Recent Updates

Advocates of Santa Monica Municipal Airport said this week they won’t give up their fight to prevent the city from redeveloping the field, despite a failed ballot initiative that would have put the airport’s fate in the hands of voters. The ballot question asked residents if the city should be required to seek approval from […]

A sale is a sale but Textron Airland probably didn’t expect its first customer-owned Scorpion military jets to hit the airshow circuit. DefenseNews is quoting unnamed sources as saying the United Arab Emirates is in “serious discussions” to buy Scorpions for its air demonstration team, Al Fursan. The team currently flies six (with a seventh […]

Embraer recently rolled out is largest military aircraft to date and is apparently taking aim at the venerable C-130 with the KC-390. Embraer hopes to fly the high-wing twin turbofan by the end of the year and certify it by the end of 2015 with the first operational aircraft delivered in 2016. The KC-390 has […]

An F-35C Lightning II carrier variant Joint Strike Fighter has completed an arrested landing aboard an aircraft carrier for the first time, the U.S. Navy announced this week. The landing took place aboard USS Nimitz off the coast of San Diego on Monday, shortly after noon. Navy Cmdr. Tony Wilson was the pilot. “Today is […]

Losing people in a flight program is gut-wrenchingly hard and today I feel for all of the folks at Scaled Composites. None of them set out to lose a friend and injure another when they prepared to launch SpaceShipTwo last Friday. Their goal was the same as every person or team that has ever taken […]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (subscription only) that structural failure, rather than an engine explosion, is the initial focus of the NTSB investigation into the loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo on Friday. It is quoting unnamed sources as saying the preliminary video and data analysis is turning the focus to an aerodynamic breakup, although […]

Investigators probing the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo are focusing on a potential uncommanded deployment of the vehicle’s unique feathering tail structure designed to create drag and control speed during atmospheric entry. In a press conference Sunday evening, NTSB acting chairman Christopher Hart said that early data indicated the crew activated one of two controls […]

Friday’s loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was as inevitable was it was tragic. If anyone believes-as I think some do-that attaching “tourism” to space flight somehow erases the risk of flight beyond the atmosphere, this accident should disabuse them of that notion. But I wonder if it will. Promoting space tourism has gotten quite beyond […]

One test pilot has died and another has been seriously injured in the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo during a test flight from Mojave Air and Space Port, California. The company said that the spacecraft suffered an anomaly that resulted in loss of the vehicle. Parachutes were reportedly sighted in the area. One witness said […]

Shortly after liftoff of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares Rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia on Tuesday, Oct. 28, it became apparent to the operators that there was a problem with the launch and they hit the destruct button. Barron Beneski, vice president of corporate communications at Orbital, confirmed that the flight termination system was […]