Today is turning out to be a very bad day for manned spaceflight. NASA is investigating the apparent sabotage of a computer due to be flown to the International Space Station. And the Guardian is reporting that 3 people have been killed and another 3 seriously injured in an explosion at the Mojave Air and Space Port - the site where Scaled ( Read more... )

There's been a lot of hype recently about Virgin Galactic announcing they're going to start sub-orbital launches within 5 years. Apparently 175 people have already signed up, at $280,000 per ticket. A number of people are praising the likes of VG for "doing for millions what NASA does for billions ( Read more... )

Everybody knows there are a number of companies who manufacture aeroplanes. There used to be more, I think, but that's capitalism for you. If you think back to WWII, there were a lot of big names - some are still recognisably around today like Lockheed (in the form of Lockheed-Martin) whilst others have merged into obscurity. We rarely ever hear of ( Read more... )