As a kid growing up in the military there was nothing more fun than hanging out on a Saturday afternoon at Eglin AFB watching F-15 Eagles doing maneuvers. Back then, the F-15 was the king of the skies, how times do change. Today, the F-15 is considered outdated an ancient and it’s role as master of the skies has been replaced by the new breed F-22 Raptor. The Raptor is one kick ass fighter jet, boasting two Pratt & Whitney F-119-100 engines that can produce 35,000 pounds of thrust each and push the F-22 Raptor to a cruising speed of Mach 1.72. Compare that to the 23,000 pound thrust class engines powering the F-15 and F-16 fighters. The Raptor is the most advanced fighter ever built and when combined with it’s stealth technology, thrust vectoring system and superior avionics it makes for one unfair fight. Kind of makes me want to go out in the yard and run around with my arms spread out pretending to be Clint Eastwood flying FireFox. Here’s some photos from F22Fighter.com and a video piece Discovery did on Future Weapons.

via: TechEBlog

Unless you have some phobia that prevents you from going outside or something then you know just how crowded our streets are becoming. Go over seas to Europe or Asia and the problem is magnified dramatically. Well auto manufacturers Toyota and Suzuki think they have just the thing that everyone needs, Personal Transporters. Toyota introduced the i-Real (how original).

Following previous introductions dubbed the i-Unit and i-Swing, Toyota suggests the name of its new personal transporter indicates it’s close to production. i-Real uses an electric drive for its two front wheels, with the third, rear wheel for balance. i-Real has built-in social networking, so you can communicate with other i-Real drivers near by.

While Suzuki introduced a sexier Pixy.

Suzuki’s electric powered personal transporter uses four wheels instead of the i-Real’s three. We also like that is has a full canopy, which suggests it might be more comfortable during inclement weather than the Toyota machine. But Suzuki envisions the Pixy for use on sidewalks and inside buildings. Walking will be a thing of the past.

I dunno, leave it to the Japanese to come up with some crazy idea like this one. I wonder how it does on emissions?

via: Crave

I used to be into Sim Racing and had friend who spent about $300 on plywood and an old seat to built a Sim to mount his wheel into, took him about 8 hours. John Davis of Conventry, UK did just a little bit better. He spent nearly 8 years and $30k to build a Boeing 747 flight simulator in his home. Can you say INSANE? We’ll not really. Davis turned his passion for his hobby into a business and now runs a flight simulator business from his house.

via: Gizmodo

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Engineers at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Germany have built the world’s largest man-made tornado. The 34.43 meter high tornado was built to keep smoke from making it’s way into exhibit areas in the museum in the event of a large fire. The tornado in the photos uses carbon dioxide vapor and takes a good 7 plus minutes for the 144 jets to get 28 tons of air wound up enough to create the vortex necessary to sustain the column. Once running, the tornado will effectively suck in any smoke and carry it up to vents to be expelled to the outside.

via: OhGizmo