TIME Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.

Current subscribers for full access. Not a TIME subscriber? .

Crashing Through the Envelope

Over the Mojave Desert, a B-1 dives to a fiery end

The purpose of test flights is to flirt with what pilots call the outer edge of the envelope, to push a plane to the limits of its capability and see what it can do. That is what one of the prototypes of the sleek plane was attempting over the Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force Base in California last week when it plunged to the ground in a fiery crash. It was the first serious accident in 418 test flights of B-1 prototypes since...

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish.