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Virgin's passenger spaceship completes first rocket test flight

A six-passenger spaceship owned by an offshoot of Virgin Group fired its rocket engine in flight for the first time on Monday, a key step toward the start of commercial service in about a year, Virgin owner Richard Branson said. The powered test flight over California's Mojave Desert lasted 16 seconds and broke the sound barrier. "It was stunning," Branson told Reuters. "You could see it very, very clearly. Putting the rocket and the spaceship together and seeing it perform safely, it was a critical day." The spaceship and its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port at 7 a.m. PDT (10.00 a.m. EDT), heading to an altitude of about 46,000 feet, where SpaceShipTwo was released.   Two pilots then ignited the ship's rocket engine and climbed another 10,000 feet, reaching Mach 1.2 in the process. Additional test flights are planned before the spaceship will fly even faster, eventually reaching altitudes that exceed 62 mi

Alexander Graham Bell speaks, and 2013 hears his voice

Nine years after he placed the first telephone call, Alexander Graham Bell tried another experiment: he recorded his voice on a wax-covered cardboard disc on April 15, 1885, and gave it an audio signature: "Hear my voice - Alexander Graham Bell." The flimsy disc was silent for 128 years as part of the Smithsonian Museum's collection of early recorded sound, until digital imaging, computer science, a hand-written transcript and a bit of archival detective work confirmed it as the only known recording of Bell's voice. Carlene Stephens, curator of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American history, first saw this disc and nearly 400 other audio artifacts donated by Bell when she joined the museum in 1974, but she didn't dare play them then. "Their experimental nature and fragile condition ... made them unsuitable for playback," Stephens said by email.   "We recognized these materials were significant to the early history of sound recordin

Big drugmakers think small with nanomedicine deals

Is nanomedicine the next big thing? A growing number of top drug companies seem to think so. The ability to encapsulate potent drugs in tiny particles measuring billionths of a meter in diameter is opening up new options for super-accurate drug delivery, increasing precision hits at the site of disease with, hopefully, fewer side effects.   Three deals struck this year by privately held Bind Therapeutics, together worth nearly $1 billion if experiments are successful, highlight a new interest in using such tiny carriers to deliver drug payloads to specific locations in the body. U.S.-based Bind is one of several biotechnology firms that are luring large pharmaceutical makers with a range of smart drug nanotechnologies, notably against cancer. And nanomedicine is also being put to work in diagnosis, with tiny particles used to improve imaging in scanners, as well as rapidly detecting some serious infections. In future, researchers hope to combine both treatment and diagnostics i

Solar-powered plane takes off for flight across U.S.

A solar-powered airplane that developers hope to eventually pilot around the world took off early on Friday from San Francisco Bay on the first leg of an attempt to fly across the United States with no fuel but the sun's energy. The plane, dubbed the Solar Impulse, departed shortly after 6 a.m. local time from Moffett Field, a joint civil-military airport near the south end of San Francisco, heading first to Phoenix on a slow-speed flight expected to take 15 to 20 hours.   The spindly looking plane barely hummed as it took flight in the still northern California morning as the sun was just beginning to peek out over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the east. After additional stops in Dallas, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., with pauses at each destination to wait for favorable weather, the flight team hopes to conclude the plane's cross-country voyage in about two months at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Swiss pilots and co-founders of the project, Bertrand

Boeing demonstrator breaks hypersonic flight record

Boeing Co's X-51A Waverider made history this week when it achieved the longest hypersonic flight by a jet-fuel powered aircraft, flying for 3-1/2 minutes at five times the speed of sound, the U.S. Air Force said on Friday. The last of four unmanned experimental military aircraft built by Boeing flew for at a top speed of Mach 5.1 over the Pacific Ocean on May 1, the Air Force said. The total flight covered 230 nautical miles in just over six minutes before the hypersonic cruiser plunged into the ocean.   "It was a full mission success," said Charlie Brink, who runs the X-51A program for the Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace Systems Directorate. The Air Force said it was the longest of the four X-51A test flights and the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight ever. The technology opens the door to future practical uses for hypersonic jet-fueled aircraft. A hypersonic aircraft developed by NASA used hydrogen as a fuel to fly briefly at even higher speeds in 2

Solar-powered plane wraps first leg of flight across U.S

The flight from San Fransisco to Phoenix took 18 hours and 18 minutes on Saturday - and didn't use a drop of fuel. _0"> A solar-powered airplane that developers hope eventually to pilot around the world landed safely in Phoenix on the first leg of an attempt to fly across the United States using only the sun's energy, project organizers said.   The plane, dubbed the Solar Impulse, took 18 hours and 18 minutes to reach Phoenix on the slow-speed flight, completing the first of five legs with planned stops in Dallas, St. Louis and Washington on the way to a final stop in New York. The spindly-looking plane barely hummed as it took off Friday morning from Moffett Field, a joint civil-military airport near San Francisco. It landed in predawn darkness at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, according to a statement on the Solar Impulse's website. The flight crew plans pauses at each stop to wait for favorable weather. It hopes to reach John F. Kennedy Inte

Solar-powered plane wraps first leg of flight across United States

The flight from San Fransisco to Phoenix took 18 hours and 18 minutes on Saturday - and didn't use a drop of fuel. _0"> A solar-powered airplane that developers hope eventually to pilot around the world landed safely in Phoenix on the first leg of an attempt to fly across the United States using only the sun's energy, project organizers said.   The plane, dubbed the Solar Impulse, took 18 hours and 18 minutes to reach Phoenix on the slow-speed flight, completing the first of five legs with planned stops in Dallas, St. Louis and Washington on the way to a final stop in New York. The spindly-looking plane barely hummed as it took off Friday morning from Moffett Field, a joint civil-military airport near San Francisco. It landed in predawn darkness at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, according to a statement on the Solar Impulse's website. The flight crew plans pauses at each stop to wait for favorable weather. It hopes to reach John F. Kennedy Inte