The Next Threat To Astronauts: Moon Dust
NASA is planning to build a lunar outpost by 2024, but the agency has a nitty-gritty problem to tackle first: jagged, ultraclingy moon dust, which could threaten the entire mission. Apollo astronauts discovered that the dust, with grains roughly ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
With This Quiz
Sharpen up your eco-friendly mechanic skills, then step inside Jay Leno's Green Garage (with video!) [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Plus: The Next Atomic Age
Leaning over the rail of the metal catwalk, I peer down through 16 ft. of crystal-clear water at the cool, blue glow coming from the shapes at the bottom: partially spent uranium fuel rods. "Blue," says Joel Duling, my guide to America's most .. ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Plus: Killer Asteroid Coming Our Way
The small size of the gravitational keyhole—just 2000 ft. in diameter—is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it wouldn't take much to nudge Apophis outside it. Calculations suggest that if we change Apophis's velocity by a mere 0.0001 ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Stem-Cell Fast Food: From Nasa To Nourish
Early attempts produced less-than-enticing results. Then, in 2001, scientists at New York's Touro College won funding from NASA to improve in vitro farming. Hoping to serve something, well, beefier than kelp on moon bases and Mars colonies, the ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Just Don't Call It A Blimp
Balloons and airships can already reach the edge of space, but if some imaginative NASA projects bear fruit, they might go even farther: to the atmospheres of other planets. The idea of floating extraterrestrial probes isn't entirely new. The ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Plus: Top 10 F/X Scenes
It wasn't the first film to use computer-generated (CG) graphics (and many effects were hand-drawn) but the sci-fi video-game fantasy flick Tron was the first to use computer imagery to create a 3D world, making it one of the pioneering CGI ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
The Top 50 Inventions Of The Past 50 Years
In 1956, Wilson Greatbatch grabs the wrong resistor and connects it to a device he is building to record heartbeats. When the circuit emits a pulse, he realizes the device can be used to control the beat; in 1960 the first PACEMAKER is ... [... more]
Popular Mechanics |
Turbine Turbulence: How To Fix U.S. Wind Power
Engineers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working on maturing the options for deep-water tech. Most offshore wind turbines are supported by large pilings, or monopiles, buried deep in the ground. ?In order to maintain the ... [... more]
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Analysis: Rich Rocketeers Get Real
And much of the credit for that change goes to the Ansari X Prize. On my way to the conference, I read an advance copy of Michael Belfiore's new book on the private space industry, Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, ... [... more]
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China's Space Threat: How Missiles Could Target U.S. ...
For China, a nation that has already sent humans into space and developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the technology involved in the test was hardly remarkable. But as a demonstration of a rising military posture, it was a ... [... more]
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Studying A Mystery Of Global Warming, Nasa Will Fly On ...
Program scientist Michael Kurylo stressed that "many facets of the TTL are not well understood" but finding more about its identity is "essential to understanding ozone depletion." Direct funding from NASA may have delayed this ... [... more]
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