Col. Chris Cook flies at 71,000 feet over California in a U-2 Dragon Lady during a recent mission. Colonel Cook is the 412th Operations Group commander at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (Courtesy photo/Col. Chris Cook)
Category: aerospace
USAF Thunderbirds 
Los Angeles County Air Show
The USAF Thunderbirds demonstration team performed at General William J. Fox Airfield, Lancaster CA over the weekend.
USAF Thunderbirds 
Photo: AV Media photojournalist Melinda Rodriguez
Virgin Galatic Spaceship Two Crash
The fatal breakup and crash of Virgin Galactic’s first SpaceShipTwo space plane last year was caused by a co-pilot error, as well as the failure of the spacecraft’s builders to anticipate such a catastrophic mistake, federal safety investigators say.
SpaceShipTwo crashed in October when co-pilot Michael Alsbury unlocked the commercial space plane’s re-entry “feathering” system too early during a test flight over California’s Mojave Desert, investigators with the NationalTransportation Safety Board said in a hearing today (July 28). (via space.com)
Space Tourism in the Mojave Desert
John Makely | NBC News
Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKniteTwo mothership with SpaceShipTwo aboard approaches lift-off speed for a powered test flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
“MOJAVE, Calif.—The Mojave Desert is where the Right Stuff was born. It’s where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier with the X-1 rocket plane in 1947. It’s where other test pilots earned their astronaut wings in the X-15 during the ’60s.
Now the Right Stuff is being born again in Mojave. But it’s an open question whether that renewed spirit of rocket-powered flight will grow up here—or take root someplace else, as it did in the 1960s.
This time, the rockets being tested in the desert aren’t secret military projects. They’re commercial ventures, focused on bringing the thrill of outer space to the masses and turning a profit.
“As a child, I read about some of the things that happened… the early X-1 flights, the whole X-series…I guess I thought that was over and gone with, and probably wouldn’t be seen again,” said David Mackay, a 56-year-old veteran aviator who’s now the chief pilot for one of those ventures, Virgin Galactic. “And yet, here we are with a very similar system, an air-launched spaceship.” (Full story at CNBC.com)
AV Media 