Posts

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen politicians argue over President Obama’s new 2013 budget proposal, one thing that should escape criticism is the $8 million to be spent on designing a new polar-class icebreaker for the Coast Guard. The hard part will follow: It will cost nearly $1 billion to actually build the ship, and it’s $1 billion that Congress needs to find. The United States is the world’s colossus when it comes to every other kind of military hardware, yet it has just one functioning icebreaker: the medium-strength USCGC Healy, which is primarily used for research....

The U.S. Air Force is preparing to start mothballing the B-2 Spirit and B-1B Lancer fleets in preparation for the next-generation stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, according to Aviation Week. The nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber and conventional B-1B supersonic bomber fleets will ultimately be retired to free up funds to support the B-21 program, which is expected to field the first aircraft in the mid-2020s. The preparations to retire B-2s and B-1Bs will be officially released February 12 in the White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2019....

Think Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, or Brontosaurus, and you probably picture long necks, long tails, small heads, and four enormous weight-bearing legs. These sauropods, or “lizard-footed” dinosaurs, are known for these features, not to mention their impressive size. Now picture long hooked spikes protruding from a sauropod neck like a bony mohawk. This is what paleontologist Pablo Gallina and his colleagues recently unearthed from a bed of 139-million-year-old rock in northern Patagonia, Argentina....

In the wee hours of the morning yesterday, at about 5 a.m. Eastern time, humanity explored a region of the solar system never before explored: the space between Saturn and its rings. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft dove inside the rings for the first time at about 77,000 mph relative to the planet, kicking off what the science team is calling the Grand Finale of the mission. At 2:56 a.m. Eastern, the Deep Space Network Goldstone Complex in California’s Mojave Desert picked up the signal from Cassini....

A new year is finally upon us, and that means it’s time to land the career that you’ve always wanted. Ranging in theme from cover letter and résumé essentials to copywriting, web development, and public speaking, these five courses will help you train for your ideal career, and each is available at a significant discount for a limited time. Cover Letter Mastery to Get the Job You WantBUY NOW$10Even if you have the skills and motivation to land that perfect job, none of that matters if you can’t sell yourself effectively....

You’ve been stuck in the same dull places for weeks, or maybe months. Your attention keeps drifting away to places you’d rather be, all of which are not here. Maybe the weather is too pleasant to ignore. Maybe you’d like to go somewhere snowy because it never snows at home. There are so many people to see, good roads to drive, places you love and even more places you haven’t explored....

People hear ‘nonalcoholic beer’ and think the worst,” says Bill Shufelt, cofounder of Athletic Brewing Company and Taproom in Stratford, Connecticut. “The standard commercial production gives you a bland or metallic taste. There hasn’t been a satisfying option with no compromise.” That may explain why non-alcoholic beer makes up only about 2 percent of the beer market. Shufelt took this as a challenge—and an opportunity: to create beer with no alcohol but so much flavor that anyone would enjoy drinking it....

Iran’s Defense Minister claims that his country’s indigenous fighter, the F-311 Qaher (“Conqueror”) is nearing production. The fighter was first unveiled in 2013, when it was widely ridiculed as a fake.The Qaher jet is supposed to be Iran’s first locally designed and produced fighter plane. First revealed in 2013 to great fanfare, a full-size mockup was shown to the public. The plane then disappeared into obscurity. The plane was designed and the mockup built by the Iranian government’s Aviation Industries Organization....

This week, The Mandalorian feels like a break from the narrative in an effort to scratch an irresistible itch—endless fan service. The episode, called “The Gunslingers,” finally indulges this long held desire with an absolute avalanche of winks, nudges, and nods to films that have come before. For me, Star Wars is at its worst when it relies on its past as a creative crutch, and this episode is a prime example....

Rockets roared to life on August 3, 2004, as an intrepid spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral and set out to uncover mysteries about the Solar System’s smallest planet: Mercury. The Messenger craft—short for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geo-chemistry and Ranging—rocketed toward the dense, little planet with big plans. Mariner 10—the first spacecraft to visit multiple planets and use gravity assist to fling itself from one to another—swept past Mercury three times in the 1970s....

It’s the sort of cold, blustery day that’s fit for no man or beast… high of about 3-degrees with a stiff north wind. Days like this are all about feeding the fire and procrastinating outdoor chores (a bit of a conundrum, since to feed the fire, I’ve gotta go outdoors and get the firewood. Hmm… I’m looking at the furniture in a whole new light).So now we know that there’s a greater than 90% change that human activities are contributing to global warming....

According to the Pentagon’s in-house watchdog, the replacement for the U.S. military’s Humvee is in serious trouble. The new Joint Tactical Light Vehicle (JLTV) is “not operationally suitable” because of deficiencies in “reliability, maintainability, training, manuals, crew situational awareness, and safety,” a new report says. The vehicle is so bug-ridden that it requires contractors in the field to fix problems, and is so large and loud that it’s easily detectable on the battlefield....

RocketStar Space has its sights set on “single stage to orbit”—building a rocket that can leave the planet without requiring multiple stages. That’s one of the big goals of rocketry that could make reaching space cheaper and more accessible for everybody, but so far, no one has been able to do it.Every successful rocket launch you’ve ever seen that has sent a payload to orbit or beyond has used multi-stage rockets....

A team of astronomers have been able to observe a supermassive black hole sucking in gas with such remarkable speed that the only proper comparison is the speed of light. The gas was being sucked into the supermassive black hole at 30 percent of the universe’s speed limit.“We were able to follow an Earth-sized clump of matter for about a day, as it was pulled towards the black hole, accelerating to a third of the velocity of light before being swallowed up by the hole,” says Ken Pounds, a professor at the University of Leicester, in a press statement....

The U.S. Air Force is turning obsolete F-16 Fighting Falcons into target practice, a longstanding tradition as older planes age out. The dronified F-16s will be used to test new weapons, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Air Force had previously relied on F-4 Phantoms turned into target drones, but the supply of obsolete Phantoms is drying up. The air service turned to Boeing for help converting older F-16 fighters into drones....

Why does the metal connector between our furnace and the chimney keep rotting out?—SAM W., BISMARCK, NORTH DAKOTAI’m going to guess that you have a newer furnace. If that’s true, you’re probably getting condensation in the flue. Older furnaces didn’t have that issue. The hot flue gas they produced literally shot out of the chimney—too hot and moving too quickly to condense. While that method kept the flue clean, there was a glaring problem: All of that hot gas was wasted energy....

The bikes fire up with a smooth bang, followed by the staccato beat of cylinders finding their rhythm. The rumble breaks through the hot summer air at Sonoma Raceway. There’s an undeniable feeling that something special is about to happen. But just a few short years ago American motorcycle road racing was on the brink of extinction.View full post on YoutubeThe 1980s and 90s heyday of American motorcycle road racing was led by legendary riders like Wayne Rainey, Eddie Lawson and Kevin Schwantz, whose success proved the competition was strong enough to prepare riders to compete on an international level....

The U.S. Navy is abandoning an effort to digitize the controls of its destroyers after the system was partially blamed for a collision that killed ten sailors. The National Transportation Safety Board’s report into the incident cited the design of the ship’s new Integrated Bridge and Navigation System, which replaced manual controls in controlling the ship’s propulsion and steering, were so complicated they became a safety issue. As a result, the Navy will return to handheld manual, mechanical controls for its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers....

The U.S. Air Force revealed an F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighter in a new camouflage scheme that will be familiar to Russian plane watchers: a digital camo scheme that resembles the one painted on the new Su-57 stealth fighter. The two-tone grey paint job is pixelated in a similar manner to the latest Russian fighter plane.View full post on YoutubeThe fighter, an F-16 belonging to the 64th Aggressor Squadron and assigned to Nellis Air Force base, was painted in the “Ghost” camouflage pattern....

We’ve got rovers like Curiosity and Opportunity still rolling around the Martian surface, and we’ve got orbiters like MAVEN and India’s first Mars probe, Mangalyaan 1, in orbit. But as we close out Mars Week, here are the next explorers coming soon to the Red Planet.Next upIn 2016, the first suite of ESA’s ExoMars probes will head toward Mars. The Trace Gas Orbiter will map wells of methane across the planet, searching for its origin (whether biological or geological....