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Aera Corp., formerly American Astronautics, competed for the X Prize with plans for a ship that sounds much like Altairis, but the company never got enough capital together to make it happen. Company founder Bill Sprague told MSNBC that the success of SpaceShipOne has meant an infusion of venture capital that has encouraged him to […]

Aera Corp. Heats Up Race For Space Aera Corp., of Temeculah, Calif., announced on Monday that it has signed a “Commercial Space Operations Support Agreement” with the U.S. Air Force that will allow it to launch its seven-seat rocket-powered spacecraft from a launch pad and land it horizontally on a runway, both at Cape Canaveral. […]

What’s next for Fossett and his well-heeled buddies? There’s apparently something in the works and it will be announced in a few months, but we have to wonder if it’s as ambitious as Bertrand Piccard’s plan. As AVweb told you a couple of years ago, the Swiss psychiatrist (no relation to Jean-Luc) thinks he’ll be […]

For the record, Fossett came perilously close to not claiming the record — aside from the lost(?) 2,600 lbs of fuel (typo’d in a previous issue as gallons). The requirement for setting the record was that Fossett cross all longitudinal lines and cover a distance equal to that of either the Tropic of Cancer or […]

More Than A Footnote? Well, by now Steve Fossett has had that well-deserved sleep, meal and shower, the media hordes have left Salina and GlobalFlyer is sitting in a hangar, awaiting what will likely be its final flight (to the Air and Space Museum, via Oshkosh, it’s been speculated). But what, besides some fleeting drama […]

What’s perhaps most disturbing about this AD is the breadth of defects discovered by Cessna technicians. Normally an AD focuses on a specific part or system in an airplane but this one identifies a Pandora’s box of potentially serious issues. According to the AD, Cessna found misrigged and misaligned control surfaces, a missing bolt on […]

Emergency AD Affects New 172s, 182s If you’ve recently taken delivery of a new Cessna 172 or 182, check the serial number against a list in an Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued Friday. A few dozen of the brand-new airplanes are grounded until they can be inspected for potential control rigging problems. “The FAA has been […]

So, what happened to all that fuel? The concentration seems focussed (sensibly) on making the most of the JP-4 that didn’t disappear but there has been some speculation centering around where it all went … if in fact it went anywhere at all. A venting problem or simply a miscalculation of the initial consumption on […]

Fuel-Short (Maybe) Fossett Presses On While Steve Fossett might be able to stay awake for 80 hours (concerns over a “missing” 2,600 gallons of fuel might help), we at AVweb make no such claim. So we leave you at 1 a.m. EST with the adventurer northeast of Hawaii, consistently running at better than 270 kts […]

AOPA has filed comments on the NPRM, but only on two of the sections. Spokesman Chris Dancy said it’s AOPA’s view that helicopter rotor and tail-rotor damage must still fit the definition of “substantial damage” before it’s reportable as an accident, so it wasn’t concerned about that section. AOPA did object to the section on […]