Maybe you’ve gazed at the covers of old sci-fi pulp novels and flashed on a story based just on an image. Jupiter Ascending, the new and confused film by the Wachowskis, is a two-hour experiment of thumbtacking one gorgeous vision of space porn after another.No one could deny that the ships, wormholes, lizard creatures, and high-end interstellar couture in this film is anything but exemplary. But these are visual treats that ultimately signify nothing....
Media Platforms Design Team LOS ANGELES—Onlookers at a gas station in Malibu differentiated the new Nissan 370Z from the old 350Z almost instantly. They crowded around uttering compliments about the car’s design. That was a bit of a surprise because the 2009 370Z is an honest evolution of the original shape, carrying forward the old Z’s most identifiable attributes despite fairly profound changes to almost every aspect of the car’s mechanical architecture....
A couple weeks ago, we showed you the new Honda Fit as it was unveiled at the Detroit auto show. And this week we were at the national press introduction for the car. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you anything about how the Fit feels on the road, because driving impressions are embargoed until April 1. Therefore, you’ll read about Fit first in the May issue of POPULAR MECHANICS magazine.However, for you tech junkies out there, we did come across this interesting little tidbit, engine-wise—which has nothing to do with driving, so we can talk about it here....
Final Frontier Design is designing the astronaut suit of the future, and right now it’s investing big in one of the most important components: the hands. Like the rest of the suit, gloves have to be pressurized to protect the astronaut from the elements – or lack thereof – of near-Earth space. That’s done, on the most reductive level, by filling the suit with air. But that makes the gloves unwieldy....
Carl MehlingNew York, N.Y.Age: 42Years on Job: 16 Behind a secure, unlabeled door in a back hallway of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Carl Mehling catalogs fossils in the Big Bone Room. The area houses more than 200 bones from more than 45 species of dinosaur on open shelves and in locked cabinets. It is always kept at approximately 65 degrees F and 50 percent humidity because “small existing cracks can grow bigger over time,” says Mehling, who studied zoology and paleontology, and started at the museum as a volunteer 21 years ago....
Media Platforms Design TeamAt around 3 pm this Wednesday, the renowned BASE jumper Jeb Corliss should have been zipping himself into a wingsuit. He should have boarded a black helicopter, flown up to 2400 feet, and jumped out. He should have spread his arms and legs, turning the suit’s nylon panels into wings, and streaked through the skies like a missile. And most of all, he should have been the one to finally shatter limits of flight and human mortality as he became the first wingsuit pilot to jump from an aircraft and land without the help of a parachute....
Media Platforms Design TeamSolar power is expensive. The creation of the cells cost a pretty penny, and even the smallest, most portable panels lose charging capabilities after only a couple years.Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein were thinking about how to give portable solar charging stations the longevity and price to make them commercially viable and widely available when they came upon a new idea: the Solar Pocket Factory. “We were visiting microsolar-panel factories in China left and right,” Frayne says....
Media Platforms Design TeamVICTORVILLE, Calif. — If a movie is ever made about the DARPA Urban Challenge, the Tartan Racing team will be the bad guys. It’s not that the Carnegie Mellon and General Motors-run team is the slightest bit malicious or underhanded. In fact, the opposite is probably true, since during the week-long national qualification event they’ve even pitched in to help other teams repair their vehicles. But Tartan appears to be the most heavily sponsored team, dwarfing even Volkswagen-backed arch-rival Stanford Racing, which won the Grand Challenge in 2005....
It’s a hell of a time to be working as a young space engineer in the United States. Back in the day—and by that we mean less than 10 years ago—engineers had no options but to work inside massive aerospace firms, toiling away on small minutiae of aerospace projects that may never make it past the drawing board. And for most of their careers, they’d remain far away from any hardware that actually flew....
Media Platforms Design TeamAfter analyzing humanity’s first drilled rock sample on Mars, Curiosity rover scientists announced at a press conference today that one area of the ancient martian surface could have supported life, calling it the first definitive evidence of a habitable environment outside of Earth.Within the gray tailings the Curiosity drilled out from a sedimentary rock found within part of an ancient stream bed known as Yellowknife Bay, researchers found sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, carbon, and most importantly, water with neutral pH—the key ingredients to foster microbial life....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe fastest motorcycle to make it to the top of this weekend’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb wasn’t gas powered and, in a pre-emptive strike against– uh, human strikes– emitted a “whoop whoop” siren sound warning of its approach.Beating internal combustion Ducatis, Kawasakis, Hondas and the likes was Carlin Dunne aboard his Lightning superbike, which clocked an offical time of 10:00.694. The next quickest motorcycle was a Ducati Multistrada 1200 S piloted by Bruno Langlois, which achieved a 10:21....
Media Platforms Design TeamRegardless of how much time you spend on R&D, testing and retooling, the real measure of any new technology or system comes with its real-world deployment—unexpected challenges and unanticipated situations determine success or failure. As we approach next week’s five-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion in Iraq, advanced weaponry is still developing and maturing. In the August 2005 issue, PM examined early lessons from combat.“By far the most devastating and ubiquitous weapon of the insurgency is the radio-controlled improvised explosive device,” PM reported in a special report from former Marines Owen and Bing West....
Media Platforms Design TeamDETROIT–The fallout from General Motors’ decision to keep its Opel European brand instead of selling it to auto parts maker Magna International could distract the automaker as it tries to focus attention on fixing its North American business. Since backing out of the deal to sell Opel to a consortium of Magna and Russian bank Sberbank, GM has lost its Opel CEO and become the target of both a strike and a cascade of negative publicity....
Are carnival rides safe?Nothing is entirely safeother than a bet that no matter how many times you throw that softball at those leaden milk bottles, at least one will remain standing. But statistics suggest that carnival rides are safer than they feel, so long as operators keep their eyes on the ride and off the passing parade of tube tops, and riders don’t do anything stupid. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions calculates the odds of suffering a fatal injury on a ride at fixed-site amusement parks (Disney, Six Flags, et al....
Media Platforms Design TeamSome people have a knack.Travis Pastrana has jumped out of a plane, sans parachute. He has also logged more miles airborne in a car than you’ve probably spent in first gear. Sometimes, he’s merely aloft, like when he set a world record by jumping a Subaru WRX STi 269 feet at 2010’s Red Bull: New Year, No Limits event. Other times, he is upside-down, like when he executed the world’s first double backflip on a motorcycle at the X Games in 2006....
Media Platforms Design TeamMy dad gave me a big box of cold chisels, punches, and other stuff. Most of the tools are in pretty rough condition, with a mushroomed face on one end and a chipped edge on the other. Can I grind these tools back into shape?With the right equipment, you should be able to refurbish these tools because they’re likely made of metal that’s soft enough to grind. According to the Rockwell scalea rating system that classifies the hardness of metals and hard plasticscold chisels and punches are usually in the range of Rockwell C5759....
Media Platforms Design TeamOne of my heroes was a guy named Abner Doble, an engineering genius and a perfectionist, who built his first steam car when he was in high school. Later, as an MIT student in 1911, Abner built a steamer with a condenser that turned vapor into reusable water; not even the Stanley Steamer had that range-extending feature.Some years later, Abner, with assistance from his three brothers, founded the Doble Steam Motors Corporation....
Q: Why do I have to take my laptop out of my carry-on luggage at the airport security check? I don’t have to remove any of my other electronics.A: Ann Davis, public affairs manager for the Transportation Security Administration, says that “Unlike cellphones and Black-Berrys, laptops are very often ac-companied by power cords, cables, remote mice and keyboards, making for a cluttered X-ray image if the laptop is not screened sepa-rately....
Could nuclear power be the next source of green energy? With the threat of global warming looming and the need for renewable resources pressing, environmentalists are finding an unlikely bedfellow in nuclear power. We’ll talk with Popular Mechanics contributing editor Alex Hutchinson about new reactor designs, we’ll hear an argument for nuclear power from Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore and Union of Concerned Scientitsts physicist Ed Lyman will weigh in with some of the problems that still face civilian atomic power....
Media Platforms Design TeamCheap, small, and infinitely customizable: This is the recipe that brought gearheads flocking to the ‘32 Ford, ’60s pony cars, and the imports of the 1990s and 2000s. Could the next object of their tinkering affection be not a car, but a tiny computer?The Raspberry Pi costs $35, fits in an Altoid tin, and offers a blank slate for programmers. Hackers and hobbyists have found thousands of uses for the Pi, including some high-tech automotive applications....
