Airplanes

Law enforcement officials may be able to monitor crowds with low-flying cameras for more than 12 hours, thanks to what could be record-breaking laser beam-powered technology.

Two companies, Germany's Ascending Technologies and Seattle's LaserMotiv, say they set a new standard for flying time for what's called a quadrocopter, a small electric-powered helicopter.

While the concept of a camera mounted on a quadrocopter has been around for some time, the companies said in a release today that until now, law enforcement had not been able to use them for more than 20 minutes.

But Ascending Technologies and LaserMotiv … Read more

The time has come to jettison the traditional chemical rocket propulsion system and move to one powered by beamed microwaves, say a group of researchers.

For decades, even as rockets have gotten lighter and more powerful, the basic system for putting them in space hasn't changed. A combustion chamber is loaded with propellants, which are put through a chemical reaction, causing hot gases to accelerate and be ejected through a nozzle at very high velocity, which in turn, provides momentum to the rocket's engine.

But a team led by 25-year-old CalTech Ph.D. student Dmitriy Tseliakhovich thinks that … Read more

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif.--The flames were raging, and the cries of people trapped inside the plane were audible, even from well over a hundred feet away.

Yet despite the fire crews wearing heavy-duty proximity suits, blasting water from a pair of hoses, and a collection of fire trucks gathered near the burning fuselage, no one looked particularly worried. No lives were actually at stake.

This was firefighter training at Moffett Field, part of an annual process that the crews from the NASA Ames Fire Department and the nearby Palo Alto and Sunnyvale Fire Departments have to go through in order … Read more

Update (Monday, 3:16 p.m. PST): The complete answer to last week's Picture of the Week--which 106 people got--is the landing at the end of the maiden flight of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, at Boeing Field, in Seattle, Wash., on December 15, 2009. For this challenge, I required more specificity than I usually do because I asked why the picture mattered. So while more than 200 people knew it was Boeing's Dreamliner, and even where the picture was taken, many didn't correctly identify the significance of the initial flight. Thanks to all who played, and to … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--As someone who grew up a political junkie, I was always hard-pressed to explain why I had never visited Washington, D.C.

I don't have to make excuses anymore, not after Road Trip 2010, my journey up and down the American Northeast that began in D.C. on June 23 and ended Saturday in Orlando, Fla.

Indeed, the trip--which covered 5,266 miles of driving in a Porsche Panamera through Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, and an accompanying jaunt to Florida--was an opportunity … Read more

NISKAYUNA, N.Y.--When you're listening to someone explain a new scientific method and just about the only thing that goes through your head is "This is going to win a Nobel Prize," you know you're in good company.

That was my experience recently while I was listening to Fiona Ginty, a project leader in computational biology in General Electric Global Research's biosciences group, explain her work. Ginty's project is all about finding new and better ways to spot cancer in a patient's body, ideally as early as possible. And as a member … Read more

PORTSMOUTH, R.I.--As someone interested in the cutting edge, one of the best things about Road Trip 2010 has been getting a rare look at the U.S. Navy's next-generation aircraft carrier and the world's most advanced submarine.

But that wasn't enough for me. I also had to see where the Navy is going with destroyers, and that's why my visit to Raytheon's Seapower Capability Center here was such a good investment of time: I got a chance for a lengthy discussion on the next-generation, Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyer, which the Navy expects to be … Read more

WALTHAM, Mass.--For Mark Russell, the vice president of engineering, technology, and mission assurance at defense giant Raytheon, engineering is not just his profession--it's also the lifeblood of the company.

It seems pretty obvious that engineering would be important at a company that makes just about every imaginable kind of defense system. But this important? At Raytheon, more than 40,000 of the total 75,000 employees are engineers, and the company is hiring thousands more each year.

To Russell, who grew up in the company (he's been there 27 years) it's a no-brainer that all six … Read more

WASHINGTON, D.C.--If you walk around the Air & Space Museum here, as I did Sunday, you can't help be struck by how much of the most important events and aircraft in aviation history are from decades ago.

This is the museum, after all, where you can find the plane the Wright Brothers used in humanity's first-ever powered flight, in Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. And the capsule from John Glenn's first American manned orbit of the Earth. And the Apollo 11 capsule. And so on.

Then again, right above you when you come in … Read more