Model Airplanes

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When I first told friends this summer that I was headed to Seattle to test out a new Airstream trailer, the most common reply was, “They still make those?”

The Airstream, hand-assembled in Jackson Center, Ohio, was inspired by the early aerospace and automotive industries and has changed little in the last 80 years. The trailers have quarantined and transported astronauts, made cameos in movies and TV shows, and become part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Although they represent a small share of the U.S. RV market, Airstream travel trailers have been around longer than those from any other manufacturer, and the design — both retro and futuristic — has captured the imagination and nourished the wanderlust of Americans. For a certain traveler who isn’t willing to sacrifice style in the great outdoors, the Airstream trumps all.

In August, I set out in Airstream’s 2016 22-foot Sport trailer, using a 2015 Ford Expedition King Ranch as the tow vehicle. My plan was to set out for two nights at a

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2015/10/09/airstream-sport-trailer/73577112/

Throughout NASA’s long and industrious history, the space agency’s cutting-edge technologies have been adopted or adapted to suit various needs on Earth.

For instance, the ear thermometer sitting in your medicine cabinet relies on the same infrared technology used by NASA to measure the temperature of stars. The memory foam in your pillow and mattress was initially developed by NASA to absorb shock in airplane seats.

NASA technology has even found widespread use outside the home in anti-corrosion coatings, firefighting equipment, highway safety grooves and the video-enhancing and analysis systems used in law enforcement and security.

Many of these technology transfers are well-known, but numerous others slide in under the radar. Here are 10 recent examples of how NASA research is benefiting the rest of us.

1. Cabin pressure monitor

Warning systems for aircraft cabin depressurization sometimes fail to monitor pressure changes that cause a slow, inconspicuous development of hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency, which can lead to unconsciousness. Based on NASA pressure-monitoring technology, Alt Alert is a compact altitude pressurization monitoring system that acutely tracks aircraft cabin pressure. Great for private and recreational pilots. aviationtechnologyinc.com

2. Advanced skin cream

Using a rotating vessel-wall bioreactor (which replicates microgravity conditions experienced in Earth’s orbit), NASA scientists have produced regenerative biomolecules from adult skin cells. The molecules have quickly found a use in

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/technologylive/2015/10/09/10-ways-space-technology-benefits-our-earthly-existence/73657820/

The defense bill resting on President Barack Obama’s desk would pave the way toward keeping the Delaware Air National Guard flying and viable in the near future.

Yet the congressional representative who fought longest and hardest to keep the state’s, and the Air Force’s, aging C-130 airplanes flying in 2020 and beyond wants the president to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains language that would allow Congress to appropriate the necessary funds.

Rep. John Carney still wants to see the aging aircraft upgraded. His support for a veto of what’s referred to as the NDAA is purely ideological.

“I support the modifications to the C-130 program, and I’m hopeful they’ll be included in the version of the NDAA that the president signs,” Carney said in a statement Friday. “The C-130 program, and Delaware’s National Guard, play a crucial role within our military and in our response to natural disasters.

Article source: http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/nation/military/2015/10/09/guards-old-c-130s-could-get-new-life/73666208/

As any good steampunk will tell you, about a century ago airplanes and airships (blimps, dirigibles, zeppelins) shared the skies, vying almost neck-and-neck for dominance. From the turn of the 20th century through the 1930s, spacious lighter-than-air craft—usually rigid-framed ships like zeppelins with “gondola” compartments below the balloons—ferried passengers and cargo across nations and oceans. Starting in 1925, the United States even created a helium stockpile to service our airship fleets. Then in 1937 the Hindenburg crashed in New Jersey—it wasn’t the first airship accident, but the well-documented horror of its explosion soured the global public on dirigibles. Governments continued to use the craft for surveillance throughout WWII, but eventually even they were forced to scrap their fleets in what many industrial romanticists regard as a tragic, paranoid denial of a technology’s potential.  

Yet despite decades of relegation to roles as tourist attractions or advertising gimmicks, airships may be on the verge of a comeback. This resurgence will be fueled not by impractical nostalgia or fandom, but by incredible advances in airship technology that have made these craft both immeasurably safer than their predecessors, and perfect vessels for certain niche conditions. And it seems like this phoenix-like rebirth of everyone’s favorite forgotten tech might

Article source: http://magazine.good.is/articles/airship-comeback-zeppelin-dirigible-blimp

The drug-addict mother, the fictional son, the defective airplane parts: Secrets are at the core of many great American plays. Sometimes they are secrets kept by one character from the others, or from the outer world; the drama is in the revelation of what the audience already knows. Other times, though, the audience is the dupe, the playwright springing his secret like a sex toy to juice up the proceedings. (I’m looking at you, Neil LaBute.) One of the mysterious achievements of Sam Shepard’s 1983 play Fool for Love, only now having its Broadway debut, is the way it combines these two seemingly incompatible modes of withholding in a story whose point is the huge damage caused by a lack of information. When the withholding and revelation are handled as adroitly as they are in Daniel Aukin’s terrific staging for the Manhattan Theatre Club, Fool for Love acquires the force of Greek tragedy — one Greek tragedy in particular.

I’m not trying to be coy, but it’s difficult to write about this kind of play without giving away its legitimate surprises. In Fool for Love, it takes about half of the 70-minute running time for the real situation to sink in, and it is so subtly prepared for that you almost don’t recognize the moment of recognition. At first you think you are getting a typical story of can’t-live-with-you-can’t-live-without-you love, straight from a country-western song. May (Nina Arianda) and Eddie (Sam Rockwell) are longtime lovers whose shtick involves violent need and

Article source: http://www.vulture.com/2015/10/theater-reviews-barbecue.html

Since we first learned that the A9 SoC in Apple’s iPhone 6s lineup is dual sourced – that is that it’s being made by two different vendors with two distinct manufacturing processes – one major question has remained in the process of reviewing these two phones. The main issue under question here is whether the TSMC A9 or Samsung A9 have any difference in performance and power consumption. If there is a difference, the question then becomes whether the difference is significant.

In an atypical move for the normally tight lipped manufacturer, Apple issued a statement this afternoon in response to these questions and some rudamentary end-user benchmarking showing that there may be a difference:

With the Apple-designed A9 chip in your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, you are getting the most advanced smartphone chip in the world. Every chip we ship meets Apple’s highest standards for providing incredible performance and deliver great battery life, regardless of iPhone 6s capacity, color, or model.

Certain manufactured lab tests which run the processors with a continuous heavy workload until the battery depletes are not representative of real-world usage, since they spend an unrealistic amount of time at the highest CPU performance state. It’s a misleading way to measure real-world battery life. Our testing and customer data show the actual battery life of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, even taking into account variable component differences, vary within just 2-3% of each other.

It interesting to see this response as Apple normally doesn’t

Article source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9708/analyzing-apple-statement-for-tsmc-and-samsung-a9