Browsing: Engineering

– 201203sonic biplane 1

The now retired Concorde turbojets were the fastest civilian airliners in the world, capable of carrying passengers from Paris to New York in just 3.5 hours, traveling at supersonic speeds. However, lack of market appeal, combined with high maintenance costs, lead to its regrettable retirement from service with no civilian airliner to replace it, not even to […]

– 201202space elevator tokyo

This is the kind of engineering feat that sounds so preposterous, so crazy, so … foolish, that it might actually work. A Japanese construction company plans to build an elevator that can lift tourists in space, up to a quarter the distance between Earth and the moon. While entrepreneurs like Richard Branson or Paul Allen […]

– 201110orion spacecraft basin test

Yesterday NASA tested a 18,000 pound mock-up of the ambitious Orion spacecraft in a water basin, to simulate how it would handle a Pacific Ocean landing in moderate sea conditions. The spacecraft is slated for space exploration programs and is capable of carrying four astronauts for as much as 21 days. The scientist at NASA’s […]

– 2011061

An Australian engineer boosts that he has successfully managed to build a working hover bike, one, he claims, that you could ride to 173 mph at 10,000 feet and feel like any other motorcycle. So far, however, Chris Malloy’s prototype hoverbike hasn’t done any of the aforementioned claims, aside from hovering a bit over ground, […]

– 201104fire ants form life rafts afloat 35039 600x450

In what can only be described as an incredible natural engineering feat, fire ants in times of floods have the remarkable ability link up with one another to form a life-saving, floating and impenetrable raft. While this is an attested ability for a long time now, scientists have only recently managed to understand how the […]

– 201009shell ship lng

Well despite what you may think, the oil industry is doing better than ever. With a length of 468 meters, this giant will be exploiting the Prelude gas field, about 500 km away from Australia, relying on a Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) plant. However, the vessel will be too far away from land to […]

– 200809cern

In a previous article you had the chance to read about the seven wonders of the ancient world, which remained famous for thousands of years and still amaze people from all over the world due to their magnificent traits. But time passed and nowadays people take pride in other accomplishments, from scientific experiments to stadiums. […]

– 200710knee cartilage

Organ transplants are no longer a novelty,  but transplants could help save a lot of lives of people who need certain tissues to live. There is probably going to be a day when laboratories could be able to grow synthetically engineered tissues such as muscle or cartilage needed for transplants [later edit: Scientists create […]