Where and when did you do the ski test?I was up in Mammoth [California]. It’s near Tahoe, in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, where I was born and raised. The test was done on January 25. I’d been working on this jet wing for about two years nowit’s a followup to what Yves [Rossy] is doing, with my own little twist to it. The wing is done; it’s ready to go....
The U.S. Navy uses colors to describe where a ship is built to operate: Brown for rivers, blue for oceans and, recently, green for coastal, or littoral, waters. The Navy, traditionally focused on dominating oceans, does not have a vessel built to operate in green waters, so it is seeking a fast, shallow-keeled ship that can chase down enemies and dispatch helicopters with ease. In 2002, the Navy solicited builders to design its Littoral Combat Ship....
Media Platforms Design Team Last night’s episode of Lost, “Namaste,” opened with the our favorite pilot, Frank Lapidus, attempting to land Ajira flight 316 on an unfinished runway on Hydra Island, where the Dharma Initiative once housed a zoo full of animals. The pilot was able to bring the plane to a halt just off the unfinished, too-short runway without hurting any passengers (if you don’t count the co-pilot, who died when a tree limb crashed through the windshield and impaled him)....
NASA announced today that it will continue to rely on Russian Soyuz flights to send its people to the International Space Station beyond 2017, the planned end date, pushing back the launch of its Commercial Crew program another year and possibly two. NASA chief Charles Bolden blamed delays on congressional underfunding of the program, which would see American astronauts ferried to the ISS on craft from Boeing and SpaceX.“Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress, while incrementally increasing annual funding, has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned,” Bolden wrote in a letter to congress....
Media Platforms Design TeamVideogames and force feedback have been fair-weather friends for years, frommotorized steering wheelsyou slam into a wallentire seats that tilt and lurchyour F-16 banks out of harm’s way that go spastic when , to as . But playing with the Novint Falcon feels like nothing you’ve tried before. This 3D force feedback controller nudges back against your hand when you fire a pistol in Half-Life 2, like a more powerful version of a game console’s internal rumble....
Media Platforms Design Team Ann Arbor, Mich. — As General Motors ramps up for the 2011 Volt and Toyota readies the long-awaited, factory-built plug-in Prius, customers wait-and wait. And wait. Even when these cars hit the market, some 24 months from now, demand will be very high. It could take many more years for production plug-in hybrids to reach mainstream garages in America. But why wait? Prius owners can turn their cars into plug-ins today with a $10,395 L5 plug-in conversion module from Hymotion....
Media Platforms Design TeamCastelli Subito jersey, $75Rapha Classic jersey, $205After I collided with a car this winter, I decided I probably should carry more than just my house keys when bike-riding. But my saddlebag is already packed with an extra inner tube and a couple of tools, and I’ll be damned if I’m caught in a fanny pack. Depending on your stance on spandex-clad cyclists, you may think that’s a better solution than a bike jersey....
By the early 2020s, the United States and its allies in the Pacific plan to have more than 100 stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighters stationed near North Korea, according toAviation Week. Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121, the “Green Knights,” were the first squadron of F-35s sent to the Pacific theater. They are currently deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, and the jets participated in training exercises in South Korea in March....
Media Platforms Design TeamThanks to some field testing during a joint exercise by the U.S. Marines and the Australian Army, we get this video of the M777A2 firing off rounds. The M777 Lightweight Towed Howitzer is the most recent 155 mm howitzer, debuting in 2005. The model used here, the A2, has additional software upgrades that allow it to use Excalibur GPS-guided rounds, making the M77A2 incredibly accurate from up to 25 miles away....
Media Platforms Design TeamAt a remote swath of the Indian Ocean about 1,100 miles west of the Australian mainland, the first of three ships scheduled to start a deep-sea search for the missing has arrived. Malaysia Flight 370Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.The search for the missing 777 was suspended in May following a series of setbacks, including several weeks spent chasing what were mistakenly believed to be pings from the jet’s flight data recorders....
View full post on TwitterEconomist correspondent Edward Lucas has become the first legally recognized “e-resident,” thanks to the tech-savvy country of Estonia.Estonian president President Toomas Hendrik Ilves presented Lucas with the country’s first e-residency card. It doesn’t make Lucas (who actually lives in the U.K.) a citizen or legal resident of Estonia. But it is designed to let people sign documents, vote in elections, conduct bank transactions and perform other day-to-day digital tasks with the backing of the Estonian government saying that they are who they claim to be....
Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeWhen comedian Eugene Mirman introduced Neil deGrasse Tyson to the stage of NYC’s Town Hall for Star Talk Live, he referred to him as the “Robert Plant of Astrophysics.” Sure enough, Tyson strutted out with his shirt half-buttoned to curry the audience’s favor.Such an entrance set the scene for Wednesday night’s event, in which Mirman and Tyson were joined by John Oliver of The Daily Show, space journalist Andrew Chaikin, and the one and only Buzz Aldrin....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Department of Defense produces reams of procurement documents, and the vast majority of them are mind-numbingly dull. And then there is , which the Navy quietly issued in January.Justification and Approval document No. 1312This request, the kind of document the Pentagon generates to seek permission to award a contract without competition, seeks an electronic warfare system that can protect ships from “a newly discovered threat.” The document uses very grave language to justify the $65 million procurement, citing a “need to provide a protective capability to naval ships and their crews in a critically short time frame....
Ceres is a strange, strange world. It was first discovered in 1801, and until 1852, it was considered a planet. The discovery of numerous other bodies in its region of space, including at least a couple that were smaller but also sizeable, as well as its utter smallness compared even to dinky Mercury and Mars, led to its demotion.Change a few words and dates in the preceding paragraph, and you have another one of our solar system’s other dwarf planets: Pluto....
Media Platforms Design TeamImagine, you’re flying through the downhill course, and something starts buzzing behind you. Drones will be doing just that, following competitors at the 2015 Winter X-Games in Colorado. ESPN received special permission from the FAA to fly throughout the event to get video game shots of the competitors. “They’re outfitting Vortex Aerial drones with Panasonic GH4 cameras, which run about $1,700 each"It’s impressive that ESPN is allowed to do this, and credit should go to the brand’s legal team....
Media Platforms Design TeamDETROIT— Forget about your wimpy little gas-sipping hybrid cars, styled like George Jetson’s toaster. The Fisker Karma, penned by industry design heavyweight Henrik Fisker, will run 0-60 in an impressive 5.8 seconds, and is claimed to be capable of sustained top speeds of 125 mph. Fisker Automotive isn’t just another startup designed to milk investor money until its inevitable failure. Danish-born Fisker is responsible for the design of such vehicles as the BMW Z8, Aston Martin Vantage V8 the Lincoln Zephyr, and now, the Karma....
Media Platforms Design TeamUbiquitous and easy to grow, algae has long been a promising biomass-to-fuel candidate in the eyes of researchers. Now algae is a burgeoning sector in biofuels with several high-profile start-ups, including Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, and the interest of big-time investors like Bill Gates and ExxonMobil. Of course, hurdles still exist to make a competitive fuel. Algal biofuels still cost too much to produce—over $8 a gallon (pdf), according to the DOE....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Phantom Menace MOJAVE, Calif. — Lined up inside a cavernous hanger on the fringe of the air- and spaceport here, once supersonic F-4 Phantom fighter planes sit motionless in various states of repair. This is something of a rehab center for these veteran war birds: Nose cones swing open to expose radar fixtures, aluminum foil plugs protect air inlets from debris and fuselage panels have been removed to expose squares of the electrical systems that run them....
Media Platforms Design TeamThis morning Google’s DoubleClick’s ad servers mysteriously went down, causing a massive ad outage across the web. DoubleClick is arguably one of the backbones of the internet’s ad infrastructure: it serves a massive percentage of the web’s ads (including many of those of Popular Mechanics and Hearst), and it’s also the biggest ad exchange for advertisers and publishers. You’ll notice that most banner ads are gone from your regular browsing, replaced by blank boxes....
It may not be sporting, but researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., are training fish to swim into nets–and doom themselves to the lemon-and-capers treatment. Last summer, 6500 confined black sea bass were exposed to a specific sound each time they were fed. In true Pavlovian fashion, the fish learned to gather for their meals on cue. Next, researchers plan to sink an “AquaDome”–a 32-ft.-wide, 16-ft.-tall cage of steel mesh held in place by five 1000-pound anchors–in a popular bass hangout in a bay near Boston....
