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The first thing to notice is how rapidly Elon Musk's SpaceX is altering the market for government-sponsored rocket launches. Witness how frequently the words "to compete with SpaceX" appear in industry statements and press coverage. To compete with SpaceX, say multiple reports, the United Launch Alliance, the Pentagon's traditional supplier, is developing a new Vulcan rocket powered by a reusable engine designed by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Because of SpaceX, says Aviation Week magazine, Japan's government has instructed Mitsubishi to cut in half the cost of the Japanese workhorse rocket, and China is planning a new family of kerosene-fueled Long...

Space makes for strange relationships. With NASA’s Space Shuttle shuttered since 2011, American astronauts have hitched rides to the International Space Station inside Russian Soyuz rockets for the past four years. But ever since Russia claimed Crimea and supported a separatist movement in Ukraine, the United States and Russia haven’t exactly been on great terms. Congress passed punitive sanctions on Russia, and in retaliation, Russia forbade the sale of rocket engines to the American military. Yet the Pentagon, which is currently supplying the Ukrainian military with vehicles, now needs a little help getting its military satellites to space. So it's...

Has former lefty pinup Hillary Clinton become the senator from Lockheed Martin? According to the senator’s travel-expense forms, unearthed by the Center for Public Integrity, the senator and her aides have taken free rides on a Lockheed-owned private plane at least five times since 2001. The Lockheed jet isn’t exactly Air Force One, but it certainly has saved time and airfare costs during the Armed Services Committee member’s successful efforts to get Lockheed defense contracts, notably a $1.7 billion, 750-job deal to build presidential helicopters up in Owego (population 3,911), near Binghamton. Last year, Lockheed’s pac gave Clinton the maximum...

... Easter had a top-secret job offer. If Moseley accepted, he would have to commit for four years, he couldn't tell anyone about the job and he would have to accept the job before knowing what it was. "And he said, 'You've got 30 seconds and if you don't say yes, this conversation never happened.' Well, that was just too intriguing to turn down," Moseley says. "So I said, 'Absolutely.' And he'd given me a telephone number and an intersection." ...

  In 2014 China made a round trip to the moon with robotic explorers. The Chinese intend to launch a mission to the moon that will return samples back to Earth. They have outlined their ambitious plans for outer space here. IEEE/Spectrum calls China the "Next Space Superpower."“The Chinese have said repeatedly that they are not going to go into space, land on the moon, look around, say, Been there, done that,’ and consider themselves done,” says Johnson-Freese. “They’re going to do stepping-stone infrastructure, and in those terms their space station makes sense.” Where else might Chinese astronauts go? Their...

Sponsored by: FedBiz Daily Here's why Lockheed is pulling the curtain back on Skunk Works Feb 23, 2015, 2:25pm EST Updated: Feb 23, 2015, 4:40pm EST   Enlarge Photo   The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is one program that emerged from Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Skunk Works, which has pulled back the curtain in an effort to attract talent and get credit for contributions to defense and aerospace.   15 photos Home of the DaySponsor Listing Jill R. AitoroSenior Staff Reporter- Washington Business JournalEmail  |  Twitter  |  LinkedIn Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Advanced Development Programs group, better known as Skunk Works,...

BRUSSELS—French President François Hollande said Thursday Egypt will buy 24 of Dassault Aviation SA ’s Rafale in a contract worth around EUR5 billion ($5.7 billion), the first foreign order for the combat jet. Egypt will buy 24 Rafale and an accompanying frigate, Mr. Hollande said at a news conference after a European summit in Brussels. The French-made Rafale, which exists in land-based and carrier-based versions, has been in service with the French military for more than a decade, but repeatedly lost out to foreign competition and never been sold for export. The jet has seen action in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali,...

NASA's picture-perfect Orion launch to Mars was all the rage last week. Praise was heaped upon key NASA contractors Boeing (NYSE: BA ) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) -- and deservedly so. Between Orion's success, and the companies' announcement that their United Launch Alliance joint venture will develope a "next-generation liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon first stage" rocket to power launches to near-Earth orbit, Boeing and Lockheed are on a hot streak. But amid all the hullaballoo at ULA, you might have forgotten there's another space launch company that is building even more innovative products. Its name is SpaceX. It goes up,...

Military Superiority: China's new Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter could be the equal of our F-22s and F-35s, U.S. pilots say, and is just one of the weapons that may thwart America's "pivot" to the Pacific. The J-31, a fifth-generation stealth fighter, will make its official debut at the Zhuhai International Air Show Nov. 11-16 in southern China's Guangdong province. As one U.S. pilot with F-35 experience told USNI News of the J-31 and other new Chinese fighters: "I think they'll eventually be on par with our fifth-gen jets — as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well."...

Could one of aviation's most enduring mysteries be solved? An aircraft recovery group says it may already have a part of Amelia Earhart's plane, and it thinks it knows where to find the rest of it. The International Historic Aircraft Recovery Group says new testing of a piece of metal found in the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean in 1991 gives the group "increasing confidence" that it's a part of the Lockheed Electra. In a press release the group argues that the aluminum debris is likely a patch that Earhart had put on her plane in place of a...

Nuclear fusion from Google, Lockheed, Draper Fisher By Mark Halper | February 15, 2013, 5:25 AM PST X marks a spot of fusion. Charles Chase describes how Lockheed Martin's fusion device trumps huge government fusion projects in this photograph by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson from a Google "Solve for X" event last week. – A well-known venture capitalist has his eye on one of the biggest and most elusive prizes of our times: nuclear fusion. And the “skunkworks” project he’s eyeing is not from some stealth startup or academic lab. Rather, it’s under development at aerospace company Lockheed Martin and...

Tim Nguyen regards the C-130 “Hercules” as a “good friend.” The 60-year-old military aircraft has been the focus of his professional career, and quite possibly saved his life. During the 1975 Fall of Saigon, Nguyen -- then serving in the South Vietnamese air force -- escaped on the last C-130 out of Vietnam. During a lull in enemy fire, he emerged from a bunker at Tan Son Nhut Air Base to see the last flyable C-130 stopping and going on the taxiway. The aircraft’s rear ramp was still open, apparently weighed down by the crowd of people standing on it.

Lockheed’s strategy of basing its F-35 marketing strategy on its “stealth” capabilities is beginning to backfire as their effectiveness is being increasingly challenged by competitors and outside analysts. (RAAF photo) Boeing has been loudly criticising Lockheed Martin’s F-35 in hopes that the Navy and other clients will buy more of its EA-18G Growlers for support and F/A-18 Super Hornets as contingency. Developed in a Joint Strike Fighter contract that Lockheed won over Boeing in 2001, the F-35 is wildly over budget and has run into various design problems. Chief among them, according to Boeing, is the weakness of its stealth...

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, national security correspondent David Martin chronicled the seemingly never-ending list of problems with the Pentagon’s next-generation F-35 fight jet, from cost overruns of $160 billion to technical problems that have plagued the plane’s development. When asked if the F-35 program, which is expected to cost some $1.5 trillion over the four-decade life of the program, is now under control, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall, said, "Yes, it is." But that commitment came with a warning. “Long gone is the time when we're going to pay for mistake after mistake after mistake," said...

The Walt Disney Company will cut funding to the Boy Scouts of America, beginning in 2015, because of a policy that bans gay adult leaders in the organisation. In December the defence and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin said it would no longer donate to the Boy Scouts, because of the same policy. Last May, the California Senate voted to revoke the organisation’s charitable status. The Boy Scouts organisation said it was “disappointed” by Disney’s decision, which will affect its ability to serve children, Deron Smith, a Boy Scouts spokesman, said in a statement on Sunday. Disney does not provide direct...

The Lockheed Martin Corp. is cutting ties with the Boy Scouts of America because the group does not allow gay Scout leaders, officials told the MDJ on Wednesday. “While we applaud the mission of the Boy Scouts and the good things they do in our communities, their policies that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and religious affiliation conflict with Lockheed Martin policies,” said Lockheed spokesman Gordon Johndroe. The reference to “religious affiliation” has to do with the Boy Scouts’ ban on atheist members.

On the list of Pentagon weapons programs gone awry, the Navy's A-12 Avenger attack jet stands out. The radar-evading, carrier-based McDonnell Douglas plane was 18 months behind schedule and about $1.4 billion over cost when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney canceled the $57 billion program back in 1991. The case over the triangular-shaped A-12 Avenger, which was dubbed the "Flying Dorito," has been in legal limbo ever since, going all the way to the Supreme Court in 2011 before being referred back to a lower court. Now, after 22 years, a settlement is on the horizon. Senator Susan Collins told the...

This piece of the History of the Lockheed A-12 is dedicated to the memory of Dorsey G. Kammerer. Dorsey was a part of the Lockheed SkunkWorks from its inception. He was an "inside" man on the team that built the P-38 Lightning, the P-80 Shooting Star, the F-104 Starfighter, the U-2 Angel and the A-12 Archangel and the other versions, the YF-12 and the SR-71. Dorsey that had the foresight to save the photos that help document this story. Dorsey's family found these gems and made them available for this story. This story has never really been told in much...

Aviation Week's Guy Norris has an exclusive article on the successor for the Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird, the legendary spy plane that may be the favorite of every airplane nerd in the world. The hypersonic SR-72 is the first aircraft that can fit perfectly in Star Wars or Galactica, a true space age ship.

Lockheed Martin Corp , nearing completion of its 100th F-35 fighter jet, anticipates dozens of international orders or commitments for the new radar-evading warplane in coming months, according to U.S. government officials and industry executives. The F-35 program got a boost on Tuesday when the South Korean government rejected a bid by Boeing Co to build 60 F-15 warplanes, saying it needed a more advanced "fifth-generation" fighter.