DETAILED REVIEWS:



- Canon Digital Rebel


- Nikon D70


- CANON POWERSHOT PRO1


- Nikon Coolpix 8700


- Olympus C-8080

If U.S. military weapons planners have learned anything from the varied conflicts of the past quarter century, it is that the challenges are not getting any more predictable. With the nature and capabilities of U.S. opponents changing on practically an engagement-by-engagement basis, deciding which new weapon technologies will best serve soldiers in the battle theaters of the future remains a high-stakes guessing game.

Got a question for one of the Geeks? Send it here. We'll pass on all your questions, and pick one each month to answer in the Ask A Geek column in the magazine.



Phillip Torrone - The Gadget Geek

In the countryside north of Beijing, horse carts clatter past farmers’ huts, and the air is thick with the grit of coal dust. But a huge stretch of industrial complexes is also rising here: China’s rapidly expanding Aerospace City. Once a third-world nation, China is transforming itself into a global player with high-tech space aspirations.

6:00a.m.


I'm not up five minutes, and it looks like I'll get my RDA of science claims at breakfast. Cheerios "can reduce your cholesterol."¹ My milk derives from a dairy whose cows "graze freely on lush natural pastures as nature intended."² My Concord Foods soy shake is "fat-free" and a "good source of fresh fruit."³


Then it's off to the e-mail inbox for some fresh scientific-sounding morning spam: A miracle pill guarantees I will "gain 3+ full

Ever since he returned from the ultimate getaway—six months aboard space station Mir—Alexander Poleschuk has not had much patience for the mundane. Even today, 10 years later, there’s a kind of contained restlessness about the former cosmonaut as he sits, drinking tea and fingering his cigarette pack, in a Toyota dealership on the bleak, block-housing-lined outskirts of Moscow, waiting for his car to emerge from the service bay.

If California is the nursery of the alternative space agenda, Mojave is the crib. Here—just a few miles from Edwards Air Force Base, where the remnants of Lockheed Martin’s ill-fated, billion-dollar X-33 orbital space plane sit mothballed—seven private rocket companies have set up shop. Most famous is of course Scaled Composites, whose majordomo, Burt Rutan, is widely expected to capture the $10 million X Prize for the first private vehicle to travel to space twice in two weeks. But at the lesser-known XCOR Aerospace, work proceeds apace.

Dept: Geek Guide

Tech: Automotive GPS

Cost: $200-$2,500

BETA | | | | | FINAL

UC Berkeley space scientist Greg Delory devoured Carl Sagan’s books as a kid; now he hunts for extraterrestrial water—and life—in the solar system.


Jeff Greason learned to pick locks at Caltech, from none other than Richard Feynman; now he burns LOX (liquid oxygen) in engines built by his California rocket company.


Alexander Poleschuk spent six life-changing months aboard the space station Mir; now this Russian ex-cosmonaut obsesses over his nation’s lofty space goals—and its inability to pay for them.

Bugs can go places that humans can’t; they cooperate better than almost any other organism; some of them can even fly. It’s those desirable traits that are driving robotics toward a future that looks more like A Bug’s Life than The Jetsons.

Within a decade or so, swarms of mechatronic bugs outfitted with sensors and wireless transceivers will likely be burrowing through the rubble of buildings to search for earthquake survivors and scrabbling over the hull of a spacecraft to repair damage inflight.