CNN: Flight Failure Won’t Stop “Mad Scientists”
By Michael Belfiore. CNN.com, August 15, 2011. The HTV-2′s hypersonic glide flight test was but one of many high-risk, potentially high-payoff projects funded by DARPA. DARPA is America’s hidden innovation engine. Not so many know the name, but nearly everyone is familiar with the agency’s work: GPS receivers that slip into our pockets, interactive computer displays and the...
Read MoreNew York Times: Fatal Flaws
Review of Jet Age by Sam Howe Verhovek. By Michael Belfiore. New York Times, February 6, 2011. “Jet Age” is ostensibly about the race between two companies and nations to commercialize a military technology and define a new era of air travel. There’s Boeing with its back to the wall and its military contracts drying up, betting everything on passenger jets, pitted against de Havilland and...
Read MoreSmithsonian: Power From the People
Energy harvested from our bodies will make possible mind-boggling gadgetry. By Michael Belfiore. Smithsonian magazine, August 2010. Sensor-studded clothing worn by a soldier tracks his movements and vital signs. A disposable electrocardiogram machine the size of a Band-Aid monitors a heart patient. A cellphone is implanted in a tooth. Scientists and engineers are trying to develop such...
Read MorePopular Mechanics: Liquid Metal Batteries Could Lead to Power Storage Breakthrough
Researchers create an all-liquid-metal battery that could allow alternative power schemes to flourish. Plus, three more breakthrough technologies that the U.S. Department of Energy is funding now. By Michael Belfiore. Popular Mechanics, April 27, 2010. Plans to add renewable power sources to the electric grid have a common problem: weak, expensive and small batteries that can’t guarantee...
Read MorePopular Mechanics: Human Space Flight Needn’t Rely on NASA
By Michael Belfiore. February 1, 2010. Is Obama’s just-released NASA budget the “death march for the future of U.S. human space flight,” as Senator Richard Shelby proclaims on his website today? Or is it in fact a new beginning for the space agency? Obama’s proposed 2011 budget actually increases NASA’s budget by $6 billion. What has Shelby and others up in arms is...
Read MorePopular Science: The Hypersonic Age Is Near
Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. They could also mean missiles capable of striking any continent in a moment’s notice. No wonder the race to develop them is as fierce as ever. By Michael Belfiore. Popular Science, December 10, 2007 Last March, engineers from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) gathered in the control room of a...
Read MoreNPR: ‘Mad Scientists,’ Building The Future For 50 Years
All Things Considered, November 15, 2009. GUY RAZ, host: We’re back with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Guy Raz. If you’re driving at the moment and you’re using a GPS system for navigation, you can thank a small and somewhat secretive branch of the Pentagon. It’s called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA for short. Now, aside from the...
Read MoreInvention & Technology: Strong Armed
Building a truly useful prosthetic arm remains a major engineering challenge: while new designs show promise, they still can’t beat the utility of a simple hook mechanism that dates back to before World War I. By Michael Belfiore. Invention & Technology Magazine, Fall 2009. The place didn’t look like a cutting-edge research laboratory. The work benches in the little room at Johns...
Read MoreAir & Space: License to Thrill
Meet the first commercial rocketship pilots. By Michael Belfiore. Air & Space Magazine, March 01, 2009. In the old days it was straightforward enough. The planet had two corps of astronauts, Soviet and U.S., and to join one, you had to be a military test pilot. But now the rules have changed. You don’t have to be an American or a Russian anymore, and you don’t even have to be a government...
Read MoreWired: Robot Cars for Everyone
By Michael Belfiore. Wired, November 1, 2007. The question on a lot of people’s minds here at DARPA’s race for driverless cars is “when can I get mine?” So I went and asked Michael Darms, a Continental Automotive Systems engineer working with Carnegie Mellon’s Tartan Racing team. His answer: A lot sooner than you think. Robot cars have been Darms’ passion from an early age and...
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