Clips
Hybrid Technologies L1X-75: Zero-60 in 3.1 Seconds, Batteries Included Popularmechanics.com
NEW YORK — Perhaps it was fate: We were walking toward the parking lot to leave the New York Auto Show’s second day of press previews on Thursday as a strong gust of wind blew the cover off of a little, red roadster parked on a side street. We went back to investigate, and discovered the L1X-75, a 600-hp, carbon-fiber rocket that’s powered by nothing more than your 110 outlet. Read more…
A Great Flight So Far, Say Shuttle Managers, and Not Much Else Popularmechanics.com
Every day of the shuttle’s flight, at least twice a day, NASA convenes a press conference in the Johnson Space Center to update the global media on the state of Space Shuttle Discovery and the STS-121 mission. No doubt NASA mission planners—faced with a chorus of pre-launch criticism over everything from escalating costs to safety issues to questions about why the shuttle was launching in the first place—felt pressure to display utmost transparency, updating the press corps at an average of once for every four orbits Discovery makes. It’s beginning to look like that plan has backfired—but not because of any embarrassing disclosures on the part of the space agency. Rather, there’s just not much to say. With Discovery A-OK on virtually all aspects of her flight so far, shuttle managers are, literally, at a loss for words. Read more…
Debunking The Myths of Katrina Popular Mechanics March 2006
NO ONE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SURPRISED. Not the federal agencies tasked with preparing for catastrophes. Not the local officials responsible for aging levees and vulnerable populations. Least of all the residents themselves, who had been warned for decades that they lived on vulnerable terrain. But when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, it seemed as though the whole country was caught unawares. Accusations began to fly even before floodwaters receded. But facts take longer to surface. In the months since the storm, many of the first impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be mistaken. And many of the most important lessons of Katrina have yet to be absorbed. But one thing is certain: More hurricanes will come. To cope with them we need to understand what really happened during modern America’s worst natural disaster. POPULAR MECHANICS editors and reporters spent more than four months interviewing officials, scientists, first responders and victims. Here is our report.–THE EDITORS Read more…
Slideshow – Images From Katrina Popularmechanics.com
New Orleans, more than three months later. In December, Popular Mechanics editor-in-chief Jim Meigs, executive editor David Dunbar and research editor Benjamin Chertoff toured New Orleans, southern Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast during an intensive examination of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Read more…
DARPA Grand Challenge Winner Stanley: How It Works Popular Mechanics January, 2006
Downlaod the infographic PDF here.
Supersonic Dream Machine Popular Mechanics September, 2005
Just two years after the last flight of the Concorde, France and Japan are talking about reviving supersonic commuter planes. But just how serious is the conversation?
When the French and Japanese governments announced at the Paris Airshow in June that the two countries would team up to develop a replacement for the Concorde, the international press ran with the story. Headlines promised the “Son of Concorde” was on its way, capable of Mach 2-plus flight. Global business executives would surely jump at the prospect of speeding from New York to Tokyo in 6 hours, wouldn’t they? We were intrigued, but the more we looked into it, the less substance there seemed to be. Read more…
Air New Orleans Popularmechanics.com
We could hear the whomp whomp of a helicopter as we were walking out of the Louisiana National Guard’s barracks in the Convention Center. “That’s your ride,” said our Guard escort as we hustled to the makeshift helicopter pad in the center of downtown New Orleans just in time to catch sight of a massive Black Hawk helicopter touch down. Read more…
Morgellons Disease Baffles Patients And Doctors Popular Mechanics June, 2005
People with creepy symptoms find a diagnosis on the Internet. But are they jumping to conclusions?
Miles Lawrence, a landscaper in Florence, Texas, was supposed to be packing for a road trip to Las Vegas when he noticed his finger tingling. He stared in disbelief, he says, as “little spiny things” sprouted out of the skin where he’d just removed a splinter. He grasped one of the spines with tweezers and pulled.
Instantly, he says, a bolt of pain shot up his arm. He tugged on another one and the pain snaked up his neck. Then the really creepy part began. “It felt like bugs under the skin of my arms, in my joints,” Lawrence says. “I freaked out.” Read more…
Vinyl To Go-Go Popular Mechanics April, 2005
Digitize those dusty stacks of wax and get your iPod in the groove.
Vinyl records are a tough bunch. They survived the rise and fall of the cassette and held on during the age of the compact disc. But the dawn of the iPod and other MP3 players, with their lifestyle-changing convenience and jukebox capacities, has finally sent record collections to the dusty attic gulag. Problem is, you spent good money (and class time) compiling those stacks of LPs. Even at an iTunes-cheap 99 cents a song, it’ll still cost a bundle to replace your beloved analog Kiss collection with digital replicas. But not to worry. There’s an easier (and cheaper) way to get this done: software programs that take the art of digital remastering away from the sound engineers and give you the power to turn your LPs into MP3s. All you need is a turntable and an amp, a PC, and a little time to let the lava lamp heat up. Read more…
Overpriced F/A-22 Raptor Fighter Jet Popular Mechanics April, 2005
Expensive and arguably outmoded, the F/A-22 Raptor faces its first battle–with the military’s top brass.
On Dec. 20, 2004, an Air Force test pilot pulled back on the stick of a brand-new F/A-22 Raptor, the most advanced–and expensive–fighter jet in history, and cleared the Nellis Air Force Base runway. Moments after the rubber left the concrete, the Raptor’s nose pitched down violently and uncontrollably. The pilot pulled the eject lever just seconds before the $133 million plane slammed into the end of the runway, only 8 miles from the Las Vegas strip.
The Air Force is still investigating the cause of the crash, but experts suggest a software glitch with the plane’s fly-by-wire system. “You’re basically left with software or act of God, take your pick,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst. “Neither of those are really program killers.”
Nevertheless, the crash is only the latest pocket of turbulence for the Raptor. The plane is scheduled to go operational by the beginning of 2006, but the 19-year-old $72 billion project is $55 billion over budget and fighting for its survival. The Pentagon wants to cut its order for Raptors in half, to 180 planes. Read more…
9/11 Debunking the Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to Hard Facts
PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
FROM THE MOMENT the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, the world has asked one simple and compelling question: How could it happen?
Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase “World Trade Center conspiracy” and you’ll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.
Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.
To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.
In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.–THE EDITORS Read more…
I was the research editor for Popular Mechanics when we began our investigation, so I led our nine-person reporting team. The original story has since been expanded into a book, Debunking 9/11 Myths, and the story – and this author – remains the subject of further conspiracy theories to this day.
