When we need brake pads or a fuel pump for our automobile, we assume the garage will have one in stock or know where to get it. But at the dawn of the automobile age, when this Daimler car was new, it wasn't that simple. Every automobile was essentially a one-off, custom-built as a worldwide cadre of tinkerers and engineers struggled to invent an industry. A few years later, the same held true as the aviation industry was born.

Rattled by cold California high-desert winds, and little changed since its days as a Second World War motor pool for the U.S. Marine Corps, the old hangar that Masten Space Systems calls home seems an incongruous incubator for low-cost flights to sub-orbit.

French arms exports were down sharply last year, from €6.5 billion ($8.7 billion) in 2011 to an estimated €5 billion in 2012, thanks to stiff competition from increasingly hungry U.S. contractors and technological gains in countries that until now posed little threat to the world's No. 4 defense exporter.

A massive U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan next year will trigger a shift in Pentagon priorities and force structure, but do not expect any major changes for the Air Force's intelligence collection fleet. At least, not for now.

Lawmakers revisit long-standing feud over new approach to spaceflight

Military-space planners unclear whether smaller means cheaper