A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
In the center of a large, bright hangar at California's Edwards Air Force Base was a large cross made of two iron girders balanced on a universal truck joint. Six thrusters on the ends of the cross's limbs shot spurts of compressed nitrogen every time Neil Armstrong, sitting in a makeshift cockpit on the cross's forward end, moved the control stick in his left hand. It might not have looked it in 1956, but this barebones simulator was the future Moonwalker's first step into space. Armstrong's love affair with aviation began when he was six years old and skipped Sunday school to take an airplane ride with his father. Inspired, Armstrong devoured books and magazines about flying, built model airplanes, and eventually earned his private pilot's license at 16 before he even learned to drive. In 1947, he began his formal training, enrolling at Purdue University, Indiana, in a four year engineering programmer in exchange for...