Moving people and supplies across the Great White South is treacherous, difficult, and expensive with logistical costs constituting as much as 90 percent of an expedition’s budget—about $125,000 a trip on average. And that’s assuming the convoy isn’t swallowed by an ice crevasse en route. But a new radar-equipped rover could help the National Science Foundation save lives and millions of dollars a year. More »
For the multitudes of cultural differences that exist throughout human civilization, we do share a single, universal goal: to build stuff bigger and better than the schmucks next door. Every single one of the seven wonders of the ancient world was created as a chest-thumping, neighbor-shaming testament to its builder’s awesomeness. That proud tradition continues even today with Saudi Arabia’s massive Mecca-clock, a timepiece so enormous it almost ended Greenwich Mean Time. More »
One does not simply build an International Space Station. It takes years of planning and, for the astronauts charged with its assembly, months of training and Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) practice in a simulated micro-gravity environment—that also happens to be the world’s largest indoor body of water. More »
Hellfire II missiles are accurate and powerful, but expensive. Hydra 70 rockets are relatively cheap but unguided and far less accurate, which increases the chances of incurring collateral damage. But by combining a Hellfire’s guidance and launcher with a Hydra’s warhead and propellant, Lockheed has created a deadly new hybrid in the Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR). More »
Sandia National Laboratories is the nation’s premiere nuclear weapons research facility, and for more than 60 years, its researchers have poked and prodded the interiors of atoms to suss out their secrets—a task that has produced mountains of data that the facility’s copper network struggles to contain. But now, even the most remote building’s on Sandia’s campuses have access to the biggest bandwidth modern technology can muster. More »
1893 marked the 400 year anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the New World. To commemorate the anniversary, the 51st US Congress of 1890 declared that a great fair—the World’s Columbian Exposition—would be held on April 9th of 1893 in Chicago and Daniel H. Burnham, father of the skyscraper, would oversee its construction. If only he could find enough civil engineers to pull it off. More »
Superman: Escape from Krypton has been terrifying Six Flags Magic Mountain visitors since 1997. Once the tallest roller coaster on the planet and the first to employ a linear motor system, Superman launched riders up a 415-foot vertical track at 100 MPH. Now GE is working to convert the technology behind the amusement park ride into an electric catapult capable of flinging F-35s into action. More »
At more than 7,580 feet long, Seattle’s Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge is already the world’s longest floating bridge. But after fifty years of service the four-lane concrete span has aged worse than Gerard Depardieu. Its pontoon supports can no longer endure the region’s strong storms and the bridge itself is likely to collapse under a moderate earthquake. But Washington can rebuild it, they have the power, they have the technology. More »
A 50-foot wide, 10,000-ton meteor that packs triple the force of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima is nothing to scoff at. But in the grand scheme of things, the meteor that hit Chelyabinsk, Russia, last week is a cosmological runt. Space rocks as much as 100 feet across are estimated to strike every hundred years or so and those like the 160-foot diameter Tunguska meteor of 1908 hit maybe once a century. More »
Dubbed the P.1HH HammerHead, this UAV is the result of a collaboration between Piaggio Aero and Selex ES based on the P-180 Avanti II, a twin-engine turboprop. The Avanti II is primarily utilized as a business jet with a 1400 NM range, though a “Special Mission” piloted derivative is also available for both emergency response and military operations. In the latter case, the Avanti II can perform in a variety of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, security surveillance roles. More »
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