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The study, performed by NexGen Space LLC and partly funded by NASA, concludes that the space agency could land humans on the Moon in the next five to seven years, build a permanent base 10 to 12 years after that, and do it all within the existing budget for human spaceflight. The way for NASA to do this is to adopt the same practice that it's using for resupplying the International Space Station (and will eventually use for crew transport) — public-private partnerships with companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, or the United Launch Alliance. NASA can cut the cost of...

A new vulnerability in the Uconnect system gives attackers frightening remote powers over Chrysler vehicles, revealed in a Wired exclusive report. In a live demo, attackers used the vulnerability to cut out a Jeep Cherokee's transmission and brakes and, when the car is in reverse, commandeer the steering wheel — all without physical access to the vehicle. "This might be the kind of software bug most likely to kill someone," said Charlie Miller, one of the researchers behind the exploit. The full vulnerability will be presented next month at Defcon, although the researchers plan to withhold crucial details so that...

The Ford Mustang and BMW M4, at face value, probably don’t appear to have a whole lot in common. They go at it from opposite ends of the enthusiast landscape: The Mustang is the quintessential pony car—an American icon by almost any definition—while the BMW M4 builds on decades of finely groomed performance pedigree. Price-wise there’s a vast difference, too; you could get two high-performance, V-8-powered Mustang GT Coupes for approximately the price of a base BMW M4. Yet these two models have become more closely aligned than you might think, in recent years. Both models are nearly identical in...

Watch your heads! Check out this video showing the American Queen, the largest steamboat ever built, passing under the Illinois Central Railroad Bridge in Cairo, Illinois while southbound on the Ohio River with only 6″ minimum clearance. “We topped around above the bridge and backed down through it with the throttles ready to go ahead should anything go wrong,” a source told gCaptain. “We have several close bridges but that was the closest.” Built in 1955 by McDermott Shipyards, the American Queen is an authentic recreation of a classic Mississippi paddle-wheeler and really is powered by a genuine steam plant....

all traffic on both sides of the highway was closed. The westbound side of the freeway remained intact, but officers had stopped traffic while they tested its stability. A pair of small nearby highways that could possibly serve as detours were also closed. ... The showers forced the Los Angeles Angels' first rainout in 20 years and the San Diego Padres' first rainout since 2006. Saturday's rainfall broke records in at least 11 locations, including five places that had the most rain ever recorded on any day in July, Sirard said. July is typically the driest month of the year...

There are plenty of options all over the globe that go beyond the traditional spots in Europe. It’s not hard to feel right at home in Thailand. From its beautiful, tropical weather; low cost of living (in Chiang Mai, a rented two-bedroom home goes for about $500 a month); and access to high-quality medical care (in Ko Samui, it’s just $20 for a basic doctor’s visit), it’s altogether possible for the investment-minded among us to maintain residences in the heart of Southeast Asia as well as back at home. Plus, the Thai come by their reputation for being among the...

Also speaks various Arabic dialects from Saudi Arabia, YemenMax spends a lot of time in the desert with camels. (EAY) They call him ‘Max of Arabia’ as he speaks various Arabic dialects from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other regional countries, although he is American. The 27-year-old man, whose name is Max Stanton, came to the UAE in 2007 to study marketing in the American University in Sharjah and fell in love with the UAE. Although he has completed his studies, he refuses to return home and insists on staying permanently in the UAE, where he has made many...

My daughter (A research librarian) and I are planning a 1 week north France-Belgium-Luxemburg trip later this fall to see the historic battlefields and "general sites" across the area. Would fly into Paris, go the the "usual" tourist sites there by tour bus, but then she wants to drive across the area looking at the area of the battlefields and sites across the region. Over 2000 years since the Roman conquests, there are obviously hundreds - if not thousands - of interesting sites. Equally, we want to go to the more interesting architectural and battlefields just to "see" what each...

Google Inc. revealed Thursday that one of its self-driving car prototypes was involved in an injury accident for the first time. In the collision, a Lexus SUV that the tech giant outfitted with sensors and cameras was rear-ended in Google’s home city of Mountain View, where more than 20 prototypes have been self-maneuvering through traffic. The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain. In California,...

Iraq, Iran, and Russia find themselves in the headlines daily because of their ongoing military conflicts, human-rights violations, and oppressive regimes.Unsurprisingly, a report issued Thursday by the Reputation Institute ranks those countries among the least reputable countries in the world.On the other side are the most admired and reputable countries, of which Canada leads the pack.The Reputation Institute's Country Reptrak report "measures the reputation of 55 (largest by GDP) countries based on levels of trust, esteem, admiration and respect based on an online panel of more than 27,000 people representing the G8 countries."The report looks at 16 attributes for each...

Classes began in early September last year at a small new international university, called Nalanda, in Bihar in northeast India -- one of the most backward parts of the country. Only two faculties -- history, and environment and ecology -- were holding classes for fewer than twenty students. And yet the opening of Nalanda was the subject of headlines in all the major newspapers in India and received attention across the world. "Ritorno a Nalanda" was the headline in Corriere della Sera. The new venture is meant to be a revival of Nalanda Mahavihara, the oldest university in the world,...

Moving right along on My Velocity Airplane project, top is all cleaned up, lines all straight and even, finish sanding on the top of plane next week.

In Pamplona, rumour has it that Hemingway never ran in front of the bulls during the festival of San Fermín. It’s an urban myth: he did run – several times. What is not true is that he was injured, as he would later claim to a news agency. In fact, Hemingway was close enough to the action to witness a man being gored by a bull in 1924. This was actually the very first fatality in the modern history of the encierro, as the running of the bulls is called in Spanish.

Six years ago, The Onion ran a story called "United Airlines Exploring Viability Of Stacking Them Like Cordwood," with "them" being a humorous refusal to even say the word "passenger." Now Zodiac Seats France has actually come up with something that's arguably worse, a seating configuration that looks like a covert way to get people to demand high speed trains, more Amtrak lines, more steam ships—whatever it takes to never, ever fly again.

B.C. Wildfire Management confirmed the Big Beaver Creek fire has jumped the Alaska Highway between Prophet River and Fort Nelson, forcing the road to be closed and cutting Fort Nelson off from the south for the time being. The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM) and the provincial government issued the notice Wednesday afternoon. The road closure takes affect 30 kilometres north of Prophet River at Mile 250 of the Alaska Highway. All 52 firefighters tending to the blaze were pulled off earlier in the day as increased winds in the area fanned the flames to the point where it unsafe...

The remains of an imperial Roman legionary camp -- the only one of its kind ever to be excavated in Israel or in the entirety of the Eastern Empire from the second and third centuries CE -- have come to light at a dig near Megiddo, archaeologists said this week. Legio, a Roman site situated next to Tel Megiddo in northern Israel, served as the headquarters of the Sixth Legion Ferrata -- the Ironclad -- in the years following the Jewish Revolt, and would have helped keep order in the Galilee during the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132-135 CE... In...

A Polish mission at Tel Al-Farkha in Daqahliyah has discovered four pre-dynastic tombs, Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty announced on Tuesday. Eldamaty said three of the tombs are in a very poor condition and include child burials. Meanwhile the fourth tomb is in very good conservation condition and can be dated to the Naqada IIIC2 era. The minister told Ahram Online that the tomb is a small mastaba with two chambers. The southern one was filled with 42 clay vessels, mainly beer jars, bowls as well as a collection of 26 stone vessels of different shapes and sizes. Some of...

For 13 years, the excavation permissions were limited only to Egyptian missions to explore treasures in Upper Egypt but due to the “successive requests from foreign Universities and researchers, the council agreed to give the licenses after 13 years of suspension,” Amin told Youm7 without going into further details on number of the foreign missions applied for the permits. Allowing any foreign mission to search the Egyptian artifacts should be approved by the Ministry of Tourism and five other sovereignty bodies, former head of the SCA Abdel Halim Nour el-Din told The Cairo Post Saturday. Moreover, the mission should be...

--SNIP-- Three months ago, Brown’s Department of Transportation, fulfilling a 2009 legislative mandate, began circulating a draft of a California Transportation Plan, aimed at setting policy for the next quarter-century. Citing California’s commitments to reducing greenhouse gases and improving access to non-automotive transportation, the CTP proposes to reduce automotive travel by increasing motorists’ taxes, flatly rejecting “road capacity enhancing strategies,” and urging the state to “avoid funding projects that add road capacity.” Implicitly, therefore, it contends that increasing traffic congestion and the cost of driving would compel Californians to abandon their cars in favor of transit, bicycles and other non-automotive...

About 2000 years ago in what is today western Illinois, a group of Native Americans buried something unusual in a sacred place. In the outer edge of a funeral mound typically reserved for humans, villagers interred a bobcat, just a few months old and wearing a necklace of bear teeth and marine shells. The discovery represents the only known ceremonial burial of an animal in such mounds and the only individual burial of a wild cat in the entire archaeological record, researchers claim in a new study. The villagers may have begun to tame the animal, the authors say, potentially...