Edwards Air Force Base News

Editor's note: This guest post was written by Ron Atkins, a life-long supporter of human space exploration and an ardent advocate of "NewSpace" and Commercial Spaceflight.

Wrapped in protective plastic, the Dream Chaser arrives at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility, where it will be based for flight testing.

Plans from the Defense Department to furlough as many 650,000 employees could have a severe impact on federal contractors as program operations, new competitions and invoice payments face potential delays from lack of resources, according to Lockheed Martin Corp.'s chief financial officer.

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems has finished assembly and testing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft and is getting ready to ship it from its Louisville headquarters to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Col. Andrew J. "Drifter" Toth, commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing, the "Nomads" at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, was talking about the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter when he acknowledged a flight restriction on the airplane.

More specifically, California and Washington State. The AUVSI report lists them as the No.1 and No.

Alone in the single-seat cockpit and high above the American Southwest, pilot Bertrand Piccard could hear only his plane's gear box and the quiet whine of four electric motors.

The silhouette of an aircrew member from the 9th Airlift Squadron can be seen as they prepare to remove a power cart from a C-5M Super Galaxy for a test sortie April 26, 2013, in support of C-5M Super Galaxy Block 3.5.2 software upgrade testing.

One of the biggest stories last week was Virgin Galactic's successful flight of SpaceShipTwo .

Boeing's X-51A WaveRider - a jet-fueled, air-breathing hypersonic rocket developed for the U.S. Air Force - went hypersonic during a recent test off the Southern California coast, flying at more than five times the speed of sound.

They called him "Sonny" and thought his skills as a piano player likely would lead him to a career as a musician.

An F-35A taxis into a hangar at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., where pilots and maintainers are being trained on the new Joint Strike Fighter.

The X-15 is a strong contender for the title of "Everyone's Favorite X-plane." Conceived in the 1952-1954 period, before Sputnik and the birth of NASA , the North American Aviation-built rocket plane was intended to pioneer the technologies and techniques of hypersonic flight - that is, of flight faster than Mach 4 . Between 1959 and 1968, three ... (more)

Lt. Gen. Jim Kowalski, commander of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command, sits at the electronics nerve center of a B-52H test aircraft in May 2012 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Astronaut David Scott urges Jacksonville University graduates to 'see the world': 7th man to walk on the moon receives honorary degree On Saturday, the seventh U.S. astronaut to walk on the moon, retired U.S. Air Force Col.

An unmanned X-51A Waverider test plane achieved an incredible speed of more than 3800 mph on May 1, reaching Mach 5.1 over the Pacific Ocean.

Scientists the world over are looking to combine flying wing technology with pilotless aircraft in commercial as well as military capacities.

The U.S. Air Force's experimental X-51A Waverider vehicle flew under its own power for four minutes on May 1, 2013, reaching a top speed of Mach 5.1. The U.S. military launched an experimental hypersonic aircraft on its swan song test flight Wednesday , accelerating the craft to more than five times the speed of sound in the longest-ever mission ... (more)

No noisy jet engines. Piccard piloted the craft for 20 hours, first cruising along the California coast after taking off from Moffett Field in Mountain View near San Francisco just after dawn Friday.

The unmanned X-51A WaveRider, which is more of a missile than a plane, was launched off the coast near Port Magu and reached hypersonic speed before plunging into the ocean.