Technology & Innovation

Sport aviation is personal flying for pleasure. Sport pilots fly gliders, sailplanes, hang gliders, ultralights, homebuilts, and other types of aircraft. At the turn of the 21st century, Beechcraft, Cessna, Piper, and other companies were still.... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

In 1908, Wilbur Wright flew the first public exhibitions of a Wright Flyer in France, and it wasn't long before aviation meets began thrilling crowds of spectators with races, altitude records, climbing and diving, and dramatic turns. Today, .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

General aviation refers to flights not flown by commercial carriers or the military; it includes everything from personal to business flying, air taxi, sightseeing tours, and life-saving medical flights and accounts for the vast majority of .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Able to operate freely from nearly any place on earth, helicopters come closer than any other aircraft to achieving the birdlike freedom humanity has always envied. However, the same technology that makes this possible also prevents the .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

All the roles and missions of modern air power were defined during World War I and refined during World War II: maintaining air superiority, performing reconnaissance, providing close support for ground forces, ensuring logistical support, and .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

In the 1920s, visionaries in the United States, Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere began developing liquid-fuel rockets with an eye toward space travel. Within a couple of decades, rockets and missiles had begun to alter the course of the.... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

The Wright brothers inaugurated the aerial age and helped fashion a radically new world with their historic first flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The first glimpses of what that world would become are reflected in .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

When British and French gliding enthusiasts tested gliders propelled by small engines in 1922, they created a new type of low-cost "ultralight" airplane. But the idea didn't get off the ground until 1975, when John K. Moody installed a 12½-.... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.