David Szondy
The U.S. Navy took a step farther away from John Paul Jones and closer to James T. Kirk as it announced that a solid-state laser weapon will be deployed on a U.S. Navy ship in fiscal year 2014. The announcement that the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) will deployed on board USS Ponce (AFSB[I] 15) two years ahead of schedule was made on Monday at the Sea-Air-Space exposition, National Harbor, Maryland. The deployment is the latest in a line of recent recent high-energy laser demonstrations carried out by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Naval Sea Systems Command. Read More
Traveling through deep space is a hazardous undertaking and choosing the right engine can mean the difference between a fast, successful mission and a slow one with mounting dangers of radiation sickness, equipment failures and personal conflicts. A team of researchers from the University of Washington (UW) and Redmond, Washington-based MSNW are aiming to expand the options by developing a new fusion drive rocket engine that promises to make possible a manned spacecraft that could reach Mars and return to Earth in months rather than years. Read More
Imagine an aircraft that is silent, invisible to infrared detectors, has zero emissions and can hover in an eerie manner that helicopters can’t. Now imagine it coming from technology currently used to suck dust out of living room air. That’s what a team of researchers at MIT is doing. They've conducted a study that indicates that ionic thrusters, currently a science fair curiosity, might one day take to the skies. Read More
Fighting for human rights is a noble undertaking, but it’s also extremely dangerous in places where that fight isn't about simply arguing over abstractions. Aware of the very real possibility of campaigners being beaten, kidnapped or murdered, Civil Rights Defenders in Stockholm has launched the Natalia Project. Named after Natalia Estemirova, a human rights activist who was abducted and murdered in Chechnya in 2009, it’s based on an electronic bracelet that sends a pre-programmed text alarm if activated or forcibly removed. Read More
Boeing announced on Friday that the preliminary design review for the Launch Vehicle Adapter (LVA) for the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft has been successfully completed. This is the third milestone completed by Boeing under NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement, the purpose of which is to develop a privately owned and operated U.S. replacement for the Space Shuttle to ferry crew to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Read More
On Friday, Boeing completed the final certification test required by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for approval of the company’s lithium-ion battery modifications for the 787 Dreamliner aircraft. The test flight was made using a Boeing-owned production airplane built for LOT Polish Airlines with the company reporting that the test was “straightforward and the flight was uneventful.” Read More
If you’re like me and have kids and dogs, then a day out can leave the car looking as if the interior was marched through by a battalion of crisp-munching soldiers. To help deal with this everyday reality and eliminate the need to hunt down a hand vac, Honda has installed a built-in vacuum system into its 2014 Odyssey Touring Elite. Read More
High-performance electric cars have been around for some years now, but despite the fact that Detroit and the electric car go back a long way, no all-electric supercars have been built in the Motor City. That is, until now. After giving us a bit of a tease last month, Detroit Electric has taken the wraps off its Limited-edition SP.01. According to its maker, the SP.01 is not only the “first pure electric sports car” to come out of Detroit, but it's also reportedly the fastest, and the first to be fully integrated with a smartphone. Read More
Of all the nations who might get to Mars first, Austria doesn’t loom large. Yet the Austrian Space Forum (OEWF) has sent a manned mission to the Red Planet – or at least, to an Earth-bound version of “Mars” located in the northern Sahara near Erfoud, Morocco. During February OEWF conducted a series of experiments and simulation tests with the aim of gaining a better understanding of how to execute a manned mars mission and develop technology for making it a reality. Read More
Audio files may seem to have put paid to CDs, but new technology shows that, like vinyl, the format still has a few tricks left in it. CDs do a pretty good job of reproducing music, but for many an audiophile the digital format lacks “warmth” and often suffers from tiny, yet detectable, imperfections that can be as jarring as serving Gordon Ramsay ketchup with lobster. The Parasound CD 1 player strives to eliminate these imperfections by ditching the conventional CD player in favor of a CD-ROM drive that spins CDs at four times normal speed in order to find and eliminate imperfections before they reach the speakers. Read More
