There was a World War II reunion of sorts this week in Santa Maria, Calif., as three Army veterans came together. Frank Goins, a flight officer with the U.S. Army Air Corps, Bindo Grasso of Guadalupe, a paratrooper with the U.S. Army who served in France in the months following D-Day, and a Douglas C-47B [...]
1896 – Birth of Edgar Charles Johnston, Australian World War I fighter ace and leading member in civil aviation in Australia. 1924 – One of the four Douglas World Cruiser aircraft, the “Seattle”, attempting an around-the-globe flight in stages, crashes into a mountain in Alaska. The crew survives and makes it way to safety. The wreckage of the “Seattle” is later recovered [...]
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane lit up its engine for the first time in flight on Monday, taking a giant supersonic leap toward outer space. The crucial 16-second blast took place at about 7:50 a.m. PT (10:50 a.m. ET), high above California’s Mojave Air and Space Port. Virgin Group’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, was on hand to [...]
George Laszlo, 91, of Ellwood City, Pa., is one of the World War II veterans who served our country in combat and never talked about it. About 12 years ago, Laszlo was attending an air show in Pittsburgh with Sam Pawlowski of Ellport. Pawlowski told a television reporter that Laszlo had flown the famous aircraft [...]
Editor’s note: Michelle Evans is the president of Mach 25 Media and author of “The X-15 Rocket Plane: Flying the First Wings into Space.” Ms. Evans contributed this article to SPACE.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. From the Wright brothers to the last flight of the X-15 was a steady progression, moving the barriers back on the unknown. [...]
On May 1, two solar aviation pioneers at Solar Impulse are going to attempt what has never been done before — a coast-to-coast flight across America, from California’s Moffett Federal Airfield near San Francisco to Washington (and then on to New York), powered only by sunlight. They will not expend an ounce of fuel during the entire journey, [...]
1917 – German World War I fighter ace Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen scored four victories on that single day with his Albatros D.III. 1917 – Birth of Eric James Brindley Nicolson (shown above), British World War II fighter pilot. He is the only Battle of Britain pilot and the only pilot of RAF Fighter Command to be awarded [...]
In Hampton Roads, Va., a jet engine may be the sound of freedom, but the contrail it leaves behind is nothing to salute. The cloud-like contrail is composed of ice crystals, soot, sulfur and other harmful elements that riddle the emissions of jet engines and are potentially harmful to people and the environment. But NASA Langley Research Center in [...]
