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Air & Space Magazine

With Lincoln Beachey at the controls, a Curtiss design dashes past the crowd, but not fast enough to earn points from the judges.

The Big Race of 1910

How the first U.S. air race launched an aviation tradition.

An all-volunteer crew works on the Museum’s Junior. From left: George Rousseau (by wing), Karl Heinzel (with cowling), Melissa Courtney (center), Joe Fichera (near tail), and Roger Guest (by prop).

The Thursday Regulars

In the Museum: The Thursday Regulars

The author with his anti-sub Lockheed Orion.

Above & Beyond: Adventures in the South China Sea

Above & Beyond: Adventures in the South China Sea

Hello HAL: Pilots needed a computer to fly Grumman’s X-29.

Moments and Milestones: Swept Forward

Moments and Milestones: Swept Forward

John Magda mounting his Blue Angel Panther in 1950.

Restoration: Kentucky Panther

Grumman’s first jet honors a son of the Bluegrass State.

Charles Lindbergh (left) and Harlan Gurney (with a Lincoln-Standard J-1, ca. 1922) would remain lifelong friends.

Slim and Bud

Meet Charles Lindbergh the barnstormer—as he interviews his oldest flying buddy.

The Air Force hopes its unmanned X-37 (in taxi tests in 2007) will take on some of the functions of the shuttle

Space Shuttle Jr.

After 2010, the only spaceplane in the U.S. inventory will be the Air Force’s mysterious X-37.

The author’s daughter, spellbound by a Hercules C-130, had little interest in the B-2 bomber that was entertaining an airshow crowd at the moment the photo was snapped.

Like Father, Like Daughter

A daughter begins to seek interest in airplanes.

Left - Then: Given the troubles of 1968, says Jim Lovell, "a Bible reading was the right thing" for that Christmas in space. Right - Now: Expedition 16 played Santa for Christmas 2007. From left: Yuri Malenchenko, Peggy Whitson, and Dan Tani.

Joy to the World

First Americans to spend Christmas in space.

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Recalling the H-Bomb that Almost Backfired

Yang Guoxiang, one of China’s top test pilots, tells the story.

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2009: A Space Oddity

The other day we posted some of Arthur C. Clarke’s philosophical words on the fate of human evolution, with the caveat that his predictions were still far into the future.But here’s a neat video of astronaut Timothy Kopra on the International Space Station on August 15, 2009, conducting an experime…

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The Search for a Real “Pandora”

In the three years since film director James Cameron wrote the script for his new blockbuster Avatar, a lot has changed in the field of exoplanet research (the study of planets around other stars). Nobody knows this better than one of its leading practitioners, Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smith…

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Mountains and Craters

A geologist’s lunar paradise.

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Plane Art

In late 2001, as a cost-cutting measure, Delta Air Lines decided to replace its first-class linen tray cloths with paper placemats. As flight attendant Jewel Van Valin told the Los Angeles Times in July 2008, the first time she set down a paper mat, a disgruntled passenger “stared at it and then ro…

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Inching Closer to Clarke’s Prediction

In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written as Stanley Kubrick was adapting it to a screenplay for his 1968 film, author Arthur C. Clarke philosophizes deeply on the convergence of man and machine. While the human astronauts Frank Poole and David Bowman affect an almost robot-like discipline and de…

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Boeing’s Christmas Tradition

Frequent contributor Stephen Joiner writes: “The 737 runway overshoot in Jamaica on December 8 reminds me of our Boeing Aircraft On Ground article (“Airliner Repair 24/7,” Oct./Nov. 2008), where Boeing’s Jim Testin told me gravely, “Something will ALWAYS happen on Christmas eve” (and then it did.) …

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Major Santa Claus

This guy knows flight operations.

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Inside Track

The Cassini probe to Saturn and Titan is just one of those spacecraft that keeps returning very cool stuff, such as the beautiful view of Saturn during its equinox a few months ago.Now, the mission has just released tantalizing footage of Saturn’s moon Janus, which is about 111 miles across, overta…

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The First Naval Aviator

On this day in 1910, Theodore “Spuds” Ellyson, a 25-year-old Navy Lieutenant from Richmond, Virginia, was ordered to report to Glenn Curtiss’s flying school in San Diego as the first Naval officer assigned to aviation.”What was accomplished is now history,” Ellyson wrote later, “namely the develop…

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Virtual Flight Over Mont Blanc

More coolness in Google Earth: A virtual helicopter flight over the Chamonix Valley in France, including Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in western Europe. Take the whole tour at this site (you’ll need the Google Earth plug-in, which is easy to install) or watch a short YouTube video below:

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