May 2019
Cold comfort for astronauts
... development and introduced a controlling, detail-oriented culture to NASA. The human space programme started with two Air Force-contributed large intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) rockets, Atlas and Titan – used on the Mercury and Gemini...
January 2022
De Ayrshire ad Astra
... of the first dedicated small commercial launch vehicles was a horizontal air-launch system. The then Orbital Sciences’ Pegasus is a three ...protected during ferry operations In 1974, the US Air Force was studying options for making large missiles more...
18 January 2021
Virgin Orbit rocket reaches orbit for first time
...also marks a historical first: no other orbital class, air-launched, liquid-fuelled rocket had successfully reached space before... customers ranging from the US Space Force and the UK’s Royal Air Force to commercial customers like Swarm Technologies, ...
July 2014
The hypersonic grail: advances at DARPA, AFRL and beyond
...fuel run through a heat exchanger. The engine, called Sabre, is being developed by UK-based Reactions Engines. The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), under a co-operative research and development agreement with Reaction Engines, is exploring technical...
June 2015
Great expectations: launch markets, SpaceX, China, and other new players
... to conquer a great part of the commercial market, SpaceX also looks for profits in the government segment. The US Air Force plans to certify Falcon 9 in 2015, so that it can use the rocket to launch satellites in the interests of national security...
March 2016
Time for European visionary goals
...leaps in evolutionary terms. In less than 100 years air travel has become routine and the car has provide ...concentrated on a backlog of failures. Politicians across Europe are forcing each other into populist measures to please themselves and the ...
