The U.S. Marines and Air Force still want a belly-mounted gun for the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. Although the Osprey is now equipped with a gun, that weapon must fire out the open cargo ramp and can cover only targets to the rear. The Osprey’s design prevents it from having side-mounted machine guns. So, the military wants a retractable gun on the bottom of the aircraft that can cover a wide arc....
During the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force issued sleeping bags in “spam cans”—steel cans opened with a metal key. Unintentionally silly by today’s standards, it was part of a serious effort to keep crashed or shot-down airmen alive in cold regions until they were rescued.YouTube vlogger Taras Kul picked up a M1949 sleeping bag on eBay. The M1949, also known as “Sleeping Bag, Mountain, M1949” is well known in collector circles....
The U.S. Army is pushing ahead with plans to field railguns on the battlefield of tomorrow, awarding a leading railgun developer a contract to mature a ground-based railgun system. Rapid progress in miniaturizing railguns technology has transformed the hypersonic weapons from laboratory curiosities to potential weapons that promise tremendous increases in range and energy.According to National Defense, the Pentagon’s Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium awarded a contract to General Atomics, developer of the U....
Air compressors are commonplace on high-end DIY projects and home-construction work sites‹powering tools, spraying lacquer, and generally making noise, tripping people up with tubes, and getting in the way. Compressed air bottles present a serious alternative to the standard tech, though, just as battery-powered tools once challenged corded tools. The T-Force bottles we saw today hold air compressed at 3000 to 4500 psi. That’s an immense amount of pressure, held in a bottle rated by the Department of Transportation and also used in aviation and military applications....
On December 12, 2010, the much-maligned Metrodome finally gave out. After nearly a foot and a half of snow accumulated on top of the home of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, the roof caved in spectacular fashion, dumping truckloads of powder upon the football field.View full post on YoutubeThe collapse left the Vikings out in the cold. The team eventually would get its wish as the city of Minneapolis approved a new stadium to be built in the same spot....
Media Platforms Design TeamWe hate secrets. But we had to keep the info about Victory’s new 2007 models under our hat until today. The biggest news this year is that Victory will expand their lineup to include the new Kingpin Tour. That bike replaces the Victory Touring model that’s been in the lineup since 2001. The new Kingpin Tour rides on the modern Kingpin platform and uses Victory’s venerable 100 cid V-twin and 6-speed combination....
The chaotic and destructive Carr Fire in northern California has finally been quelled. But authorities and weather experts are still horrified by a rare event that took place within the fire: a fire vortex, also known as a fire whirl or a fire torando. View full post on TwitterFire vortices are not tornados in a true sense, but they represent a level of devastation not commonly seen. The phenomenon has more in common with dust storms: a gust of hot air blows through the fire at the right angle and creates a spinning momentum....
Barely a day after an engine blew up on a Southwest 737 jet at 30,000 feet, killing one passenger and hurting seven others, the National Transportation Safety Board has identified the likely cause: metal fatigue that caused one of the engine blades to snap off and puncture the fuselage.Speaking at a late-night briefing at Philadelphia, where the crippled Flight 1380 made an emergency landing, NTSB Chair Robert Sumwalt said agency experts made a preliminary examination of the engine and found that “there’s evidence of metal fatigue where the blade separated from the hub....
If your aim is merely to make something sharp enough that it can cut, you can make a knife out of a whole lot of things. Virtually any sort of metal, to begin with, so long as you have the heat to make it malleable, tools to beat it into shape, and a stone to sharpen the edge. If you want to go further, you can dabble with beer and bacon, or old batteries....
The Air Force wants to cash in on the flying car craze to field a new type of transport.Flying cars would be quieter than other types of air transport, attracting less attention.A large enough electric car could someday replace the CV-22B Osprey. The U.S. Air Force is looking into fielding so-called “flying cars” to use as quiet transport vehicles. The Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Will Roper wants to leverage the work of aviation companies to produce aerial taxis to create a military-grade vehicle....
Galaxies come in all shapes and size, and NASA’s best estimates indicate there are more than 200 billion of them in the observable universe. According to the latest findings from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), all these billions of galaxies have one thing in common: They spin at a rate about about once every billion years.“It’s not Swiss watch precision,” said Professor Gerhardt Meurer from the UWA node of ICRAR in a statement, “but regardless of whether a galaxy is very big or very small, if you could sit on the extreme edge of its disk as it spins, it would take you about a billion years to go all the way round....
Our Solar System has got one star and a handful of planets, and that’s really all we need. But other systems can have much more than that, often coming with two or—rarely—three stars orbiting each other. One group of astronomers has gone even further, managing to find a bizarre quadruple star system hiding just 146 light-years away.The system, named HD 98800, was discovered by astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a giant radio telescope located in Chile....
Warner Bros. revealed the new Batmobile from its upcoming film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice today at the 2015 Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, and it is…something. Media Platforms Design TeamIt looks like Bruce Wayne’s matte black ride is about one angular surface away from completing its transformation into the lovechild of Megatron and an M1 Abrams tank. Just be grateful it’s in good hands, because I don’t want to know what kind of havoc this guy would wreak behind the wheel....
It’s not often that a car’s moniker actually matches its personality. But for the Kia Soul, the name fits. Sure, it’s one of the least expensive new cars on the market, but it packs quite a lot of substance into that bargain-basement price tag. Inside, the materials used are one solid notch above the class. Kia offers two engines. We prefer the more potent 142-hp 2.0-liter inline Four that comes standard on Sport models....
Media Platforms Design TeamFirefighters who do battle with wildfires must constantly plan and revise their escape routes and safe zones in case a change in the fire’s direction or speed forces a retreat. But if they find themselves trapped by flames, their only hope is a fire shelter.“As far as last-ditch safety equipment, that’s pretty much the one thing that we carry,” says Wildland Firefighting Team Lead Kyle Bylin of East Pierce County, Wash....
Boeing is quietly proposing a new version of the world-famous F-15 Eagle that combines an updated airframe with an unprecedented number of anti-air missiles. The F-15X would carry more than two dozen air-to-air missiles, more three times more than most fighter jets. According to DefenseOne, the Air Force is considering the proposal.The F-15 Eagle was first introduced in 1972. Designed as an air superiority fighter, the F-15 was armed with four AIM-9 Sidewinder short-range infrared-guided missiles and four AIM-7 Sparrow medium-range radar-guided missiles....
Media Platforms Design TeamIt was a gray morning when the skeleton crew from Popular Mechanics loaded into the pale Starcraft bus, heading to Hearst Magazines’ Disaster Recovery Center. The event: Testing the capabilities of an emergency facility where the company keeps a shadow office stocked with all the data and hardware needed to create magazines in the event that Hearst Tower becomes indisposed by calamity—a fire, water-main break or something worse, like a terrorist attack....
One year after the disappearance of the Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan, the search continues, investigators are long past any hope of recovering survivors. Now the search has refocused on locating the hull and the remains of the trapped submariners. In the early morning hours of November 15, 2017, the ARA San Juan, one of Argentina’s three diesel electric attack submarines, disappeared. As USNI News recounts, the captain of the San Juan sent a satellite phone message to his headquarters stating water had entered the ship through the snorkel and started a battery fire....
Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s been a quick few months in the Silicon Prairie.In Halt and Catch Fire’s season finale, “1984,” Cardiff Electric’s owner puts Joe (Lee Pace) and Gordon (Scoot McNairy) in charge of the company. The Giant PC is expected to make $40 million when it hits stores a few weeks later. However, the hardware and software teams test the first production models and find a flaw in one: It turns off spontaneously....
Here’s a fact for the next time you need to win a bar bet: How fast does a professional golfer swing the club on a fairway drive? The answer, according to Callaway Golf, is a blistering 120 mph. With golf club head speeds well into triple digits, aerodynamics is a discipline Callaway has studied for years. For its latest driver, the XR16, the company sought a fresh approach to moving through the air....
