“Find the niche and fill it” is a venerable maxim and one Butler National

The two largest space powers outside the U.S. had wildly divergent records in 2011, with Beijing boasting 19 launches and demonstrating in-orbit docking for a future space station while the Kremlin ordered an investigation into a string of high-profile engineering failures plaguing Russia's space program.

BENGALURU, India - India's Defense Bioengineering and Electromedical Laboratory has developed an oxygen life-support system for helicopter pilots operating at high altitudes.

"There are concerns expressed by us time and again and we are watching the progress at the other end," one senior Indian Air Force official told AVIATION WEEK.

The flying of the space shuttle involves complex choreography of man (or woman) and machine. With five shuttle missions under his belt and a stint as the chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, U.S. Navy Capt. (ret.) Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson is among the most qualified to explain what must be done to make a flight a success. In an exclusive Aviation Week pilot report, he describes what transpires from launch through landing from the commander’s point of view.

The loss of two shuttle orbiters and 14 brave astronauts gave NASA and the nation several textbooks worth of painful lessons about launching humans into space, including how easy it is to forget those lessons. The Challenger accident scuttled forever the notion that the space shuttle was an operational vehicle that could take humans to orbit as a matter of “routine.” Columbia’s loss underscored that schooling, and killed the shuttle program.

As new competitors enter the commercial aircraft market, Boeing and Airbus face big decisions about how to keep their products on the leading edge. Should they make incremental upgrades now, or wait until game-changing technologies are ready? Boeing Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney sat down at the company’s Chicago headquarters with AW&ST Senior Business Editor Joseph C. Anselmo to discuss the options the company is mulling and why he thinks China will become the industry’s next big power.

Trials about to start on a small engine stand in rural Oxfordshire, England, could open the door to full-scale development of a hybrid air-breathing rocket engine for single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable launch vehicles.