The Only Terrorist To Comfortably Seat Five

Car manufacturers usually make up a stupid name for their newest products...and that usually works better than using existing words that are poorly researched.

Kia's new concept car, the Provo, is rankling British lawmakers, who are asking the South Korean car makers to change the name.  "Provo" was the street name for the dominant branch of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. Y'know, the Provisional IRA that killed nearly 1,800 people during a 27 year campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the UK that ended in 1997.

Kia insist their experimental prototype was named to suggest "provocative," and would not market any future car as a Provo in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland.   Cars also not getting released in certain parts of the world are Ford's Slavemaster mini-van in the US, the Peugeot Colonist SUV in Africa and southeast Asia  and the Mercedes Kristallnacht coupe, well, everywhere. 

Corkscrewed

The Real Hot Wheels Double Loop

Aerodestructive

Imagine you could run so fast, your skin peeled off.

That's basically what happened with a secret hyper-sonic plane developed by DARPA - y'know, the lovable scamps from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency!  Apparently, a plane going 20 times the speed of sound may put a little pressure on the surface of the aircraft.  At least, that's the best guess as to what caused their HTV-2 to crash in the Pacific Ocean last August.  Not bad for an eight month inquiry.

DARPA expected the arrowhead shaped vehicle to lose some of its skin mid-flight, but as they say, "larger than anticipated portions of the vehicle's skin peeled from the aerostructure".  That may be an understatement, considering the shockwaves it experienced were more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand.  Well, that's what will happen when you make something that can get from Los Angeles to New York in about 12 minutes. Details of the  craft's design and stability system still remain classified, but it's likely tied to a test that the Army performed two months later on a system called the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, that was (the kind designed to strike any target in the world in just a couple hours).

Gykmhana

More Live A Drive-In Movie

The Vintage Mobile Cinema is one of seven "auto-theaters" that were commissioned by the UK's Ministry of Technology in the late 1960s. After more than a decade, one of the fleet was restored and outfitted with an all new theater system:

Onkyo TX-NR807 receiver
Pioneer BDP-320 Blu-ray player
Mordaunt Short Aviano 6 floorstander speakers
Mordaunt Short Alumni 9 subwoofer speaker
Mordaunt Short Alumni 5 center speaker
Mordaunt Short Alumni 3 surround speakers (x4)
Epson EH-TW3500 LCD projector

Patrons can watch the screenings, including lesser known films from it's original run as well as archival footage from the different cities to which the bus travels, on upholstered seats (which date back to the 1930s). The bus holds 22, and it's hoped that independent filmmakers will screen their work onboard.

USBitchin'

Instructables has all kinds of badass projects, like this crafty USB power outlet installation for your car. Here's the basics - click on each step for details and step-by-step pictures:

step 1Finding a location for the USB power plug
In the 2010 Prius III there is an unused outlet next to the 12volt aux power in the front center console. I disassembled the center console and removed the plastic housing of the blank outlet and the 12volt aux.

step 2The USB 12 volt car adapter
I disassembled a Dynex USB power adapter and removed the circuit board from the plastic housing, then removed the 12 volt supply wires. The supply wires were springs and such, and too bulky to reuse.

step 3Preparing the blank cover
Once the blank cover (plug) is removed, I found it to be filled with a dense lattice of plastic. To fit the USB power circuit in it, a lot of the plastic needed to be cut out. Using an Exacto knife, and a box
cutter, I cleared the inside of the cover.

step 4Fitting the USB circuit board
I used a Dremel tool with a grinding attachment to slim down the USB's circuit board until it slid into the hollowed out cover. Once the fit was right, it was time to make the hole on the face to access the USB plug.

step 5Making the hole for the USB power
I approximated the center of the USB plug and drilled a tiny hole through the face of the blank accessory plug.

step 6Wiring
Once I trimmed the opening, It was time to wire the 12 volt power to the USB adapter. Since the 12 volt accessory was right next to it, I soldered the ground from the USB board to the cigarette adapter, and attached the positive end to a nut on the back.

step 7Fixing the LED
The USB board has a 2 color LED to indicate power and charging. I wanted the light to shine behind the USB plug, so I de-soldered the LED and repositioned it to face forward. I had to add some wire to the board to attach the LED, but it was not hard, and could be done by a beginner.

step 8Securing the USB board
After making sure the 12 volt accessory and USB power were working, the package needed to be glued into place to prevent it falling back into the center console. I used a general auto glue that holds tight, but remains slightly flexible.

step 9Final install
I let the glue cure overnight. After testing the power out one more time, I slipped the plastic housing back into place.

Koonstastrophe

Bayerische Motoren Werke has occasionally invited artists to use its cars as canvases. Sometimes, they get an M1 Group 4 racer painted by Andy Warhol. And sometimes they get a BMW M3 GTS painted by Jeff Koons.

Koons, you ask? Yes, he's a far overrated "artist" that will have his seizure inducing crapsterpiece compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans next week.

"These race cars are lifelike, they are powerful and there is a lot of energy," Koons said. "You can participate with it, add to it and let yourself transcend with its energy. There is a lot of power under that hood and I want to let my ideas transcend with the car — it’s really to connect with that power." That is some pretentious bullshit.

The design isn’t actually painted on the car; it’s a vinyl wrap covered with two layers of clear coat. BMW says the wrap was lighter than paint and it could be applied much more quickly, but I think we all know is that they didn't want to ruin the car by making the paint job permanent. Koons had two months to complete the project, though it looks like something an Intro to Art student did for an assignment.

Koons has wanted to design an art car since 2003, when he first approached BMW about the idea. Looks as though BMW finally got worn down, and for that, our eyes must suffer.

Smaller And Cuter, But Still Going To Enslave Humanity

Boston Dynamics’ “Big Dog” robot will frighten the piss out of you, so it follows that the new Little Dog quadruped robot will make smaller squirts.

Little Dog, which is being developed at USC as part of Skynet Darpa’s robot locomotion initiative, can navigate uneven, rocky terrain, up stairs, and even across gaps. To top it off, that little robotic bastard is completely autonomous and learns how to navigate terrain better using sensors that measure joint angles, motor currents, body orientation, and ground contact. Little Dog can run nearly 30 minutes on one charge...so far.

Traffic Stopper

IBM is planning to pattent the "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING VEHICLE ENGINE RUNNING STATE AT BUSY INTERSECTIONS FOR INCREASED FUEL CONSUMPTION EFFICIENCY." Translated and bereft of caps lock, the device can stop your car dead in its tracks. If you don't beleive me, check out the patent application:

The present disclosure is directed to a method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal. The method may comprise establishing communications with participating vehicles; responding to a stop status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: receiving a position data from each participating vehicles; determining a queue of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal; determining a remaining duration of the stop status; sending a stop-engine notification to the list of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal when the remaining duration is greater than a threshold of time; responding to a proceed status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: sending a start-engine notification to a first vehicle in the queue; calculating an optimal time for an engine of a second vehicle in the queue to start; and sending the start-engine notification to the second vehicle at the optimal time.

I'm not into that. There's enough assholes on the road stopping my driving progress; I don't need traffic lights doing any more than they already are.

Commercials Are Better Down Under

It's so good, you'd actually consider getting a Corolla.

Call Of The Clunkers, Or Proud To Be An American

General Motors Co. will begin removing its "Mark of Excellence" logo from vehicles as the company "places greater emphasis on its individual brands". Wow, that's some heavy spin. It makes way for a "Seal of Mediocrity"

The company said it would phase out the placement of the GM logo on its cars and trucks, leaving just the GMC, Chevrolet, Cadillac or Buick logos on the vehicles.

"We really want to elevate the prominence of our four core brands," said one of their talking heads. "It's really going to be an intense focus." Yeah , you'll have to after jettisoning half your brands. They are discontinuing or selling Hummer, Saab, Pontiac and Saturn.

The final decision to remove the silver square logo was made earlier this month, although executives had mentioned the possibility of such a move months ago. The company found that consumers had a greater affinity for GM's individual brands than the corporate name. And apparently didn't care for the extra pejorative. "What we're seeing is the GM brand gets dinged big time in terms of considering a GM vehicle (what does that even mean?)," said GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis. That's quite a title for a make believe job. "When you look at Chevrolet, Cadillac and our other brands, they haven't changed." Because only marketing people pay attention to that nonsense.

The company began putting the logos on all its vehicles in North America in 2005. Removing the logo — which is generally placed on the lower section of the door panel — from some models will be more difficult than on others. On vehicles where a specific indentation is made in the sheet metal for the logo, phasing it out will take longer. Other models such as the Camero or Equinox, removal is easier, and will begin immediately. If you care...

Taking the logos off the vehicle will save GM a "nominal" amount of money, and a whole lot of company pride.

Tachikoma!

All you anime nerds now have a real good reason to move to Planet Japan. The Japanese have created a life sized Tachikoma robot one in which you can actually travel. They call it the 'personal edition', the cocoon shaped vehicle (for non Ghost In The Shell fans) has a camera on the outside which projects the view on the spherical cockpit inside (image after the jump). As seen in the video it can be controlled by a joystick. For now it can accommodate a medium sized passenger weighing no more than 130 lbs.

Hmmm, that was underwhelming.

Innersphere

Israeli scientists have unveiled a tiny robot, made using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, purportedly able to crawl through a person's veins in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer.

The little robot - with a diameter of just one millimeter - has neither engine nor onboard controls, instead being propelled forward by a magnetic field wielded on it from outside the patient's body. Controlling the tiny bot externally guides the little critter as it crawls its way through the body's veins and arteries using miniscule outstretched arms which grip the vessel walls. (tiny ouch)

Scientists reckon the mini bot can even withstand massive blood flow and is able to push forward regardless of the magnetic field actuation direction, doing away with any need for exact localisation and direction retrieval. A controller can move the little crawly creature in increments, with its speed of up to nine millimeters a second regulated by varying external magnetic field frequencies. Outside control also means the robot can be made to work for an unlimited amount of time, rather than suddenly - not to mention inconveniently - keeling over to die of battery failure in the middle of a medical procedure.

A small cross sectional area on the tiny robot apparently allows fluids to flow with minimal interference making intra-vascular motion more feasible, and opening up the possibility of minimally invasive medical treatments, as well as diagnosis within the body. Researchers are also apparently toying with the idea of attaching miniscule cameras to the bot, as well as other "tools" it may need to perform internal surgery. As if getting under people's skin wasn't enough, Technion researchers say they're also looking at putting the ant-like creature to work in urban water distribution systems, to look for any leaks that need plugging.

The Power Of Fly-ght

Boom.

With Leather found this awesome bus race footage from Ohio, of all places. Yes, you read that right, and the bizarre tingly awesomeness I feel from watching a bus plowing into another bus simply cannot be described. It’s like watching Optimus Prime give a prostate exam to a Tyrannosaurus Rex, only with more debris flying around and more profanity. And even that visual image doesn’t do it justice.

Jazzy Robots, Misdirection, And Cleveland...Rocks?

Tankillac

click to enlarge, putz

I don't know if the presidential motorcade is going to feature one of these, but the schematic has me sold on it.

The Bloodhood Gang

Call it a Limey (fish and?) chip on their shoulder.

The Britons who built the first car to break the sound barrier are back with plans to shatter their own record in a jet-powered land-rocket they're betting will be the first car to top 1,000 mph.

Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green will make his run for the record strapped into the Bloodhound SSC, a 42-foot-long missile powered by a rocket bolted to a jet engine. With 45,000 pounds of thrust available at full throttle, Bloodhound will hit 1,050 mph in just 41 seconds and cross the salt faster than a speeding bullet.

"There has never been anything like Bloodhound SSC before," says team leader Richard Noble, who set a land speed record of his own in 1983. "It is undoubtedly the most stimulating and challenging program I've ever been involved with. The next three years are going to be tough, testing and damned exciting." Well, sure, brag about it because you get to be part of the project.

The announcement comes 11 years after Noble and Green set the current land speed record of 763.035 mph in the Nevada Desert and continues a British tradition for speed that dates to the 1920s and '30s, when Sir Malcolm Campbell set several records on land and sea. Britain has held the land speed record for 58 of the 109 years since Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat of France reached a blistering 39 mph in a suburb of Paris.

More than bragging rights are at stake in the ambitious project announced today. Noble and Lord Drayson (awesome evil villain name), Britain's minister of state for science and innovation, hope the three-year project will inspire children to pursue careers in engineering, mathematics and science, so they might solve the world's most pressing problems. "Ultimately, I hope that this iconic British project will encourage the next generation of scientists and engineers, as we will depend on them to find the solutions to everything from climate change to growing population pressures," Drayson says.

Drayson, himself a race-car driver, was Britain's defense minister when he approached Noble and asked if he had any ideas that would capture the imaginations of the nation's children. Drayson fears kids are losing interest in science and engineering, and he's worried about the impact it will have on the United Kingdom. "The consequences if we don't inspire the next generation are that we will wither as a country," he told BBC News.

Noble quickly signed on and set his sights on surpassing 1,000 mph on four wheels. He knows a thing or two about land speed records, having designed the ThrustSSC. That vehicle set the current land speed record in 1997 when Green crossed Nevada's Black Rock desert at 763.035, becoming the first driver to break the sound barrier. Noble has spent 18 months developing the Bloodhound concept — the car hasn't been built yet, and won't make its run for the record until 2011 — from a clean sheet of paper. "The target is 1,000 mph," he says. "That's a 31 percent jump (over ThrustSSC), and there is no way Bloodhound SSC is going to look like anything we have seen before."

Noble calls Bloodhound "a jet and hybrid rocket." A Falcon rocket generating some 25,000 pounds of thrust will get the car up to the speed of sound (340.29 meters per second, or 761.2 mph). At that point Green will use a Eurojet EJ200 jet engine producing 20,000 pounds of thrust to take Bloodhound the rest of the way to 1,000 mph. A V12 engine will drive Bloodhound's hydraulic system, serve as a starter motor for the EJ200 and pump high test peroxide fuel through the rocket at the rate of one ton every 22 seconds.

All that power is useless without aerodynamics, and Noble says "the Bloodhound SSC shape is completely different to anything seen before. We need to minimize the cross-sectional area to minimize drag, but we also need a supersonic intake and a smart suspension system, which will enable the car to run smoothly over the rough salt surfaces."

Bloodhound is 42 feet long, 9 feet tall and will weigh 6.4 tons. With the rocket mounted above the jet engine, the center of gravity is so high, the rear wheels must be suspended on outriggers. In the past, that would have created excessive drag, but Noble says computational fluid dynamics allowed him to find the optimal shape for aerodynamic efficiency. Bloodhound also uses an unusually small rear fin, but Noble is confident he's achieved the best compromise between the stability of a large fin and the aero efficiency of a small one. Small winglets above the front wheels can be adjusted on the fly to maintain a constant level of downforce as the vehicle approaches Mach 1.4.

Downforce takes on a new meaning when you're shooting for 1,000 mph — a speed Noble estimates Green will need 4.5 miles to achieve (it'll take about that far to bring it to a stop afterward). The air pressure bearing down on Bloodhound's carbon fiber and titanium body at Mach 1.4 will exceed 12 tons per square meter and its 35.8-inch rear wheels will be spinning at more than 10,000 RPM. They'll be made of titanium to keep them from flying apart.

At that speed, Green will be covering about 400 yards a second, or about 50 meters in the blink of an eye. He admits it'll be risky, but says Bloodhound will be designed to maximize safety. "Does that make it zero risk?" he told BBC News. "No. Is life with zero-risk interesting? No." Is this rocket car wiping out fgoing to look just as cool asif it succeeds? Hell yes!

For The Sly Investor

With the world in such economic unrest, it's hard to know what's a smart investment. There's confusion depending on your personal financial timetable as to whether you should keep your money where it is and weather the storm, or if it's smarter to cut your losses now and put the money into government bonds, a savings account, or underneath a mattress. But what is not being discussed because it's not necessary, is whether or not it makes sense to spend $45,000 on a replica of the Ghostbusters car from some dude on eBay. The seller's description:

In August of 2006 I purchased the original Universal Studios Ecto-1. The car was stripped of all the Ghost busting equipment and sold as an ambulance and with a little negotiation I was able to get all of the roof rack parts and the original light bars. This car was used at the park for over fifteen years for the Ghostbusters Experience, parades and display inside the Florida park. This car is one of three Sony/MGM authorized Ghostbusters 1959 Cadillac Miller Meteor Ecto-1. There are the two original cars used in the films and this one built exclusively for the Universal Studios Theme parks. This car has a rich history and thousands of fans have been photographed with this car. The only major change made to this car was the roof rack. We modified the roof rack to resemble the screen used Sony Ecto-1 original car. Other upgrades are cosmetic and mechanically it's very sound.

The best part is that although this is a GENUINE THEME PARK ITEM, it was actually deconstructed and returned to its original ambulance state at the time of its last purchase. So you're not actually buying the Universal Studios Ghostbusters car (although why do you even want to do that?) but rather you are buying a fan-built souvenir using most of the parts from the Universal Studios Ghostbusters car. It's fan fiction. You are buying drivable fan fiction. Except you're not buying it, because you're not a ridiculous moron.