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Air & Space Magazine

Lockheed Martin has considered both lifting bodies and ballistic capsules for the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle. The rounded capsule is shown attached to a service module, which provides propulsion.

Retro Rocketeers

If a capsule was good enough to get a crew to the moon, these old-timers say, it’s good enough to get a crew back to Earth.

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Night Stalkers

U.S. soldiers in Vietnam heard rumors of ghosts; the Viet Cong chalked it up to bad luck.

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The People and Planes of Friday Harbor

Time and tide wait for no man, but they seem to linger a little around the flying paradise of the San Juan Islands.

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Glacier Girl

The Lockheed P-38 saved from an icy tomb is now the star attraction in a previously quiet Kentucky town.

Artist's conception of the Lunokhod rover about to descend ramps from the landing module.

The Other Moon Landings

The Soviets lost the moon race but won a dram of glory with the first robotic craft to roam another world.

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The Need for Speed

Everything is in place for the development of a supersonic business jet-except U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations.

Aeronautics, May 1930.

Reflecting the Glow of Flight’s Golden Age

Page through these vintage magazine covers and return to a time when the world was vast and air travel was grand.

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The People and Planes of Santa Paula

There’s a hard-to-define quality that can’t be found on a flight chart or listed in an airport directory.

Instructor Herbert Cain introduces his French students to their new trainer.

French Lessons

With their own country occupied by Germany, French air cadets came to Alabama to learn to fly. Vive la Dixie!

In the Icing Research Tunnel of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio, granular “rime ice” chunks obliterate an airfoil’s smooth surface.

Electro-mechanical Deicing

Ice kills. That’s why engineers continue to invent new ways to keep it off airplane wings.

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Star Power

The plasma rocket, says U.S. astronaut Franklin Chang-Díaz, is the propulsion technology of the future.

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Australian Racing Moths

In the Great Australian Tiger Moth Race, it’s not whether you win or lose, but whether you can stand that damned uncomfortable cockpit long enough to even finish.

On June 12, 2003, Concorde F-BVFA landed at Washington Dulles International Airport after its final flight. The airliner is now on permanent display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

My Ride on the Concorde

A museum curator goes along for one last transatlantic voyage

The prototype’s wing had a constant angle of sweep; tests led to a trademark leading edge kink in wings of production craft.

God Save the Vulcan!

The Royal Air Force Vulcan, immense cold war bomber and aerodynamic marvel, has been sentenced to permanent museum exhibition.

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‘It’s All About Fire, Smoke, and Noise’

You know those little rockets made of wood and glue that you can stuff a motor in and launch from the field next door? These aren’t them.

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100 years on

Magazine Within a Magazine. Celebrating 200 Years of Flight

CH-46Es glow in a view through night-vision goggles aboard the flight deck of the USS Saipan.

Through Darkest Iraq with Gun and Cobra

A month of war through the night-vision goggles of a Marine AH-1W SuperCobra pilot.

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Celestial Body

De Havilland’s D.H. 106 Comet blazed the commercial jet trail but broke its nation’s heart.

A simulated Mars Exploration Rover roams a simulated planet. In January it all becomes real.

Next Stop Gusev Crater

If planetary scientists could do whatever they wished, they’d probably send a spacecraft to land on the floor of Valles Marineris.

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Air(show) Assault

With a Caribou, Mohawk, Bird Dog, Hueys, and Cobras, Army aviators are teaching the loudest history lesson you ever heard.

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