Near Space is a region where few aircraft can tread. Floating high above the jet stream, lighter-than-air ships are now deemed as a way to loiter at length. They appear ideal for keeping tabs on a foe’s troops or delivering telecommunications services to your own warriors.
Top US air force officials are working on a strategy to put spy planes in near space - the no man's land above 65,000 feet, but below an outer space orbit.
Military officials have recently expressed an interest in "near space", the realm between the upper atmosphere and low Earth orbit. Taylor Dinerman describes why near space is so interesting and the role suborbital vehicles can play there.
The cost of building and launching spacecraft is prohibitive for students, but there is still a way to give them the experience of spaceflight. L. Paul Verhage reports on balloon-launched ?near spacecraft? being built and flown by amateurs across the US.