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The burgeoning private space industry might find itself caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia. Russian lawmakers have drafted a law that would ban cooperation between the two countries on building rocket engines, including sales of the crucial RD-180.The RD-180 powers the Atlas V, the launch system maintained by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint company owned by both Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Earlier this year the company was awarded a $351 million dollar contract by the U....

Tony Dyson, the man who built Star Wars’ most iconic cylindrical robot, was found dead of natural causes today at the age of 68. R2-D2 was designed by Ralph McQuarrie and co-developed by John Stears, but it was Tony Dyson who actually built the lovable little bot. Several of them actually. Over the course of the original trilogy, Dyson built eight separate R2D2 units four of which were remote controlled while the others were operated by R2-D2’s actor, Kenny Baker....

Projected temperature rises over the next 30 years could lead to an additional 21,000 suicides in the U.S. and Mexico, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Suicide rates have generally been higher in warmer months for centuries, but it’s been difficult for researchers to draw direct comparisons to temperature, given the many other factors that vary seasonally (unemployment rates, daylight hours). To find a more direct link, researchers from Stanford University compared historical temperature and suicide data in the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeThe 1990s: That magical time when you knew you were supposed to be on the Internet, but you weren’t exactly sure what to do with it. Luckily, the decade had a solution: Perfectly 90s informercials demonstrating how to navigate cyberspace!This mid-90s half-hour infomercial, “Internet Power: Discover the World of Online Entertainment,” comes from a VHS that YouTube user Andy Baio just digitized. The elements are all here: The Seinfeldian funky bass line over the title, vague references to how the internet will change everything about how the world works and plays, and the phrases “net surfer” and “surfing through cyberspace....

Maintaining the strongest military force on the planet is no easy task. You need a huge budget, knowledgable personnel, devoted soldiers, brilliant engineers, and high-tech tools and weaponry. You also need a hell of a lot of manuals. Perhaps the most interesting one in the Department of Defense library is all about cutting thing in half. DoD Manual 4160.28 describes its own purpose like this:[It] assigns responsibilities, and provides procedures for assessing demilitarization (DEMIL) requirements and performing physical DEMIL of DoD personal property....

If you’ve ever listened to digital music, you’ve probably did so using an MP3 file. The MP3 is a ubiquitous staple of digital audio for decades and is one of the most common ways people listen to music. Now the institute that initially developed the MP3 has terminated its licensing fees, meaning the MP3 is now free.In 1988, a group of engineers were faced with a problem: audio files were too large....

Devon JarvisLast weekend I was installing some 2 x 4 blocking for a bathroom cabinet, and I really struggled to drive the screws into the lumber. In fact, whenever I use drywall screws to build stuff, they break or strip. Any suggestions? I’ve tried nailing, but there’s not enough room to swing a hammer.Enough, already! Let’s just stop using drywall screws for construction. We’ve all done it. Yes, they’re cheap. Yes, we always seem to have a box or two of them handy....

The United States Army is looking to replace older, Cold War era missiles with new ones capable of hitting targets up to three times farther than before. The new missile will also be more compact, allowing twice as many to fit into existing launchers, and feature precision guidance.For nearly two decades, the U.S. Army has focused on so-called low intensity conflicts against guerrillas, non-state actors, and terrorists. These wars often transformed tankers and artillerymen into infantry, forcing them to abandon their armored vehicles and artillery pieces to patrol on the ground, dismounted....

Days after data throttling a fire department fighting the largest fire in California history, Verizon says it is taking steps to make sure the situation does not repeat itself. These steps will include introducing a new unlimited plan “with no caps” and priority access for first responders.“As of yesterday,” says Mike Maiorana, Verizon’s Senior Vice President of Public Sectorin a press statement, “we removed all speed cap restrictions for first responders on the west coast and in Hawaii to support current firefighting and Hurricane Lane efforts....

Carnegie Mellon UniversityThe robots aren’t doing war all by themselves yet, but we’re getting close. Thanks to advancements by Carnegie Mellon University and aircraft manufacturer Sikorsky, a fully- autonomous helicopter has been able to fly in and deploy a fully-autonomous ground vehicle. Who needs boots on the ground anyway? The test, performed for the U.S. Army last October, involved a UH-60 Black Hawk hovering its way into position before lowering a big ol’ cage holding Carnegie Mellon University’s Land Tamer UGV inside....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen he was a kid, Greg Schroll used to daydream about a soccer ball that could redirect its course while rolling. As a mechanical engineering student at MIT, he built a spherical robot that can do just that. Other spherical bots roll as a result of a pendulum inside that constantly shifts the sphere’s center of mass. But that design is limited, Schroll says. “Most people have a disclaimer saying their spherical robot can’t climb steep inclines or stairs....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs durable as they may be, the thousands of miles of cast-iron pipes buried beneath our nation’s oldest cities can’t last forever. While residents of the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and Ewing, N.J., deal with the aftermath of tied to natural gas leaks, these and other cities around the nation must confront aging infrastructure.recent fatal explosionsRobert Jackson, a professor of environment and energy at Duke and Stanford universities, tells PopMech that pipe age is the No....

By late 2019, the U.S. Army could field up to three manned and unmanned combat vehicles to help determine the future of heavy army fighting vehicles. The Next Generation Combat Vehicle will replace Cold War era fighting vehicles with a new, modern design meant to kit out tank and mechanized infantry units with a 21st century armored chariot.Army officials have laid out the groundwork for developing the Next Generation Combat Vehicle, or NGCV....

Media Platforms Design TeamMicrosoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer delivers the keynote address at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show. (Photograph by David McNew/Getty Images) Las Vegas– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave his first keynote at CES on Wednesday, providing a curious parallel to this year’s MacWorld. Although it must be said that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has proclaimed quite publicly that, despite his break from keynoting for this last gathering he has no intention of relinquishing the reins of Apple, while CES staple Bill Gates turned over the CEO position at Microsoft to Ballmer almost nine years ago, yet continued giving the keynote speech until last year....

China says its new hypersonic missile, the DF-17, can sink U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. The claim, which ran in several media outlets controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, came just hours after U.S. and British Royal Navy warships sailed through the South China Sea together. Yes, China almost certainly has such missiles. Whether the country could marshal the resources to locate a carrier at sea and then sink it is a much more open question....

View full post on YoutubeEx-NASA engineer and Youtube inventor Mark Rober has made a perfect rock-skipping robot. Not only can the robot perform impressively, but it can help you learn how to skip rocks better too. Rober built the robot by tweaking a clay pigeon thrower, creating wooden custom throwing arms and a base for stability. Once he built a prototype, his team of assistants (nieces and nephews) gave Skippa, the rock-throwing robot a makeover with spray paint and giant googly eyes, then brainstormed test variables for a perfect skip....

It isn’t often that a car differs startlingly from its competition. But when we compared four front-drive cars in our recent test (“Battle of the B Cars,” July ‘06), we found that despite the group’s general similarities, the Honda Fit just stood out. The frugal, fun and funky Fit made such an impression on us that it won our 2007 Automotive Excellence Award for Best Value (October ‘06).In fact, we liked Honda’s smallest car so much, we added one to our long-term test fleet at the same time we ordered its adversary, the Versa....

There was only one Kalinin K-7. The Soviet plane was an odd duck when it was first imagined in 1931—twin booms paired with large wing pods meant to store machine gun turrets and landing gear. Meant to hold 120 people who would sit within the wings, the plane is something of a cult icon for weird-plane enthusiasts.There’s no better way to pay tribute to a plane too weird to fly than building a working RC model....

ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) is both a physical sensation—that tingly feeling you may get up your spine when you hear a song you love–and a bizarrely popular internet subculture in which white noise or other soothing sounds are played or created, usually with a woman speaking softly over them. Now, IBM has gotten in on the ASMR game, or at least learned how to parody it. In a new video about their IBM Q laboratory, we get to hear the sounds of quantum computing in progress....

Like a punk band or a mob informant, Mars’ ancient water may have gone underground as the planet’s climate rapidly changed.In a study published today in Nature, researchers outlined the ultimate fate of Martian water. As Mars’ atmosphere thinned out, much of the water evaporated and escaped with other gases. While some water froze on the surface, the rest, according to the study, slowly descended into the volcanic rock of the mantle of Mars about 2....