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The idea of using satellites to beam solar power down from space is nothing new–the Department of Energy first studied it in the 1970s, and NASA took another look in the ’90s. The stumbling block has been less the engineering challenge than the cost.A Pentagon report released in October could mean the stars are finally aligning for space-based solar power, or SBSP. According to the report, SBSP is becoming more feasible, and eventually could help head off crises such as climate change and wars over diminishing energy supplies....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe accompanying detail drawing shows a design of a portable workbench suitable for the amateur woodworker. This bench can be made easily by anyone who has a few sharp tools and a little spare time. If the stock is purchased from the mill ready planed and cut to length, much of the hard labor will be saved. Birch or maple wood makes a very good bench, and the following pieces should be ordered:Media Platforms Design TeamPrintable Detail Drawing [PDF]Materials4 legs, 3 by 3 by 36 in....

Will drones make fighter pilots obsolete? That’s a big question hanging over the Pentagon as it considers what the future of air power looks like. Well, in a press conference today, the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force made it clear that humans will always have a place in the cockpit. After all, somebody’s going to have to pilot America’s X-wing fighters once the Air Force gets its hands on a few....

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is just one month out from the dwarf planet Ceres, and the images it sends back from the largest body in the Asteroid Belt are getting better and better. Taken at about 90,000 miles away, this animated composite image shows about 8.5 miles of Ceres per pixel. (Ceres is about 590 miles in diameter.)Features seen in previous, farther-out views of the world are coming into better view, including caps of ice believed to be the result of cryovolcanism and a possible subsurface ocean....

Media Platforms Design Team by Seth Porges The 2009 CES isn’t quite over, but the biggest hits have all made their splashes. We’ve sifted through the technological overload of information, and pulled the six trends that are turning into the show’s biggest stories, and will likely have the biggest lasting effect on the tech we see over the next year. 1. Microprojectors Find A Home Last year’s CES saw the debut of the microprojector....

You need look no further than the recent death of Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore in an ATV-related accident to know that recreational vehicles require heads-up driving. Now, a relatively new classification of ATV–so-called Recreational Off-Highway Vehicles (ROVs) or Side-by-Sides (SxSs), which describe four-wheelers with car-like controls, a cargo bed and an occupant protective structure–is poised to grow much more popular. While they share some basic rules with smaller, more agile ATVs, the ATV Safety Institute insists that ROVs have their own unique safety demands as the niche market becomes increasingly popular with vehicles from Arctic Cat, Kawasaki, Polaris, Yamaha and Honda (click here for our new test drive)....

Media Platforms Design TeamCharles Chase has one of the coolest titles in the aviation industry: senior program manager of the revolutionary technology programs at Lockheed Martin. He works out of the company’s famous X-plane shop, Skunk Works. But his newest invention may one day appear in plain sight.Chase is developing an inch-thick material that generates electricity from slow-moving wind. The sheets of material could be placed anywhere the wind is stirring—on the rooftops and walls of buildings, inside subway tunnels, in the downdraft of wind turbines, and on highway medians....

Media Platforms Design TeamRed Bull Creation is now underway. This morning the topic was released, and the 16 teams competing for the title of top creator were unleashed on New York City with 72 hours to build their creations. The theme is “Energy In Motion.” Each team must build or hack some mode of transportation that can carry a human from point A to point B using an alternative power source....

Media Platforms Design Team Bar Stool RacerBuilt by: Don GreiderShady Bayou, Texas Bar stools just weren’t meant to move, but that didn’t stop Don Greider from rigging this one up to tear down the street at 41 mph with the help of a 7 HP Robins engine. Fortunately, he also included a disk brake to slow the supped-up stool down when things get out of hand. Other details include a powder-coated frame and front and rear wings....

Media Platforms Design Team This morning, Garmin introduced a product of great social and political import: The Approach G5, a golf-specific GPS navigator. At $500, the Approach is less expensive than Garmin’s $600 Astro, a hunting-specific GPS unit, but it’s for a sport that’s every bit as rarefied. The Approach comes preloaded with course maps for hundreds of U.S. golf courses—as you tee off and putt your way around the course the GPS shows your location on a 3-in....

Oscilloscopes! Hexadecimal code! 1980s Porsches! This is the world of AMC’s newest period piece, Halt and Catch Fire, which debuted June 1 (watch the full pilot episode here). The network’s next great hope for another Mad Men or Breaking Bad, Halt dives deep into the nerdy early days of the PC, hoping Sunday night TV viewers will go as gaga for Big Blue as they did for Blue Sky.The show transports us back to a fictional 1983, when personal computing was booming in Texas’ Silicon Prairie....

A source of hot magma, ozone-depleting aerosol particles and clouds of sulfates, volcanoes aren’t high on the list of climate-stabilizing phenomena. But after analyzing 12 new climate models, scientists have found that eruptions can temporarily cool ocean waters, counteracting one of the known effects of global warming. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and collaborators from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Reading and the Hadley Centre, examined model simulations of the climate from 1880-2000, comparing them with available observations including changes in greenhouse gases, solar irradiance, sulphates and volcanic aerosols....

Every great war has a back story. And a mighty big battle is brewing among the titans of technology. Software giant Microsoft is aggressively trying to buy Internet portal Yahoo! to compete for Internet dominance with Google, the current king of the Web search. Google obviously doesn’t like the idea of Microsoft pushing into its terrain, and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has already made it clear that he doesn’t want Microsoft to buy his company....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs Hurricane Sandy approached New York and New Jersey last week, schools were closed, subways shut down, and low-lying coastal areas evacuated. The storm preparations were aided by what turned out to be remarkably accurate forecasts from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), which had warned residents living in Sandy’s warpath as early as five days before the storm arrived. By accurately predicting the track and intensity of the storm, the forecasting may have saved lives as well as millions of dollars....

Media Platforms Design TeamHere’s what we know about the Boston Marathon bombs: They were pressure cookers, packed with BBs, headless nails, and a mass of firecrackers. They were deliverers of shrapnel, perforating more than 250 victims and triggering the in Massachusetts history.biggest manhuntBut they could have been worse. According to Kevin Fleming, a recently retired optical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, the Tsarnaevs employed the same pressure cooker design that’s become common in Central Asia and the Middle East, but with one crucial difference: For reasons that aren’t yet clear, they chose firecrackers instead of ammonium nitrate, a common, easily obtained fertilizer....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe small pickup market hasn’t had a new entry for years. And the new midsize Colorado pickup looks very much like a hit for Chevy–a truck that could finally take a bite out of Toyota’s Tacoma, a truck that dominates class. We dig the design and underneath, it rides on a frame that shares components with the new Silverado—so you know its stiff and strong.Midsize pickups are perfect for beach patrol and Chevy is making a pitch to become the next supplier of these trucks for LA....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe author’s transformation may look silly frame-by-frame, but the facial mapping software at Image Metrics–already implemented in Grand Theft Auto IV–could someday take performances by dead actors and sync them up with CGI characters. (Stills courtesy of Image Metrics; photo illustration by Anthony Verducci)Only a few years ago, movie and video-game companies set out to redefine the science of special effects and makeup artistry with a new technology called motion capture....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhere should I store my documents? In the cloud? On my hard drive? Both?Like many of Mountain Lion’s new features, iCloud document storage encourages connection between your computer and mobile devices—and encourages you to use the same Apple applications across devices. Apple includes the iCloud service in some of its applications (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) and gives you the option of storing documents created in those programs in the cloud, where any change you make on one device will be reflected on all the others....

Media Platforms Design TeamFrom concept to construction, the Solar Impulse has been hailed as a savior—the first major attempt to fly a plane without fuel, with eco-eyes set on a sun-powered trip around the globe. And for record-setting adventurer Bertrand Piccard, whom we profiled in a cover story on the aircraft two years ago, Monday’s unveiling of its prototype was a long time coming: He showed off a mock-up of the Solar Impulse at the 2005 Paris Airshow, but now the 201-ft....

It’s long been whispered that the Milennium Falcon was inspired by a hamburger with a bite taken out of it. But did you know the asteroids seen in The Empire Strikes Back included actual potatoes? That’s according to this video featuring the designers of the Falcon. Compared their asteroid design to potatoes… so, they included a few pototoes, which you can see as the distant asteroids during the Falcon’s chase sequence....