When it comes to seaborne propulsion, one simple layout has largely dominated over all others. You pair some kind of engine with some kind of basic propeller at the back of the ship, and then you throw on a rudder to handle the steering. This lets you push the ship forward, left, and right, and […]
The heat pump has become a common fixture in many parts of modern life. We now have reverse-cycle air conditioning, heat pump hot water systems, and even heat pump dryers. These home appliances have all been marketed as upgrades over simpler technologies from the past, and offer improved efficiency and performance for a somewhat-higher purchase […]
In 1958, the American free-market economist Leonard E Read published his famous essay I, Pencil, in which he made his point about the interconnected nature of free market economics by following everything, and we mean Everything, that went into the manufacture of the humble writing instrument. I thought about the essay last week when I wrote […]
When looking back on classic gaming, there’s plenty of room for debate. What was the best Atari game? Which was the superior 16-bit console, the Genesis or the Super NES? Would the N64 have been more commercially successful if it had used CDs over cartridges? It goes on and on. Many of these questions are […]
Like many of you, I have a hard time getting rid of stuff. I’ve got boxes and boxes of weirdo bits and bobs, and piles of devices that I’ll eventually get around to stripping down into even more bits and bobs. Despite regular purges — I try to bring a car-load of crap treasure to […]
There’s little about building spacecraft that anyone would call simple. But there’s at least one element of designing a vehicle that will operate outside the Earth’s atmosphere that’s fairly easier to handle: aerodynamics. That’s because, at the altitude that most satellites operate at, drag can essentially be ignored. Which is why most satellites look like […]
There was a time when wise older people warned you to check your tire pressure regularly. We never did, and would eventually wind up with a flat or, worse, a blowout. These days, your car will probably warn you when your tires are low. That’s because of a class of devices known as tire pressure […]
You’ve likely at least heard of Marion Stokes, the woman who constantly recorded television for over 30 years. She comes up on reddit and other places every so often as a hero archivist who fought against disinformation and disappearing history. But who was Marion Stokes, and why did she undertake this project? And more importantly, […]
Over the course of its nearly 30 years in orbit, the International Space Station has played host to more “firsts” than can possibly be counted. When you’re zipping around Earth at five miles per second, even the most mundane of events takes on a novel element. Arguably, that’s the point of a crewed orbital research […]
If you search the Internet for “Clone Wars,” you’ll get a lot of Star Wars-related pages. But the original Clone Wars took place a long time ago in a galaxy much nearer to ours, and it has a lot to do with the computer you are probably using right now to read this. (Well, unless […]