W.J. Hennigan

LOS ANGELES -- Work is quietly under way on a massive 22-story rocket whose power is rivaled in the U.S. only by the mighty Saturn V rocket, which took man to the moon, in a risky private venture that could herald a new era in space flight.

Dubbed Falcon Heavy, the 27-engine booster is being assembled by rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, at its sprawling complex in Hawthorne, Calif., where it has about 1,100 workers.

The rocket has twice the lifting capability of the next largest launcher built by a U.S. company.

"We're embarking on something that's unprecedented in the space industry," Elon Musk, the company's chief executive, told the Los Angeles Times. "This is territory that has only belonged to the U.S. government -- with its tens of billions of dollars."

Musk's company is building the 227-foot-tall Falcon Heavy even though there are no guarantees that the military or NASA will step forward to pay for the rocket to lift its payloads -- or even astronauts -- into space someday.

SpaceX hopes to launch it in a demonstration flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, Calif., at the end of next year.

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The ear-piercing, machine-gun-like blasts of an air hammer are a welcome sound to workers on the Northrop Grumman Corp. assembly line in El Segundo, Calif.

LOS ANGELES -- Nearly three years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, the 787 Dreamliner passenger jet has been a nonstop frustration for Boeing Co. -- disappointing airlines, passengers and hundreds of unpaid parts suppliers.

LOS ANGELES -- A lightweight, solar-powered drone with a massive 73-foot wingspan flew above the clouds for 14 consecutive days, shattering long-standing aviation endurance records, according to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

The international governing body for aeronautics confirmed last week that the solar-powered robotic plane, dubbed Zephyr, soared above the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona from July 9 to July 23.

LOS ANGELES -- A Global Hawk robotic plane, hovering more than 11 miles above Afghanistan, can snap images of Taliban hide-outs so crystal clear that U.S. intelligence officials can make out the pickup trucks parked nearby -- and how long they've been there.

POWAY, Calif. -- The cars begin rolling through the security checkpoints before dawn. Here, in a sprawling complex amid the craggy rock outcroppings of north San Diego County, 3,300 workers are building a new generation of weapons central to the military's vision for modern warfare.