My student (a Millennial who doesn’t watch movies made before the 2000's) and I (a Gen X’er with a love of pop culture) have a thing where we recommend movies to each other. She told me to watch Blade Runner 2049 and I came away thinking that Dave Bautista was a hell of a lot better actor than Ryan Gosling.

I’ll leave you with this plot where each dot represents a particular aircraft model. Since the dawn of the passenger jet age, aircraft noise levels have been reduced by ~55dB (~+30 on the left down to ~-25 on the right of the plot).Note that a reduction of 6dB is a halving of the noise level (acoustic pressure). That…

I see this more often from European media, but why did the author refer to the US space agency as ‘Nasa’ and not NASA? I don’t see Deadspin using ‘Nfl’ or ‘Mlb’ or ‘Ncaa’. Do Jezebel writers call this nation the ‘Usa’? What’s the latest on game development for ‘Gtav’ on Kotaku?

Physically impossible? Not really. I can point you to many scientific reports showing the continual decrease in the certified noise levels of commercial aircraft over the last 50 years since the jet age began. The reasons are numerous and include the switch from turbojet to turbofan and high-bypass turbofan engines,…

It’s probably a good thing you didn’t start since every new generation of aircraft is substantially quieter than the one that preceded it (military jets excluded since they are more focused on ultimate performance). If the research plans for NASA in this area comes to fruition, elevated noise levels on the ground will…

Using ground-based solutions for taxi makes total sense as long as you can get the airports to invest in the technology. Then it becomes a trade between how much the airport is going to charge for the service and what the airline is willing to pay if they can’t get the airframer to put the tech on the plane. Like most…

What you may see first on long-haul aircraft are hybrid systems that use batteries and electric motors in conjunction with a cruise-optimized engine to boost power to the fan for takeoff. That way you’re not flying more engine than you need for the longest portion of the flight. You can also use that system to handle g…

Sounds like my local Saab-Cadillac-GMC store that always took three visits to fix any problem: one to diagnose and tell me they have to order the parts, another to install the parts and break something else in the process and a third to fix whatever went wrong on the second visit. As soon as the car was out of…

So here’s the problem with owning a 900 these days: certain SAAB-specific parts are no longer available making it very hard to keep it on the road. One part in particular is the rubber bellows that hold the in-tank fuel pump in place. They were created before ethanol gas and don’t tolerate it well. Eventually, they…

Put your order in as soon as possible and expect to wait. Took me 10 mos to get my Mav EB. Hybrid production is severely constrained and way oversold so the likelihood of them even being able to offer a PHEV version is iffy until 2024 at least.

My recent experience on Amtrak was quite the opposite. Back in September, I took the train from Williamsburg, VA to Philadelphia, on a Saturday, to pick up the Ford Maverick I ordered. The train took six hours (driving would have taken 5) and cost me a grand total of $39. Other than the slow Wi-Fi, it couldn’t have…

So let’s just say that I’m very familiar with the NASA program through my colleagues, area-adjacent technical work and education. You’re right in your understanding of what the X-59 is trying to do with it’s shape in making the pressure ‘disturbance’ less abrupt which changes the acoustics from the characteristic…

For me, the best-looking, new BMW is the Toyota Supra and it’s no beauty either.

Some might not, but should. How do I know? My friend makes a decent amount of money selling a plastic gear for BMW transfer cases used in X5's and X1's. When you don’t replace all the tires, the rotational speed difference between axles can cause the system to repeatedly engage/disengage the transfer case. Eventually,…

This test isn’t looking to put open fan on the A380. The 380 is just being used as a testbed to evaluate the technology. Pratt and Whitney and GE both have  747's they can use for this type of thing. GE’s must have been busy or maybe they wanted to use an Airbus plane for political reasons because of Safran.

I’ll see your 65mph and raise you to 184!

The only explanation for that is something I learned in an HPDE school at Road Atlanta: If you keep staring at the thing you don’t want to hit, odds are you’re going to run right into it. Always look where you want to go and you’ll be much more likely to get there.

From the Hyundai website: ...sold at select Hyundai dealers in AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, LA, MA, MD, ME, MO, NC, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, TX, UT, VA, WA, and WI...

Call me a success story for Liberty Media then. In the previous 10 seasons of F1, I watched maybe three races but got hooked on DTS from Netflix. This year, I’ve watched every practice, qualifying and race so far and was genuinely mad that ESPN had tech issues with the race stream in Australia and didn’t get it fixed…

The noise levels cited by the residents seem implausible if one looks at the noise maps around Miami’s airport: