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Nowadays in Los Angeles, a private space company unveiled the latest participant in the competition to send paying passengers into suborbital space.

The Lynx, in development by XCOR Aerospace, is envisioned as a two-seat vehicle that will allow a paying passenger to ride up front with the pilot to experience weightlessness and see the Earth from space.

“From the beginning we worked towards a vehicle which is fully reusable, will fly often enough, economically enough and safely enough to succeed in what we expect will be a robust, competitive market place,” said XCOR president Jeff Greason at a press conference today.

XCOR’s been quietly working on liquid fueled rocket engines of all sizes and types in Mojave, California since 1999. The engines range from a diminutive alcohol-fueled “tea-cart” rocket suitable for showing off in hotel ballrooms (and attracting investors), to a methane-powered 7,500-pound-thrust engine completed last year for NASA.

Along the way, the company’s engineers have also hotrodded a homebuilt Long-EZ airplane with an alcohol-fueled rocket engine, picked up contracts from the Department of Defense to build novel rocket fuel pumps for cheaper operation of high powered rockets, and teamed with the Rocket Racing League to build the X Racer, a rocket-powered raceplane that XCOR chief test pilot and former Space Shuttle commander Rick Searfoss is now flight testing.
“As a test pilot and former astronaut, I’m absolutely enthralled to be having the prospect of flying this Lynx up through the development and test phase to the point where we are confident we can safely fly the paying public,” said Searfoss at the press conference.

Space is defined by an imaginary boundary at 62 miles altitude, and suborbital spaceships built by private companies aim to just sail past that mark for four or five minutes of weightless flight before falling back to Earth. That’s far short of the 200 miles or so reached by the Space Shuttle at orbital speeds topping 25 times the speed of sound.

Still, suborbital flight is a big challenge for any private company, and only one, Scaled Composites of Mojave, California has actually pulled it off. To get there, a ship has to crack three times the speed of sound using rocket power, keep its passengers alive with onboard life support, use maneuvering thrusters to orient itself in space, and somehow survive reentering the atmosphere, still going Mach 3, to make a safe landing.

Scaled’s SpaceShipOne, did all that in 2004 to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE, inspiring British airline tycoon Richard Branson to invest in SpaceShipTwo for his newly formed Virgin Galactic. Branson’s plans hit a snag last summer, however, when a test stand explosion claimed the lives of three Scaled employees and set back the company’s rocket development for the new ships.

XCOR plans to launch the Lynx by 2010, the same year called for in Virgin’s revised schedule for SpaceShipTwo. The private space race is definitely heating up.

Conduct yourself in Miami, since the eyes-in-the-sky may almost immediately be watching. With still some doubt about all those gossips concerning insect-sized flying vehicles keeping watch over cities, but larger versions certainly seem to be on the way.

Develop by Honeywell International’s Micro Air Vehicle, or MAV, a 16 pound, 14-inch-wide hovering craft, could become the Miami’s police department’s latest tool in the fight against crime. And although it does look frighteningly similar to the Interrogator Droid in Star Wars, there’s no proof that it’s capable of extracting information from rebel princesses. Or anyone else, for that matter.

The tiny vehicle is able of vertical take-offs and landings and, more importantly, capturing visual information from overhead. The MAV is waiting for FAA approval, but if it passes, the Miami-Dade Police Department figures to start using it as an extra set of eyes in emergency situations

Currently the world’s largest aircraft, the An-225 Mriya (dream) stemmed from the need to transport large items for the Soviet space programme. Construction of the An-124 provided the basis for the new aircraft, Antonov using many of the same components to keep cost and development effort down.

The fuselage and wings are similar to the An-124, the cabin retaining the same cross-sectional dimensions but with increased length. To save weight the rear loading ramp is removed, but the An-225 retains the nose visor. Standard An-124 wings are grafted on to a new centre section, thereby increasing the span while keeping the engine installations the same. An additional pair of D-36T turbofans is fitted to the new centre section. raising thrust to an amazing 1377 kN (309,540lb). In order to support the increased weight, seven pairs of wheels are fitted to each side as opposed to five in the An-124. Outsize loads that cannot fit into the capacious cabin (including Buran and Energiya components) are carried ‘piggyback’, the load supported on two main attachments above the centre section. These supports and other smaller ones along the fuselage top are faired over when notin use. Toavoid buffetingfrom the ‘piggyback’ load, the An-225 has twin vertical fins mounted on the end of a large tailplane. The prototype made its first flight on 21 December 1988, and in March 1989 setup no fewer than 106 world and class records in one flight from Kiev, at a maximum take-off weight in excess of 500000kg (1.100,000lb). Only two have been completed so far. and the first flew with Buran on 13 May 1989. This combination made a dramatic appearance in the West for the first time a month later at the Paris Air Salon.

Boeing is hoping its new X-48B aircraft will become the commercial airliner of the future ,but may look like a stealth fighter jet. The blended-wing plane—a name given to planes that merge the fuselage and wings into one—eliminates the tail part of a plane (which is usually the part of the plane responsible for drag). In doing so, the X-48B uses up to 30% less gas than a typical airliner. Boeing hopes to have a military version of the plane ready by 2022, and a passenger model by 2030.

Do you want to can fly cross-country in 2 hours ? get your hands on a Lockheed Martin Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST)—a 12 person luxury plane that can hit over 1,100 MPH. But unlike its daddy, the Concord, this plane can muffle its sonic boom to 1/100 the strength. That means you won’t be limited to flying over the ocean, so you can take this baby across the country without disturbing anyone.
The way the QSST is able to keep itself so quiet lies in its aerodynamics. Instead of creating two large booms like most supersonic planes, the QSST is designed to create many smaller ones.