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Media Platforms Design TeamLand Cruisers have always offered a dichotomy: They’re Toyota’s most posh and luxurious SUVs on the road, yet also its most capable in the dirt. The all-new 2008 Cruiser is certainly no exception to that long-standing rule. Toyota says the development time for an all-new Land Cruiser is essentially double that of a normal passenger car because of the extensive field testing required to make sure Land Cruisers can survive the harsh environments around the world....

Media Platforms Design TeamSTUTTGART, Germany—Survey all the Porsche engineers at the company’s headquarters in Zuffenhausen, Germany, and you won’t find a fool among them. These are German engineers who don’t build cars without first measuring every angle to the thousandth of a degree and subjecting components to stress tests that would crack open diamonds. So if there was any way Porsche could extract enough fuel economy from its current Cayenne and meet future demands—without creating a diesel or hybrid model—these are the engineers that would have found the way....

Media Platforms Design Team Maybe you watched one of those Star Trek episodes in which the replicator produces a piping-hot cup of Earl Grey tea out of thin air and thought, I could devise far better uses for that thing—like creating an entire 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO SWB. That capability is a lot closer to reality than the show’s faster-than-light travel. Thanks to the rapid advancement of 3D printing tech, crafting new car parts through additive manufacturing is becoming routine, and companies are even starting to consider 3D printing complete re-creations of classic cars....

September 2022: Twenty-one years have now passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the time since then, many people have heard the “truther” conspiracy theories about the fall of the Twin Towers in New York City. But conspiracy theorists claiming an “inside job” didn’t stop with the World Trade Center.When Popular Mechanics published our cover story debunking 9/11 myths back in March 2005, the editors also tackled the conspiracy theories about the attack on the Pentagon....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday NASA announced the seven instruments that will fly aboard its next Mars rover, scheduled launch in 2020. The 2020 Mars mission will take a closer look at the Mars environment to help scientists determine its habitability and to advance NASA’s plan of sending humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s.The 2020 Mars rover will have an instrument that will convert atmospheric carbon dioxide to breathable oxygen, along with a device that will measure how dangerous the dust in the atmosphere could be to humans....

Nearly a week has passed since a pre-dawn act of arson took out a busy air traffic control facility outside Chicago, and the nation’s air transportation network still hasn’t completely recovered. That’s sparking some serious questions within the aviation industry—and in Congress—about whether the Federal Aviation Administration has truly modernized and secured air traffic control, seeing that this one incident caused so much havoc.Ron Ruggeri, a former air traffic controller who now teaches at Vaughn College in New York, says he’s puzzled that there wasn’t a better backup system in place....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn addition to receiving gear for urban combat, Army Abrams tanks are being upgraded with sensors that could extend their service life to 2025. (Photograph by Getty Images)U.S. Army tanks were made to fight the armored columns of the Soviet bloc, not to take on shadowy urban guerrillas. However, in 2004, as violence escalated in Iraqi cities, M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams tanks–the bedrock of the Army’s armored forces–proved to be an intimidating and lethal tool....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s not just the muscular theme music or the mechanical map of the world that make the Game of Thrones intro so iconic. It starts with the astrolabe around a roiling sun. Now, this piece is yet another piece of Westerosi memorabilia you can own.According to Comic Book, a new edition of the pop-up book Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros will come with a model of the astrolabe:The astrolabe is over 13 inches tall and is fully articulated, with moving rings that dynamically replicate the oscillating movement of the astrolabe seen in the Game of Thrones intro sequence....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou do a lot of advance scouting before the cast and crew arrive on the scene. What does that involve?For one thing, we’ll develop a route if that’s appropriate for the show. In 72 Hours, for instance, there are three teams of three people each, and they get dropped off in the middle of nowhere with a bottle of water and a GPS unit. Then, they have 72 hours to follow a series of waypoints and find $100,000....

Media Platforms Design Team1) NORTH DAKOTAMost of the wells in northwest North Dakota aren’t linked to the area’s eight major oil pipelines. Instead, tanker trucks haul crude to pipes and rail—this puts about 2000 trucks daily on North Dakota roads. The state allocated $307 million for oil country roadwork in 2011, mostly to build bypasses and repair highways. The region will spend another $605 million by 2013.2) THE MIDWESTPipelines take crude to Flanagan, Ill....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere are about 40 million wood decks in the United States, many of them 20 or more years old, according to the North American Deck and Railing Association. While these structures don’t collapse every day, then they do, people can be injured or killed. Cary, Ill., resident Marisa Costello was almost killed a year ago when her deck gave way. A simple inspection and some corrective carpentry can prevent most of these disasters....

A water heater, especially an electric model, is a very simple device. Unheated water enters one side of the tank. The water is heated by a couple of electric resistance elements that extend from the side of the tank into the middle of the water. And then on demand the water exits from the other side of the tank.Unfortunately, such simplicity doesn’t really extend to its installation. While far from difficult, installing an electric water heater does involve plumbing and electrical work, which may be enough to put off quite a few people....

Media Platforms Design Team"We need to be a multiplanetary species,"—that’s the ambitious way Elon Musk begins his talks. And it’s the kind of attitude that won Musk the 2012 PM Breakthrough Leadership Award. Today he came by PM’s home base to talk about his twin ventures, SpaceX and Tesla Motors.In May, his company SpaceX successfully launched a 227-foot tall rocket from Cape Canaveral and berthed its Dragon capsule with the International Space Station....

Media Platforms Design TeamSick of political bickering? Tired of polarization? Try tuning in to next week’s public hearings on the federal government’s first-ever efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, where—surprisingly—it looks like all sides will be singing the same tune. Truckers like it, truck manufacturers like it, scientists like it, environmentalists like it . . . which should leave you wondering why the government needs to get involved at all....

Popular Mechanics: What’s new about the latest Super Mario Bros game?Shigeru Miyamoto: It’s the next installment in the newer Super Mario Bros. series, which we started on Nintendo DS. The idea behind New Super Mario Bros. was originally that we wanted to create a Mario game that would really be accessible to several different kinds of game players. We wanted it to be something that people who had never played a game before could enjoy....

Chevy’s gas-electric plug in hybrid Volt may have grabbed the headlines this year, but GM wants you to know that the Volt’s smart chassis and powertrain system allows it to run hydrogen too. The test bed for what may eventually become the fuel cell Volt, is a rather unassuming Chevy Equinox—an Equinox that just happens to have a fuel cell stack where the V6 normally goes. The Equinox Fuel Cell (FC) will soon be amongst the everyday folk....

Media Platforms Design TeamDallas—When the bottom fell out of the economy, pundits predicted the death of the full-size truck. While personal-use truck sales are still soft, big pickups still qualify as the fifth largest segment, with current annualized sales of roughly 1.3 million units. That’s not small potatoes. Furthermore, estimates predict that full-size pickups sales could hit 2 million by 2015. Even in the darkest economic days, planners at Ford knew things would bounce back, and for 2011, the company has revamped the F-150’s powertrain lineup....

Flooded Basement Rule #1: Get the Water Out Before You Go InA flooded basement is more than a nuisance, it’s an electrocution hazard. Let’s say you’ve got an inch or so of water in the basement. Assuming the service panel is also in the basement, you can put some dry lumber down or use a small plastic step stool or a fiberglass step ladder to get above the water and switch off basement circuits....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs Super Bowl week ramps up, one of the main non-Richard Sherman is bound to be the weather. The big game typically goes to cities in Florida or California. Super Bowl XLVIII, scheduled to kick off Sunday night from New Jersey’s Metlife Stadium, is the first NFL title game to be contested outdoors in a northern city since before the Super Bowl existed.media storylinesThe league is going to great lengths to make sure the February weather in the New York metropolitan area doesn’t spoil the spectacle, starting with the lucky few who’ll watch from inside the stadium....

Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday, Ohio legislators were set to consider a perfectly sensible bill, one that would require drivers to move over and leave an empty lane between themselves and maintenance vehicles parked on the side of the highway. And then, thanks to an unrelated amendment tacked on, the state became the latest battleground between car dealerships and Tesla Motors over who has the right to sell cars.If you haven’t been following this car sales saga, a number of states have proposed laws that would prohibit manufacturers from selling vehicles direct to consumers, protecting the current franchise system in which local dealers act as the middleman between car buyers and car companies....