Chris Anderson’s pitch for the new Solo drone by 3D Robotics comes down to this: “Don’t fly the drone. Fly the camera.“Solo, a $999 drone unveiled today and set to come out in May, isn’t a toy made for users to enjoy the thrill of flight. To hear Anderson tell it, it’s more like an autonomous flying camera dolly—a drone that flies itself as much as possible so the user can focus on capturing the footage....
BUY NOWBellroyThere are few items more important that your wallet. It’s always on you, takes up precious pocket real estate, and most importantly, it holds all your cash. So it’s worth springing for a good one, but it’s better to spring for a good when it’s 25 percent off.Right now over at Huckberry, the Bellroy Low Down—one of our favorite wallets—is going for $60, down from $80. Available in caramel, black, and charcoal, the Low Down is made from vegetable-tanned leather, folds up to a measly 70mm, and can hold up to 10 cards....
Robert Bigelow, back of inflatable space hotels, has announced the formation of a new company to build and market space stations in Earth’s orbit, called Bigelow Space Ops.During his announcement, the company’s founder made a point to paint a picture of a thriving U.S. industry: American-made hardware launching from American spaceports, leading the way into the orbital future. But what Bigelow and other space barons’ business plans really want are for customers from other nations to emerge....
Betelgeuse, once one of the brightest stars in the night sky, has dimmed significantly in recent months. This shift in brightness could signal changes for the red star, and some scientists believe a supernova could be on the horizon. Betelgeuse has a mass about 20 times that of our sun and would swallow everything up to Jupiter, were it to swap spots with our Sun.One of the brightest stars in the sky has dimmed in recent months....
It’s now unlikely that the Bush Administration will announce the bailout package this week. According to an article in the New York Times Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has taken a lead roll formulating the plan and the Bush Administration is pushing for a resolution by December 25. There is also an indication that the GM and Chrysler merger is back on the table. Many believe that Chrysler is the most troubled of the Big Three because it doesn’t have much new product in the pipeline nor does it have any overseas operations....
🏍Make/Model: Can-Am Ryker Rally Edition | Price: $10,999 | Engine: Rotax 900 ACE inline 3 with electronic fuel injection | Peak Torque: 56 lb-ft | Horsepower: 82 | Transmission: Continuously Variable Automatic | Front Suspension: Double wishbone with KYB HPG coil-overs, 6.38 inches of travel | Rear Suspension: KYB HPG 40mm with 6.89 inches of travel | Dry Weight: 627 lb | Ground Clearance: 4.4 inchesRally racing is one of the most challenging forms of motorsport....
Modern heavy-duty diesel pickups are like muscle cars that can tow 12,000 lbs. It seems like just about every year one of the “Big Three” trumps the others with a new or substantially revised turbo-diesel that cranks out even more hp and more torque. The latest is the 2006 Chevy and GMC Duramax 6.6-liter V8 that makes 360 hp and 650 lb.-ft of torque. That’s 40 lb.-ft. more torque than Dodge and 80 more than Ford....
LOS ANGELES — Recently, I stumbled upon a group of Honda engineers testing a new vehicle on the Angeles Crest Highway here in Southern California. I’m certainly no Jim Dunne. But I have learned a thing or two from our resident Spymaster over the years. Timing is everything—the car could be driven away at any moment. So I nervously scrambled for my camera and started clicking away.At first glance, this test mule looks like a current generation Honda Accord....
A grieving orca mom has been swimming with her dead calf for over five days off the coast of Victoria, British Columbia. According to The New York Times, the calf died on Tuesday morning, half an hour after its birth. It was the first calf known to have been born to the local population since 2015. Since then, its mother, a 20-year-old whale named J35, has been carrying the calf on her nose in grief....
Over millions of years, evolution can do some wild things. In New Zealand, where almost no mammals live natively, birds took on every role in the food chain, from herbivores who waddled on the ground to fruit eaters who lived in the trees, to a giant terrifying eagle with a ten foot wingspan. In Hawaii, something similarly bizarre happened to a species of spider, as we learn from a new study in an upcoming issue of Current Biology from researchers at UC Berkeley....
Boeing has revealed its first-ever concept for a hypersonic passenger plane that could cross an ocean in two hours for military or commercial customers. Debuted at an aerospace conference in Atlanta today, the design shows that the aerospace giant is ready to compete for this high-flying piece of the aviation future.“There is an inherent value in speed,” says Kevin Bowcutt, Senior Technical Fellow of hypersonics in Boeing Research & Technology. Boeing is the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to hypersonics, the technology to fly faster than Mach 5....
The first issue of Airbnbmag, which hits newsstands today, will help you find a place to stay off-planet, too. Here are the companies competing to take us to the heavens, and how much we’ll have to pay (and how long we’ll have to wait) for the ride of a lifetime.Worldview Express: $75,000Float 100,000 feet to the edge of the atmosphere via a helium-balloon-powered space capsule. There’s no training required for the four- to six-hour World View Voyager trip....
Lithium metal batteries could be far more efficient than lithium ion batteries.Unfortunately, they have a tendency to explode due to build up called “dendrites.“A new coating is preventing dendrites from ever forming.One of the most crucial materials in current electric vehicles could be getting a major upgrade. Researchers at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a coating that could make a long-held idea, the rechargeable lithium metal battery, a reality....
A new water-repellent coating under development by the University of Michigan could reduce fuel costs for U.S. Navy ships, increasing fuel economy by making it easier for them to cut through water. The new coating could also make ships—especially submarines—faster and quieter. Researchers at the University of Michigan funded by the Office of Naval Research are trying to develop durable “superhydrophobic” water coatings for ship hulls. Water encounters less friction passing over air bubbles than it does a ship’s hull, so the solution is to cover the hull in literally millions of tiny air bubbles....
Currently, a planet-wide dust storm is encircling Mars, blotting out the sky over the two NASA rovers that are currently exploring the Red Planet. The storm is particularly troublesome for the 15-year-old Opportunity rover, which has no power source save its solar panels. Under the darkened skies, the rover has entered a power fault mode, and though NASA was optimistic that the robot could ride out the storm a month ago, the agency has of yet failed to establish contact with Opportunity....
The question of “what is a planet?” has always been a thorny one, and even more so since the Pluto demotion fiasco of 2006. Now there’s a new proposed definition for planethood, but it focuses not on the small end where objects like Pluto and its counterparts live. It’s concerned with the question of how big something can get before it doesn’t count as a planet anymore.In his new paper “Evidence of an Upper Bound on the Masses of Planets and Its Implications for Giant Planet Formation,” Kevin Schlaufman sets planetary boundaries at four and 10 times the mass of Jupiter, which itself has a mass equivalent to roughly 317 Earths....
“Electric cars are not that new,” says Tony Posawetz, vehicle line director for the Volt. The first vehicle ever built by Ferdinand Porsche, he says, the 1898 System Lohner-Porsche, was in fact an electric car. Posawetz estimated, however, that next year, modern car manufacturers will easily set the all-time record for electric vehicle sales, and they will continue setting records for several years to come. “By 2020,” Posawetz says, “an additional 300 million vehicles will be built worldwide, which is more than the total number of vehicles that exist in the U....
As the partial government shutdown stretches into a monthlong slog with no end in sight, TSA workers and other federal employees in the U.S. aviation industry have felt the strain of clocking in for work without the prospect of pay. There’s been little reason to believe the stalemate between President Trump and Democratic members of Congress—stemming from a prospective $5 billion wall on the southern border with Mexico—will end, but a solution that could potentially bring the impasse to a halt was recently suggested by Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) President Sara Nelson: a general strike....
Can a heart-sized, seven pound parasite exist in a human?When FBI agent Mitchell Loeb collapses in pain, he’s sent to the emergency room. Only after breaking open his chest cavity do the doctors see what caused his heart to stop: a strange, almost-otherworldly alligator-mouthed parasite wrapped around the organ. When mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop examines the parasite, he determines that it is a typical water-borne organism that lives in the intestines of animals....
A method developed for spotting mines in the ocean may provide the unlikely inspiration for a new way to identify breast cancer. It turns out that, just as fish, waves and rocks can interfere with sonar signals, dense breast tissue can hide or distort elements in a mammogram. “The environments may be different, but the goal is the same: to find subtle information,” says Michael Duarte, a computer engineer at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and CEO of Advanced Image Enhancement....
