• Technology

    A Brief History of the Apollo Hoax

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 9.30.2008 35 Comments

    When Neil Armstrong pressed the first bootprint into the Sea of Tranquility, most of humanity watched the televised low-res blob and felt pride welling up in their chests. But a few watchers felt something entirely different—an unconfirmed, squinty-eyed skepticism that something about the whole deal smelled fishy. How could the United States, which could barely put a chimp into space in 1961, get two full-grown men on the surface of the moon eight years later? How could anyone confirm that men actually made it to the moon? And, how, exactly, had that $25 billion Apollo budget been spent?

  • Science

    Lock and Roll

    By Paul Adams Posted on 10.8.2008 4 Comments

    Werner O. Merlo’s patio umbrella refused to stay locked in a tilted position. Frustrated, he replaced the sagging sunshade’s flimsy ball-and-joint with a self-designed mechanism that swiveled smoothly yet held fast at an angle. His umbrella never flopped over again. "I'm not really the umbrella-manufacturing type, so the first thing that came to mind was, What else can I use this for?" says Merlo, a former chemist at the University of Alberta.

  • Technology

    All Aboard the AeroTrain

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 9.25.2008 13 Comments

    In this age of eternal flight delays, traveling from New York to Miami in the scheduled three hours sounds like a fantasy. Yet within a decade, aircraft designer Abe Karem plans to fix that by bypassing congested runways in his tilt-rotor, vertical-takeoff commercial plane, the AeroTrain. Sitting on a helipad with its twin rotors tilted straight up, the craft can take off vertically and fly like a helicopter. Once the plane has reached a safe altitude of 50 feet, the pilot will tilt the rotors forward and fly the craft like an airplane.



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December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

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