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United Flight 1637 was returning off-duty Air Force Captain Mike Gongol, his family and 157 other souls from their Christmas vacation when disaster struck. The Boeing 737's pilot suffered a devastating heart attack at 30,000 feet on the way from Des Moines to Denver, forcing Gongol to rush to the cockpit and help guide the plane to an emergency landing. His heroic actions have gone unheralded until now, as Gongol recalls the dramatic moment he answered the chilling announcement on the December 30 flight, 'Does anyone know how to fly a plane?'

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Boeing expects to launch the first unmanned test flight of their commercial CST-100 manned ‘space taxi’ in “early 2017,” said Chris Ferguson, commander of NASA’s final shuttle flight in an exclusive one-on-one interview with Universe Today for an inside look at Boeing’s space efforts. Ferguson is now spearheading Boeing’s human spaceflight capsule project as director of Crew and Mission Operations. “The first unmanned orbital test flight is planned in January 2017 … and may go to the station,” Ferguson told me during a wide ranging, in depth discussion about a variety of human spaceflight topics...

A U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge issued an injunction late Wednesday prohibiting a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing from proceeding with plans to buy Russian-made rocket engines. SpaceX sued the federal government Monday, protesting the Air Force’s award of a lucrative space contract, saying it should have been competitively bid. In the suit, SpaceX criticizes United Launch Alliance (ULA) for using Russian engines in some of its rockets, which SpaceX founder Elon Musk said might be a violation of U.S. sanctions and was unseemly at a time when Russia “is the process of invading Ukraine.” Musk alleged...

Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has questioned whether flight MH370 crashed into the southern Indian Ocean and has blamed Boeing, the plane’s maker, for its disappearance. Dr Mahathir, who maintains a powerful influence in his country’s ruling party, also suggested the reason why the passengers and crew never acted to stop whatever was happening on board was because they were “somehow incapacitated". “Even if the pilot wants to commit suicide, the co-pilot and the cabin crew would not allow him to do so without trying something,” he said. “But no one, not even the passengers, did anything.” Writing in...

Lockheed’s strategy of basing its F-35 marketing strategy on its “stealth” capabilities is beginning to backfire as their effectiveness is being increasingly challenged by competitors and outside analysts. (RAAF photo) Boeing has been loudly criticising Lockheed Martin’s F-35 in hopes that the Navy and other clients will buy more of its EA-18G Growlers for support and F/A-18 Super Hornets as contingency. Developed in a Joint Strike Fighter contract that Lockheed won over Boeing in 2001, the F-35 is wildly over budget and has run into various design problems. Chief among them, according to Boeing, is the weakness of its stealth...

EDITED Boeing's CEO faced pointed questions about its charitable donation to the Clinton Foundation in the same year that then-Secy of State Hillary Clinton advocated on its behalf on an official tax-financed trip to Russia. David Almasi, shareholder and representative of the National Center for Public Policy Research think tank, asked the question, and gave an indication of the kinds of challenges that companies could face as Hillary weighs a run for president. Dozens of major corporations have made charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation in recent years. Almasi called the Boeing donation a "clear conflict of interest" that seemed...

The latest news to come out of Ukraine doesn’t involve Vice President Joe Biden, European natural gas supplies, or Vladimir Putin’s insatiable appetite for the resurrection of the Soviet Union. In fact, it hits a bit closer to home. America’s spy satellites, as it turns out, is dependent upon Russian provided technology to reach orbit. That’s right… Not only are our astronauts hitching rides to the Russian-run “international” space station, but even our spy satellites have to hitch a ride via Putin’s Russian Military industrial complex. And any sanctions that could come out of the situation in Ukraine, may just...

A civilian cargo aircraft crashed at Bagram Air Field near the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday, killing all seven people aboard. The plane came down shortly after take-off and crashed within the boundaries of the US-run airbase, a NATO spokesperson at the base said. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the crash, but the coalition dismissed the claim as "false" in a statement to AP. The cause of the crash is being investigated by emergency crews, but no sign of insurgent activity in the area was spotted at the time, the statement added.

Senator Graham aggressively fought President Obama's union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when they filed a frivolous complaint against Boeing's decision to build a production facility in South Carolina. The labor unions were so upset about Lindsey's efforts they retaliated by filing a baseless ethics charge. Lindsey's response: "I will not be intimidated." He refused to back down, the ethics charge was dismissed, and Boeing prevailed - saving thousands of South Carolina jobs. Lindsey has introduced legislation to restrict the NLRB's authority and prohibit the NLRB from having a say in where American companies can do business....

Somebody on Twitter posted an upbeat message saying the US delegation to the latest round of talks with Iranian officials was quite optimistic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a born optimist and I love optimism, but I’d rather revel in victory than hope for good news, and the Iranians have every reason to revel. The Obama crowd has just ok’d something the Tehran tyrants have desperately wanted since the eighties: spare parts [1] for their long-grounded American passenger aircraft. Boeing and General Electric were given export licenses by the Treasury Department and everyone involved has been chanting “we take...

WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) - Boeing Co , the world's biggest airplane maker, on Friday said it had received a license from the U.S. Treasury Department to export certain spare parts for commercial aircraft to Iran under a temporary sanctions relief deal that began in January.

(Jon Ostrower and I Made Sentana contributed to this article.) ...officially both sides said cooperation between the two countries is good. But people familiar with both countries' efforts say that isn't always the case. :snip: "Washington seems to be a leaky boat," said one person familiar with the Malaysian investigation. "It erodes trust." Nevertheless, this person said concern about the Americans' role isn't seriously impeding the investigation. "We have been surprised at how many people we have been able to rope into this," this person said. :snip: Boeing, without the full involvement of Malaysian investigators, has run some computer models...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An unmanned experimental aircraft failed during an attempt to fly at six times the speed of sound in the latest setback for hypersonic flight. The X-51A Waverider was designed to reach Mach 6, or 3,600 mph, after being dropped by a B-52 bomber off the Southern California coast on Tuesday. Engineers hoped it would sustain its top speed for five minutes, twice as long as an X-51A has gone before. But the Air Force said Wednesday that a faulty control fin prevented it from starting its exotic scramjet engine and it was lost.

Here are the top five aerial weapons that one day could change the face of modern warfare. Relying on the most advanced technology in the world, these hyper-advanced projectiles may outmaneuver, outrun, and outmatch America’s foes around the globe, whenever the need arises. 1) The Mach-5 Cruise Missile If a cruise-missile at supersonic speed is a full-throttle Ford Mustang, then a missile that hits Mach 5 is a Formula 1 racer going all out. The problem is, that hypersonic Mach 5 pace — clocking in at five times the speed of sound– has yet to be reached by munitions. Until...

coondoggie writes "The aspiration that jets may someday fly at over six times the speed of sound took a very real step toward reality recently, as the US Air Force said it successfully married the test aircraft, known as the X-51A WaveRider, to a B-52 in preparation for a Dec. 2 flight test. The X-51A flight tests are intended to demonstrate that the engines can achieve their desired speed without disintegrating. While the X-51 looks like a large rocket now, its applications could change the way aircraft or spaceships are designed, fly into space, support reconnaissance missions and handle long-distance...

The Space Shuttle may be dead, but the Air Force is looking to pick up the slack. Last month they launched their secret space plane, the X-37B, from a base from Florida. The spacecraft is currently on the first part of a top secret nine month mission that will end with a soft landing in California. So is the X-37B the Air Force's first foray into creating the world's first starfighter? Absolutely, not says the Air Force. Gary E. Payton, under secretary of the Air Force for space programs says that the plane carries "no offensive capabilities." He states, "The...

A recent United States Air Force scramjet test has hinted at a future where hypersonic vehicles streak through the sky at many times the speed of sound around the world, and perhaps even open up access to space. The experimental X-51A Waverider used a rocket booster and an air-breathing scramjet to reach a speed of Mach 5 and achieve the longest hypersonic flight ever powered by such an engine on May 26. That technology might not only deliver cargo quickly to different parts of the globe, but could also transform the space industry and spawn true space planes that take...

Hypersonic missiles Speed is the new stealth Hypersonic weapons: Building vehicles that fly at five times the speed of sound is amazingly hard, but researchers are trying ON AUGUST 20th 1998 Bill Clinton ordered American warships in the Arabian Sea to fire a volley of more than 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps near the town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The missiles, flying north at about 880kph (550mph), took two hours to reach their target. Several people were killed, but the main target of the attack, Osama bin Laden, left the area shortly before the missiles...

What's faster than a speeding bullet, doesn't require a cape and isn't deterred by kryptonite? It's called the X-51 Waverider...and is the latest creation of Boeing and Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne. This past May it completed the longest hypersonic combustion (scramjet) powered flight in aviation history, reaching a speed of about Mach five, or five times the speed of sound. A scramjet engine is often likened to an air-breathing engine...it has no moving parts, and sucks in air from the atmosphere, rather than using oxidizers or additional fuel. It is new technology engineers say will allow aircraft to fly faster...

An aircraft resembling a large bodyboard detached from a flying B-52 bomber and then shot across the Pacific on Wednesday at more than 3,500 mph, shattering aviation records and reigniting decades-long efforts to develop a vehicle that could travel faster than a speeding bullet. The unmanned X-51 WaveRider, powered by an air-breathing hypersonic engine that has virtually no moving parts, was launched midair off the coast near Point Mugu. It sped westward for 200 seconds before plunging into the ocean as planned. Previous attempts at hypersonic flights lasted no more than 10 seconds. "Everything went very well for a first...