Whittle's original design was called a turbojet and it's still widely used in airplanes today. A turbojet is the simplest kind of jet engine based on a gas turbine: it's a basic "rocket" jet that moves a plane forward by firing a hot jet of exhaust backward. The exhaust leaving the...
Engines have been powering our world since the Industrial Revolution: first, dirty coal-powered steam engines, then cleaner and more efficient gasoline engines, and more recently jet engines in airplanes. The basic concept of an engine—something that exploits the difference between a high ...
through to the run-flat tire in the 1980s (able to continue driving even if a tire is punctured) and ultra high-performance tires for additional control and braking performance. Now, we are on the cutting edge of a new generation of airless tires (Non-pneumatic tires – NPT), which can...
Sixteen of these early hybrids still service Genoa, Italy, where drivers switch from diesel to electric power when passing the city's downtown architectural treasures. But no city has gone as far as Seattle, which last year bought 235 GM hybrid buses at $ 645,000 a pop. When the final o...
DUBNER: And when you say vehicles, you’re not including airplanes, I’m guessing? SPARKS: I’m not including the aircraft. But really everything else. I’ve got someone who’s loading bags into a cart and then driving those bags out to the airplane. I would love for someone to be...
(I’ve flown business and even first, I’ve had salmon on airplanes, it has NOTHING to do with how your palate shifts at altitude, it was what they served that sucked), and the beef distinctly tasted like it had been marinated in disinfectant. The next day, when I was home at my ...
A jumbo jet with its nose cargo door open. It sure would be a nice place to put some... batteries... Electric airplanes are perhaps the most exciting prospect for the future of aviation.The record-breaking Solar Impulse II is one of the projects that sho
before you can use it; you can get a diesel engine running in less than a minute. Steam engines disappeared from factories whenelectricitybecame a more convenient way of powering buildings. Who wants to load coal into a factory every day when they can just flick on switches to make things ...