The U.S. taketh away and then it giveth. After not renewing the contract for the Afghan air force’s C-27A cargo aircraft, the U.S. Air Force is looking into providing the Afghans C-130s, an Air Force spokesman says. It is not yet known whether the aircraft would be sold or given to the Afghans. “The U.S. Air Force is currently developing and assessing strategies to identify C-130 aircraft that could be made available for transfer to the Afghan Air Force at some point in the near future,” the spokesman said in an email. The Afghan government has requested four C-130s but…
Browsing: Space
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA – An Atlas V is rolled out to launch pad 41 this morning at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Launch is set for Wednesday, Jan. 30 with a half-hour launch window starting at 8:48 p.m. Eastern. The mission is planned to deploy NASA’s 11th Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-K) payload, replacing an earlier TDRS satellite that has been on orbit for 30 years. The TDRS constellation provides constant communication relay services to U.S. government satellites in low earth orbit. (Air Force Times photos/John Bretschneider)
First came the flying saucers, and now another Air Force experiment has shed some light on a past space endeavor. Except this time, it was to be at the expense of the moon. According to this recent article from Discovery News, Air Force Physicist Leonard Reiffel published a report in 1958 that proposed “nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the moon.” Amy Shira Teitel, the author of the Discovery News article, writes, “Reiffel envisioned soft landing three identical scientific instrument packages carrying seismometers and radiation detectors at random on the visible face of the moon. These in situ stations would…
Recently, a British “film crew” was reportedly detained for trying to shoot a UFO conspiracy documentary on the Air Force base in Nevada known in folklore as Area 51. The Air Force would not comment about the alleged incident at the base, formally known as the Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range Complex. “The range is used for the testing of technologies and systems and training for operations critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces and the security of the United States,” Air Combat Command spokesman Col. Todd Vician said in an email. “There is an operating location…
Recently, a British “film crew” was reportedly detained for trying to shoot a UFO conspiracy documentary on the Air Force base in Nevada known in folklore as Area 51. The Air Force would not comment about the alleged incident at the base, formally known as the Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range Complex. “The range is used for the testing of technologies and systems and training for operations critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces and the security of the United States,” Air Combat Command spokesman Col. Todd Vician said in an email. “There is an operating location…
Whether aliens exist or not, the Air Force may have once tried to reach them. The National Archives published parts of recently declassified records from the Aeronautical Systems Division in a document titled, “USAF Project 1794.” Dated in 1956, this document shows the Air Force’s goal to build a supersonic flying … something. According to the National Archives blog, the Air Force had contracted the work out to a Canadian company, Avro Aircraft Ltd. in Ontario, to construct the disk-shaped craft. The “saucer” was designed to be a vertical take-off and landing plane designed to reach a top speed of…
Photo Virgin Galactic via L.A. Times Retired Lt. Col. Keith Colmer, who had served as the director of engineering for the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve Command Test Center, has been tapped by eclectic billionaire Richard Branson to test Virgin Galactic’s futuristic spaceships. Colmer, who had recently retired, is going from test flying the propeller-driven AT-6C light attack plane just a few weeks ago to testing Virgin’s spaceships WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. The L.A. Times reports that Colmer has logged more than 5,000 flight hours in more than 90 different types of aircraft, including two tours in Iraq flying F-16s.…
