Guest Author • Apr 21, 2021 •
Gail Iles, RMIT University Yesterday at 9pm Australian Eastern standard time, the Ingenuity helicopter — which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February — took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, three metres above the surface and came right back down again. It may not sound like a huge … Read More
Robert McLachlan • Oct 21, 2019 •
#NoFly: Walking the talk on climate change, by Shaun Hendy. BWB Texts, 2019. Reviewed by Robert McLachlan In June 2018, Swede Maja Rosén founded We stay on the ground with a pledge not to fly in 2019, and a goal of persuading 100,000 other Swedes to join her. In August, her compatriot Greta Thunberg began her school strike for … Read More
Ken Perrott • Jul 19, 2016 •
Two years on and there has yet to be a a decision on who was responsible for shooting down Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Eastern Ukraine. This video shows the local memorial meeting held near the crash site. We often forget that the locals in such tragedies also suffer as they have to deal with the destruction and death … Read More
Peter Griffin • Dec 10, 2015 •
It has been a rollercoaster of a year for Martin Jetpack, the innovative Christchurch company that for years has been chipping away on developing a “practical” personal jetpack. Glenn Martin In June, the company’s founder, Glenn Martin, abruptly quit, seemingly dismayed at the direction the company that bears his name was going in. You see, Martin’s original vision, over 35 … Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • Sep 11, 2012 •
The headline to this post is, at the same time, misleading and not misleading at all. To explain: allow me to introduce to you FlightRadar24: Live flight traffic. Now, I’m well aware that aeroplane anoraks* will either already know about it, or have just left this post by frantically clicking on the link [...] … Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • Oct 25, 2011 •
Featuring (very) bright sparks, biomimicry and flight, Dance Your PhD, NASA inventions, carbon nano-onions, Iceland’s renewable internet, spider silk, zoned-out rats, forecasting with Twitter, autistic facial characteristics, a new superconductivity, the geek book list, Tell Us A Story 2011 winners, and the economics of milk. Also featuring some Interesting Things, including a comment on a paper showing how cats lap … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Jul 18, 2011 •
I want one of these. Way better than those little rubber-band powered balsa and polystyrene gliders we had as kids. Of course what these people have developed is a little more advanced than a bit of wood and foam - and a whole lot more fun to watch. This … Read More