This guy has used stock parts to upgrade a Chevy Impala from 250 to 800 horsepower and decrease it’s consumption to 25 mpg. He’s now planning on a Hummer Hybrid where a jet engine spins up the juice. He reckons he can make it go from 300 to 600 hp and get 60 miles per Read more about Daily Kos: Doing what Detroit says is impossible[…]
OK, well it’s more of a flying moped, but still, it’s nice to see he’s finally got the M200G Volantor in production. No it’s not the skycar thing, it looks like a flying saucer. It flies 3m off the ground and goes around 50 mph. They’ll cost around EUR. 50,000 which isn’t too bad for Read more about Moller Flying Car Finally in Production[…]
The Sonex is powered by 80 lithium polymer batteries and has a flight time of 45 minutes. Sonex / AeroConversions expect to be able to extend that to an hour. It seats two and will be “vastly less expensive than other things out there.”
EADS showcased a model of it’s airplane looking space rocket, which they hope will fly in 2012 and take passengers up at EUR 150,000 – 200,000. They see a big market in this and want some of it. Very coincidental how the pricing is similar to the Burt Rutan Spaceship One / Virgin Galactic prices.
This ship is designed to have its deck sink allowing goods to be floated on and off.
The 2 stage rocket is designed to compete with all current operators of satellite launch platforms and be 10 times cheaper than them. There is not so much emphasis on bringing people into space, making this probably commercially more viable. Their first launch was a flop, so they were happy that this launch lasted untill Read more about SpaceX Falcon 1 liftoff[…]
If you’re looking to buy a business jet, ex military jet aircraft, propellor driven aircraft, aerobatic planes, world war one / two replica’s, etc. there’s a good chance you can buy it on internet. Globalplanesearch is a meta search engine for adverts Aircraftdealer has a large listing as does Aviatorsale
Ugo Conti is an old man, which is his excuse for making this thing: he’s at the end of his career and he has nothing to lose if it doesn’t work out. His concept for a ship is to have flexible legs acting like shock absorbers on small hulls which carry the mass of the Read more about Spider Ship Builder[…]
This guy has been approached by NASA to give a talk about how he’s going to build a flying saucer – something the engineers haven’t been able to do yet – by using upwards air pressure between contra rotating rotors. He’s not an engineer, in fact, he’s a construction worker with a serious can-do attitude. Read more about Flying Saucer Builder[…]
This is one hell of a printer – you feed it with concrete and gypsum, you have one single operator, and like an inkjet it prints out your house, speeding up the construction time by a factor of 200 and dropping costs by four fifths. Anyone can become an architect and because bricks need to Read more about 3D Printers for houses[…]
And they’ve just managed to launch 4 satellites. Now they’re going to see if they can recover the space capsule.
Following the succesfull first flight of their vertical liftoff and landing vehicle, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is looking for more people to help them go to space. The site has video from the launch on it – good to see more and more successes in private spaceflight, even if it is in the form of Read more about Blue Origin Spaceflight is Hiring[…]
The Tokyo National Maritime Research Institute’s Advanced Maritime Transport Technology Department has thought up a system that allows ships hulls to be surrounded by a blanket of bubbles, which keeps away the water from the hull, reducing friction and drag and accounting for the efficiency increase of moving through water. In 2003 > 90% of Read more about Bubbles around your hull save 20% fuel[…]
These brakes stop your car in half the distance and will last longer. Be careful of the car behind you!
I’ve seen these on motorcycles, but not yet on cars – looks cool, but what about overheating problems?
Yes, soon you too will be able to scale Mt. Everest with someone on your back thanks to your augmented powersuit exoskeleton. If you have the +- $60,000 to buy one with. Production for 2007 is expected to be around 20 units, with around 400 + rolling off the lines in 2008.
For $2.2m you too can own a jet which flies 6 people! After Honda’s jet, Piper is now following in the same low cost jet strategy. When are Cessna, Bombardier and Lear going to follow suit?
Michelin has invented the rather stupidly named ‘tweel’ – a wheel without air in it. The video in the link shows how it is mounted under a car, and has a few other applications for it as well. The airless wheel might take a bit of getting used to, but it helps with suspension, simplifies Read more about Tweel – a lame name for a cool concept[…]
Gas turbines the size of a matchbox – an alternative to battery power, but I wouldn’t want something doing 500,000 RPMs coming loose in my pocket!
This consortium has a whole load of car manufacturers in it trying to create a decentralised network of road cars which beam each other driving information using 802.11 built in networks. The idea is to beam information about driving conditions, accidents, traffic jams, etc to cars within a few hundred metres. Nice idea, but how Read more about Car to car communication[…]
This guy allready has a test module in space – Genesis 1 and is planning to launch Genesis 2 soon. After that will come Galaxy, which will have some habitable space in it. Together with Lockheed Martin they’re designing a launch strategy to get people to the habitat. If this all works out, he’s going Read more about Bigelow aerospace space hotel[…]
China’s First Auto Works (FAW) has built a car that can drive itself up to 93mph. Damn, I was hoping that technology wouldn’t work – I like driving my car irresponsibly!
NASA has finally awarded the contract to build the new manned lander craft that will take people back to the moon in 2020 and hopefully to Mars. They are going back to the system that runs Arianne and Soyuz and the old NASA Apollo rockets: ie. a tiny capsule balanced on top of a huge Read more about Lockheed Martin to build landers[…]
It looks fairly easy and it costs a lot at the mechanic. This is a good guide that should have you done in an hour or so.
Yup those big bulldozers – they’ve built a yellow car to beat the previous 1973 land speed record for diesel cars. It’s called the Dieselmax. The driver will be the same guy that drove Thrust SSC to breaking the sound barrier and land speed record in 1997, Wing Commander Andy Green. The Guardian has a Read more about JCB goes for land speed record[…]