planes

Authorities may have found the wreckage of the plane that adventurer Steve Fossett was flying when he went missing last year.

"The National Transportation Safety Board has dispatched investigators to California to investigate the crash of a small plane that was found (Wednesday)," the NTSB said Thursday in a statement.

Fossett, who was flying a Bellanca 8KCAB, has been missing since September 3, 2007. He took off from Yerington, Nev., for a local flight. Investigators say they found wreckage at about a 10,000-foot elevation in the Sierra Nevada in the vicinity of Mammoth Lakes, Calif.

There has … Read more

This week, your Intrepid Editor returns from vacation, just in time to catch a Hewlett-Packard laptop-news trifecta. First, the company announced that it had achieved a mobile-computing milestone by getting the HP EliteBook 6930p to operate continuously for 24 hours on a single battery charge. Then came word that the Voodoo Envy 133 laptop, introduced in June, started shipping to customers. And finally, the company brought a bit of geekiness to New York's Fashion Week when a Vivienne Tam-designed HP mininote hit the runways.

Sony also initiated a multipronged attack on the headlines this week, first with its 18.… Read more

I recently wrote a column about using American Airlines' new in-flight Wi-Fi service to blog at 37,000 feet. I did a couple of speed tests and ran some Hulu video, but the one thing I never thought of doing is pulling up a porn site.

Now, Bloomberg is reporting that American's flight attendants are concerned about just that--that too many passengers will try to get their mile-high Web porn fixes.

It's unclear whether those worries stem from a specific incident or incidents, but it appears both passengers and flight attendants raised some red flags and the leaders … Read more

Some of us at Crave are old enough to remember when the Harrier "Jump Jet" gained fame (or notoriety) in the Falklands War of 1982, an aircraft that seemed to arrive from the future because it could take off vertically like a helicopter. That, anyway, is what came to mind upon seeing this "RC Jump Jet Stealth Plane."

Unlike most remote-controlled aircraft, this one claims to have a Harrier-like vertical lift powered by four "gyro-stabilized" propellers. Unfortunately, OhGizmo says it looks more like "a four-bladed helicopter that's been adorned with small wings&… Read more

We've never quite understood why so many high-end game simulators for the home basically look the same as the ones at the mall or the theater lobby. After all, if you're going to shell out several grand, the least they can do is design some that don't look like they came directly from an arcade fire sale.

That's why we appreciate Global VR's efforts on its "Blazing Angels" simulator, which is designed to look like the cockpit of a World War II fighter plane, complete with faux bullet holes in the fuselage. It … Read more

For those of you who want an electric car and a trip to the Kennedy Space Center, head on down to Sam's Club.

The club store branch of Wal-Mart Stores is selling a 2007 lithium-powered smart car from Hybrid Technologies this year as part of its once-in-a-lifetime packages. For $35,000 you get the car along with a trip to the NASA Kennedy Space Center to watch a shuttle launch. Some of the technology inside the car comes from NASA. That's the connection.

George Clooney owns one of these. Sam's Club will put the car on sale … Read more

Google Transit has been around since late last year, and as early as this February, public transit stops started to pop up on Google Maps, alongside other landmarks and locations, indicating the service was slowly moving into the mainstream. This morning, Google Transit is alive and kicking as a "graduate" of Google Labs. You'll now find a new link on top of your driving directions in Google Maps to toggle the public transit directions, be it bus, train, or boat--assuming you're in one of the 10 U.S. cities (or Japan) with supported transit systems. You'… Read more

Flying enthusiasts around the country are descending on Oshkosh, Wisconsin for AirVenture, the biggest annual air show in the United States. It's being held July 23-29 this year and is sponsored by the Experimental Aircraft Association. Hundreds of thousands of aviation fans are expected to view about 10,000 aircraft parked at Oshkosh's Wittman Regional Airport.

At the show, Sonex Aircraft and AeroConversions Products unveiled their "E-Flight Initiative" for driving alternative energy research and development for sport aircraft. They showed off a proof-of-concept prototype electric powerplant that was installed in a Waiex airframe.

For a gallery … Read more

The grand Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus a380 may usher in an era of more fuel-efficient air travel, but their bird-shaped designs could look downright primitive later in the century.

Dutch aerospace engineers are imagining aircraft that look less like today's big-nosed winged planes, which haven't changed much in shape since the 1950s, and more like flying saucers. So maybe you can rest assured that those UFOs you spotted aren't signs of spying aliens, but instead are just your great-great-great-grandchildren traveling home for the holidays from a future when both saucer planes and time travel exist. The … Read more