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The USS Harry S. Truman, scheduled for a fall cruise, is currently pierside as engineers attempt to fix an electrical issue.The carrier’s escorts are deploying as a group and are a pretty potent force themselves. The U.S. Navy hopes Truman can rejoin its strike group at a later date.The U.S. Navy is sending a carrier strike group to sea, but without its most important asset: the aircraft carrier itself. Problems with the USS Truman’s electrical system have sidelined the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, so the cruisers and destroyers that make up the rest of the group are still sailing as planned....

The world’s largest cargo aircraft came in for a landing at Oakland International Airport earlier this week. The Antonov An-225 “Mriya” (“Dream”) flew non-stop from its home base in Ukraine to Oakland on an emergency flight to pick up disaster relief supplies. The flight was made in anticipation of Typhoon Mangkhut, which hit Guam yesterday.View full post on YoutubeThe An-225 Mriya is a strategic airlifter designed in the 1980s to support the Soviet space program....

China has been puffing out its chest a lot this week to show that it’s the tough guy in its region. It unveiled new missiles that could target American bases. It marched its soldiers and weapons in a big parade. Its naval vessels just happened to make a close pass to Alaska while President Obama was visiting there.But if all that was too subtle, now there’s this:View full post on YoutubeThe video, released last week, looks like a Call of Duty video game on steroids....

For nearly 20 years, the United States Air Force has been focused on anti-terror operations in uncontested airspace. Now, as America transitions its focus away from the War on Terror toward potential near-peer conflicts, the U.S. is looking to pull a page out of its own World War II playbook by building inexpensive combat aircraft that can overwhelm advanced enemy air defenses through sheer numbers.The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie, an unmanned and experimental combat aerial vehicle, is tough to spot on radar and could be directly linked to the F-35 through an encrypted data connection to serve as a wingman under the pilot’s control....

Over the summer, an eight-year-old girl turned an idle day at the lake into a significant historical discovery when she found a 1,500-year-old sword from Europe’s Iron Age. The 33-inch long artifact was sitting in a shallow body of water, about 1.5 feet below the surface when it was happened upon by the young girl. Prior to unearthing the object, the girl named Saga Vanecek was dong run-of-the-mill kid stuff, like “throwing sticks and stones and stuff to see how far they skip,” per a report in Sky News....

A U.S. Air Force Base in Florida received an unexpected visitor early Tuesday morning: an alligator. The reptile wandered onto the base flight line, where it was scooped up and returned to the wild. The gator did not threaten flight operations or anyone at the air base.The incident took place on May 15th, and the alligator was noted on the flight line and pickup was handled by the base wildlife manager....

European aircraft giant Airbus is in the early stages of planning what very well may become the continent’s next generation fighter jet. The unnamed fighter could replace current European fighters, including the Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing F/A-18 Hornet, in the next ten to fifteen years.Deutsche Welle, citing the German business daily Handelsblatt, said that Airbus was working on some components for the yet-unnamed jet. The article also said Airbus hopes to convince France, home of French fighter manufacturer Dassault, to join the program....

Last week, a number of unidentified objects soared across skies above Chiloe Island in Southern Chile.After conducting field analysis of the alleged impact site, officials were unable to confirm that the objects were part of a dissolved meteorite.Experts have suggested the objects could have been pieces of space debris. Last week, residents of the island of Chiloe in southern Chile were startled to see several bright red objects streak across the sky....

In 2015 DARPA sent out a call for something that sounds straight out of Mission Impossible: “a flock of small, single-use, unpowered delivery vehicles dropped from an aircraft, each of which literally vanishes after landing.” Just two years later, they’ve gotten what they’ve asked for in MORSE Corp.’s ICARUS drone. The appeal of a dissolving drone to the military is pretty self-evident. In its initial call, DARPA, the Pentagon’s long-running experimental division, highlighted scenarios of first response, when soliders are called into disaster zones with insulin or plasma....

Most cars are easy to run at the drag strip. Line up, wait for the green light, and go. In today’s fancier cars, the machine can do it for you: All-wheel-drive monsters like the Porsche 911 Turbo and Nissan GT-R can dial up launch control and let a computer-orchestrated clutch drop send you on your way.Once you’ve got more power than the tires can handle, though, that’s when the tricks and artistry come into play....

On a Utah plain with a backdrop of snow-covered mountains, Austin Jensen walks backward holding a bright red flying wing 6 feet across. When the bungee cord holding the airplane to a stake in the ground is taut, he holds the machine over his head and releases it into the sky. Propelled by the tension in the bungee, it sails overhead, releases from the bungee, and spins up the pusher prop in the back with a whine from its electric motor....

Ford recently received a patent for a retractable movie screen that would cover the windshield inside a driverless car. If the driver wants to take control of the car, the screen and projector would retract into the ceiling.It’s unclear if Ford will run into trouble by trying to completely cover the windshield and block the passenger’s view. But if the future involves smart highways devoid of human drivers, then it makes sense that the entire car could be a media and entertainment system....

Tragedy was avoided when a train hit a school bus earlier today near the German town of Buxtehude. The bus had reportedly broken down on the track, and the bus driver made everyone evacuate before the train hit. They didn’t go very far, apparently, as the video below demonstrates.View full post on YoutubeAccording to Spiegel Online, the approaching train had been seen from the bus, and the driver quickly sent the kids out and away from the vehicle....

For more than a century now, automotive engineers have struggled with an unavoidable balancing act when it comes to engine compression. Now, thanks to an innovation from Infiniti, they may get to enjoy the best of both worlds.Cars have a single engine compression ratio, which is expressed in a form like 10:1. That ratio compares the maximum to minimum value of cylinder volume as the piston travels throughout its complete range....

The furnishings in our homes are subject to a great deal of stress and strain, from the weight of a thousand sittings, to casual spills made while watching the game. Upholstery becomes worn, legs get wobbly, and surfaces get dinged, dented, and scratched, all as part of the rough and tumble that is life in any home. We don’t think of furniture as being dangerous, but a wobbly chair or an unstable bookcase is an accident waiting to happen....

India has successfully launched its second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2. The country hopes that the launch will make bring it into the exclusive club of nations that have successfully made a soft landing on lunar soil. Riding on an Indian-built rocket known as a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, or GSLV MkIII-M1, the successful launch from the Second Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center, located on a small island off India’s southeastern coast, took place at 2:43 pm Indian Standard Time (IST)....

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is expanding its purview into missions for the U.S. military.Blue Origin is one of three recipients of a $2.3 billion Department of Defense (DoD) contract, meant to ensure the military’s rocket launch technology is developed and manufactured domestically, Reuters reported Wednesday. The billionaire’s rocket company, which recently announced the development of a “large lunar lander” meant for a 2023 mission, will join Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems and United Launch Services (ULS) in providing the US Air Force better access to space....

The Hawaiian Kilauea volcano, which has been active for two months, has now injured 13 passengers on a nearby tour boat. One 20-year old woman suffered major leg trauma while other passengers had burns and scrapes, according to the state’s Department of Land and National Resources.View full post on FacebookLava spewing from the volcano easily burned through the boat’s roof. The tourist group was in the area to specifically see lava from Kilauea plunging into the ocean....

Meet WALL-E’s badass cousin, Colossus, a firefighting robot that helped turn the tide at Monday’s devastating fire at Notre Dame de Paris. With the roof ablaze and threatening to bring the monumental building down, the Paris Fire Brigade withdrew its human firefighters and sent in one of its newest team members, a caterpillar-tracked tank-bot quickly becoming a firefighter’s best friend. With its help, the firefighters extinguished the blaze and largely saved 850 years of history—and no civilians or firefighters were killed in the process....

Media Platforms Design TeamMicrosoft officially launched its Office 2010 public beta today. The beta isn’t exactly public–it’s mostly available to developers and IT professionals (as well as enthusiasts who illegally download it over torrents). We’ve been playing with the software for about a week now, and have found the interface improvements to be subtle, but welcome. The biggest news about Office 2010 it its integration with SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online storage service....