Coronavirus has cut US air travel to a fraction of what it was, with COVID-19 guidelines including stay-at-home orders reducing flyers to a bare trickle, the TSA has confirmed. With many US states on lockdown by governor order, and the general advice being to maintain social distance and avoid unnecessary travel, the knock-on impact to how many people are passing through airports has been huge.
NASA announced the SpaceX Demo-2 flight test date and additional details on how they'll be running a world's first since the final "space shuttle" mission on July 8, 2011. This will be the "return of human spaceflight launch capabilities to the United States" in full effect. It'll also be the first launch of American astronauts aboard an American rocket and spacecraft since that 2011 date, the date of NASA's final space shuttle mission.
Today Delta CEO Ed Bastian sent an internal letter with a list of actions that'll be taken to "protect the financial position of the company". This set of actions includes an "overall capacity reduction in the next few months of 40 percent - the largest capacity reduction in Delta's history, including 2001." While the company will maintain service to London, England, they're also complying with the 30-day ban on travel to and from continental Europe announced the night of March 12th (Wednesday).
Boeing's 777X successfully aced its first test flight over the weekend, later than the jet-maker had hoped for but no less of a milestone for it. Boeing had originally aimed to give the 777X its inaugural flight last week, but poor weather conditions including strong winds forced the plane to stay grounded.
Boeing announced a change in leadership this morning amid ongoing crisis in the company. Hundreds of victims were killed earlier this year in a pair of crashes of the Boing 737 Max. The same airplane model crashed in two separate events, likely due to a single piece of anti-stall software placed on the craft. The CEO Dennis Muilenburg was not mentioned in the press release for this change in leadership.
There is no shortage of people trying to create ways for mankind to fly on their own. Pretty much like the Wright Brothers, these people are both admired and ridiculed. These days, however, it's no longer a dream nor a fantasy nor science fiction with inventions and stunts from the likes of Yves Rossy, better known as "Jetman" who makes taking off vertically look almost too easy.
NASA's Super Guppy aircraft landed this week in Ohio to drop off NASA's newest Moon capsule. This Orion capsule is part of the Artemis I mission with an aim for the surface of our close lunar relative. This Orion spacecraft is currently arriving at NASA's Plum Brook Station where it'll be going through a series of tests before it reaches its next stage of preparedness for its flight to our Earth's Moon.
Today we're looking at how a fly lands upside-down - up on a ceiling - courtesy of a study published this week in the AAAS's Science Advances. Inverted landing is something a fly takes for granted - largely because, as it would appear in this study, most of this process takes place in a fraction of a second. The findings in this paper show an expanded understanding of the various biomechanical, sensory, and neural processes that take place when a fly attempts to land on a ceiling. This data could lead to fantastic future applications - let's take a look at why.
Today Porsche and Boeing entered into a partnership for the future of urban air mobility and "the extension of urban traffic into airspace." Sort of like Back to the Future 2, or The Fifth Element, or Blade Runner - or any number of other sci-fi stories - this partnership is about the "Premium Urban Air Mobility Market."
Technologist Mahmooda Sultana created the design for a nanomaterial-based detector platform. Because of her work, combined with a next-gen 3D printing program, a new generation in computing may be about to emerge. It all centers on the 2-inch by 3-inch device able to detect minute concentrations of gases, vapor, atmospheric pressure, and temperature.
Generally speaking, air travel is a pretty dull affair that is nonetheless a reality of life for a lot of people. Alaska Airlines announced today that is has a new way for some flyers to pass the time while they're in the air, as it has outfitted some of cross-country routes with VR headsets. More specifically, Allosky headsets from SkyLights will allow Alaska Airlines passengers to watch some immersive VR movies and short films as they fly.
The FAA has refused to force airlines to offer more legroom, rejecting calls for legal minimums and dismissing concerns that cramped seating in cabins could present an evacuation risk. The Federal Aviation Administration had been forced to reconsider regulatory requirements for airplane seating, after a judge ruled in favor of a consumer group in a lawsuit last year.