On Wednesday, Virgin Orbit attached its prototype rocket, LauncherOne, to a modified 747 for the first time at an airport in Long Beach, California. The company hopes to send the rocket into orbit early next year.
LauncherOne is 70 feet long and weighs 57,000 pounds. It’s designed to carry small satellites into orbit around Earth. But instead of blasting off directly from the ground like a typical rocket, LauncherOne will start its journey on a runway.


The team were carrying out the integration check of the rocket with Cosmic Girl to verify mechanical, electrical, software, and dynamics all work together for the first time,” Virgin Orbit owner Richard Branson wrote in a blog post. “It’s an incredibly exciting moment for us, as Virgin Orbit’s first test flights move ever closer.”
To prepare for the eventual test flights, engineers altered the plane, stripping out seats and bulkheads from its interior to cut down on weight. Cosmic Girl is now designed to take off carrying LauncherOne under one of its wings.
The plane will fly LauncherOne to an altitude of about 30,000 feet. At that point, the rocket will release from the plane and engage its thrusters to travel into orbit at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour, which is 20 times the speed of sound.

By using a plane to assist with the rocket launch, Virgin Orbit hopes to offer satellite launches on shorter timelines and at lower prices than competitors, many of which rely on expensive ground-based infrastructure. The company eventually hopes to launch from multiple locations around the world, including the United Kingdom.
Virgin Orbit is a spinoff of Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company also owned by Branson. While Virgin Galactic is focused on bringing people to space, Virgin Orbit’s goal is to launch small satellites into space. Since its founding last year, the company has already signed on several customers for future satellite launches, including the Department of Defense and the European Space Agency.

If you live near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, you're probably used to hearing jets pass overhead or seeing convoys on your drive to the supermarket. What you're probably not expecting, though, is to have a Humvee dropped in your backyard.
But that's exactly what happened earlier today, when a C-17 transport testing a new airdrop system accidentally released a Humvee from 1,500 feet, a mile from its intended target. Instead of landing in the Sicily Drop Zone, the nearly three-ton vehicle ended up in a tree. Luckily, other than to the branches, there were no injuries.

According to video available at ABC News, the Humvee landed a stone’s throw from a civilian house, in a tree approximately thirty feet above ground. The Humvee was still suspended there when the Army arrived to pick it up. 
Most airdrops go off with problems, or at least without news crews, but this is not the first time there's been trouble. In 2016, three Humvees plummeted to Earth after a Army sergeant cut the rigging that held the vehicles to their parachutes. The sergeant responsible was found guilty by court-martial.
​An Army spokesman said that the airdrop had been conducted by the service’s Operational Test Command as they tested a new parachute system for heavy equipment. The three parachutes designed to gently lower the Humvee to the ground worked, he said, and the test “went as planned—except for the early release.”

Race pilot Matt Hall experienced an accelerated stall his aircraft less than 100 feet off the ground. Fortunately, he was able to bring the aircraft to wings level before bouncing off the water, and fully recovered to return to the airport.
This is an extreme example, but it goes to show how important it is to watch your airspeed and bank anglewhen you're in the traffic pattern.

This sounds like something straight out of a goofy military comedy, but I assure you this is real: a Belgian technician accidentally set of the cannon of a military plane during maintenance, which shot another plane. That plane blew up, damaging the initial plane in the process. Talk about a bad day.
The event took place at the Florennes Air Base on October 11. A bunch of planes were being serviced, since some were heading off for a training mission. A technician in one of the F-16s accidentally hit that metaphorical big red button and activated its six-barreled Vulcan M16A-1 cannon.
 Presumably before he even had time to utter “oh, shit”, another F-16AM had burst into flames. This one had recently been fully fueled for a training run, and yes, the bullets hit the gas tank. Oops!

And because the world is cruel, the blast from the exploding F-16AM also impacted the plane that delivered the shots.
Unfortunately, two technicians were also injured during the blast. The full extent of their injuries isn’t known, but the Belgian Aviation Safety Directorate has opened an investigation to see what, exactly, they can do to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again, possibly with even worse results.

we’re not exactly sure why or how these guys were there, but judging from their other videos on Youtube it seems like they are hunters. With a woodsy and mountainous setting in the back, we’re assuming that the guy that captured this footage and his buddies were just strolling through the woods when all of the sudden they were greeted by not one, but two A-10 Thunderbolts. More often than not called Warthogs or just Hogs, their pilots just kept on doing low flybys and looping around for another set.
A-10’s official name is Thunderbolt II, a name which comes directly from the P-47 Thunderbolt that was used during World War II.
Warthogs were the only planes ever developed specifically for CAS (close air support.) Entering service in 1976, the entire plane was actually built around its gun, namely, the GAU-8 Avenger rotary gun. Able to fire up to 4,200 30mm rounds a minute, this plane/gun combination is the most effective CAS platform ever built.
It is also the safest plane for its pilots as well. With a myriad of precautions taken in design stages, engineers knew this aircraft would be taking on a lot of enemy fire. For this reason, the engines were taken off the wings to decrease the likelihood of fires. Also, the pilots sit in a 1,200 lb. titanium armored “tub,” protecting him from small arms fire while strafing.