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The 14th Air Force is one unit transferring from the Air Force to Space Force.The California-based unit is being renamed the Space Operations Command.The Space Operations Command’s acronym is SPOC. We’re into it.The U.S. Space Force is days old and already has its own reference to the science fiction pop culture. A former U.S. Air Force unit transitioning to the Space Force was redesignated the Space Operations Center—or SPOC. The acronym is almost certainly named after the half-human, half-Vulcan first officer of the USS Enterprise of Star Trek fame....

.The Decade, Reviewed looks back at the 2010s and how it changed human society forever. From 2010 to 2019, our species experienced seismic shifts in science, technology, entertainment, transportation, and even the very planet we call home. This is how the past ten years have changed us.Something very strange happened to spaceflight over the past 10 years: Commercial Space companies now have devotees. Like impassioned sports fans, their conflicts play out on social media, where detractors and worshippers swap insults and Delta-v rocket equations with equal invective....

High-resolution photos of the business end of keys make for great blueprints. That’s a lesson the TSA learned the hard way after one such photo of their master luggage keys circulated online last month.Oops.The photo has been attributed to a November 2014 Washington Post article about airport luggage, which saw a recent resurgence courtesy of social media. The TSA and the newspaper finally realized the harm that this photo could do, and it no longer appears in the article....

A new breed of air-launched drones is giving pilots a close look at places they would fear to fly, like the heart of a hurricane or inside a zone of heavy anti-aircraft fire. Sometimes called “off-board sensors,” these. small unmanned vehicles can be simple, expendable camera-carrying drones or far more sophisticated machines. Either way, the ability for an aircraft to become a drone mothership of sorts, sending out eyes and ears in all sorts of directions, could change the game for the Pentagon....

Nearly eight years have passed since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. That 2010 disaster sent millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon spill was the largest accidental oil spill in U.S. history, one of the worst environmental disasters ever, and an ongoing national embarrassment as BP struggled to contain its mess. In the wake of that terrible tragedy, the Obama Administration implemented a handful of new regulations meant to prevent such an accident from ever happening again....

The first thing the late Senator John McCain chose to say in his farewell address, read to his fellow Americans upon his death in August, was: “Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead.” It’s the hardest thing to do, and therefore the most fulfilling.McCain embodied the relationship that has long braided America’s armed forces with her elected officials....

Former Google self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski has been indicted on 33 counts of trade secret theft.Levandowski has been accused of stealing 14,000 confidential files from Google’s Waymo self-driving division before leaving the company and selling his own self-driving startup to Uber, with very similar lidar designs to those at Waymo.Much of the engineering IP in question deals with lidar, a sensor that many experts in the field consider essential to winning the autonomous vehicles arms race....

Stealth planes like the F-22 and F-35 can carry limited weapons loadouts.The Arsenal Plane will act like one big flying magazine.The Air Force wants to transform an existing aircraft in its inventory into the Arsenal Plane.The U.S. Air Force is carefully considering what plane is the best fit for its new Arsenal Plane concept. The Arsenal Plane, a large aircraft packed with semi-autonomous flying weapons, is designed to provide extra firepower for fighter jets that spot targets but don’t have the weapons to take them out....

The Russian government has bumped up its first order for new Su-57 fighter bombers, commiting to five time as many planes as it had originally planned to purchase by 2028. The order comes after the fighter’s development has stalled and co-developer India has pulled out of the project. Moscow has also offered the jet to Istanbul if Turkey is kicked out of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.The Su-57’s first flight was on January 29, 2010, when it flew for 47 minutes from the Yuri Gagarin aircraft factory in Russia’s Far East....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe slim profile of the thinnest iPhones ever, the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, is causing a few users a bit of a problem: . Several users have reported the problem as a result of bending over with the phone in their pocket or sitting for a prolonged period of time with the iPhone in a front or back pocket. It looks like a bigger issue for the larger iPhone 6 Plus....

You’ve probably played the mobile game Pokémon Go, where you’re encouraged to get out and explore the world in the name of capturing Pokémon by way of augmented reality. Now, Niantic, the same company behind the massively popular title, wants to turn another basic human activity into a game: sleeping.Enter Pokémon Sleep. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a Pokémon game that’s essentially “played” while you sleep. As you saw logs like a Snorlax, it’ll record metrics related to your sleeping patterns....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn the war thriller Lone Survivor, four Navy SEALs venture into the mountains of Afghanistan on a mission to track the Taliban leader Ahman Shah. But things soon go terribly wrong, leaving the team led by Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) with some hard decisions about whether to continue the mission, as seen in the clip below. Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and Eric Bana also star.Lone Survivor comes out on Blu-Ray on June 3, and PopMech will be giving away 10 Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Download combo packs to mark the occasion....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeIn a small case next to the main display stage at the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show, Nissan showed off it’s newest big idea. The NISMO Watch Concept is an automotive take on the rapidly expanding world of smartwatches. This one is designed to monitor all sorts of information on the way you drive, both on the track and on the street, including checking the driver’s heart rate....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize has proved anything so far, it’s that everybody has a different idea.The first Knockout Round of the X Prize started Monday, June 21, at the Michigan International Speedway. The field has so far been whittled down to 22 cars, or more accurately vehicles that are close facsimiles of cars. This week they all have to meet some minimum performance requirements or else they’ll be eliminated....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamAl Gore may have some environmental issues of his own, but there’s no doubt that he’s promoted a big conversation on environmental issues at the moment.One thing that seems clear to me is that it’s a question of balance. Oh, there may be some “deep ecology” fringe types who favor human extinction as a path to environmental purity, but for most people it’s about keeping the environment reasonably decent without impoverishing ourselves....

The two most exciting places in the solar system may be Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The watery worlds are widely considered the best bets to find extraterrestrial life. NASA is now building a spacecraft called Europa Clipper to launch to Jupiter’s moon in the early 2020s. Enceladus, however, does not yet have its own mission on the books. Yuri Milner wants to change that. The Russian billionaire venture capitalist and amateur physicist is the man behind the Breakthrough Starshot mission to send a nano-spacecraft to the closest star, Proxima Centauri, and an initiative called Breakthrough Listen to use powerful radio telescopes to search for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations....

China’s first fifth-generation fighter, the J-20, is finally operational, but the jet already has one known flaw: it uses engines that produce less thrust than originally anticipated. The engine meant for the stealth fighter has experienced serious developmental delays, forcing the use of a less powerful engine. The result is an airplane that can’t quite live up to its potential, for now.The Chengdu J-20 was first seen by the outside world in 2011, when it was observed during a visit to China by U....

Colorado was hit with a deluge of snowstorms over the weekend, and motorists driving on the state’s I-70 highway on Sunday experienced the worst of the frosty onslaught when an avalanche barreled down a mountainside and engulfed their cars in snow. Jacob Easton took video of the avalanche as it descended upon the highway, blanketing everything in its wake and abruptly stopping his journey just outside Copper Mountain. The terrifying footage spread on social media over the weekend, showing a tidal wave of snow balloon over the road: View full post on YoutubeRelated StoryCanadian Troops Battle Avalanches with HowitzersDespite the harrowing ordeal, nobody was hurt in the incident, according to local reports....

Media Platforms Design TeamNSX fanboys, rejoice. Today Acura showed off the latest evolution of its supercar concept, and it is hot. Really, really hot. The car still remains similar to the first version shown off at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show. On the exterior, the design is influenced by a new “alluring modern edge” philosophy. It sounds like standard design-speak babble to us, but it’s hard to disagree with how the car looks in person....

Media Platforms Design TeamSAFETY FIRST: Parental supervision strongly advised for build and launch.Tools and Materials· Electric drill with 1/16-, 5/32-, and ¼-inch bits· One No. 4 size rubber stopper (1 inch long, 1-inch diameter at the fat end)· One 8-inch length of 3/16-inch (outside diameter) copper tubing· Bicycle pump with inflation needle· Heavy card stock· One 2-liter plastic bottle· Duct tape· One drinking straw, minimum ¼-inch diameter· Four 1-inch-square wood blocks· One ½-inch plywood board, 12 to 16 inches square· One¼-inch threaded steel rod, 18 inches long· Four ¼-inch nuts· Two washers, ¼-inch hole, 1-inch diameterMedia Platforms Design TeamMake the Stopper Assembly1....