Hear more about author James Vlahos's experience in the Army's new smell simulator on the PopSci Podcast.

We tested two new night-vision systems that are available in the top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz S550 and BMW 7-Series luxury sedans. They operate on virtually opposite principles—Mercedes illuminates the environment with projected infrared light; BMW detects thermal energy emitted from objects—and each works well under different circumstances. href="/node/6951"
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In July, the space shuttle Discovery is slated to deliver two tons of hardware and supplies to the partially built International Space Station. This mission is paid for. As for the 16 more needed to finish assembly, as mandated by President George W. Bush two years ago in his Vision for Space Exploration policy, NASA is short by as much as $5 billion.

Steve Austin had that enviable telescopic squint. Star Trek chief engineer Geordi La Forge saw darkness as daylight with his 24th-century ocular implants. And now it looks like a generation of very real people who have lost their sight are next in line for such seemingly sci-fi vision. “I’m hesitant to use the word ’superpower,’ ” says Armand R. Tanguay, Jr., an electrical-engineering professor at the University of Southern California who is building the world’s first implantable camera for the blind.