In the 1960s the Cold War was heating up and after the shot down of Gary Powers by a Soviet missile, while he was flying in the U-2, the USA needed a new kind of airplane. The SR-71 was developed as a black project, a highly classified project by Lockheed Corporation from the Lockheed A-12…
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Flying cars, the new thing?
Whenever futuristic scenes appear in films there are flying cars present. It is an image we have about how the future might be, but has the future finally arrived? Short take-off and Landing aircraft (STOL) have gained a lot of force over the past couple of years and also the ones that can be both…
Tracking Santa Claus
Have you ever wanted to know exactly when Santa will arrive? Well, you cant rack him through the NORAD system. NORAD is the North American Aerospace Defense Command and since 1955 tracks Santa around the Globe as he delivers presents to the kids waiting for him. But how did it all start? On December 24,…
How to spend the holidays in Space
Being away from home for the holidays may be difficult but imagine being in space for the holidays! How do astronauts celebrate in the International Space Station? Let’s find out. The first time a group of astronauts celebrated the holidays on space was not in the ISS but on the Apollo 8 in 1968. The…
A story of espionage in the Cold War era
The single-seat, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft Lockheed U2 that took of for the first time 66 years ago is one of the aircraft that drones and satellites were intended to replace but is still flying missions in an environment no other aircraft can operate in. This single-engine aircraft was operated by Central Intelligence Agency, NASA, Republic…
How do airlines schedule flights?
Have you ever wondered why does your flight departs at certain time of the day? Do you think there’s a reason why when you take a transatlantic flight, it departs in the morning in Europe or in the afternoon in America? It’s all part of a complex scheme called “Airline scheduling”. The time a flight…
The engineering behind the Sr71 Blackbird
It’s the higher flier, the fastest and most slippery, it’s the Blackbird. But have you ever wondered what’s behind its records? Have you ever thought about the insane engineering behind one of those engines? The Sr-71 Blackbird, known between its pilots as Habu, is the conventional plane with higher flight roof, higher top speed and…
What is Sustainable Aviation Fuel?
The aviation industry is a big polluter of our World, accounting for approximately 2-3% of the manmade global carbon emissions and that means we need to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions in the following years. This is an urgent situation because of the growth of air traffic in the past years and the predicted…
How airlines choose new routes?
Have you ever thought of the importance of airline routes? A great choice can lead to great profit over one single route, take as an example the route London Heathrow (LHR) to New York (JFK), which is the highest profit route in the world (€ 1.000.000.000/year) mostly due to the high first and business class…
James H. Doolittle
Today’s turn its for one of that people that deserves his own Hollywood movie, meet James H. Doolittle. Born in California in 1896, Doolittle was a short kid, such thing made him being bullied by his classmates till he started boxing, turning de odds and giving him a strong personality but his first contact with…