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President Trump on Wednesday announced the temporary grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 jets operating in the United States, mirroring the orders of aviation authorities across the world that have banned the planes from operating after two large crashes in five months. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially declined to suspend the jets from service, despite orders from Great Britain, Canada, China and others to immediately ground the planes after the Ethiopian Airlines disaster that killed 157 on Sunday....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASA has been launching space (and air!) bound vehicles since 1958, which means, of course, they’ve been crashing them that long too. But, you know, in the name of science. Now, this roundup video from NASA Langley brings you 50 glorious years of dropping things on the ground to see what happens, ever since they started testing in 1965.This has it all: early stage moon landers, crashtest dummies, experimental airplanes, helicopters, heat shields, whatever....

Media Platforms Design TeamEarlier this week, a team of scientists revealed the first unpowered wearable exoskeleton that decreases the energy required to walk. The ankle exo, as they call it, is stunningly simple: It acts as an auxiliary calf muscle, using little more than a straightforward spring and a mechanical ratchet that either tightly or loosely grips that spring, depending on the motion of your walking foot. Wearing the ankle exo decreases the energy a person expends when walking by 7 percent....

It’s a new war in Iraq, but the same weapons will be taking the field. The State Department just approved the sale of $3 billion in Humvees and M1A1 Abrams tanks to the Iraqi government, which is trying desperately to hang on to power in the fight against the well-equipped army of the Islamic State. (Congress still must approve the sale.)The State Department’s approval letter may not specify IS as the target, but you can see the organization’s shadow in the report’s language: “Iraq will use the M1A1 Abrams tanks to facilitate progress towards increasing its ability to quickly mobilize and defend its border....

Two American giants of military development, Sikorsky and Boeing, have teamed up for what they are calling a revolutionary helicopter design. The SB>1 Defiant, in the works for years, is finally getting a debut in pictures. According to a press release, the Defiant is “designed to fly at twice the speed and range of today’s conventional helicopters and offers advanced agility and maneuverability.” The actual flight launch is scheduled for 2019, even as early as next month....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow will the film version compare to the television show?In no way, shape or form, beyond the characters having the same names, and keeping a lot of the things I think the fans love about that show. The analogy I always use is: How much did Chris Nolan mine of the old Adam West Batman TV show for The Dark Knight? Not a lot. I think Steve Cannell, who created the [A-Team] show, was very keen on us doing thatkind of exploring it on our own and not being held to whatever the tenets of the TV show were....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe defense research group DARPA wants better vehicles, and it wants them faster and cheaper. To make it happen, the Pentagon’s mad scientists are taking a cue from computer-circuit builders.During the 1980s, the integrated-circuit-manufacturing industry began a sea change away from the traditional manufacturing model: Design was separated from manufacturing as a stand-alone function, with designers outsourcing manufacturing to dedicated fabrication plants, or fabs. The result has been an industry more responsive to the rapid pace of innovation that we all know and love today....

I promise you, this isn’t something from Coast-to-Coast AM: A former FermiLab researcher thinks he can make an antimatter engine, one that could accelerate a spaceship to 40 percent of the speed of light. And he intends to start a Kickstarter to help him build the proof of concept.For the paltry price of $200,000, Gerald Jackson and Steven Howe (formerly of Fermilab and Los Alamos, respectively) say they can create a thrust measurement device....

Media Platforms Design TeamAn F-22 flies during an air show earlier this month. (Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images) UPDATE: Lockheed Martin has confirmed the name of the test pilot who was killed in a F-22 Raptor crash on March 25. David Cooley, 49, died when the advanced stealth warplane went down 35 miles outside of Edwards Air Force Base in California. No one else was injured in the crash. Lockheed said he had been with the company since 2003 and was a 21-year Air Force veteran....

The debut of Portal, Facebook’s video chatting device, sparked an obvious question: Does this camera-enabled home assistant manufactured by a company attached to numerous privacy scandals keep your private data private? Facebook was quick to note that Portal wouldn’t feed your data to advertisers — “Portal conversations stay between you and the people you’re calling,” last week’s announcement said — but that reassurance has already proven false: Facebook might use your calls and Portal app usage as queues for its advertising network, a company spokesperson told Recode....

Media Platforms Design TeamNEW YORK – It wasn’t hard to find the high-octane action of at the Jacob Javits Center this past weekend. All you had to do was follow the thunderous cheers erupting from several hundred amped-up high-school students. Inside the exhibit hall, face-painted teenagers waving foam fingers and team flags were packed hip-to-hip on two sets of bleachers as referees circled center court. the FIRST CompetitionIt was much harder to believe what elicited such fervor: Hand-built robots going head to head as a varsity sport....

A new infographic shows the underwater might of the Russian Navy and its fleet of 72 submarines, one more than the U.S. Navy at the time of this writing. Split between nuclear missile submarines, cruise missile submarines, attack submarines, and unique special mission and test submarines, the Russian Navy is no slouch.Once again, the excellent website Naval Analyses (Twitter), creator of the United States Navy Submarines 2018 infographic, has released a new image (full size) that shows off the various classes of submarines in service with the Russian Navy....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe designers of the east span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge—opening Labor Day weekend as the result of a 13-year, $6.42 billion project—didn’t have the luxury of anchoring the new bridge into bedrock. Instead, the 2047-foot span will become the world’s longest self-anchored suspension bridge, an engineering marvel that must endure not only Bay Area traffic but also the inevitability of major earthquakes here.In a traditional suspension bridge like San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate, engineers use inches-wide steel cables to hang thousands of tons of concrete and steel over water, and those big cables anchor to the shore....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe DIY Network’s Garage Mahal crew and the author–PM’s Detroit editor and home-improvement enthusiast–turned this two-car garage in Knoxville, Tenn., into a gym with monkey bars, climbing wall, weight bench and more. To see the transformation, scroll down.With only a crawlspace below their house in Knoxville, Tenn., Tanya and Laurence Brown eyed their garage when they decided to add a home gym. “We both like to exercise,” Laurence says, “but ever since we had our first kid, it’s been hard to find time to go to the gym....

A historian is shining light on the loss of hydrogen bomb secrets on a train in 1953.The political report intended to sway public opinion toward the hydrogen bomb in a time when people were skeptical and afraid.Hydrogen bombs are at least 1,000 times stronger than the atomic bombs used in Japan in 1945.In 1953, American physicist John Wheeler lost the document detailing the hydrogen bomb, just a couple of months after the first successful test in the far-outlying Marshall Islands....

Media Platforms Design TeamJaguar. Just saying the name brings chills to even the most hardened of shade-tree mechanics. The beauty and charisma of the marque’s products are nearly matched by the complexity of the cars’ mechanicals. But sometimes, there’s a design problem that threatens to overshadow Jag’s tasty rides. One incident stands out for its severity as well as its simplicity—the failure of its Nikasil-lined V8 engines. In the early nineties, Jaguar recognized that its long-in-the-tooth but much-loved inline six—which traces its lineage to 1949—was finally due for replacement....

• First ReportInfiniti M35After attending the press preview of Infiniti’s M35 and M45 several months ago, we were so smitten with the M duo that we named it the Luxury Category winner for our inaugural Automotive Excellence Awards (check out the awards here). We also decided we wanted to test one in more depth–so we ordered an M35 for our long-term fleet. We opted for the humbler of the two for a number of reasons: Taking into account price, gas pumps and the environment, the V6-powered M35 seemed a wiser choice than the V8 M45....

France’s government undertook a weird publicity stunt this week with President Emmanuel Macron sharing a short video on social media of a soldier carrying a rifle while piloting a flyboard. Except the soldier wasn’t strictly speaking a French Army trooper, and he wasn’t operating a piece of Army kit.President Macron shared a minute long video, taken during France’s annual Bastille Day, of Flyboard inventor Franky Zapata zipping over what appear to be French special operations troops....

NASA today selected two mission proposals to receive a final round of funding in its New Frontiers program to build interplanetary spacecraft. One of the spacecraft missions will be selected by July 2019 to be built and launched before the end of 2025. The first, CAESAR, is a sample return mission to a comet, and the second, Dragonfly, is a rotorcraft drone to explore Saturn’s largest moon Titan.The CAESAR (Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return) spacecraft, led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, would return to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the same comet that was mapped by the Rosetta spacecraft in recent years....

Patagonia has just gotten a step closer to reaching its goal to use 100 percent renewable and recycled materials. Its new line of fan-favorite Black Hole bags is now made with 100 percent recycled material in the fabric and webbing. So far, 10 million plastic bottles have been used to make this season’s collection. Related StoriesShop Our Favorite Gear During REI’s Summer SaleThe Best Travel Bags You Can Buy Right NowIf you’re somehow unfamiliar with Black Hole backpacks and duffel bags, they’re known for being spacious, lightweight, durable, and water-resistant travel companions....