Popular Science (June 2004)

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GEEK TO LIVE ON TECH JUNE 2004 popsci.com
FROM 1954
AND: CAN THE HIGH-TECH
7E7 SAVE BOEING?
CONTENTS
JUNE 2004 VOLUME 264 #6
The Acura came roaring out of the gate hard left and knocked over a
Founded in 1872 two-and-a-half-foot-high concrete guard before DARPA could hit stop.
DARPA’S DEBACLE IN THE DESERT p. 86
tech
15 What’s New
Toyota’s prescient concept car; 1MP
camera phones; portable PlayStation;
geek campsite; remote-control lawn-
O N T H E C O V E R : J O H N M A C N E I L L ; I N S E T P H O T O G R A P H , C O U RT E S Y T O Y O TA M O T O R C O R P. ; T H I S PA G E , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: C O U RT E S Y T O Y O TA M O T O R C O R P. ; T O M E R H A N U K A ; G A R RY M A R S H A L L ;
mower; 20 products in 2 pages

101 How 2.0
ACQUIRE Digital SLRs vs. all-in-ones
INTEGRATE Trekking Tajikistan with GPS
HACK Unlocking your cellphone
BUILD Eight steps to a classic arcade
15 101
news
43 Headlines
RESEARCH Bacterial microbots
DEFENSE Gaps in the new missile shield
GREEN TECH 2,000 miles on one charge
PHYSICS Tabletop fusion reconsidered
stories
56Hollywood, Science, and the
End of the World The Day After
Tomorrow is a severe weather warning.
How’s its science? By Matthew Teague
38 44
62Is This What War Will Come
To? Five strange weapons systems
from the Pentagon’s future files.
By Eric Adams
M I C H A E L D A RT E R ; J O H N M A C N E I L L ; RYA N H E S H K A ; E D W I N F O T H E R I N G H A M ; A L A I N P I L O N
74 Tech ’54, Where Are You? We

send our writer 50 years back in time
to live life without e-mail, PDAs and
ATM cards. By Larry Smith
84 DARPA’s Debacle in the Desert 32 84

An inside look at what went wrong at
the Grand Challenge. Plus: Who’s ready
for next year’s race? By Joseph Hooper
94 Boeing, Boeing, Gone? Aviation

giant stakes its commercial-aircraft
future on the 7E7. By Bill Sweetman
depts.
6 From the Editor 9 Contributors 10 Letters
32 Man and Machine 38 Crime Seen
112 FYI 144 Looking Back 94 62
POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004 5
FROM THE EDITOR
Editor-in-Chief Scott Mowbray

Deputy Editor Mark Jannot
Bad Weather Bids Design Director Dirk Barnett

Features Editor Emily Laber-Warren
Science Editor Dawn Stover
For Boffo Box Office Senior Technology Editor Suzanne Kantra Kirschner
Senior Editor, What’s New Eric Hagerman
Aviation & Automotive Editor Eric Adams
Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer
Senior Associate Editors Nicole Dyer, Michael Moyer
Associate Editor Greg Mone
Assistant Editors Mike Haney, Martha Harbison
JUDGING FROM THE EARLY-CUT PREVIEW WE SAW A FEW MONTHS Assistant Editor, Best of What’s New Joe Brown
ago, Roland Emmerich’s latest movie, The Day After Tomorrow, Deputy Art Director Hylah Hill
Assistant Art Director Josh McKible
will be a hell of a ride—at least if you like to see favorite cities Designer April Bell
laid waste by tidal waves, plagues of giant hail and gangs of ram- Photo Editor Kristine LaManna
Staff Photographer John B. Carnett
paging tornadoes (which we do, certainly). At the very least, it Editorial Assistant Barbara Caraher
looks to be another step forward for computer-generated special Web Producer Peter Noah
Consulting Editor Jeffrey Rothfeder
effects. Pixel-processing power is now such that when a virtual Graphics Consultant John Grimwade
tsunami charges down a Manhattan street, the virtual camera can Contributing Design Editor Chee Pearlman
Contributing Automotive Editor Stephan Wilkinson
shoot from multiple angles and even surf the wave. You have to Far East Contributing Editor Dennis Normile
believe that filmmaking is moving, as inexorably as high water, to- Contributing Editors Dan Carney, Rebecca Skloot,
Bill Sweetman, Charles Wardell
ward the day when computer special effects will be indistin- Contributing Futurist Andrew Zolli
guishable from filmed reality. After that will come a virtual guild Contributing Artists Mika Grondahl, Jason Lee, John
MacNeill, Garry Marshall, Stephen Rountree, Bob Sauls
of CG actors, powered by AI, reading from scripts written by PCs Art Intern Peter Oumanski
and shot by robo-helmers, at which point an “independent” film will POPULAR SCIENCE PROPERTIES
be one produced on a PDA. But that’s a different nightmare scenario Publisher Gregg R. Hano
Advertising Director John Tebeau
from the one raised by The Day After Tomorrow. Vice President & General Manager Steve Belanger
Forget global warming: This movie is about global gasket-blowing, Executive Assistant Chandra Dwhaj
Northeast Advertising Office: Manager Howard S.
Mother Nature on a binge. Emmerich naturally says he shot the Mittman (212) 779-5112, Jill Schiffman (212) 779-
film as a warning, not merely as an entertainment. This is at least 5007, Mike Schoenbrun (212) 779-5148
Ad Assistant Brenda Charles
good marketing, and nicely timed after a recent Pentagon-funded Midwest Advertising Office: Manager John Marquardt
what-if/worst-case report sparked headlines when it speculated that (312) 832-0626, Megan Williams (312) 832-0624
rapid cooling in the northern hemisphere—a hangover effect of Ad Assistant Mickey Preston
Los Angeles Advertising Office: Manager Dana Hess
rapid warming—could begin as early as 2010. (310) 268-7484, Ad Assistant Deena Hancock
But does the film have anything to do with reality, or is it just Detroit Advertising Office: Manager Donna Christensen
(248) 988-7723, Ad Assistant Diane Pahl
a bucket-of-popcorn apocalypse? With the Fox studio’s coopera- San Francisco Advertising Office: Manager Amy Cacciatore
tion we took the script and some clips to three respected experts: a (415) 434-5276, Ad Assistant Sarah Needleman
Southern Regional Advertising Office: Manager Dave
paleoclimatologist, a paleontologist and the futurist who co-wrote Hady (404) 364-4090
the Pentagon’s report (see page 56). Frankly, we expected the same Classified Advertising Sales Joan Orth (212) 779-5555
Direct Response Sales Marie Isabelle (800) 280-2069
sort of pure-hokum dismissal that scientists offered last year Business Manager Jacqueline L. Pappas
regarding the silly magnetic-field disaster flick The Core. But that Director of Brand & Business Development L. Dennett
Robertson
wasn’t quite what we got. Certainly, the movie depicts a crazily Sales Development Managers Mike Saperstein, Daniel
accelerated, climate-on-crack-cocaine scenario that, compared to Vaughan
Events and Promotion Manager Christy Chapin Ellinger
historical examples of rapid climate change, is unbelievable. Rapid Creative Services Designer Mary McGann
climate change means different things in Earth years and in Holly- Marketing Coordinator Eshonda Caraway
Advertising Coordinator Evelyn Negron
wood minutes. But, our experts warned, the consequences of rapid Associate Circulation Director Barbara Venturelli
climate change would feel mighty apocalyptic to those who expe- Senior Planning Manager Margerita Catwell
Senior Production Director Laurel Kurnides
rienced them. The effects would overcome nations. Production Assistant Shawn Glenn
When it comes to summer blockbusters, we take the popcorn Prepress Director Lisa Szymanski
Prepress Manager José Medina
and the movies with a good deal of salt. But disaster flicks are, if noth- Publicity Manager Hallie Deaktor
ing else, a measure of the temperature of the time. Film historians
may look back at a movie like this, as they look back at On the Beach
and Dr. Strangelove in light of the atomic age, and note that our cul-
ture was beginning to sweat in 2004. Let’s hope the historians are not President Mark P. Ford
Senior Vice Presidents James F. Else, Victor M.
doing it from waterfront property in Beverly Hills. Sauerhoff, Steven Shure
Director, Editorial Development Scott Mowbray
Director, Corporate Communications Samara Farber
SCOTT MOWBRAY Mormar
JAKE CHESSUM
scott.mowbray@time4.com
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6 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004
CONTRIBUTORS
What would happen if some cruel deity (say, oh, a POPSCI editor) suddenly deprived
you of all the technology introduced in the past 50 years? Writer LARRY SMITH (left)
found out when he exchanged his cellphone, iPod, cable TV and Internet service for
a rotary-dial phone, a Columbia phonograph, a black-and-white Zenith TV and a
Royal typewriter (page 74). “I even bought a fedora,” Smith says, “but I felt foolish
wearing it.” During Smith’s 10-day retrotech exercise, he was forced to nurse a crush-
ing hangover with naught but aspirin and rotgut hair of the dog, crouch in front of
the TV for lack of a remote, and wheedle cash from a real, live bank teller. Still, there
were benefits to the low-tech life: the peacefulness Smith discovered when walking
down the street or relaxing at home without myriad distractions. Illustrator TAVIS
COBURN (right), who created the images that accompany the story, echoed Smith’s
love-hate feelings about technology. While Coburn adores his computer so much
he FedExed it to himself when he moved back to Toronto from California, he concedes
that being shackled to tech robs life of certain basic pleasures: “I haven’t even
looked outside today,” he says. “The weather report’s right there on my Blackberry.”
After reading the script of this summer’s climate-disaster

flick The Day After Tomorrow, writer MATTHEW TEAGUE
sought reassurance from the experts (page 56). “I thought
the first one would tell me it was wrong,” he says. “When
he didn’t, I thought, ‘Well, the second expert will.’ ” Instead,
all three researchers confirmed the worst: Climate change
could happen rapidly, catastrophically—and soon.
For an article about Boeing’s business woes, illustrator

RYAN HESHKA created a mirror-image portrait of the 7E7
Dreamliner, the airplane that could be Boeing’s savior or its
demise (page 94). Says Heshka, “My main challenge was
not to seem too dark and gloomy.” In this age of Photo-
shop, Heshka is resolutely old school: He paints in gouache
on illustration board, then puts the work in the mail.
Each month in our You 2.0 column (page 105), STEVE

CASIMIRO explores human interactions with tech. This
time around, Casimiro, a sports-tech convert (“I was an
anti-heart-monitor guy until a friend, who used one regu-
larly, crushed me like a little bug”), treats a skiing-induced
bum knee with a $2,000 device that pumps ice water
through sleeves to regulate temperature and pressure.
The drama-packed qualifying rounds for the DARPA Grand

Challenge robotic vehicle race, held a few days prior to the
race, provided a jolt to the adrenal glands. “It was immedi-
ately clear that anything could happen,” says photographer
MICHAEL DARTER. The race itself ended in disappointment
and vehicle failure (page 84). But for a few hours there,
says Darter, “It was like ‘Wow! This could actually work!’ ”

LETTERS
LETTERS@POPSCI.COM
Mountain to seep into your ground-

water, a figure confirmed by the
Department of Energy.
Brother, We Weren’t Fooling

Your article “My Little Brother on
Drugs” [April] was almost plausible
given the increasing popularity of
vanity, drug use and distracted par-
To the Moon? enting in our society. I almost be-
lieved that parents could condemn
Not Again! their 9-year-old son to years of needle
pricks and drug use, at a cost of
I’m a generally spacey guy so I’m sorry to be such a $160,000, for a few extra inches of
height at adulthood. I closed the mag-
stick-in-the-moon-dust, but why should NASA tear up azine in disgust, then noticed the is-
half a dozen programs that could provide real scien- sue date—April. What a relief! This
tific value to go to a place where we’ve already been was, of course, your April Fool’s joke,
[“Are We Really Going to the Moon Again?” April]? and I fell for it. Good one.
Pete Theodore
What could we possibly do on the Moon that we can’t Crestline, Calif.
do on the ISS or the like—and possibly for cheaper—
since a space base could be built without respect _FROM THE BLOGS
for gravity? What benefit does a lunar base provide Last month, over 350 Web logs
over a space port, where we could build relatively fast linked to popsci.com. A sample:
space-faring ships without any need for a hefty My Little Brother on Drugs_
One article in the April issue stands out
weight-supporting frame? There is more design flexi- from the rest, and not for its high-tech
bility in space than in a gravity well, which would pro- content or for its spectacular graphics. It’s
a simple article entitled “My Little Brother on
vide a significant cost benefit to the whole operation. Drugs.” And these aren’t street drugs . . .
posted by Brian DeMarzo, DeMarzo.net
Brian J. Teegardin demarzo.net
Detroit, Mich.
Reassessing Radioactivity their dose rates are very low—

You called the used radioactive or else how could they have such
material destined for Yucca Moun- long half-lives? You also mislead HOW TO CONTACT US SCIENCE, please contact:
Address: 2 Park Ave., Phone: 800-289-9399
tain [“Conspicuous Construction,” your readers by saying it will take New York, NY 10016 Web: popsci.com/subscribe
April] “this dangerous waste.” Well, 240,000 years before plutonium is Fax: 212-779-5103
CUSTOMER SERVICE AND
water is dangerous too: People safe when it’s obvious that the dan- LETTERS SUBSCRIPTIONS
simply have to learn the safety ger decreases 50 percent for each Comments may be edited For 24/7 service, please
for space and clarity. use our Web site:
rules when they’re around it. half-life plutonium goes through. Please include your popsci.com/customerservice
address. We regret that we You can also call:
Dose rates from radioactivity are Glen Howard cannot answer all letters. 800-289-9399 or write to:
the real safety issues. The isotopes Idaho Falls, Idaho E-mail: letters@popsci.com Popular Science
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of most concern are those with QUESTIONS FOR FYI Tampa, FL 33662-4568
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short-lived isotopes, people simply ble over the number of half-lives We regret that only letters For inquiries regarding
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POPULAR SCIENCE ONLINE
lives (not the 10 that you say). to 20 half-lives for plutonium-239 Visit our World Wide REPRINTS
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FROM “AHAB, CAPTAIN” TO
“ZERO-TO-SIXTY”
Your guide to this month’s POPSCI
AHAB, CAPTAIN PAGE 92

AUTONOMOUS MAYHEM 86
BODY PACKERS 38
BUNCH OF CROOKS 96
CASEY JONES 36
CELESTIAL JUKEBOX 80
CELL HACKING 43
CHURCHILLIAN FORMULATION 90
CLASSIC MAKEOUT CAR 82
CORPORATE GROUPTHINK 112
DEADMAN THROTTLE 36
DISASTER FLICK 58
DOUBLE-BAGGED CONDOM 39
ELECTROMAGNETIC RAILGUN 65
EXERCYCLE SWEATBOX 144
FEDORA 80
FLAMEOUT, INGLORIOUS 86
GRACE UNDER PRESSURE 92
HAIL CANNON 144
HAIR DRYER, WORLD’S LARGEST 35
IRON GORILLA 32
LEATHERMAN OF JETS 96
MELTON WOOL 76
MENTAL SPAM 54
METAL STORM 64
MIXED REALITY 15
MYDOOM, FUTURE OF 101
NANOGRASS 50
OVERDOSE, MASSIVE 40
PROSUMER DIGITALS 101
RODS FROM GOD 70
RYE WHISKEY 80
SHAKEDOWN ARTIST 88
SHOCK THERAPY 124
SONOFUSION 53
STORMS, APOCALYPTIC 59
STORMY TIMES 96
STRATOCRUISER 96
SUBARCTIC TEMPERATURES 59
SUPERCAVITATING TORPEDO 67
TAJIKISTAN 108
VICTORY OR DEATH 90
ZERO-TO-60 32
INSIDE: CELLPHONE CAMERAS 16 • THE FUTURE OF GAMING 18 • GEEKING OUT IN THE WILD 22 • TICK KILLER 26
SHE’LL
What’sNew Want to take this baby out? You’ll need a PlayStation 2. The
only place you can drive Toyota’s Motor Triathlon Race Car—a
rig designed to handle a track, street circuit or rally course equally well—is in
DRIVE YOU the forthcoming video game Gran Turismo 4. That doesn’t mean its marquee
innovation is pure fantasy. Called Mixed Reality (a joint venture between
CRAZY Toyota, Denso and Canon), the technology is a computerized imaging system
that makes performance adjustments on the fly. We already have cars that
TOYOTA’S CONCEPT MTRC
SERVES UP A PRETTY PICTURE adapt to changing road conditions, but the MTRC is the
first that could anticipate them. A helmet-mounted
OF AUTO SOFTWARE TECH. camera videos oncoming terrain and a comput-
er reacts: the system can raise, lower, stiffen
or soften the suspension as needed. It also
directs electric motors at each wheel. It’s a
shame the MTRC will never run, but
there’s no reason its tech
couldn’t find its way into
a real car.—JOE BROWN
C O U R T E S Y T O Y O TA M O T O R C O R P.
It’s a one-door. No, a hatch-side. Put it this way: The

left flank of the tandem-style MTRC pivots upwards
90 degrees for you and your navigator.

What’sNew CELLPHONE CAMERAS
WANT TO BE A
PAPARAZZO?
YOUR MOBILE GETS
MORE MEGAPIXELS.
YOU GET LEGIT PRINTS.
Last year, camera cellphones
were something of a novelty.
Their optical sensors captured VGA- 2 3 4 5
THE IMPROMPTU THE BEAUTY QUEEN THE MOBILE THE BLOGGER
quality stills at best (that’s about half a PHOTOGRAPHER WEBCAM
megapixel), so the resulting shots were
destined to live in the digital realm. This
summer, 1-megapixel combos capable
of producing album-worthy 3-by-5-inch
prints hit stores. One-hour photo outlets
are capitalizing: Already you can 1
THE TRANSFORMER
point your 1MP mobile at a wireless,
digital photo kiosk and—like that!—
print your snapshots.
Prices for these models will range up
to $600, and by the time you read this,
C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: C O U R T E S Y K Y O C E R A ; C O U R T E S Y M O T O R O L A ; C O U R T E S Y L G ; C O U R T E S Y N O K I A ; C O U R T E S Y S O N Y ( 2 ) ; J A S O N L E E
mobile carriers will have announced
which phones they’ll offer. Or, wait
another year and pick up a 2MP
version.—SUZANNE KANTRA KIRSCHNER
THE PHONES
1] THE TRANSFORMER The Sony Ericsson S700
makes the complete transformation from cellphone
to camera. Hold it horizontally, frame your shot in
the LCD and press the top-mounted shutter release.
D FRONT: A PHONE
BACK: A CAMERA
SPECS: 1.3MP; 8x digital zoom; 2.3-inch display;

7 hours talk time; 4.83 ounces; Bluetooth
2] THE IMPROMPTU PHOTOGRAPHER No need to
choose between taking a call and taking a picture
with Kyocera’s Koi. You can do both since the
answer button remains accessible in camera mode.
3.5 hours talk time; 4.02 ounces
3] THE BEAUTY QUEEN Tired of squinting to see
yourself in the mini mirror some cellphones use
for self-portraits? Motorola’s V710 employs a
1.3-inch external LCD as a second viewfinder.
4 hours talk time; 4.6 ounces; Bluetooth; MP3
4] THE MOBILE WEBCAM Like these other
models LG’s LG8000 takes videos. But
thanks to its compatibility with Verizon’s high-
speed (300 to 500kbps) EV-DO network, it’s NEXT UP: LIQUID ZOOM LENSES LIGHT 3 MM DIAMETER
also capable of working as a webcam. • Digital zooms lose quality. Opticals 1 2
SPECS: 1.3MP; 10x digital zoom; 2.25-inch display; LENS
don’t, but they’re bulky. So Philips
3 hours talk time; 3.9 ounces; external color LCD lined a tiny cylinder with a hydro-
5] THE BLOGGER By tracking your appointments, phobic film that squeezes water into
the calls you make and the photos you take, a convex state—a lens. Zapped with
Nokia’s 7610 Lifeblog creates an online diary of electricity, the film forgets its phobia,
your day. Just don’t ask us to suffer through it. lets the water spread, and alters the
SPECS: 1MP; 4x digital zoom; 2.13-inch display; convexity. Two stacked make a cell-
HYDROPHOBIC FILM CURRENT
3 hours talk time; 4.16 ounces; Bluetooth; MP3 sized optical zoom. ETA: two years.

What’sNew GAMING
DEVELOPERS EMBRACE Given the complexity of engineering convincing graphics,

lifelike movement and artificial intelligence, it makes sense to
THE PIECE PROCESS

A NEW APPROACH TO BUILDING
farm out work to software boutiques. Take physics modeling:
It used to be that when you shot a bad guy you saw a canned
animation. Now we expect “ragdoll” physics, in which a
GAMES CRANKS UP CREATIVITY. slavering zombie’s body reacts differently depending on
where it’s hit, and with what. Happily, code jockeys at middle-
ware outfits like Havok and Renderware have mastered
If you’re waiting for PlayStation 3 or Xbox 2 to spice
Newton’s minutiae and can deliver a ready-made solution. To
up life on the couch, don’t hold your breath. Console
wit: When the giants in Lionhead Studios’ forthcoming Black
gamers won’t be getting next-gen hardware anytime soon.
and White 2 hurl boulders at innocent villagers, the resulting
This spring, both Sony and Microsoft told antsy fans that
carnage will be modeled on a Renderware physics engine.
their focus for the foreseeable future will be on developing
Now publishers can concentrate on creating content—
great software for their existing platforms.
eye-popping visuals, stirring audio, dazzling dialogue and,
Sounds like a cop-out, but there may be something to
dare we hope, innovative gameplay—instead of noodling
their strategy. The ostensible idea is to give developers a sta-
with software code. After all, it’s such trappings that make
ble platform to work from, and thus unleash their creativity.
the upcoming Shadow Ops: Red Mercury different from
According to Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft’s games divi-
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, even though
sion, 80 percent of the time spent producing a game tradi-
they’re both built on the UnrealEngine2 technology. Under
tionally has gone into programming and only 20 percent into
the new paradigm it probably won’t be long before even
design—the creation of new worlds, characters, plotlines.
these titles feel dated.—STEVE MORGENSTERN
Maintaining the hardware status quo dovetails nicely with
an emerging software trend. In the past few years, develop-
ers have begun using a modular strategy to build games, DEVELOPMENT COST OF A HIT GAME*
6†
rather than starting from scratch for each one. Middleware
5
developers now design off-the-shelf tools and special effects
4
that “plug in” to the prefab code of a game engine; the end 3
product is often good enough for top-tier publishers. The 2
impressively realistic physics in Eidos’s Deus Ex: Invisible War 1
GEOFFREY GRAHN
and Rockstar Games’ Max Payne 2, which came out in late 0

2003, were both built on this model. 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
*AS ESTIMATED BY DFC INTELLIGENCE; †IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

What’sNew GAMING
MOBILES GET
3-D GRAPHICS
YOU WILL PLAY, AND
YOU WILL LIKE IT
Whether you want it or not,
full-blown 3-D games with
graphics to rival console ver-
sions are coming to your mobile
phone. For some, they’re
already here: AT&T’s mMode
has offered boxing and bass
fishing in 3-D since March (on
Nokia’s 3620, 3650 and
6820). This fall, inexpensive
phones with such capabilities
will flood the U.S. market.
If you want today’s ultimate
gaming handset, take a look at
Nokia’s revised N-Gage QD. It
keeps the best of the original—
Bluetooth for head-to-head battle
and a bright 2.5-inch screen—
while fixing its primary flaws.
Nokia moved the
speaker so
you can
actually use
it as a phone;
the game card slot
THE NEW FORCES OF DOOM

is more accessible; and it nearly
doubles the battery life at 5-10
CLEVER CODE AND SOUPED UP VIDEO CARDS hours. It’s also 20 percent
GIVE THIS SUMMER’S BLOCKBUSTER A REAL EDGE. smaller.—STEVE MORGENSTERN
The theory of designing 3-D graphics has always been the more polygons
the better. They’re the building blocks that inform the structure of objects
in games. But id Software’s long-awaited Doom 3 ($55), which comes out next
month, subscribes to a different theory. While this version does have more poly-
POCKET ROCKET
gons, the real trick is packing them with detail—layering lighting, reflections and
HANDHELD GAMING
other effects onto each one to achieve near Shrek-quality graphics.
FOR GROWN UPS.
They’ve also upped the realism of Doom 3 with sophisticated lighting physics. Sony’s forthcoming mobile-gaming
In the past, lighting effects were prerendered animations that played out the same platform, the PlayStation Portable,
way regardless of the source. Now the software knows how light actually works. is no Game Boy wannabe. It’s a
F R O M L E F T: C O U R T E S Y i d S O F T WA R E ; C O U R T E S Y N O K I A
sophisticated multimedia companion

Snuff out the torches in a cavern and the place goes black. Swing from a chan- built for gaming, but also music,
delier and shadows skitter around the room as they would in real life. Another movies and photos. From the dem-
first: per-pixel collision detection. Rockets will now fly between your enemy’s legs onstrations we’ve seen, it might
rival PlayStation 2 for power. The
or soar past his shoulder, rather than treating him as a solid block. graphics are rich, and the anima-
Naturally, to experience the full complement of Doom 3’s stunning visual tion smooth. It should be available
effects, you’ll need to invest in some new hardware: a PCI Express graphics card by March 2005, though Sony hasn’t
set a price. Below are the specs
from ATI or nVidia and a new PC with Intel’s Alderwood or Grantsdale chipset we know thus far.—S.M.
with the card slots to support them. The new high-speed graphics cards have two
separate paths totaling 4GB of bandwidth, versus the single shared 2GB path DISPLAY: widescreen LCD (480 by
used by current AGP (Advance Graphic Processor) graphics cards. Translated, 272 pixels) GAME MEDIA: 1.8GB
proprietary UMD disc VIDEO OUT:
that means you get a much wider data pipe. Might be a good idea to buy a none COMMUNICATIONS: Wi-Fi
comfortable desk chair as well.—STEVEN KENT EXPANSION: Memory Stick slot

What’sNew RECREATION
❯
GEEKS GONE WILD |1| MOUNTAIN HARDWEAR MOUN-
TAIN JET 3 Welded seams—glued under
ESSENTIALS? NOT EXACTLY. BUT THE OUTDOORS high heat and pressure—joining the
roof and floor mean resilient water-
WOULDN’T BE HALF AS MUCH FUN WITHOUT proofness in this two-door, three-person
THIS ROSTER OF DELUXE CAMPSITE GEAR. tent. 6 pounds, 3 ounces. $265;
mountainhardwear.com |2| UNCLE
MILTON X4 METAL DETECTOR ROVER
Keep the youngsters occupied at the
Some folks head to the hills for serenity, a chance to simplify. Or worse, campground with a remote-control car,
to rough it. Not us. We view every rendezvous with which sounds an alarm when its built-in
Ma Nature, at least in part, as an opportunity to metal detector finds gold—or a rusty tin.
update our cache of outdoor tech. Herewith, every- $35; unclemilton.com (available in fall)
thing the equipment hound might need to enjoy the
woods this summer—on his own terms.—ED FINN
|3| GIANT INTERNATIONAL T5SMS

Use your two-way radios to text-
message a request for s’mores (on a
qwerty keyboard) while you’re still five
miles out. It has 5 frequencies and 38
private codes. $100 a pair; giantintl.com
(available late summer) |4| PANA-
SONIC TOUGHBOOK 18 Naturally, it
has a shock-mounted hard drive, mag-
nesium alloy case and a moisture-resist-
ant keyboard. It also doubles as a tablet
PC and runs on a 900MHz Centrino
processor. $3,800; panasonic.com

|5| WEBER BABY Q GRILL At 14 inches
tall and 35 pounds, it’s a pint-size ver-
STAY IN TOUCH
WIRELESS POWER
sion of your deck grill. Meaning it gives
AND CONNECTIVITY
you real flames, at 8,500 Btu per hour,
thanks to the mini propane tank. $150;
weber.com |6| NITE IZE FLASHFLIGHT
DISC-O In the dark, a color-changing
LED and fiber-optic array turn this disc
into a well-identified flying object. $23;
niteize.com |7| EXCALIBUR EXOMAX THE ÜBERNERD
CROSSBOW Limbs that curve away IN THE ROUGH
from the stock when they’re unstrung
power your bolts at 350 feet per sec-
Siemens M65
The first ruggedized camera
8 phone: resistant to shock,
water and grit. Buy it over-
seas; use it here. Price not
set; siemens.com
ond, faster than any other. $880 with
scope kit; excaliburcrossbow.com
|8| SUUNTO X9 Lock a waypoint into
the X9 and get lost. This GPS-altimeter-
compass watch can lead you home.
$725; suunto.com |9| BUZZ OFF/
F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y S I E M E N S ; C O U R T E S Y H E AT H E R W I L L I A M S ; C O U R T E S Y I C P S O L A R ; I N S E T: C O U R T E S Y B E N C H M A D E K N I V E S
ORVIS CLOTHING Working with Buzz
Off, Orvis is using a chemical derived 9
from an insect-repelling breed of African
chrysanthemums in its new line of bug-
beating clothing. The chemical is added
to the fabric in a process not unlike dry
cleaning. Marquesas Shirt, $69; Mar-
quesas zip-off pants, $89; Invincible
Databahn Mobile T1
Socks $45 for three pairs (note: we rec- Satellite System
ommend against pulling them up to your Aim this dish at the southern
calves when wearing shorts); orvis.com sky, and it’ll pull in Internet
|10| BENCHMADE 160 TETHER KNIFE access, a TV signal and
A thermal-plastic coating on the handle phone service anywhere in
provides a strong grip without conduct- the lower 48. $4,000;
ing temperature. $70; benchmade.com thedatabahn.com
|11| NIKE AIR ZOOM TALLAC Your
hiking boots don’t have to be clunky
blister factories: Nike’s new Tallacs
weigh a pound apiece. Gore-Tex keeps
the elements at bay. $140; nike.com
10
Coleman Exponent Flex 5

Soak up rays with this solar
panel and juice most hand-
11 held devices in a few hours.
$120; colemansolar.com
PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN KANTOR POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004 23

What’sNew HOME
GRASS GUZZLER HATE MOWING? TRY IT FROM

YOUR LAWN CHAIR—WITH A REMOTE.
Necessity? Bah. Laziness is the true mother of invention. Just ask Luis Medina, 36, an
SPECS
EVATECH RCLM2004S
electrical engineer in Tarpon Springs, Florida, where the steamy summer days are ideal Base Price: $2,200
for growing grass, horrible for cutting it. Forced by his stringent neighborhood association to Curb Weight:115 lb.
Peak Power (gas engine): 6.5 hp
mow every week, Medina made a machine to ease his sweaty task: the Evatech RCLM2004S
Top Speed: 8 mph
remote control lawnmower. “Now I can kick back and relax in the shade,” Medina says. Fuel Economy: 4 acres/gallon
“And laugh at the people who have to push their lawnmower.”—JOE BROWN Remote Range: 2,000 feet
Units produced: 8
Contact: evatech.net
ONE SMART CHOPPER THE HYBRID POWER SYSTEM

The brain comprises an AM
receiver, microprocessors and a
gyroscope. Three 20MHz micro-
processors translate analog sig-
nals from the remote into digital DIVISION OF LABOR
values for speed and direction Separating power sources
to control the rear wheels. The for the blade and wheels
gyroscope senses if the mower ENGINE means no transmission.
runs off course and signals the BATTERY
•12V, 280 amp battery
microprocessors to redirect the starts the engine when sig-
wheels accordingly. naled by the remote. It drives
the wheels till the alternator
gets up to speed.
THE BRAIN • 6.5 hp Briggs & Stratton
engine turns the cutting
blade and runs the alterna-
ELECTRIC MOTOR ALTERNATOR
tor. The alternator powers
the electric motors (which
drive the wheels) and, of
course, charges the battery.
THE KEY TO LEISURE

The remote’s joystick
controls speed and direc-
tion. Two AM channels
let you switch frequencies
should one be occupied
by a neighbor’s 1/10-scale
monster truck.
INFOGRAPHIC: JASON LEE; CHARLES MARAIA (2)

What’sNew
[WIRE]06.2004
PICTURE THIS A SNEAKY LITTLE INNOVATION DESIGNED TO THWART LYME DISEASE
• Deer ticks aren’t born with Lyme disease. They pick it up while feeding on the blood of infected rodents—namely mice and chipmunks.
Knowing this, the CDC and Bayer Environmental Science developed the Maxforce Tick Management System: cigar-box-shaped plastic
traps that kill ticklets with Fipronil but leave rodents unharmed. In tests, tick populations dropped by 97 percent in two years.
•From the crypt: the Mummy’s

naked mechanical skeleton.
LEAN, MEAN, FREAKING MACHINE

Universal Studios Orlando unwraps a frighteningly
limber mummy at its new amusement park ride.
FROM TOP: GEOFFREY GRAHN; COURTESY UNIVERSAL ORLANDO
He’s 6 feet 8, 650 pounds, and he’s got 40 different
moves. If Universal Studios Orlando’s new animatronic
mummy ever plays ball, make sure he’s on your team.
The creature is the namesake of the $80 million Revenge
of the Mummy thrill ride, which opened in May. Built of
thousands of parts that are articulated by 1,000 feet of
4,000psi hydraulic tubing, the robot has four times the
technical agility of state-of-the-art animatronics. All this
equipment goes toward mimicking the countless motions
that make up human movement. Universal has developed new force-
feedback algorithms to perfectly emulate the speed and fluidity of an
(undead) human. A control computer monitors the position, velocity and
force of every twitch to make sure he doesn’t run amok during his 15-
second choreographed appearance—which he performs more than
1,500 times a day. Like we said, the guy’s got hustle.—ERIC MINTON

What’sNew
[WIRE]06.2004
2003 VEHICLE
SALES BY GENDER
MALE FEMALE
STATS
Numbers
that count.
C
MID OMPA
-SIZ CT,
SIZE E, FULL- 2,744,669
CAR
S 3,317,044
LUXU
SPO RY A
RTS ND
CAR
577,148
S 1,105,847
PICK 553,676
UPS
2,610,186
SUV 1,611,232
S
2,731,712
VAN
S 416,651
981,508
WORST DRIVERS BEST DRIVERS

• Capless, electrically rotated ball valves NUMBER OF ACCIDENTS PER 1,000 DRIVERS PER YEAR
152 43
provide hands-free fueling and fluid refilling.
WHAT WOMEN WANT

Swedish concept: sexy or sexist?
STUDENT
FARMER
Volvo’s YCC concept car, designed entirely by a team of female engi-
neers and stylists, met with snickers and smart-ass comments from the
good-ol’-boys club when it debuted at the Geneva Motor Show in
MEDICAL
DOCTOR 109 FIREMAN 67
March. It’s loaded with simplifying features ostensibly designed to attract
ATTORNEY 106
ARCHITECT 105
PILOT 75
HOME-
a female audience. For instance, only mechanics can open the hood, REAL ESTATE BROKER 102 MAKER 76 POLITICIAN 76
on the assumption that women don’t want to mess with what’s under it.
We got our macho going and confronted Lena Ekelund, a deputy man-
ager of the design team. She did OK.—STEPHAN WILKINSON
COMMON DRIVING DISTRACTIONS
Popular Science: Why aim a car at women? % OF SUBJECTS GUILTY OF DURING % OF
DRIVING TIME
Lena Ekelund: They’re the most demanding customers. We found that the
Manipulating music/
demands of women are higher than those of men, even on performance. 91.4 audio controls 1.35
PS: Did it concern you that the YCC would be perceived as a girly car?
LE: When people see what we have done with this broad-shouldered, 77.1 Conversing 15.32
muscular, sleek thing … girls like boys with muscles, and I guess we like Eating,
71.4 drinking, spilling 1.45
cars with muscles as well.
PS: Which of its features will go into production? 45.7 Grooming 0.28
LE: I’m not allowed to tell you, but if you look at Volvos three years from 40 Reading or writing 0.67
now, you’ll be surprised.
PS: American women are a frightened lot. Did you consider making 30 Using a cellphone 1.3
the YCC a fortress car, maybe with a 360-degree Mace sprayer?
7.1 Smoking 1.55
LE: We do have a feature that will tell you if anyone has been tampering
with the car. When you get within range of the car, the key flashes
red to warn you that perhaps you don’t want to open it on your own.
PS: Why make it seem like women have no mechanical ability by PASSENGER VEHICLE DEATH RATES
making the engine inaccessible? 25*
MALE OCCUPANTS
LE: I don’t think there are many guys who would be able to do anything FEMALE OCCUPANTS
constructive to fix a modern engine either. What are you going to 20
do, replace the fan belt? You’d have to disassemble half the engine bay.
PS: Driving skills are already on the decline. Won’t features like auto- 15
matic parking worsen the situation?

LE: I don’t think driver skill is dependent on whether you’re good at 10
parallel parking. Having good visibility and feeling in control is much

5
more important. In Germany, they already have sensors making sure
C O U R T E S Y V O LV O
cars don’t get too close on the Autobahn. I am not personally fond of
that; I want to be the one in control. 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
*NUMBER OF OCCUPANTS KILLED PER 100,000 POPULATION
SOURCES: J.D. POWER, QUALITY PLANNING CORPORATION, AAA FOUNDATION FOR TRAFFIC SAFETY, INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY–HIGHWAY LOSS DATA INSTITUTE

What’sNew MUST-SEE TECHNOLOGY
THEGOODS
2O SERIOUSLY HOT PRODUCTS THAT (ALMOST) SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.
Armed with Data

SwissMemory USB pocketknife
>> Swiss Army found something
else to build into a knife. USB key
removable for air travel.
Available in 64MB or 128MB.
Price not set; victorinox.com
A Flashlight
with Flair
The Perfect Roommate Gerber Inferno
Kärcher RoboCleaner >> When it’s full of >> Each of its flexible
dust bunnies, this robot vacuum roves until arms is tipped with an
it finds the infrared beam that’ll guide it LED bulb, so you can
back to its base. $1,500; robocleaner.de aim light in several
directions. $55;
gerbergear.com
No Patience?
No Problem.
Eastman Outdoors Reveo
>> A rotating, vacuum-sealed
cylinder does two days worth
of marinating in 20 minutes.
$200; freethemeat.org
A Better
Nozzle
Craftsman
Easy Squeeze
>> A reversed
trigger lets you
pull with your
strongest digits,
so you can
handle that
garden hose Motor Minder Power Suit
with authority. Craftsman Fresh Start Solar SCOTTeVest
$10; sears.com >> A dispenser >> Recharge
nested in the gas electronics while
cap gradually you wander: Solar
Names That Tune releases a panels on the back
Audiovox Vox 8610 >> Dial chemical to juice a power pack
*ID, hold the handset up to stabilize the fuel that can top off a
a speaker for 15 seconds, in your dormant cellphone battery
and Virgin Mobile texts mower. $17; in 3 hours. $475;
you the song name. $119; virginmobileusa.com craftsman.com scottevest.com

Stay in Line
Iteris AutoVue Lane Departure Warning System
Poor Man’s >> An onboard camera and
Segway computer alert you when you
Body Engine Scooter
switch lanes without
>> It doesn’t use
signaling. Look for it on the
gyroscopes and a
Infinity FX45. iteris.com
balancing computer
Inside Job since it has four
Serengeti Stratus Titanium wheels rather than
>> A polarizing filter can’t two. Goes 15 miles The VolksBeemer Bluetooth
scratch when it’s built into on a 10-hour BMW SlideCarver >> Disc brakes, front
plastic lenses—a first. $200; charge. Holds 300 suspension and pivoting rear wheels for Blowups
serengeti-eyewear.com precise cornering make this the one Sony Ericsson
pounds. $1,300;
push scooter that qualifies as cool. MMV-100
shoplifestyle.com
$695; bmw-online.com >> Beam
photos via
Nice Bluetooth from
Package your Sony
Palm Zire 72 Ericsson cell-
>> An MP3 phone to this
player, 1.2 gadget to display
MP camera them on a TV.
that captures Uncer $200;
15-frames- sonyericsson.com
per-second videos, Bluetooth
radio, and 320-by-320-pixel
color display all fit in this
PDA’s 4.8-ounce body.
32MB. 312MHz processor.
$300; palmone.com
Dyson
Gets Down A Bona Fide
Dyson DC11 Telescope Master of Stairs
Vacuum Cleaner Tarantula >> Fully
>> Cupboard or articulated arms
display case? mean that in
This stylish addition to
canister the backyard,
vacuum’s wand this remote-
telescopes and the control rover
hose wraps around can tackle a terrain
its body for compact historically
storage. $500; impossible for such
dyson.com toys: stairs. $100;
mgae.com
Band Aid
Transperformance/Klein Acoustic Guitar Crazy Sound
>> Strings ride atop six piezo-electric Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 3
chips that sense their Speakers >> In addition to a five
frequency; internal motors foot tall, $16,000 set, B&O’s
tune them. $14,500; Acoustic Lens technology—which
kleinguitars.com sends out a 180-degree wave of
sound—now comes in a
bookshelf model. $3,000 a pair;
bang-olufsen.com
Goodbye, Tungsten Mindful Bindings

Enlux LED Flood Light >> The first LED drop-in Atomic Neox EBM >> The first
replacement for a standard floodlight glows like a computerized ski bindings make sure
60 watter, lasts 50,000 hours, and doesn’t get hot you’re securely snapped in and alert you if
enough to pose a fire threat. $90; enluxled.com you’re not. $1,050; atomic-usa.com

MAN &
MACHINE
BY STEPHAN WILKINSON
HARD, FAST, SHINY OBJECTS &
WHY WE LOVE THEM
Do The Locomotion:
207 Tons and 4,400 hp
GE’s Evolution does 0-60 in 45 seconds, unloaded. Braking is a
different story: A full-on panic stop takes half a mile.
THEY SIT ON A SPUR OF TEST two V12 engines direct-driving alter- emissions regs? Neither did I. I assumed
track outside General Electric’s nators five feet in diameter. These that the 207-ton iron gorilla of the
locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylva- are two of the most advanced diesel- wheeled world damn well did whatever
EDWIN FOTHERINGHAM
nia, panting and grumbling like two electric locomotives in the world: GE it wished. But the new Tier II standards
old lions half asleep. The ominous, Evolutions, running all-new power- require substantial cuts in NOx and
muttering rumble is the sound of plants designed specifically to meet particulate matter, and GE, one of
8,800 horsepower at idle—24 cylinders stiff Tier II EPA locomotive emissions the world’s major locomotive manufac-
with pistons big as buckets, turbo- regulations that go into effect next year. turers, has designed a new engine to
chargers the size of washing machines, You didn’t know locomotives had meet them handily. The engine has an

MAN &
MACHINE
air-to-air turbocharger intercooler that almost 60,000 pound-feet of torque at world’s largest hair dryer, near the top
lowers induction-air temperature to start-up—the equivalent of about 120 of the car body, toward the back. Does
only a few degrees above ambient, for Ferrari Enzos—good for a zero-to-60 the grid actually glow, I ask lead sys-
cleaner emissions and more power. Not time, unloaded, of just shy of 45 sec- tems engineer Mike Schell? “It does
only is the new GEVO 12 four-stroke onds. Rather longer, though, if you’re when it catches fire,” he says with
diesel 40 percent cleaner than its prede- dragging a 17,000-trailing-ton coal train. a straight face. But even with the
cessor, it’s three percent more fuel- The traction motors also brake the blowers at work, you wouldn’t be able
efficient as well. train. When the driver (“engineer” no to tolerate the compartment where the
That may not sound like much, but longer being the term) wants to slow grid lives.
it’s huge: A half-percent improvement down, he turns the motors into genera- How much fun is it to drive a loco-
is a big competitive advantage in loco tors, reversing the field so they’re mak- motive? Not much. The machine has
sales. A locomotive typically burns ing electricity rather than consuming its eye on you, and headquarters has its
about 300,000 gallons of fuel a year, it, and are thereby magnetically resist- eye on the machine from a distance.
and saving 9,000 gallons per engine ing the turning of the wheels. This is a Every 2 minutes (every 30 seconds
can make a big bottom-line difference. lot cheaper than replacing brake shoes, when the train is traveling faster than
A modern locomotive is a hybrid. which won’t last long if asked to hold 50 mph), a big red caution light that
The diesel doesn’t drive the train; it back a train that is as heavy as a tramp reads “alerter reset” glows on the dri-
cranks an alternator, which powers the freighter. The wheel brakes are used ver’s panel. The driver has 25 seconds
six huge electric traction motors that only at slow speeds and to bring the to slap a yellow switch to affirm that
actually turn the locomotive’s wheels. train to a complete stop. he is indeed present and accounted
Each motor is set transversely between The excess current produced is dis- for. If he doesn’t, the power automati-
a pair of drive wheels. On an Evolution sipated by a series of big, fan-cooled cally backs down and then the brakes
the electric motors will put out a total of “dynamic-brake grids,” effectively the come on—hard. This is the modern
MAN &
MACHINE
equivalent of the deadman throttle. passing no-horn-blowing-after-midnight

The fear of the out-of-control train noise-pollution regulations, even this
traces partly to the era in which engi- weapon is being disarmed. Granted, a
neers sat in the very nose of the train train weighing thousands of tons is
rather than farther back in what’s going to turn even a 4-ton dually pick-
today called a safety cab. Up front, they up into shrapnel, but the front end of a
would occasionally experience a mes- locomotive is not a nice place to be
merizing vertigo brought on by the when the blast goes off.
drivers’ eyes following each passing The Evolution driver sits in a kind of
cross tie as it rushes under the cow- glass cockpit, behind two large CRT
catcher. Lightplane pilots are prey to monitors upon which he can call up
similar phenomenon, flicker vertigo, some 30 different graphic pages of
caused by looking at a bright light instruments, gauges, graphs and infor-
through idling prop blades. mation, with a separate monitor for the
The accountants in a railroad com- helper. Every aspect of the engine’s
How much fun is it to drive?

Not much. The machine has its eye on you, and
HQ has its eye on the machine from a distance.
pany hate hard braking, especially if health can be tracked, and GE monitors
it means replacing tracks scalloped by most of its locomotives remotely, via
sliding steel wheels. But almost every GPS and an OnStar-like link to the Erie
day it happens somewhere in the factory. The telemetry will spot a fault
country, typically at grade crossings. and transmit data to the closest service
The biggest danger a loco crew faces, shop, telling the technicians what the
up there on the pointy end of the problem is. They will alert the crew to
engine, is not the high-speed Casey stop if the problem is urgent.
Jones crash but the drunk in the pick- Toughest duty for a crew is not a zil-
up truck trying to weave through the lion-ton coal drag two miles long. No,
crossing gates at three in the morning. the worst kind of trip features a bunch
“People think trains can stop like cars,” of ungated crossings as well as car
says GE product-line manager Peter exchanges that require the drivers to
Lawson. Clearly people are not think- constantly climb in and out of the train.
ing. It can take half a mile to panic- Can a sloppy driver abuse a $2 mil-
stop a loaded train. lion engine? Not really, says Schell.
Since four-bar crossing gates that “There’s nothing he can do to hurt it.
completely block the road are roughly We’ve got enough protection and
twice as expensive as the standard two- warnings in place to protect the temps
bar gates, railroad companies are loath and pressures, the cooling water, the
to install them. Indeed, many rural oil, everything. The only people who
crossings are still totally ungated, can hurt an engine are the railroads, by
which means that a train has to stop so not doing the proper maintenance.”
the driver’s helper can climb out and Still, between each of the alerter
physically halt traffic. There’s nothing resets, humans are in control, and
much a loco driver can do when they can lose control. GE’s short test
approaching a gated crossing but blow track in Erie ends “in a pile of dirt and
the horn, particularly if he’s ballin’ the a nice old lady’s yard,” says Lawson,
jack to stay on schedule. And with “which we’ve needed to landscape a
increasing numbers of municipalities couple of times.” ■
The Little Inbox That Could: write Stephan Wilkinson at manandmachine@time4.com

CRIME
SEEN
BY JESSICA SNYDER SACHS
AT THE INTERSECTION OF
SCIENCE & CRIME
DrugCartelsRaisethe
GamefortheMuleTrackers
It’s called body packing, it’s dangerous and gross, and new
technology makes gut-based drug smuggling harder to spot.
have dispersed across the local neigh-

borhoods, these undercover uniforms
will blend in with the sidewalk traffic
to all but the keenest drug dealers and
street runners. Today, Trojan’s unit is
looking for less experienced quarry.
They are hunting for “swallowers,”
drug couriers who rent out their bod-
ies as cargo containers, each carrying
upwards of a kilo, or 2.2 pounds, of
packaged narcotics. It’s an old trick,
body packing, but on the rise, and get-
ting more sophisticated. Increased air-
port security has caused some drug
cartels to shift a majority of their small
shipments out of carry-on baggage and
into the less easily searched internal
compartments of the “mule.”
Trojan and his partner walk toward
Rockaway Boulevard, where they
begin conducting the kind of ad hoc
street interviews—“Excuse me, sir,
may we talk with you for a minute?”—
that occasionally lead to the arrest of
heroin smugglers arriving from Cen-
tral or South America, on their way to
make connections in the neighbor-
hoods that surround the airport.
Search and seizure laws say that sus-
pects don’t have to let agents look in
SPECIAL AGENT CHRIS TROJAN hoods around John F. Kennedy Interna- their bags. “But,” says Trojan, “believe it
pulls into the parking lot of tional Airport for a particular class of or not, they usually do. I think they’re
a convenience store in Ozone Park, arriving travelers. afraid they’ll look guilty if they don’t.”
Queens, and spots a half dozen col- Trojan—his short hair wet and In the drug-refining centers of Cen-
leagues lingering out front, exchanging spiky, his ruddy face freshly shaved— tral and South America, the cartels tar-
morning banter and finishing second falls in with the crowd long enough to get the nondescript—middle-class
cups and cigarettes. The previous trade the expected verbal abuse and workers, women, even children—and
afternoon, at the Drug Enforcement extract his partner for the day. In such groom them for the task of swallowing
Administration’s New York offices in a cluster, the officers’ street clothes as many as 100 packages the thickness
ALAIN PILON
Manhattan, Trojan’s unit had looked at present a rather homogeneous look of and shape of fat breakfast sausages.
the week’s open schedule and decided faded blue jeans topped by dark Wind- Some swallowers are naturals, while
to start this day trolling the neighbor- breakers or leather jackets. When they others build up to the task with a

succession of gradually larger objects
such as grapes and baby carrots. “It has
more to do with psychology than the
size of the person,” says Trojan, who
has arrested small-framed women car-
rying far more cargo than that found
inside men twice their size.
Once packed, the courier must slip
unsuspected through airport customs
and try to rendezvous with his or her
connection before the cargo starts pass-
ing of its own accord. Nature deter-
mines the timetable here. Occasionally
agents end up making their arrests as
suspects leave bathrooms. Sometimes
they locate already-passed packets in
pockets, suitcases or shopping bags.
Drug swallowing came to light in the
mid-’70s, when the first known swal-
lower showed up in a Toronto emer-
gency room with an intestinal block-
age. During the 1990s, the typical
packaging—double-bagged but leak-
prone condoms—gave way to sturdy,
machine-pressed pellets. Each pellet is
fashioned from the sealed finger of a
latex glove that has been packed with
8 to 12 grams of narcotics—most often
heroin, sometimes cocaine or amphet-
amines—and coated with hard wax.
The DEA recently got a look at one of
the production machines, rigged from a
hydraulic jack. There’s a growing con-
sensus that at least some cartels are
now using machines professionally
engineered for the task, says Trojan.
When Trojan cuts through the wax
coating of one of the pellets, which is
about 1.5 inches long and 0.75 inches in
diameter, he finds additional layers of
plastic wrap, transparent tape, carbon
paper and other materials that suggest
an attempt to evade X-ray detection.
Though the ruse ultimately doesn’t suc-
ceed, it reveals a working knowledge of
radiology on the part of the manufac-
turers . . . or their medical consultants.
But Trojan has his own team of med-
ical consultants. In late 2000 he began
bringing his drug-packed suspects to
Bellevue Hospital, on Manhattan’s East
Side. Although several hospitals nearer
JFK airport were more convenient for
the X-rays and medical exam that
Trojan’s suspects required, he got little
sympathy from the staff at their
CRIME
SEEN
emergency rooms when he explained Journal of Medicine that provides the

the delicacy and urgency of the situa- most up-to-date guidelines for diagnosis
tion. “They pointed me to the waiting and care. It includes guidelines for rec-
room and the end of the line,” he says. ognizing telltale X-ray patterns such as
There he would sit amid the screaming, the star-shaped “rosette” that signals
the bleeding and the retching—hand- where the knot at the end of a latex
cuffed to a drug courier passing nar- packet traps tiny air bubbles inside its
cotics into his or her pants. folds. Similarly, air between the layers
The first swallower who Trojan of a typical drug package can reveal its
brought to Bellevue sparked immediate sausage-shaped outline. The repetition
interest and care. “The medical issues of these patterns on an abdominal X-ray
are fascinating,” says Stephen Traub, the tells the doctor that he or she is looking
Bellevue toxicologist who was on call at manufactured goods, rather than the
that day. “And the patients are some of remains of yesterday’s dinner.
the saddest I’ve ever seen.” As a toxi- The Bellevue doctors offer a com-
“If anyone is contemplating

how to get a small amount of a concentrated
bioterrorist agent into this country, this is it.”
cologist, Traub understood the medical pelling reason for further research into
risks that other ER doctors tended to their new specialty. “If anyone is con-
gloss over. Though the machined pack- templating how to get a small amount
ets are less likely than tied-off condoms of a concentrated bioterrorist agent into
to leak and trigger a massive overdose, this country, this is it,” says Hoffman.
it’s all too easy to leave a package With its capacity of 10 grams, a single
behind, lodged in the intestines. Should pellet could be used to import enough
doctors then release the patient into anthrax, ricin or other deadly biochem-
police custody, the pellet could degrade ical powder to wreak havoc. “Maybe I’m
and begin to release its contents. just a dumb doctor,” says Hoffman, “but
Trojan shares the doctor’s sympathy we hear about drug money funding a
for many of his suspects. “For the most lot of terrorist operations, and those
part, these are not hardened criminals,” people are going to think about this.”
he says. “Once I have them under arrest, U.S. Customs Service is aware of the
my priority is to get them the best pos- threat, confirms Sam Stabile, a deputy
sible medical care.” And so, over the hos- chief inspector for Kennedy Airport.
pital bed of their first shared charge “It’s one of the toughest things to de-
nearly four years ago, Trojan and Traub fend against—someone who’s willing
forged a friendship and a mutually to swallow something that could kill
advantageous working relationship. him.” While the threat is hypothetical,
“They give us the red-carpet treat- the drug cartels have shown they rec-
ment, and we bring them a research ognize the versatility of body packing:
opportunity like no other,” says Trojan. They have used swallowers to courier
Last September, Trojan and Traub pellets filled with rolls of currency.
filled a large auditorium with a presen- “Our most powerful screening tools
tation on “body packer syndrome” at the are not X-rays or body scans but the
annual meeting of the North American instincts of our inspectors,” says Sta-
Congress of Clinical Toxicologists in bile. “A lot of what we do involves
Chicago. Traub and Bellevue colleagues observing behavior, recognizing dis-
Robert Hoffman and Lewis Nelson crepancies in reasons for travel, and the
have also published several scientific like. We acquired this expertise before
papers on the syndrome, including a re- 9/11 in our fight against narcotics, and
cent review article in The New England now we are applying it to terrorism.” ■
H E AD L I N E S JUNE
2OO4
Discoveries, Advances & Debates in Science and the World

INSIDE
MISSILE DEFENSE DÉJÀ VU
Why the missile shield EMERGING RESEARCH
is still a long shot.
A GUTSY ELECTRIC CAR Can it
cruise 2,000 miles on
a single charge?
VENUS IN VIEW Another
THE NEW SCIENCE
OF CELL HACKING
planet worthy of
obsessive attention.
DESKTOP FUSION Revamped
and looking for respect.
Programming bacteria like computers, scientists tap an unexpected labor force.
As the cruiser powers into an dynamite but will scrub effectively reprogramming
enemy harbor the captain, carbon dioxide from smoke- the genetic pathways that
suspecting mines, unleashes stack emissions, diagnose control how the organism
a swarm of microbes into the disease, and siphon hydro- behaves. “You no longer
water. By the trillions they gen from water for fuel. think about fixing a single
sniff out TNT, fluorescing The microbots’ chore list is gene; you think about put-
brighter hues of red as they endless, says Weiss, who is at ting in whole sets of instruc-
near their quarry and then the forefront of a small but tions,” Weiss explains.
digest the explosive, render- sophisticated new field of This June scores of re-
ing it harmless. genetic engineering called searchers, including Weiss,
Sounds far-fetched, but if synthetic biology. While will convene for the first-ever
Princeton University bioengi- traditional genetic engineers conference on synthetic bio-
neer Ron Weiss has his way, shuffle genes from one organ- logy, hosted by MIT. Weiss, for
within the next 10 years the ism to another, synthetic one, is eager to get feedback
first generation of man-made biologists design and rewire on his newest creation: bac-
bacterial robots, or micro- complex networks of genes teria programmed to measure
bots, not only will detect inside a single organism— concentrations of a chemical
PROGRAMMING A LIVING CHEMICAL DETECTOR
Colony of Colony of
detector cells detector cells
F R O M L E F T: A LY S O N A L I A N O ; C O U R T E S Y S U B H AY U B A S U ( 2 )
Colony of Colony of
sender cells sender cells
LOW CONCENTRATION HIGH CONCENTRATION
With funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, bioengineer
Ron Weiss is creating living sensors: bacteria engineered to detect and measure the
concentration of various target chemicals. The image at left (magnified x100) shows
a colony of “sender cells” (orange), engineered to secrete a specific chemical. Like an
ink drop in water, the chemical dissipates as it moves away from the source. The sec-
ond colony (green), made up of “detector cells,” is programmed to absorb the chemi-
cal and fluoresce green when it detects weak amounts; thus the detector cells that are
closest to the sender cells, where the chemical concentration is high, don’t glow and
can't be seen. At right, Weiss has rewired the detector cells to do the reverse: glow
when the chemical is strong. Thus the cells closest to the sender cells glow green.
MICROBOT BUILDER RON WEISS
TICKER /// 03.16.04 TB FEARS THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION REPORTS THAT THE NUMBER OF DRUG-RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS CASES IS 10 TIMES HIGHER IN EASTERN >
HEADLINES
H NATIONAL SECURITY
HAIL MARY LAUNCH?

and then form a bull’s-eye around The Pentagon fields its controversial missile shield.
the source (see graphic). “The
impact of research like this will be While dirty bombs and bioweapons steal headlines, the Pentagon is plowing
tremendous,” says Eric Eisenstadt, ahead with a 21-year-old plan to silence a more traditional weapon of mass
who handles synthetic-biology destruction: the intercontinental ballistic missile. Despite widespread criticism,
funding for the Defense Advanced this summer the Missile Defense Agency will deploy the humble beginnings of
Research Projects Agency. a nationwide missile defense shield.
At the genetic level, bacteria If all goes according to plan, by September the rudimentary shield will con-
use many of the same tricks as sist of 10 ground-based interceptors (six in Alaska and four in California) and
computer circuitry. In a typical a constellation of early-warning infrared and radar systems. The interceptors
genetic circuit, one gene produces are designed to collide in orbit with long-range ballistic missiles, presumably
a protein that turns a correspon- launched by North Korea or China, and annihilate them upon impact. At least
ding gene on or off, much the that’s the plan on paper. Unlike other U.S. weapons systems, which must pass
way a computer inverter turns a a series of benchmark tests before deployment, the system remains largely
1 into a 0 and vice versa. untested. (The testing requirements were quietly waived in 2002 to enable the
MDA to meet a president-mandated fall 2004 deadline.)
[ ]
“IT’S FASCINATING TO THINK THAT Critics say the system, which will cost upwards of $53 billion over the next
YOU CAN MAKE LIVING ORGAN- five years, is too premature for deployment. “The fundamental problem is that
ISMS DO WHATEVER YOU WANT,” there’s no way to reliably discriminate between a decoy and a real warhead,”
SAYS PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
BIOENGINEER RON WEISS. says MIT nuclear physicist Theodore Postol. Despite more than two decades of
research, “the basic science just isn’t there,” he says. And even if the Pentagon
Switched on, a gene might pro- could employ a perfect missile defense system, opponents argue that it would
duce a chemical signal that do little to protect the United States from an ever-growing network of terrorists
directs an organism to seek out who hardly need ICBMs to threaten homeland security. “I’m no hippie,” Postol
food; switched off, it helps the says. “I like weapons that work.”—REPORTING BY MARK FARMER
organism conserve energy. By
plugging in proteins and genes, Infrared satellite
Weiss can activate or deactivate
chemical signals on command.
Weiss made his first single
gene circuit in 1997 as an MIT
1 Dummy warhead
computer-science graduate stu- BOOST PHASE
Live warhead
dent. Since then his circuitry has
become increasingly complex.
His newest work, the bull’s-eye
bacteria, contains a circuit made
of five genes. “It’s fascinating to Warhead booster
think that you can make living
organisms do whatever you Early-warning radar,
Shemya Island,
want,” Weiss says.
Alaska
Fascinating and dangerous,
says Stanford University bioethi-
cist David Magnus. Bacteria could
be programmed to produce tox- MINUTES TO LAUNCH, SECONDS TO INTERCEPT
ins instead of mopping them up. A long-range missile fires from East Asia. Within minutes, a defense satel-
Magnus argues that the new field lite equipped with infrared sensors detects the rocket’s bright plume.
needs strict guidelines to ensure Early-warning radars in Alaska and California begin tracking the incom-
that microbots test safe before ing missile, calculating its target destination (1). Ten minutes later, a
scientists release them into the ground-based interceptor is launched from Alaska or California. With
wild. Weiss acknowledges the several targets in sight, the interceptor deploys a kill vehicle (2). Closing in
GARRY MARSHALL
risks but says the more we learn at 15,000 miles per hour, it has less than one minute to discern the war-
head from the decoys. With little time to correct its course, one wrong
about gene programming, the
calculation means that the warhead cruises back into the atmosphere (3).
better able we’ll be to minimize Fifteen to twenty seconds later it strikes its target.
the dangers.—DAN FERBER
EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA THAN IN THE REST OF THE WORLD /// 03.18.04 DUST BOWL, DECIPHERED EXTREME OCEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURES MAY HAVE DRIED OUT THE GREAT

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN: KILL VEHICLE LACKS 20-20 VISION
The most critical part of the missile defense system is the exo-
KILL VEHICLE atmospheric kill vehicle, or EKV. Made by Raytheon Missile
Divert thrusters
Systems, the 140-pound EKV is hidden beneath an aerody-
namic shroud at the tip of the ground-based interceptor. During
the initial stages of flight, tracking data beamed from early-
warning radars guide the interceptor toward its target. Once
in space the interceptor deploys the EKV. Traveling at about
5 miles per second, it has roughly one minute to home in on
warheads obscured by a flurry of decoys. To do this it uses a
delicate infrared telescope that distinguishes objects by meas-
Infrared
uring reflective brightness, a technique MIT’s Theodore Postol
telescope shield equates to looking for explosives hidden in suitcases by scan-
ning baggage for color and shape. Warhead-shaped decoys
covered with reflective foil can easily confuse the EKV. So far
Liquid nitrogen tanks Attitude the system has flunked three out of eight test flights.
control thrusters
A B
A warhead appears as a blurry lump of pixels to an infrared telescope100 kilometers away (a). The scope’s one-
degree view field—similar to that of a soda straw—severely limits the view of objects dispersed in space (b).
2
MID-COURSE PHASE
Kill vehicle
3
RE-ENTRY PHASE
Interceptor
Interceptor silo,
Fort Greely,
Alaska
Early-warning radar,
Clear AFB,
Command Center,
Alaska
Cheyenne Mt.,
Colorado
Interceptor silo,
Early-warning radar, Vandenberg AFB,
Beale AFB, California California
Early-warning radar,
U.S. Navy Aegis
destroyer
PLAINS IN THE ’30s—SECTIONS OF THE ATLANTIC WERE ABNORMALLY WARM, WHILE THE TROPICAL PACIFIC WAS UNUSUALLY COLD, NASA SCIENTISTS SAY /// 03.18.04 >
HEADLINES
H
THE POPSCI OPINION POLL
BASED ON 2,419 RESPONSES POSTED
TO POPSCI.COM FROM 3/1 TO 4/1
PERSPECTIVE
LAST MONTH
WE ASKED:
YOUR VENUSIAN CRIB SHEET WILL CLIMATE
On June 8, Venus will make a rare flyby of Earth. Study up. CHANGE
121.5 Number of years since Venus last crossed between Earth PROFOUNDLY
and the Sun, making it visible to the naked eye AFFECT THE
8 Number of years until the next Venus transit WAY WE LIVE
5 BILLION + Estimated number of people who will be able to see all or OUR LIVES
part of the 2004 transit. People in the western U.S., Hawaii
and New Zealand are out of luck until 2012
20 YEARS
Cell drops
23° N, 55° W Best view, just south of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
FROM NOW?
SUN FILTER Equipment necessary to view transit without eye damage
1761, 1769 Years in which astronomers used the transit of Venus to
[YES]
63
measure Earth’s distance from the Sun
864 Surface temperature of Venus, in degrees Fahrenheit
266 Highest temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit, that a lifeform
on Earth has been known to survive
6 Planned U.S. missions to Mars, 2004–2011
%
1 Planned U.S. missions to Venus, 2004–2011
[NO]
37 %
THIS MONTH’S
OPINION POLL:
INKJET PRINTER BLUEPRINT ADOBE HOUSE SHOULD THE
UNITED
ENGINEERING STATES
CONTINUE
NEED A HOME IN A HURRY? PRESS PRINT TO INVEST IN
An oversize printer could speed up building construction. A NATIONAL
If Behrokh Khoshnevis has his way, the on-demand world of movies, TV, Internet MISSILE
connections, you name it, will have a home under on-demand roofs. Khosh- SHIELD?
nevis, a University of Southern California professor, says he’s a year away from
essentially printing out a house from computer-generated blueprints wired to an YES
apparatus that works like a giant inkjet printer. In this case, the printout is 3-D: SOMETHING IS
An overhead gantry moves back and forth while an attached robotic nozzle BETTER THAN
oozes layer after layer of cement shaped by two automated trowels. Khoshnevis NOTHING
calls the technology “contour crafting.” He envisions printable low-income
houses, emergency shelters, apartment buildings and even intricately designed NO
OUR DEFENSE
FROM CENTER: CORBIS (2)
homes that take advantage of the trowels’ ability to mold cement or adobe into
virtually any shape. Khoshnevis has already built walls 3 feet high, 6 inches
DOLLARS ARE
BETTER SPENT
wide, and 5 feet long—in an hour. “I think we could build a 1,000-square-foot
ON PROVEN
house in a day,” he says. But while Khoshnevis predicts a “press print” home TECHNOLOGY
will be doable by 2005, University of Texas civil engineer Carl Haas says it will
be at least a decade before contour crafting goes mainstream: “Building codes WHAT DO YOU THINK?
POPSCI.COM
have to change. A whole industry has to change.”—MICHAEL ROSENWALD
DON’T BLAME TV UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS RESEARCHERS REPORT THAT VIDEOGAME PLAY HAS A STRONGER CORRELATION TO CHILDHOOD OBESITY THAN TV VIEWING /// 03.18.04 >
UPDATE
UP, UP AND AWAY

A flawless first test flight bodes well for Rutan’s GlobalFlyer.
Can aviation mastermind Burt which flew around the world

Rutan do no wrong? This with two pilots in 1986, suffered
March his radical Virgin Atlantic a wide range of stability prob- THE GLOBALFLYER
GlobalFlyer, the twin-boomed lems. Most worrisome was an
jet-powered plane that adventurer aeroelasticity glitch that caused Karkow said. “I was pleasantly re-
Steve Fossett hopes to fly solo the wings and fuselage to flex lieved that it flew so well. Global-
around the world—nonstop and dramatically in flight. Flyer handled much better.”
without refueling—breezed But Karkow reports that Global- Rutan was so pleased with the
through its maiden test flight. Flyer had no such issues, even debut performance that he imme-
COURTESY SCALED COMPOSITES
During a 1.5-hour hop out of after he tried to induce aerody- diately outlined an accelerated
Mojave, California, lead test pilot namic oscillations by rapping the flight test schedule, squeezing in
Jon Karkow took GlobalFlyer to control stick and deflecting it as many as 50 tests in the next
12,000 feet to check the airplane’s slightly off center. “I was confi- four to six months. “His plan was
stability in mild turbulence and dent this airplane would be bet- so ambitious that our chins hit
from near-stall speeds to 110 ter, but I was still prepared for the floor,” Karkow says. “Burt
knots. The airplane’s predecessor, poor handling characteristics, wants to build up to long flights
Rutan’s similarly shaped Voyager, based on the Voyager flight,” by the fifth flight.”—ERIC ADAMS
CLOSE PASS A 30-METER-WIDE ASTEROID PASSES WITHIN 26,500 MILES OF EARTH, THE CLOSEST EVER OBSERVED BY A TELESCOPE /// 03.22.04 SHUTTLE FLAW FOUND GEARS >
.
HEADLINES
H
SHRINKAGE DEPT.
RESEARCH UPDATES ON THE QUEST
TO MAKE REALLY TINY THINGS
AUTOMOTIVE INNOVATION
BATTERIES INCLUDED
Stanford students rev up the electric car with laptop power. REPELS LIQUID
When General Motors and Toyota computers. Straubel says booming

yanked the plug on their electric- laptop sales have made lithium-
vehicle programs last year, citing ion batteries cheaper and more
high costs and weak demand, efficient than lead-acid or nickel-
many proud owners of gas- metal-hydride cells, the power
ABSORBS LIQUID
guzzlers no doubt nodded sources for GM’s EV1, Toyota’s
smugly: Batteries are for flash- RAV4 EV and other now defunct NANO-GRASS
lights, not family cars. commercial models. Water take heed: Liquids
But now a team of young The Stanford car will stow are now at the mercy of a
electric-car enthusiasts is attempt- 10,000 lithium-ion batteries breakthrough material
ing to change that widely held under the hood. A standard lap- from Bell Labs. Flip an
perception by building an experi- top typically has eight. Wired electric switch and the
mental battery-powered car capa- together, the lithium-ion cells— material acts like a
ble of highway cruising speeds each roughly the size of an AA sponge. Flip again and
it behaves like a rain
and cross-country trips—all on a battery—will store enough energy
slicker. Applications could
single charge. “We want to dispel to power an average home for turn up wherever liquids
the myth that electric vehicles four days, says Straubel. More meet solids (read: practi-
can never travel more than a few important, the Stanford team cal- cally everywhere). Lead
hundred miles,” says engineer J.B. culates the pack could propel its researcher Tom Krupenkin
Straubel of the Stanford Electric car at an average 45 mph for envisions near-frictionless
Vehicle Project. 2,000 miles, smashing all previ- torpedoes, self-cleaning
The secret to the project is ous EV records. The team hopes windshields and more
lithium ion, the same technology to have the car ready for road efficient batteries.
supplying juice to most laptop tests by July.—MICHAEL STROH Water clings to most
materials, either soaking
in or beading up,
WHAT MAKES THE E-CAR EFFICIENT
2 BATTERY PACK
The 10,000 lithium-ion batteries will
depending on surface
area and composition.
FROM TOP: COURTESY LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES INC/BELL LABS (2); GARRY MARSHALL
1 CHASSIS DESIGN
Built from hollow stainless-steel tubes,
the chassis weighs less than 100 pounds
weigh about 1,100 pounds and hold 80
kilowatt-hours of energy. To prevent the
The new material, etched
from silicon, resembles a
batteries from overheating, 150 micro- microscopic bed of grass.
and measures 8 feet long, axle to axle. processors will constantly monitor their Each “blade” is a few
The chassis is covered with an aerody- temperature and voltage output. nanometers thick—about
namic teardrop-shape carbon-fiber shell. 100,000 times smaller in
diameter than a single
human hair. When liquid
drops onto the tiny
blades, it suspends itself
on their tips without sink-
1 2 3 ing between. The blades
“reduce the surface area
the droplet feels,” says
Krupenkin, so the liquid
beads up effortlessly.
When the researchers
charge the silicon with
3 WHEELS
The wheels are outfitted with Miche- electricity, the energy field
PHOTO CREDIT TK
lin’s custom solar-car radials. Inflated to pulls the liquid down into
100 psi, the tires are made of Kevlar- the gaps, and the “nano-
reinforced rubber and have up to one- grass” wets instantly.
fourth the resistance of traditional tires. —LAURA ALLEN
IN THE RUDDER OF AT LEAST ONE SHUTTLE WERE INSTALLED INCORRECTLY IN THE LATE 1970s OR EARLY ’80s—A POTENTIALLY DISASTROUS PROBLEM THAT WENT UNNOTICED >
HEADLINES
H CON-FUSION IN A JAR
PHYSICS 1 2
Generating heat energy like the Sun: Can it be this easy?

Don’t call it cold fusion. Not yet. the fluid with neutrons. The neu-
For the second time in two years, trons create tiny bubbles, which 3 4
physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan and the sound waves rapidly expand
colleagues claim to have created a and contract. The contractions
miniature sun in a jar, but this release energy—enough, Tale-
time skeptics are taking a closer yarkhan says, to fuse atoms.
look. “I still don’t believe it,” says Fusion should unleash a burst
Lawrence Crum at the University of neutrons, but Taleyarkhan
of Washington in Seattle, “but it’s detected only a few the last time 5 6
becoming more and more diffi- around. Now, thanks to a better
cult to ignore.” detector, he has measured an
Most physicists think you need enormous neutron signal. Crum
an enormous facility to generate acknowledges the improvement,
the sun-like heat and pressure but remains skeptical: The neu-
required to fuse two atoms, but trons used to start the reaction
A deuterium-heavy fluid (1) is flooded
Taleyarkhan’s fusion device fits could be confused for the fusion
with neutrons (2). Sound waves
on the tabletop of his Purdue products. Others are trying to
GARRY MARSHALL
blow apart tiny bubbles (3), then

University lab. His recipe: Start reproduce the results, using laser implode them—the energy released
with a jar of deuterium-filled stimulation to create the bubbles. (4) smashes together two deuterium
fluid, send pulses of sound waves Until then, most experts say atoms (5), and the fused atoms emit
ricocheting throughout and blast they’re not buying it.—JR MINKEL a neutron and gamma radiation (6).
FOR DECADES, NASA ANNOUNCES /// 03.27.04 IT FLIES! NASA REPORTS THE X-43A SCRAMJET TEST VEHICLE REACHED MACH 7 DURING ITS FIRST SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT /// >
HEADLINES
H MEDICAL TECH
WARMING UP TO TELEMEDICINE
Bleep! Blip! Ding! Another life saved. Why electronic intensive care isn’t as scary as it seems.
“I know these patients better than anyone on the floor right now,” asserts critical-care specialist Dr. Joseph T.
Cooke, who’s checking up on 38 ICU patients at New York-Presbyterian hospital—from across the street.
Welcome to the electronic ICU, where bedside manner means ringing a doorbell before observing patients
via video camera, then checking vital signs on four remotely located monitors. Surreal? Sure. But it’s
telemedicine that seems to be, gingerly, living up to the hype. The system’s developers, Visicu, have installed
e-ICUs in eight hospitals nationwide, with eight more in the works. Most agree that traditional ICUs are costly
and hard to manage: ICU admissions account for only 10 percent of inpatient beds and 30 percent of hospital
costs. And up to 20 percent of ICU patients never check out. The e-ICU, where one doctor and nurse can keep
24-hour watch on as many as 50 patients at once, is boosting chronically short-staffed on-site care. A recent
study reported a 27 percent drop in ICU mortality and 17 percent shorter stays since the first e-ICU set up
shop at Virginia’s Sentara Healthcare a few years ago. That's a cold stethoscope we can handle.—LAURA ALLEN
INSIDE THE E-ICU DR. JOSEPH T. COOKE MAKES ELECTRONIC ROUNDS AT NEW YORK-PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL.
“[The system] can do things

that a human being can’t,” 1
says New York-Presbyterian 3
e-ICU director Dr. Hal
Wasserman.
1] Stores and displays
patient care history—X- 5
rays, lab test results, meds.
2] Prioritizes patients by 2
severity; allows staff to
write medical notes. 4
6
3] Audibly signals alarm-
ing changes in vital signs.
4] Displays live video of
patient (not shown). 7
5-6] Telemetrically monitors
vitals like EKG waves and
heart rate in real time.
7] Digital video cameras
monitor ICU beds.
PREDICTION
FROM TOP: JORDAN HOLLENDER (2); JOE MORSE
HEADLINE FROM THE FUTURE BY KEVIN WARWICK

2069 GRAND OPENING! THE LOS ANGELES SHARPER IMAGE IMPLANT STORE
As the technology to seamlessly merge man and machine matures, more and more
people turn Cyborg. Computer chips implanted into the brain restore and enhance
memory, eyesight and hearing. Electrode arrays attached to nerve tissue detect and
treat clinical depression and chronic pain; other electronic implants linked to the
Internet enable people to control cellphones and home appliances by thought alone.
And digital memory recorders store and play back past experiences. While encryp-
tion tech protects neural networks from hackers, mental spam proves intractable.
Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, UK. His books March of the Machines and I, Cyborg will be published by University of Illinois Press in August.
03.29.04 CEO IN SPACE SPACE ADVENTURES ANNOUNCES THAT ENTREPRENEUR GREGORY OLSEN WILL BOARD A SOYUZ CAPSULE FOR A $20 MILLION TRIP TO THE ISS IN 2005.

HOLLYWOOD,
SCIENCE
ANDTHEEND
OFTHE
56
WORLD
ATHREE-ACT SCREENPLAY
POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004
COULD SUDDEN CLIMATE CHANGE WREAK INDEPENDENCE DAY-
LEVEL HAVOC? THE DIRECTOR OF THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (OUT
MAY 28) LET US RUN HIS NEW DISASTER FLICK BY THE EXPERTS.
UH-OH.
BY MATTHEW TEAGUE

A note to the reader: Certain scenes in the WRITER (voiceover): As I emerged from WRITER: Let’s get right to the point,
following account have been dramatized, my preview screening into the light of Roland. Your movie purports to be built
Hollywood-style—entirely made up—but day, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. on a scientific premise, but there’s no
the description of the film, the scientific For certain, flash-frozen pedestrians and way that the climate could change like
information and all the quotes are real. tinseltown twisters did not have the ring that in a matter of days. What do you
of plausibility. Climate can’t change in a have to say for yourself?
Hollywood minute.
But still. Ice ages happen. I’d even Emmerich proceeds, with disarming
ACT 1: HOLLYWOOD vaguely heard that they don’t take ages
to happen. And so I decided to figure out
candor, to acknowledge the unscientific
speed of the movie’s plotline.
if there was even a hint of good science
INT. MOVIE THEATER—NIGHT OF in this special-effects extravaganza. And EMMERICH: The scientific community
MAY 28, 2004 the logical first stop was the director of will say, “too fast.” And that’s OK. Other-
Camera pans a series of faces busy The Day After Tomorrow. Maybe he’d just wise there is no movie.
munching popcorn, slurping sodas, etc. grin and agree that the movie is a fun riff
Camera then rests on you, the SKEPTI- on a thin premise: show business. WRITER (voiceover): But that’s as far as
CAL MOVIEGOER. Your eyes roll during he’d budge; he refused to crack on the
the previews of the space battles— ROLAND EMMERICH, director and pro- underlying principle: Abrupt climate
ducer of such movies as The Patriot, change could plunge the planet into an
SKEPTIC: C’mon. You can’t hear explo- Independence Day and Godzilla, wheels all new ice age, rendering much of it
sions in the vacuum of space. . . .
And then the feature begins. It’s called SCENE 1 // Trouble Approaches
The Day After Tomorrow, and it’s a spec-
tacular disaster flick, obviously the gleeful
product of someone who has thought
far too much about the mechanics of
global catastrophe. On screen, a climactic
upheaval is brewing. Electrical storms
lace the sky over New Delhi while hail
pummels Tokyo. A lone paleoclimatologist
scrambles to warn the world about
impending disaster, yet he is too late: In
Southern California, tornadoes dismantle
the Hollywood sign and most of down-
town Los Angeles. A massive storm surge
crashes through Manhattan, followed by For this shot sequence, the visual effects supervisor used a helicopter to take photos above
wind so cold people freeze to the side- New York Harbor. They pasted these images to the interior of a digital sphere, creating
a 3-D backdrop for 360-degree camera pans. After adding stormy skies and a digital
walks. Chaos follows: world-pounding,
Liberty, they went to work on the water. Artists started with a foundation of featureless
civilization-scattering chaos, all thanks to water, then added layers for chop, whitecaps, foam, sea spray, etc.—about 30 in all.
a glitch in the weather.
Camera whips back to the Skeptical
P R E V I O U S S P R E A D A N D T H I S PA G E : C O U R T E S Y T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y F O X
Moviegoer’s face: The smirk is gone.
Destruction depicted this vividly can have up in a German supercar the color of a uninhabitable. And when I pushed him
that effect. But more: The Moviegoer new pistol. Emmerich is handsome, on the politics. . . .
vaguely recalls that the concept of abrupt graceful and well-tanned, with a glinting
climate change served up in the film was smile and hair that matches his car’s EMMERICH: I started writing this
recently on the front pages—courtesy of paint job. script back when I was finishing The
the Pentagon, no less—and that story Patriot, before Bush was elected. By then
didn’t have a happy ending, either. INT. BUILDING 29 it was already too late.
Emmerich shuts the door of a dimly lit
SKEPTIC (eyes darting, feet tapping): editing room and settles onto a sofa. WRITER (voiceover): “Too late”? This
This is just Independence Day minus Writer settles in across from him and guy really seemed to believe that rapid
the aliens. Science fiction, weak on the prepares to pounce, suspecting that climate change is not only a real threat
science—right? Emmerich’s motivations are more politi- —it’s inevitable. But I couldn’t be sure
cal than scientific, his disaster flick a that even a well-intentioned Hollywood
FLASHBACK, THREE MONTHS EAR- well-timed swipe at the current adminis- director could be trusted not to mangle
LIER: EXT. MOVIE STUDIO—DAY tration in an election year. the science, particularly when the god of
Camera zooms in on the SKEPTICAL SCI- drama must be served. I needed to con-
ENCE WRITER, as he emerges from an on- EMMERICH (with a moderate German sult higher scientific powers. I had to
lot screening of the film’s rough cut. accent): Your flight in was OK? visit the Oracles.

Cut to a montage of shots, in which the could snap the conveyor belt.
Oracle reveals how abrupt climate The consequences of this shutdown
ACT 2: SCIENCE change works, illustrating his points with
magazine-style infographics. (See a copy
would be sudden and catastrophic: No
more heat for Northern Europe or
of the Oracle’s documents on page 61.) the east coast of North America; they
In his quest, Writer seeks three wise men: would turn into frigid wastelands.
the ORACLES of WATER, HUMAN WRITER (voiceover): The Oracle ex- Ocean temperatures would fluctuate
LIFE and the FUTURE. Each is a highly plained that abrupt climate change dramatically and in turn disrupt
respected expert, a leader in his field. centers on something called the Great weather patterns worldwide (remember
Ocean Conveyor, a loop of current that El Niño?). Droughts, floods, apocalyptic
EXT. GREENLAND—DAWN moves throughout the world’s waters. It storms, subarctic temperatures or sear-
Writer goes in search of the ORACLE OF keeps much of the Northern Hemisphere ing heat become the norm, depending
WATER. Richard Alley, a professor of toasty by pulling warm tropical water on which unfortunate corner of the
geosciences at Penn State, has testified north and pushing cold water south. globe you happen to call home.
before the U.S. Senate about abrupt He said that when the warm water,
climate change, chaired the National which travels on the surface, reaches its WRITER: So there is some science
Research Council committee on the sub- northernmost point, near Iceland, it behind what happens in the movie?
ject, and is himself a leading real-life releases its heat into the atmosphere.
paleoclimatologist. He is an expert on ice This heat warms much of the Northern ALLEY: Well, it wouldn’t be anything
cores, long tubes of ice dug from glaciers Hemisphere, especially Europe. The like in the movie, with people freezing
and shattering and such at minus
150˚C—that’s just an exaggeration.
SCENE 2 // Surfing East 41st St.
WRITER: Thank goodness, because—
ALLEY: Western Europe might come to

resemble, say, Siberia. But people don’t
shatter in Siberia.
WRITER (voiceover): I slowly came to

realize that this Oracle did not dispute
the movie’s vision of hell on Earth—he
was just quibbling about which level of
hell. Not the seventh ring, he seemed to
say. Just the second or third.
Only the lowest 20 feet of the first two foreground buildings is real. It took three months EXT. AFRICA—NOON
to create digital models of the rest of the set. First, a team scanned 13 blocks of New Close-up of Writer’s left eye. It twitches.
York City using lidar—a laser-based distance scanner. Three other teams photographed A new tic. He is obviously disturbed by
each building from inside a building directly across the street. They mapped photos
onto models, added water and people (only foregrounders are real), and voilà—chaos!
the movie’s underlying plausibility.
WRITER (voiceover): Once I learned

that the rapid climate change depicted
that reveal changes in Earth’s climate now cold water sinks to the ocean bot- in the movie was a real possibility, I
over millennia. If anyone knows whether tom—cold water is denser than warm— had to find out how long it would take
the climate really undergoes such mas- and this movement, this sinking, drives for it to wreak its damage. Sure, the
sive shifts, he does. the entire current: It draws warm water director had admitted to speeding the
In the spooky half-light of an Arctic north and shoves cold water south. process along—but by how much?
morning, Writer stumbles across the ice, The Oracle then went on to show me Would this process require thousands
calling to the Oracle. Suddenly, a whirring how, paradoxically, if Earth warms too of years? Hundreds? Decades? Could it
sound fills the air, becoming a vibration much, the weather—at least in much of happen in a matter of days? My quest
below. Then, with a pop, a spinning figure the Northern Hemisphere—will get required a visit to the Oracle of Life.
COURTESY TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
shoots from the ice, twirling like a mad cold. If global warming proceeds apace,
gopher. As the figure slows we see it is the and enough Arctic ice melts, this melted Cut to the ORACLE OF LIFE, Peter Ward,
Oracle, busy drilling ice cores. He speaks. ice—cold, fresh water—will mix with who sits atop a small hill of human skulls
the warm, salty water coming up in the under the blazing equatorial sun. He is a
ALLEY: Hi, it’s Richard Alley. current. Since freshwater is less dense paleontologist, a professor of earth and
than salty water, the lukewarm, brackish space sciences and biology at the Uni-
WRITER: Dr. Alley, I must know: Is the water won’t have any reason to sink, and versity of Washington, and writes books
science behind this movie real, despite the engine that powers the ocean cur- with such titles as The Life and Death of
exaggerations and impossible timelines? rent will shut down. Melting Arctic ice Planet Earth.

WRITER (staggering up, skipping the phenomenon defies the tidy statistics ages. The norm is much colder and
formalities): How realistic is this movie? that define so many other scientific more volatile. We’ve lived in a climate of
fields. One report by the National Acad- global warming and benign weather for
WARD: There is no way that the change emy of Sciences compared the mechan- about 11,000 to 12,000 years.
to such cold would be so fast. ics of abrupt climate change to a person
with his finger on a light switch; the per- WRITER: So how long does an inter-
WRITER: So we have nothing to worry son applies gradual pressure, increasing glacial period last?
about in our lifetimes, right?—Right? until—snap—the switch is thrown.
So far the news wasn’t good: Abrupt SCHWARTZ: An ice age usually lasts a
WARD (rattling a laugh as dry as the climate change is real, it’s inevitable, and quarter of a million years or more.
bones beneath him): From ice cores we it happens in a snap. So the morbid ques- The interglacial periods are measured
know that we can have rapid climate tion arises: Just how ugly would life get? in thousands.
change in 10 to 20 years, minimum.
EXT. JUNGLE—DUSK WRITER: And so what would happen if
WRITER (voiceover): Ten years? Well, In the blink of an eye, Writer finds him- the climate changed by such a massive
that was longer than the movie’s week, self standing in a lush, endless garden. degree in such a short period of time?
but it still seemed a little rapid for my Flowers and moss grow thick underfoot.
taste. Wasn’t climate change supposed Writer sees the ORACLE OF THE SCHWARTZ: The collapse of the econ-
omy. Warlordism. Famine. That would
SCENE 3 // Breezy Los Angeles be prototypical of what we would see.
WRITER (voiceover): I knew that in the

Oracle of the Future’s report to the Pen-
tagon he concluded that abrupt climate
change could lead to, in the cold lan-
guage of his research, “a significant
drop in the human-carrying capacity of
Earth’s environment.” The report billed
the weather as a serious U.S. national
security concern.
Distraught, I decided to summon all
three Oracles together for an apoca-
lyptic sit-down.
Tornadoes are exceptionally complicated objects—this scene alone took 14 months to
create. Like water, a tornado requires multiple visual layers, except its layers swirl in
and out in 3-D. Specialty effects companies hire physical science Ph.D.s to create com-
puter simulations that model a tornado’s particulate physics. After the physics is right,
the studio usually tweaks the final product by hand to make it look even more real.
ACT 3: THE END OF

to happen on the scale of centuries? FUTURE nearby, floating in a lotus posi- THE WORLD
tion. He juggles three crystal balls. EXT. MISTY MOUNTAINTOP—DAY
WARD: The reality is scarier than the AND NIGHT COLLIDE
movie. WRITER: You know why I’m here, yes? Camera cranes up to show Writer stand-
ing before the three Oracles.
WRITER: I know you can’t put odds on PETER SCHWARTZ, a professional futur-
this kind of thing, but what are the ist and coauthor of a Pentagon report WRITER: So it’s real, it’s fast, it’s bad.
chances that this will happen— that examined the national security im- Great. How do we stop it?
plications of rapid climate change, nods.
WARD: 100 percent. ALLEY: We can cross our fingers and
SCHWARTZ: It’s a fun movie. hope!
WRITER (voiceover): Was he serious—
100 percent? Usually scientists sound WRITER (voiceover): He expounded in WRITER (voiceover): Somehow, I didn’t
COURTESY TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
like defense lawyers, hedging behind the manner of the previous two Oracles, think that was going to cut it. But then
words like possibly and perhaps, but praising the movie while being clear the Oracles began to expound on possi-
here I was being told that the climate that many of the details were exag- ble theories that might—just might—
will definitely change—drastically— gerated. He mocked the idea that a gla- give us hope.
and we could do nothing to stop it. cier could sweep over New York in We know that global warming could
When I asked Ward to predict when hours—it could take, gosh, years. melt too much Arctic ice, shut down the
the change might happen, his words North Atlantic current and create chaos
came more carefully: No one can predict SCHWARTZ: We are living in a period like the modern world has never seen.
the timing exactly, he said. The that’s called interglacial—between ice Yet, as we know from the study of ice

HOW CLIMACTIC CHAOS COULD HAPPEN
Abrupt climate change is not global warming, though global warming might trigger it. Instead of global warming’s
gradual temperature increase, rapid climate change would create wild temperature fluctuations around the world. The
cause: A sudden shutdown of the Global Ocean Conveyor, so named because it moves heat from the tropics up to
northern latitudes. Without that heat, much of the Northern Hemisphere would become a frozen tundra, while droughts
and floods would plague the rest of the world. Total elapsed time? Ten, twenty years.
GLOBAL HEAT ENGINE
Under normal
conditions, the
Prevailing wind Ocean Conveyor
works like this:
The warm Gulf
Warm water Stream loses its
traveling north Warm Gulf Stream heat to the atmos-
on the surface phere in the north
Atlantic. Since the
water that’s left
over is both cold
Salty, sinking water and salty, it is
also dense, and
so it sinks to the
ocean bottom. This sinking drives
Cold water
traveling south on ocean currents worldwide.
the ocean bottom
BREAKING THE CYCLE

Melting Arctic ice
If global warming proceeds apace and too much Arctic ice melts, the
freshwater created by the melting will mix with warm water in the Floating freshwater
current, forming cooler, less salty (therefore less dense) water on the
surface. This water won’t cool and sink the way denser water does.
Since this sinking drives the entire Ocean Conveyor, the disruption will
cause the world’s currents to shut down, with disastrous effects.
Ocean floor
cores, ice ages sometimes just happen. WRITER (slightly confused): Well, if we delaying one ice age, we may be pro-
They have done so at fairly regular inter- continue to release greenhouse gases voking another. A tough spot, to be sure,
vals in the past, and we’re overdue for into the atmosphere at the current rate, but there must be some way out. . . .
another one. will we be staving off an ice age, or
And so the heretical idea: Perhaps accelerating rapid climate change? INT. BUILDING 29—DAY
slow global warming could be a good WRITER (twitching): Roland, what can
thing. Warm the planet gradually, just SCHWARTZ: Look, we want to urgently we do about this?
enough to stave off that impending ice slow down abrupt climate change. We
age. Yet don’t pass the critical tipping need to develop—as rapidly as possi- EMMERICH: There is nothing. We can
point, don’t blast greenhouse gases into ble—options for clean fuels, in particu- do nothing.
the atmosphere so fast that the warming lar, hydrogen and nuclear.
melts enough Arctic ice to trigger abrupt WRITER (voiceover): With that, the
climate change. This is of course overly ALLEY (nodding): We may need a director rose from the sofa and headed
simplified—the atmosphere is far too worldwide slowdown. Reduce green- toward a small editing bay. He had a
complicated to be controlled directly, house gas output. Don’t burn fossil fuels movie to finish and didn’t have the lux-
but the idea remains: Slightly rising as fast. Don’t force the climate to ury of time to ponder just how scary
STEPHEN ROUNTREE
temperatures might not be a bad thing. change. Can I put a number on what that film would end up being—espe-
sort of slowdown, how much less out- cially to a skeptic.
WARD: We are stopping, pushing back put? No. No one can.
the next ice age. The question is how Matthew Teague has written for Esquire
long we can keep it up. WRITER (voiceover): So even if we are and GQ. This is his first feature for POPSCI.

By Eric Adams
Illustrations by JOHN MACNEILL
IS
THIS
WHAT
WAR
WILL
COME Even as the
Pentagon
TO? struggles with
the low-tech
reality of war
in Iraq, it looks
to increasingly
bizarre-
sounding
technology
for next-gen
fighting
systems. On
the following
pages, five
chapters from
the Pentagon’s
sci-fi future.

TERMINAL VELOCITY
This orbiting plat-
form would rely on
kinetic energy alone.
Tungsten rods
dropped on build-
ings or underground
bunkers would strike
at hypersonic
velocities, vaporizing
POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 2002 00
targets instantly.
If
U.S. MILITARY WEAPONS PLANNERS HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING I’d like to take a look at it,” says
from the varied conflicts of the past quarter century, it is that Thompson. “Obviously it’s an im-
the challenges are not getting any more predictable. With the provement over what we have, but
nature and capabilities of U.S. opponents changing on practi- what’s the enemy? It’s not enough to
cally an engagement-by-engagement basis, deciding which have a weapon that can use new
new weapon technologies will best serve soldiers in the battle technology creatively. It needs to
theaters of the future remains a high-stakes guessing game. answer a valid military need or
The enemy is no longer necessarily a nation; it can be a ter- threat.” It’s also wise to recognize
rorist cell. The enemy may not possess high-tech weaponry that the technological supremacy
yet still pose a threat—by exploding truck bombs on suicide that drove U.S. forces into the heart
missions or by firing hand-launched missiles against F/A-22 of Baghdad in record time won’t nec-
fighter jets. Nor, despite the absolute technological supremacy essarily forestall the low-tech agony
of the U.S. military today, can strategists afford to ignore the of the fight that has followed.
possibility that a nation that has developed advanced weaponry might come to To streamline weapons develop-
pose a threat in a nightmare future. ment, in the mid-1990s the Depart-
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, which mulls responses to future conflict scenarios, is ment of Defense implemented its
preparing for everything from ground invasions of North Korea to air strikes against advanced concept technology de-
terrorist camps. “The process is complicated by the fact that you are less certain than monstration program, a sort of try-
ever who you will be fighting and the circumstances under which you will be fight- before-you-buy setup that helps
ing them,” says John Pike, a senior military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank bypass usual R&D hurdles. One
that specializes in evaluations of military technology and strategy. “When you don’t result: In 1997 the Air Force, after
know what problem you’re trying to solve, it’s hard to come to a solution.” only two-and-a-half years of develop-
Efficiency is also a factor to a military that finds itself stretched from old bases ment, put the Predator unmanned
in Europe to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to calls for intervention in Africa, Haiti aerial vehicle into service. Then, in
and other hotspots. The scores of potential combat scenarios sketched out by the 2002, with only minimal testing,
Joint Chiefs, as well as individual branches of the U.S. military, have convinced the they equipped several of the drones
Department of Defense that a fast-track modernization program is critical to with Hellfire missiles and used one
national security. Many current weapons systems are fast becoming out-of-date, to attack an al Qaeda vehicle in
from aging attack helicopter fleets to the early-’60s-designed rifles troops carry on Yemen. “Someone came up with the
the ground. Key trends will be automation—unmanned land, air and underwater idea and just did it,” says Patrick Gar-
vehicles; communication networks that connect all the players in a battle theater, rett, an associate analyst at GlobalSe-
so that information flows freely between pilots, foot soldiers and commanders; and curity.org. “It harkens back to the
finding new ways to solve old problems—such as firing ballistics electrically rather good old days of WWII.”
than with explosives. Another example of DoD-backed
But perhaps more in need of overhaul than the weapons systems themselves is corner-cutting: the littoral combat
the process that produces them. New weapons typically start out as ideas developed ship, a versatile vessel with inter-
in one of the R&D labs belonging to the U.S. military or to private defense contrac- changeable modules that can be a
tors such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin or hundreds of smaller companies around minesweeper one day and a special
the country. As it progresses, though, a new technology may get bogged down by forces troop lander the next. “It nor-
Byzantine red tape and excessive everything-but-the-kitchen-sink tinkering. Years mally takes a decade or so for a new
may elapse—5, 10, 15 or more—while proposals and demonstrations are requested, ship class to be decided,” says Gar-
Congressional approvals secured, contractors chosen, and the technology tested and rett, “but the Navy put out the bid in
fielded—and by then the weapon that emerges may be technologically obsolete, or 2002, had five or six shipbuilders
designed for threats that no longer exist. The Defense Department has a history of come up with designs, and they’re
continuing to fund needless programs because of political pressures and sheer hoping to start construction in 2005.
momentum. A prime example: the Army’s Comanche attack helicopter, which was That’s a major feat.”
canceled in February after a 21-year, $6.9 billion development program. One of its Officials hope new technologies
key missions, battlefield reconnaissance, is quickly being usurped by far less expen- will shorten combat, minimize casu-
sive unmanned aerial vehicles. alties, and enable attacks to be car-
Weapons procurement is also plagued by redundancy: More than one branch of ried out with greater precision.
the armed services may develop different systems that accomplish the same goal. Many weapons in the pipeline, such
This could range from small-caliber bullets being developed for each branch up to as the space-launched darts and
entire weapons platforms. electromagnetic railgun, will use no
Then there’s the chicken-and-egg problem. New weapons usually address specific explosives at all, relying instead on
needs, but the reverse can occur. Military leaders can simply be dazzled by new tech- kinetic energy to destroy targets.
nologies, and develop weapons to exploit them. “These are often solutions in search Some, like Metal Storm, will use elec-
of problems,” cautions analyst Loren Thompson of the Arlington, Virginia-based Lex- tricity rather than mechanical firing
ington Institute, a Department of Defense watchdog organization. Meanwhile, U.S. mechanisms. Laser weapons will dis-
military supremacy has made certain weapons systems seem like overkill—the able enemy gear with heat rather
submarine fleet, for example. In the case of the supercavitating torpedo described than force, providing pinpoint accu-
in this article, skeptics ask where the need is. “If we ever face a hostile navy again racy and speed-of-light delivery.

All-electric DD(X), the Navy’s next-
gen surface combat ship, will be able to divert
power from the propellers to the railgun.
#1 A cradle-like
device called a
ELECTRO- sabot supports

projectile in
gun barrel,
MAGNETIC then detaches

after firing.
RAILGUN
Projectile’s
Projectiles fired from an electromag- launch
netic railgun will travel up to 290 velocity is
miles in less than six minutes, exiting 8,200 feet
the atmosphere before hurling into per second.
their target at a velocity of 5,000
feet per second. The force of the
impact will obliterate targets without
an explosive aid. Since the
projectiles
have no explo-
sives, storage
aboard ship is
much safer.
3
#1 A KINETIC MISSILE THAT Projectile A railgun uses electric current to launch a
FLIES AT MACH 7 Armature projectile. The current—up to 15 million
Electric amps—travels up one rail and down the
Picture this: A massive destroyer
current second (1). This current induces a mag-
receives the location coordinates of netic field across an armature (2) that
an enemy headquarters more than bridges the rails. This armature also
200 miles away. Instead of launch- 1 carries a current; the interaction between
ing a million-dollar Tomahawk this current and the magnetic field accel-
cruise missile, it points a gun bar- Rails erates the armature, and the projectile
2
rel in the direction of the target, aboard it, to Mach 7 (3). Adjusting the
range of the weapon is as easy as reduc-
diverts electric power from the ing the electric current supplied to the
ship’s engine to the gun turret, and rails—the lower the current, the slower
launches a 3-foot-long, 40-pound Magnetic
the projectile leaves the barrel and the
field
projectile up a set of superconduct- shorter the distance it travels.
ing rails. The projectile leaves the
barrel at hypersonic velocity—
Mach 7-plus—exits the Earth’s atmosphere, re-enters under sion won’t be “deliverable” until 2015 at the earliest.
satellite guidance, and lands on the building less than six min- The technology behind the electromagnetic railgun has
utes later; its incredible velocity vaporizes the target with been around for more than 20 years, but early efforts wilted
kinetic energy alone. because of the huge power requirements: No ship could gen-
The U.S. Navy is developing an electromagnetic railgun that erate or store enough electricity to fire the gun. The concept
will turn destroyers into super-long-range machine guns—able was revived a few years ago when the Navy announced plans
to fire up to a dozen relatively inexpensive projectiles every for its next-generation battleship, the all-electric DD(X). “In
minute. The Navy is collaborating with the British Ministry of the past, destroyers had 90 percent of their power tied to
Defence, which has a similar effort under way. In 2003, its facil- propulsion,”1explains McGinnis. “But with DD(X), you can
ity in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, hosted a 1/8-scale test of an elec- divert the power to whatever you need. We can stop the ship
tromagnetic railgun that produced stable flight in a projectile and fire the railgun as many times as we need, then divert the
fired out of the barrel at Mach 6. But Capt. Roger McGinnis, power back to the screws.”
program manager for directed energy weapons at Naval Sea The barrel of the electromagnetic railgun will contain two
Systems Command in Washington, D.C., estimates the U.S. ver- parallel conducting rails about 20 feet long, bridged by a slid-

#2
SUPER-
CAVITATING
TORPEDO
Detection and homing Cavity-piercing

Cavitator electronics keep torpedo control fins steer
ejects gas on target. the missile.
through the
torpedo’s
nose.
Storage tanks for

bubble-generating gas. Rocket motor accelerates
weapon to 230 mph.
Several challenges remain for the supercavitating torpedo, including how it will be steered underwater. Water-tunnel tests have already
proven that speed can be achieved: In 1997, the Navy tested a supercavitating projectile that reached 5,082 feet per second, becoming the
first underwater projectile to exceed Mach 1.
ing armature. In the current design, electric current travels up challenging the designers. “Getting two pieces of metal to slide
one rail, crosses the armature, and heads down the second rail. past each other is pretty hard—we’re getting a lot of damage
The loop induces a magnetic field that pushes the armature, to the rails,” Beach says.
and the projectile aboard it, up the rails. The electromagnetic railgun’s projectiles will cover 290
The challenges that remain include ensuring that the gun miles in six minutes—initially traveling 8,200 feet per second
can target enemy sites with precision, and creating equipment and hitting their target at 5,000 feet per second. Current Navy
that can withstand the gargantuan pressures the gun will cre- guns, which shoot powder-ignited explosive shells, have a
ate. “Right now, guns are only as accurate as the targeting of maximum range of 12 miles and, because they are unguided,
the bore, and now we’re talking about 200-plus-mile ranges, so are difficult to aim. Though guided missiles, the current long-
there has to be aerodynamic correction,” says Fred Beach, the range alternative for destroyers, can achieve ranges compa-
assistant program manager for the electromagnetic railgun at rable to that of the electromagnetic railgun, their cost and
Naval Sea Systems Command. The projectile, he says, will storage problems are what’s driving the efforts to find an
receive course correction information from satellites and will alternative. Ships can only carry up to 70 guided missiles and
steer itself with movable control surfaces. And because the must return to port to restock because the missiles cannot be
projectile will be subjected to up to 45,000 Gs during firing, loaded at sea, whereas railgun projectiles can easily be loaded
the onboard electronics must be strengthened to withstand at sea, and by the hundreds. Also appealing is that the elec-
the acceleration. Forces inside the gun itself—particularly get- tromagnetic railgun’s missiles do not contain volatile explo-
ting the armature to move easily within the system—are also sives; the weapon does its work with kinetic energy.

The hard part about building a rocket-propelled torpedo
isn’t so much the propulsion as clearing a path through the
ocean. Water creates speed-sapping drag; the best way to over-
come that drag is to create a bubble that envelops the torpedo—
a supercavity. A gas ejected uniformly and with enough force
through a cavitator in the nose of the torpedo will provide such
a bubble, permitting speeds of more than 200 mph and a range
of up to 5 miles (traditional torpedoes have slightly longer
ranges, but lumber at only 30 to 40 mph).
Though submerged, the torpedo remains essentially dry,
with a frictionless surface. “That sounds easy, but doing it is
extremely difficult, especially if you’re trying to steer,” says
Kam Ng, program manager for the torpedo at the Office of
Naval Research, which has been developing the weapon since
1997. “If your torpedo moves in a straight line, you just aim
and shoot,” says Ng. “That capability already exists with
Shkval. But the U.S. vehicle will be more capable—it will turn,
identify objects, and home in on the target.” (Improvements
to the torpedo to make it steerable likely froze when the Sovi-
et Union collapsed, says GlobalSecurity.org’s Pike.)
Among the greatest challenges for U.S. torpedo researchers
is developing detection and homing technology that will
enable the torpedo to distinguish an enemy sub from, say, a
rock formation, says Ng. Also tricky is finding a way to con-
trol the gas bubble to permit those course changes. “When you
turn, the bubble distorts because it is no longer symmetrical,”
he says. “So you have to compensate for that by putting more
bubble to one side.” This is done, Ng explains, by ejecting more
gas toward the outside of the turn.
Naval officials say the high-speed torpedo will enable sub-
marines to attack enemy subs and surface ships without giv-
ing them time to respond. The U.S. military has tested a pro-
totype, but combat-ready versions are not expected for at
least 15 years.
#3 A LASER CANNON THAT BLASTS FROM THE AIR

Directed-energy weapon specialists at the Air Force
Research Laboratory are close to overcoming the two main
hurdles that have confined laser weapons to science fiction for
the last half-century. Tests by lead contractor Boeing have
demonstrated that the laser has enough power to function as
#2 A ROCKET TORPEDO THAT SWIMS IN AN AIR BUBBLE

Submarines peaked in power and relevance during
the Cold War; there has since been a shift in focus to aircraft-
a weapon, and that the chemical exhaust, which could pose a
considerable threat to the weapon’s operators and individuals
on the ground, can be safely contained in a sealed system. If
based combat, and subs have become budget-cut victims. But all goes according to the U.S. Special Operations Command’s
subs are still prized for their ability to sneak about global plan, within a decade or so the Advanced Tactical Laser may
waters undetected and to defend surface ships from attack. introduce a new class of weaponry to the battlefield.
Many U.S. subs are being converted from missile launchers The weapon’s first incarnation, expected by 2010 at the ear-
into delivery vehicles for special operations troops. liest, will be a megawatt-class chemical oxygen-iodine laser
But the supercavitating torpedo—a rocket-propelled (COIL) fired from a rotating turret beneath the nose of a C-130
weapon that speeds through the water enveloped in a nearly gunship. The beam could be up to 4 inches in diameter and
frictionless air bubble—may render obsolete the old submarine have a 20-mile range—enabling it to burn through vehicles and
strategy of sly maneuvering and silent running to evade the machinery with a precision and millisecond timing that mis-
enemy. The superfast torpedo could be outfitted with con- siles and cannons can’t achieve. (Cannons, in particular—now
ventional explosive warheads, nuclear tips or nothing at all— centuries old in concept—are tricky to aim. These “indirect fire”
a 5,000-pound, 230-mph missile could do enough damage on weapons must be pointed far from the target to factor in wind
its own. The Russians invented the concept during the Cold speed, humidity, firing force—even the rotation of the Earth.)
War, and their version of this underwater killer—dubbed the Next on the agenda: developing targeting, tracking and firing
Shkval (“Squall”)—has recently been made available on the
international weapons market; the United States, of course, Watch Metal Storm in action at popsci.com/exclusive
wants a new, improved version of the original.

#3
ADVANCED
TACTICAL
LASER
Rotating turret provides

360-degree targeting.
Sealed exhaust ensures

safety of crew members
and ground personnel.
The Advanced Tactical Laser, fired from a Special Forces A/C-130

Gunship, will have a range of up to 20 miles, as well as pinpoint
accuracy and speed-of-light responsiveness. The first generation will
employ chemical lasers, which will later be replaced by diode-
pumped solid-state lasers powered by electricity.
hardware. Among the questions researchers must answer: how

long must the beam linger on a target to have the desired effect.
“There are some interesting things with the directed energy
technologies that we just don’t know about,” says Lt. Col. Joseph
Panetta Jr., program manager for the Advanced Tactical Laser at
the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Chemicals processed
Air Force Base in Florida. “We need to determine exactly how it in platform generate
will perform on the battlefield.” laser beam.
Laser weapons are a relative bargain compared with exist-
ing long-range weapons: They’re expected to cost $8,000 per
shot versus up to hundreds of thousands for missiles. Lasers division at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-
are also tunable, which adds versatility: When less-than-lethal Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, is managing the heat that’s
force is required, such as in urban areas or when hostages are generated—lasers are only 10 percent efficient, so 90 percent
present, the beam’s duration can be reduced so that it disables of the power is lost in heat. “Controlling the heat will require
technology but only injures people. “We want a system that active cooling,” she says, “such as spraying the laser’s diodes
can generate a variety of effects on the battlefield, from dam- to keep them from overheating.” Solid-state lasers will be
aging something to totally destroying it, to just kind of harass- smaller than chemical ones, permitting their use on fighter
ing with it,” Panetta says. “This seems to offer us that.” jets and ground vehicles. The Joint Strike Fighter, due to enter
Next-gen tactical lasers will likely be electrically-powered service in 2009, is a well-suited potential platform, says Erno,
and diode-pumped, since chemical lasers require storage and because its engine includes a metal shaft that spins fast
transport of heavy ingredients. The greatest challenge with enough to easily power a laser.
electric lasers, says Lt. Col. JoAnn Erno, head of the power Lasers are an example of a weapon that should be developed

for multiple uses, says Garrett. “If you can get several [military]
branches to use it instead of four different devices that do the
same thing, you can make it cheaper by cutting down logistics
#5 A GUN THAT FIRES A MILLION ROUNDS A MINUTE
Firing a gun has always been an intensely mechanical
process: Pull the trigger and a hammer strikes the back of a
problems and easing training.” bullet—usually inserted into the chamber by a spring mecha-
nism—causing explosive powder in the bullet to shoot out a
#4 SPACE-LAUNCHED DARTS THAT STRIKE LIKE METEORS

This technology is very far out—in miles and years. A
pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth
slug. The slug exits the front of the barrel and another spring
ejects the empty shell from the side of the gun.
For centuries, gun manufacturers have only been able to
would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the target- finesse the firing process, and guns remain prone to jamming,
ing and communications platform while the other carries misfiring due to deterioration of moving parts, and occasional
numerous tungsten rods—up to 20 feet in length and a foot in explosive failure that can kill or severely injure the soldier fir-
diameter—that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes’ ing the weapon. The Australian company Metal Storm has an
notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite answer: Bring digital technology to what has been one of the
commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods battlefield’s last holdouts from the electronics revolution.
enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling Metal Storm’s solution—now being examined by the Depart-
at 36,000 feet per second—comparable to the speed of a mete- ment of Defense—is to remove virtually every moving part
or. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it’s from modern guns and replace them with electronic ballistic
buried deep underground. (The two-platform configuration technology and computerized controls. Bullets stacked in the
permits the weapon to be “reloaded” by just launching a new set barrel fire at rates of up to 60,000 rounds per minute, even a
of rods, rather than replacing the entire system.) million in certain multi-barrel configurations. Coded electric
The concept of kinetic-energy weapons has been around ever signals ignite propellant embedded within each specially
since the RAND Corporation proposed placing rods on the tips designed bullet. The pressure created by the small explosion
of ICBMs in the 1950s; the satellite twist was popularized by pushes out the bullet while at the same time enlarging the
sci-fi writer Jerry Pournelle. Though the Pentagon won’t say bullet behind it, sealing the barrel and preventing the other
how far along the research is, or even confirm
that any efforts are underway, the concept per-
sists. The “U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight
Plan,” published by the Air Force in November
2003, references “hypervelocity rod bundles” in its
outline of future space-based weapons, and in Communica-
2002, another report from RAND, “Space tions and
targeting
Weapons, Earth Wars,” dedicated entire sections
platform
to the technology’s usefulness. receives
If so-called “Rods from God”—an informal instructions
nickname of untraceable origin—ever do mate- from the
rialize, it won’t be for at least 15 years. Launch- ground
ing heavy tungsten rods into space will require and identifies
substantially cheaper rocket technology than the target.
we have today. But there are numerous other
obstacles to making such a system work. Pike,
of GlobalSecurity.org, argues that the rods’
speed would be so high that they would vapor-
ize on impact, before the rods could penetrate
the surface. Furthermore, the “absentee ratio”—
the fact that orbiting satellites circle the Earth
every 100 minutes and so at any given time
might be far from the desired target—would be
prohibitive. A better solution, Pike argues, is to
pursue the original concept: Place the rods atop
intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would Partnered rod
slow down enough during the downward part “cartridge”
of their trajectory to avoid vaporizing on ejects tungsten
#4 projectile.
impact. ICBMs would also be less expensive
and, since they’re stationed on Earth, would
take less time to reach their targets. “The space-
basing people seem to understand the down-
RODS
side of space weapons,” Pike says—among
them, high costs and the difficulty of maintain- FROM Space-based weapons have exceptionally
disparate advantages and disadvantages:
They are extremely powerful and difficult to
ing weapon platforms in orbit. “But I’ll still bet
you there’s a lot of classified work on this going
on right now.”
GOD defend against, but they’re also expensive
to launch and maintain and they’re in con-
stant motion above the Earth.

Clustering barrels together #5
can raise firing rates of
individual weapons to a
million rounds per minute. METAL
STORM
Pressure from each shot expands the

Electric charge ignites pro- next round, sealing the barrel and
pellant embedded within slugs. preventing accidental firing.
Metal Storm weapons replace mechanical firing systems in conventional guns with coded electrical ignitions. These can be programmed to
fire at any rate, from thousands of rounds per second to just one at a time. According to the manufacturer, the technique can be used with
both lethal and nonlethal rounds (such as rubber bullets). The guns can also be electronically secured so only authorized users can fire them.
charges from igniting until commanded to do so. The guns require electrical power, making them yet another
Though hand-carried versions won’t fire at a million rounds gadget soldiers will need to keep supplied with batteries.
per minute—no soldier would want to reload every three mil- The Metal Storm system has been tested on rounds ranging
liseconds—vehicle-mounted systems could. Art Schatz, the sen- from 9mm to 60mm, and in a variety of weapons, including
ior vice president of operations in Washington, D.C., says that the O’Dwyer VLe (a “smart gun” with electronic safety controls,
if larger barrels were clustered on the back of a Humvee or in a named after company founder Mike O’Dwyer), and clustered
helicopter, the result would be a powerful “area-denial” weapon. pods of barrels that achieve the million-round-per-minute
The system can be adjusted to meet various needs. “We’re not numbers. The U.S. military is helping fund Metal Storm. If the
talking about always firing at a million rounds per minute,” Pentagon decides to adopt the weapon, it will probably enter
Schatz says. “But if you’ve got one of these mounted in an air- use in 5 to 10 years—that’s how long it will take for the mili-
craft and have a rocket-propelled grenade coming at you, you tary to design new weapons around the system, test them, and
can in an instant have 200 little bullets intercepting it.” More- distribute them to soldiers. ■
over, Metal Storm could fire nonlethal rounds such as rubber
bullets—for, say, crowd dispersal. The system’s key drawback: Eric Adams is POPSCI‘s aviation and automotive editor.

PHOTO CREDIT TK

Tech ’54,
Where Are
You?
BY LARRY SMITH
How much has technology

really changed our daily lives? We
asked a highly wired writer
to spend 10 days in the big city
living with the technology of 50 years ago.
No Web, no cell, no laptop,
no ATM card.
Illustrations by Tavis Coburn

to traverse. I bought a new digital camera, 1 Fabrics like Thinsulate,
clicked on my favorite blogs six times a day introduced in 1978, are
made from microfibers—
and read four months’ worth of Brookstone superthin synthetic fibers
catalogs. I drank lots of lattes, caught up on that are melted and then
Mornings weeks of back e-mail and saw part three of The

Lord of the Rings in a slammin’ multiplex with
cooled by air onto a screen
(wool and cotton, in contrast,
are woven). Advantages:
are the worst. surround sound and stadium seating.
The rules didn’t demand that I pretend the
Microfiber materials are
water-resilient and are thin-
year was actually 1954. I didn’t have to call ner and more flexible than
people “cat” or wear a gray flannel suit. I sim- even the finest silk.
ply couldn’t employ technology that wasn’t 2 The Post-it note was
available and reasonably affordable half a cen- invented in 1974, the same
tury ago. Obviously, my cellphone, Sonicare year as liposuction.
The coffee is too weak. The windup alarm toothbrush, DVD player and two computers 3 Melton is a thicker wool
clock is too loud. The phone rings, and it were out. I embarked on a search for a new than the kind typically pro-
might or might not be my mom. There are no winter jacket, as mine was made of synthetic duced today, made of a twill
new e-mails. There is no hope for a Krispy microfibers not on the market in 1954.1 The or satin weave with a lovely,
Kreme. And man, oh man, I miss my Ambien. Post-it notes2 that litter my desk had to go. smooth surface. During the
production process, wool is
Why have I subjected myself to life with- The Cuisinart (née 1973), which lives a lonely typically soaked in hot
out a PDA? Why did I agree to a plan that life under my sink, could stay right there. soapy water with a touch of
forced me to spend New Year’s Day watching While I could still use charge cards (the acid. Melton wool is soaked
the Gators in black and white, while the rest Diners Club card, introduced in 1950, ushered up to 10 times longer than
other wools, in a solution
of the civilized world rings in the new year in a new age of credit—by 1952 it was ac- that contains twice as much
with Hoppin’ John and the Orange Bowl in cepted by thousands of merchants), my ATM soap; that’s what makes it
glorious Technicolor (or better yet, on TiVo card would have to be retired. especially thick. The finished
with full control over instant replay and super Chris Duval, a vintage clothes collector in fabric is then sheared to
remove pilling, giving Melton
slo-mo)? Why, oh why, am I spending the first Fairhaven, Massachusetts, sold me a peacoat wool its satiny sheen. I’ve
10 days of 2004 attempting to work, play and that I learned was made from dense Melton never received so many com-
party like it’s 1954? wool3 rather than the inferior weaves that pre- pliments on a coat, and it
only cost me $35.
I was born in 1968. One of my mom’s vail today. At a Garden City, Long Island, com-
favorite photos is of her holding baby me in puter repair shop, collector Tony Casillo 4 In 1950, about 10 percent
front of TV images of Buzz Aldrin’s first Moon offered me a 1950s-era Royal manual type- of American households had
walk. I’m old enough to remember life before writer with the original ribbon (“this baby has a television; in 2000, that
number was 98 percent.
PCs and ATMs, but young enough to embrace very few miles on it”) and recounted an Approximately 3 million
NetFlix and Wi-Fi’ing at Starbucks. I have endearingly sad tale: His 12-year-old daughter homes now subscribe to
10,000 songs on my hard drive, but I derive was the only student in her class who knew TiVo, ReplayTV or a similar
more joy poring over my future father-in-law’s what a typewriter was when the teacher DVR service.
5,000-plus LP collection. After serving my asked. I rented a 1952 black-and-white Zenith 5 According to the U.S.
friends a perfect gin gimlet in my grandpar- TV4 with rabbit ears. Census, in 2000, 11 million
ents’ stemware, I’ve been known to duck into I knew that during my time travel I would people were unmarried and
the other room to check e-mail and sneak a have to be extra sweet to my fiancée, Piper, as living with a partner (both
same-sex and heterosexual
glance at ESPN.com. I’m what marketers call this new lifestyle would be inflicted, to some couples are included in this
an early adopter, yet there are moments when extent, on her as well5 (and she made it clear figure). In the ’50s, the Census
all I want is to sit on a porch and listen to a ball that when I walked in the front door she didn’t track cohabitation data;
game on the radio as my pop used to do in the wouldn’t be greeting me with a drink in hand, we do know that in 1950, 32
percent of men and 34 per-
days before big-screen TVs. Perhaps this mis- looking like Julianne Moore in Far From cent of women were unmar-
sion I’ve accepted will help me better grapple Heaven). Delivery of Thai food to our New ried, compared with 42 and
with my ambivalence. Is simpler really better? York City apartment was out of the question. 45 percent today.
Just how far have we come since Soviet pre- Fortunately, we retained the arguably roman- 6 True, the Pill was invented
mier Nikita Khrushchev, after listening to Vice tic ability to make an instant cake (General in 1951, but it wasn’t mar-
President Richard Nixon articulate America’s Mills’ Betty Crocker brand introduced the keted until 1960; in the ’50s,
technological superiority, responded,“Many of cake mix in 1947) and to store the leftovers in condoms ruled. Condoms
the things you have shown us are interesting Tupperware (patented in 1947 by Earl Silas began to be mass-produced
in 1844, when Charles
but not needed in life”? Tupper). And it was determined that since my Goodyear patented the vul-
partner, not I, was the one popping that post- canization of rubber. In the
PRESHOW: ’54 miracle of science, the Pill,6 it was allow- 1930s, latex was introduced;
A GEEK’S LAST FLING able (plus, my editor didn’t want to be respon- in 1957, artificial lubrication.
In the weeks before my low-tech experiment sible for another baby boom).
began, I was a high-tech camel, trying to store As the final minutes ticked away until the
up enough of the modern world to last me start of my experiment, I had Piper hide my
through the technology desert I was preparing cellphone, kissed my Sharper Image CD

shower radio good-bye, tried to ignore the fact delivered by a milkman, unadorned with 7 The Zoning Improvement
that I would soon be sacrificing 242 TV chan- stamped expiration dates. And whereas the Plan, or ZIP Code, was
devised by postal worker
nels, took a last peek at the Paris Hilton video, pig that produced his bacon was raised on a Robert Aurand Moon and
and tapped out the following e-mail autoreply: small farm (fewer than 200 animals), today’s adopted by the U.S. Postal
mass-produced porker is likely to have been Service in 1963. Moon, who
I will be offline from 1/1–1/10, not, crammed together with some 150,000 other became known as Mr. Zip,
was national director of deliv-
unfortunately, because I will be at sea or swine and continually dosed with antibiotics. ery services in Washington,
sunning on a remote island, but because And that’s just breakfast. In the ’50s, the D.C., from 1970 to 1977. He
I am doing a story on living the low-tech typical American lusted not for a plasma TV died in 2001 at the age of 83.
life for a high-tech magazine. or Treo 600 PDA/phone but for a Hoover 8 Ibuprofen (Advil’s active
Thus: washing machine and GE refrigerator.10 The ingredient) was invented in
no e-mail average person today buys a new cellphone 1969—the same year as
no cellphone every 18 months, and two of the hottest mag- ATMs, the barcode scanner
no Foreman Grill, etc. azines are Lucky (about the accumulation of and in vitro fertilization—and
approved by the FDA for
If you would like to reach me, please stuff) and Real Simple (about how to stop over-the-counter sales in
try 212-*** -**** (no answering machine). stuff from overwhelming you). Yet as the say- 1984. Back in 1954, the only
You could also write me a letter (but don’t ing goes, the more things change, the more over-the-counter pain medi-
include the ZIP Code7)—or feel free to they stay the same. As Elaine Tyler May cine was good old aspirin, a
remedy originally derived
drop by. recounts in Homeward Bound: American Fam- from willow tree bark that

ilies in the Cold War Era, Kelly Longitudinal was marketed starting in the
Studies done at that time revealed women 1890s. Tylenol, or acetamino-
complaining “My husband continually seeks phen, debuted in 1955 as a
children’s elixir—it was pack-
something new to own. He doesn’t keep his aged to look like a red fire
interest in one thing too long.” truck. The first adult version
After all, is it really such a big leap from appeared in 1960.
Without a POPULAR SCIENCE’s November 1953 feature 9 D’Oh! I had hoped that
“How You’ll Get TV Colorcasts” to the maga-
remote, I’m zine’s April 2004 story about how to hack
Gatorade was one of those
drinks that had been around
crouched in front of your TiVo to get an extra 150 hours of storage forever. No such luck.
Gatorade was created in
time? Fifty years later, we’re still trying to
the TV like a keep up with the Joneses.
1965 by researchers at the
University of Florida bent on
caveman. I’m sure my bloodshot counterpart would
have ended his New Year’s Day in front of the
creating a hydrating drink
for the Florida Gators. The
Gators then kicked butt—
tube, so I turn on the ’52 Zenith. I’m distressed they went to back-to-back
at having to drum my fingers for a full minute bowl games in ’65 and ’66.
while the TV warms up. The culprit is 1950s-
10 The post–World War II era
era tube technology. The metal in a cathode-
was a time of unprecedented
DAY 1: ray tube had to heat up before the tube would consumption. In the four
NEW YEAR, OLD GEAR function; the transistors in modern TVs, by years following the war,
Happy New Year! As on the previous approx- contrast, operate with no startup delay.11 Americans purchased 20
imately 18 New Year’s days, I wake with a The past half century has yielded dramatic million refrigerators, 5.5 mil-
lion stoves and 11.6 million
nasty headache. There have been many such advances in TV transmission and image TVs. Air conditioners were
mornings when I wish I could go back in quality—first color, then stereo sound, cable also hot items.
time. Twelve hours and 10 drinks would be transmission, satellite delivery, digitally
11 While modern TVs rely on
ideal. Fifty years? Not so ideal. transmitted signals and, most recently, the
transistors for their circuitry,
I am an expert at dealing with hangovers. advent of high-definition TV, which is expect- they still contain a cathode-
My remedy involves 800 mg of Advil,8 a tan- ed to be the industry standard by 2006. So ray tube that shoots electrons
gerine Emergen-C packet containing 1,000 Piper and I expect some waves or ripples, but at the screen to create the pic-
mg of vitamin C and tons of potassium, an the picture on our ’52 Zenith is as sharp as ture (LCD and plasma screens
excepted). The transistor was
orange Gatorade,9 lots of water, strong coffee that of our six-year-old Sony. invented in 1947 at AT&T’s
and a fried-egg-and-bacon sandwich. Today Without a remote, I’m crouched in front of Bell Telephone Laboratories in
only the sandwich and H2O are valid options. the TV like a caveman; still, I start instinctu- Murray Hill, New Jersey.
“Put on your shoes,” Piper says, “and I’ll buy ally flipping. Charlie Rose. The Orange Bowl. 12 TV Guide debuted on
you a Bloody Mary with cheap vodka.” The Simpsons. Everybody Loves Raymond. The April 3, 1953. It cost 15
She’s right: My counterpart from ’54 Drew Carey Show. Leno and Letterman. Few cents and its first cover fea-
wouldn’t be savoring a vodka like Skyy or enough options that you can toss your TV tured Lucy and Desi’s baby
Absolut that’s hyped as super-distilled. Back Guide,12 but still not too bad. I pop two Desi Arnaz Jr.
then gin was still the mainstay and vodka an aspirin and settle in to enjoy Dave’s delightful
obscure Russian novelty; Smirnoff was the interview with director Barry Sonnenfeld.
first brand to gain popularity. Meanwhile, my Twenty minutes later, the TV makes what I’ve
doppelgänger’s milk and eggs were probably since diagnosed as “a funny sound.” Poof!

13 The first commercial micro-
Fade to black. took out the soda fountain,” explains Steve Oh, wave hit the market in 1947,
At least this solves the problem of who will a Chinese guy who bought the place 17 years but like many early versions
get up to turn it off. ago from a Jewish guy (who bought the place of now-ubiquitous items, they
were gigantic (5 1/2 feet tall,
from Mr. Eisenberg). “The young people like 750 pounds) and expensive
DAY 2: the cans better.” (up to $5,000). In the late
THE FEEDING FRENZY ’60s, prices dropped, and by
When friends heard about my foray into the DAY 3: 1976 microwaves were more
simple life, they were evenly split as to WHEN RADIO RULED popular than dishwashers.
whether the lack of e-mail or cellphone would I stroll to the subway. I’m on my way to 14 Ray Kroc opened the first
break me first. Both camps were wrong: It’s Waves, an antique audiovisual paradise near McDonald’s franchise in Des
the bad coffee that’s killing me. “In 1954, most the Garment District. Here are the things I am Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. The
first drive-through window
home coffee drinkers in the U.S. used electric not carrying with me: a Web-enabled cell- opened in 1975 in Sierra
percolators,” explains Gregory Dicum, author phone with built-in camera, an iPod, a Palm Vista, Arizona.
with Nina Luttinger of The Coffee Book: PDA and an old and heavy iBook. I look noth-
15 “Rye, the spicier, more
Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last ing like my ’54 counterpart would, he of the
flavorful predecessor of
Drop, when I called him for input. “And make natty gray flannel suit and fedora. He would bourbon, was crippled by
sure you brew it weakly,” he instructs. “You probably have carried only a briefcase, but he Prohibition and never recov-
should be able to see your spoon all the way to would have been more likely than I, at the age ered,” says Anthony Giglio,
the bottom of a ’50s-style coffee cup.” of 35, to have a wife and kids, and so would Boston Magazine wine and
spirits columnist and author
New York City’s coffee of choice in the ’50s have had the weight of the world as well. of the forthcoming Cocktails
was Chock full o’ Nuts, which happens to be Left multi-taskless, I am more aware of the in New York. When alcohol
running a new campaign to bring it back in people around me, the architecture, my own was re-legalized in 1933,
vogue, passing out free packets on city street thoughts. It reminds me of the long-gone days liquor companies wanted to
get their product out in a
when I used to love roaming around a city and hurry. They tended to ignore
overhearing other people’s conversations. rye because it takes six
Now I remember how much I used to enjoy years or more to age, as
this voyeuristic little kick—it sure beats walk- opposed to bourbon’s four.
Also, rye’s powerful flavor
ing around with headphones beaming an came as an unwelcome
Alicia Keys song downloaded from Kazaa. shock to drinkers who had
I buy a single-ride MetroCard (the closest become accustomed to
watery bathtub gin.
approximation to the single-use token
employed in ’54) and make my way to Waves, 16 The first commercially
where Bruce and Charlotte Mager rent and grown genetically modified
sell phonographs, cylinder record players and food was a tomato called the
FlavrSavr. Created in 1992
black-and-white televisions. Some of their by a California company
TVs come with an oil-filled magnifying screen named Calgene, this tomato
that is slightly larger than the TV’s own; created a stir, but genetic
when placed in front of a small television, the engineering of foods has
since become commonplace
magnifier enlarges the image—which would in the U.S. The USDA esti-
have enabled the whole family to better enjoy mates that 38 percent of
corners. I’m not chock full o’ guts, though, so Milton Berle on Tuesday nights. Back then, the 79 million acres of corn
for the first couple of days the 12-cup perco- TV was an event, and viewers were willing to planted in 2003, as well
as 80 percent of the 73
lator I’ve procured remains unsoiled, and it’s gather round it when their favorite show million acres of soybeans,
out into a modern world for a cup of coffee aired. The introduction of the VCR17—and contained genetically engi-
(diner swill only, no Starbucks). more recently, digital recording devices like neered varieties.
Thankfully, since I live in New York City, TiVo—changed that, creating a world in 17 In 1975, Sony created the
things are not so bad on the ’50s food front. which viewers expect entertainment on Betamax, the first videocas-
Before we bring back our Foreman Grill and demand (music junkies dream of a “celestial sette recorder (VCR) for home
microwave,13 I promise to take Piper out to jukebox” that would make any song ever use. A year later, Japan Victor
some classic restaurants. The good news: No recorded just a click away). Company (JVC) began selling
a VCR with a different format
fast food.14 At Peter Luger Steak House, where The radios particularly fascinate me. After (VHS) that could record more
the porterhouse costs $37, Kenny the bar- the Korean War, transistors replaced tube video on a single tape. Sony
tender tells us that in ’54 a proper Manhattan technology, but as Bruce Mager explains, the soon switched to VHS manu-
was made with rye, not bourbon.15 At Eisen- tube still lives. “A lot of people are actually facturing, and by the time
VCRs took off in the early
berg’s, a tiny counter that’s been around since going back to tube technology because it gives ’80s, VHS was the standard.
1929, the chocolate egg creams, today as off a warmer sound. A speaker in a wooden
always, have no egg in them, and the tuna enclosure sounds nicer than a speaker in a
salad recipe hasn’t changed, though of course plastic container.”
now the tuna could be accompanied by fries In the ’50s, Americans enjoyed more varied
cooked in genetically modified corn or canola radio programming than one finds today
oil.16 “The only thing that is changed is that I (unless you subscribe to a satellite service).

The programs were there because people were fact that in 1954 Mr. Atkins was 24 years old 18 The touch-tone phone was
listening. “People often had several radios in and had not invented a diet that causes thou- invented in 1963 at AT&T Bell
Telephone Laboratories.
the house,” Mager says. “There was always one sands to drop their chips.21
in the living room that the whole family sat 19 Caller ID was patented in
around.” His shop is filled with beauties. DAY 5: 1983 by Carolyn Doughty of
Mager explains that in the ’50s, prices were WITHDRAWAL SETS IN AT&T Bell Laboratories (now
a division of Lucent Tech-
coming down so companies like Philco, Zenith OK, by now I’m starting to feel weak—though nologies).
and Motorola started sprucing up their looks I’m ashamed to admit what it is I miss.
to compete—much the way television and I miss Tellme, the 800 number that gives 20 Scrabble was trade-
computer manufacturers do today. free sports scores, stock news, weather reports, marked by Parker Brothers in
1948 and gained real popu-
Mager lends me a Motorola AM/FM that movie times and other essentials for civilized larity in the early ’50s when
illuminates when turned on. It’s the best- living. I miss the on-screen TV ticker telling the president of Macy’s dis-
looking appliance that has ever graced my me how many yards Steve McNair threw for covered it while on vacation.
bedroom. He also lets me try out a Columbia today, since my 52-year-old boob tube cuts off Clue, Monopoly, Candyland
and Sorry! are other pre-
phonograph housed in a wooden case, to play the bottom of the screen. 1954 board games that
the 78s and 45s I’ve borrowed from Piper’s I miss my iBook and my desktop iMac. I remain popular today. But
dad. There are two buttons: volume setting can figure out a way to mop my floor without games like Parker Brothers’
and treble setting. In goes an extended-play my Swiffer, but without the ability to process Little Red School House and
Cowboy Roundup or Bee-Line
45 of Columbia Records’ Johnny Cash Vol. 2 words, I am at a loss. What can I do with the Products’ Galloping Golf, a
(in “guaranteed high fidelity”) that includes Royal? Not much. I type a thank-you note for golf-dice game from 1950,
“Frankie’s Man, Johnny,” “The Troubadour” the New Year’s Eve party, with an apology have vanished into obscurity.
and “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” Johnny that the font makes it look like a ransom note. 21 In the 1950s, ampheta-
has recently been buried, but his spirit still How did anyone ever write a novel on one of mines were sometimes used
circles round and round. these things? Typewriter aficionado Tony to combat weight gain.
Casillo thinks the typewriter made people Towards the end of the
DAY 4: more creative, forcing the Ray Bradburys22 decade, though, Nathan
Pritikin started a new trend
HANGING ON THE LINE and Jack Kerouacs to stop and think before after battling his own heart
I try to make an airline reservation without a spewing words on the page.23 “The type- disease with a diet skewed
touch-tone phone.18 US Airways hangs up on writer,” he says, “is a great example of a per- toward whole grains and
vegetables. Though based on
me twice while I wait for someone to pick up fect combination of function and form.” I
sound nutritional principles,
(the days of “If you’re using a rotary phone, would argue that so is Apple’s first line of the high-fiber, low-fat Pritikin
please hold and someone will be with you iMacs, but perhaps I am just cranky from diet has recently been
shortly” are fading fast). Without a headset I making so many mistakes (without the aid of eclipsed by the Atkins diet,
which encourages followers
get neck cramps (and can’t do the dishes Liquid Paper, invented by Bette Nesmith Gra- to splurge on high-fat foods.
while stuck on hold for 15 minutes). And the ham in 1956) on what is certainly a Royal
problem isn’t limited to airlines: The better pain in the ass. 22 Bradbury typed one of his
restaurants require a touch-tone phone to But there are, I am beginning to notice, a best-known works, Fahrenheit
451 (published in 1953), in
navigate their many commands. few things that I don’t miss. Like obsessively the basement of UCLA’s
Unlike my nice cordless digital phone with checking phone messages and e-mail. Yelling, library, using a pocketful of
its pleasing cadence, this Wesson Electric to no one in particular, that the cable modem dimes to power the library’s
rotary has the sort of ring usually reserved for is too *#@!’ing slow. Getting the same sports pay-as-you-go typewriters.
fire drills or warnings of invading armies. It scores three different ways—from ESPN.com, 23 On second thought, Ker-
shocks my cats into bolting under the bed. the TV screen in an office-building elevator, ouac is probably a bad
And when I pick up, a different sort of and the New York Post. And then there are all example of stopping and
screech greets me. “You’ve been impossible to the beeps. Cellphone beeps. Microwave beeps. thinking before spewing. He
wrote On the Road in 21
get ahold of,” says my mother. “I don’t like this The beeps the cursor makes at the end of a days on a continuous scroll
experiment.” document in Microsoft Word. of typewritten pages he
Since people can’t e-mail me, the phone taped together. He and his
rings all the time, yet I never know who’s on DAY 6: cohorts thrived in an under-
the other end of the line.19 I’m exposed! SWANK RIDE, DADDY-O ground artists’ movement
during the height of 1950s
It’s only day four. Lenny Shiller and I are cruising through consumerism. Kerouac
It’s Sunday night but I can’t watch HBO, so Brooklyn in a ’52 Nash Statesman—what labeled the group, which
I put Sinatra on the phonograph, make a Shiller calls “a classic makeout car” because included Allen Ginsberg and
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the
pitcher of martinis and gather some friends the front seat folds back to form a bed. Beat Generation—a refer-
around a mint condition 1952 Scrabble Impeccably designed by Pininfarina, the ence to their goal of achiev-
board20 that I had procured in advance from body is beige and the top burgundy, with an ing beatitude, a state of
eBay for $4. We munch on Lipton’s old-fash- art deco interior. The backseat is bigger than utmost bliss.
ioned onion dip with chips, and revel in the
y
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 122)
Check out articles and adverts that appeared in POPULAR SCIENCE in 1954: popsci.com/exclusive

DARPA’S
DEBACLE
IN
THE
DESERT
BEHIND THE
SCENES AT THE
DARPA GRAND
CHALLENGE,
THE142-MILE ROBOT
RACE THAT
DIED AT MILE 7
BY JOSEPH HOOPER
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MICHAEL DARTER
WITHOUT A WHIMPER: The Blue Team’s autonomous motorcycle (below),

in a typical pose during qualifying trials at the California Speedway; left: a spectator
catches the “action” on race day.

8
WHEN LAST WE VISITED WITH THE MEN AND WOMEN, steering and countersteering corrections.
At the Grand Challenge, DARPA agreed
the boys and girls, the Red Teams and Blue Teams and to let him stage a remote-control demon-
Road Warriors of the DARPA Grand Challenge off-road stration for the by now autonomous-
bike-crazed media. Alas, when the check-
robotics race, back in March, we signed off on a note ered flag went down, so did the bike,
of authentic ambivalence. The teams themselves were without a whimper. The first attempt of
the high school team from Los Angeles,
all over the map, from rehearsing victory speeches to the Palos Verdes High School Road War-
praying they would pass the qualifying round and be riors, aborted when their vehicle, a mod-
allowed on to what was anticipated to be a 210-mile ified Honda Acura MDX, lurched right
immediately after start-up and headed
course from outside Los Angeles through the Mojave for the grandstands until DARPA hit the
Desert to somewhere just west of Vegas. The race’s disabling “E-Stop” button. Race organiz-
ers granted the team the luxury of a sec-
organizers, for their part, couldn’t quite muster a con- ond try and time to make some quick
sensus on how to handicap the event. Race manager software fixes, and for Take 2, the Acura
came roaring out of the gate hard left and
and resident sunny optimist Col. Jose Negron unblink- knocked over a two-and-half-foot-high
ingly predicted that a team would cross the finish line concrete guard before DARPA could hit
in under 10 hours to claim DARPA’s million-dollar the E-Stop, a don’t-try-this-at-home
moment of autonomous mayhem that
prize in the race’s inaugural run—yet course designer proved popular with the evening TV
Sal Fish couldn’t bring himself to share this official news broadcasts.
vision. “It’s still hard to get it in my brain,” Fish said, WHAT WENT WRONG? In a sense, noth-
“that this is all going to happen with robots.” ing. These results were—or should have
Chalk one up for Mr. Fish. been—entirely unsurprising. Unlike the
computer whirring on your desk, mobile
robots have to thrash around in the real
world, which makes the entire enter-
Here, to spare you the suspense, is how things looked once prise finicky and unpredictable. The 15 machines that took
the dust had cleared on race day, March 13: Carnegie Mellon the starting line in Barstow, California, were attempting a
University’s “Red Team,” the presumptive race favorite—in quantum jump in performance over the robots that putter
the minds of many race insiders, the only team with a realis- around university artificial-intelligence labs, avoiding table
tic shot at the million-dollar prize—had ended the race at mile legs at one or two miles an hour. To have a shot at the dead-
7.4, its Humvee’s belly straddling the outer edge of a drop-off, line and the big prize on what was ultimately a 142-mile
front wheels spinning freely, on fire. SciAutonics II dropped course (prudently downsized to make a 10-hour, one-day race
out of the running at mile 6.7, its Israeli dune buggy stuck in a feasible goal) from Barstow to Primm, Nevada, the Grand
an embankment. Digital Auto Drive quit at mile 6.0, its Toy- Challenge bots would have had to average nearly 15 mph,
ota Tundra stymied by a football-size rock. The Golem Group and in the flat stretches reach speeds of up to 50 mph. They
stopped at mile 5.2, its pickup stuck on a hill with insufficient would stay in one piece by tracking via GPS technology the
throttle to move forward. Team Caltech, another race favorite, latitude-longitude waypoints that 42
dropped out at mile 1.3, its Chevy Tahoe SUV having careened defined the course and avoiding
off course and through a fence. Team TerraMax, a heavy- obstacles with their own internal
THE SCORECARD
weight collaboration between Ohio State University and the sensors: video cameras, laser scan- Of the 15 qualifiers,
Oshkosh Trucking Corporation, was out at mile 1.2, stopped ners, radar and the like. Good luck. 9 made it past the
of its own accord, a 32,000-pound six-wheel military truck By comparison, the winning vehicle starting line. Here’s
flummoxed by some bushes. These, it should be noted, were in the last Baja 1000 off-road race, how far past: CMU
the Grand Challenge success stories. The rest of the field went with an actual human behind the Red Team [22], 7.4
haywire at or just beyond the starting chute in full view of the wheel, averaged just over 50 mph, miles; SciAutonics II
[21], 6.7 miles; Digi-
press who packed the grandstands erected for the event. though on much stiffer terrain. tal Auto Drive [7], 6
The two teams that had become media darlings and unof- Traversing less than six percent miles; The Golem
ficial DARPA pets had suffered particularly inglorious flame- of the course may not sound like a Group [9], 5.2 miles;
outs. At the last minute, Anthony Levandowski, the UC Berke- grand result, but it should be noted Team Caltech [5],
ley grad student-cum-visionary behind the Blue Team’s that the four lead bots did get 1.3 miles; Team Ter-
autonomous motorcycle, scratched from the race proper, his through the first section of the raMax [20], 1.2
miles; SciAutonics I
navigation systems nowhere near race-ready. But, as he course, a flat looping dirt road that [17], 0.75 mile; Team
proved on an earlier qualifying attempt, Levandowski had passed through four fence-gate CIMAR [4], 0.45
successfully realized an ingenious software system that could openings, each only about 12 feet mile; Team ENSCO
keep the bike moving forward (or in circles) through constant wide. After mile 4, the narrow, rocky [13], 0.2 mile.

29
MA P BY J E F F S OTO POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004 87
58
road begins its snake-line ascent of a been capable of writing a different

vertiginous ridge, a series of tight ending (and, for that matter, middle)
switchbacks with cliff drop-off on one to the Grand Challenge. The Red
side, hillside on the other, and heart- Team had a fanaticism more typical
break written all over it. Making it only of an underdog, enviable material
partway up Daggett Ridge is no shame. resources (it had become one of cor-
After the race, some of the robotics porate America’s more assiduous
teams grumbled that DARPA—the shakedown artists), and a culture of
Defense Department’s R&D wing, discipline that emanated from the big
which staged the race in an effort to man himself. The result was a battle-
tap the deep well of American ama- tested Humvee that was churning
teur ingenuity—had guaranteed that through impressive autonomous test
its Grand Challenge would be a short HAIRPINNED The Red Team’s Sandstorm
runs in the Mojave in February, when
and unhappy one with Daggett Ridge crashed 10 days before the race, destroying most of the other competitors had yet
so close to the start, instead of revers- a quarter million dollars’ worth of equipment. to plug in all of their circuit boards.
ing course and running the race from Technically speaking, Whittaker
Primm to Barstow instead. It’s a figured that Sandstorm’s edge derived
debatable point. The Primm area has from its elaborate mapping system,
its own minefields, notably silt beds and a steep ridgeline which electronically stores information (roads, topography,
about 12 miles from the finish. notable features) about every square meter of the course.
If DARPA was plainly guilty of anything, it was not man- During the Grand Challenge qualifying trials held at the Cal-
aging inflated expectations. Instead of billing this inaugural ifornia Speedway in Fontana the week before the race, the
Grand Challenge as a not-ready-for-prime-time field test to Red mapping team would repair after each day at the track
calibrate what was needed for future efforts, race manager to a hillside trailer adjacent to the Divine Word Mission. The
Negron, in the months leading up to the checkered flag, con- gospel according to Carnegie Mellon involved punching up
tinued to predict a victor. (At a press conference before the contiguous sections of the Mojave Desert on 15 separate
race’s start, Negron’s second-in-command, Tom Strat, wisely computers, each Red Team “editor” working away at opti-
if belatedly redefined victory as a matter of winning young mizing Sandstorm’s routes and speeds as the vehicle passed,
techie hearts and minds, not miles traveled: “I can’t tell you in virtual computer reality, through his or her respective
if the vehicles will go 1 mile or 20 miles, but I can say the block of the master map. Two nights before the Barstow
Grand Challenge has already been a great success.”) start, the team’s technical director, Ph.D. candidate Chris
DARPA had gone so far as to remake a 6,500-seat arena in Urmson, tried to dispel any excess of editorial caution. “We
Buffalo Bill’s Resort & Casino in Primm (a cheap Vegas have a battering ram of a car,” he said. “At 22 mph, Sand-
knockoff a half hour southwest of the city) into the Challenge storm is just a beast on a roll.”
Operations Center. Once the bots were well launched, the The Palos Verdes High School team had its own technical
media were to leave the spartan charms of the starting-gate issues to contend with at the qualifying trials, knottier in their
bleachers by Barstow’s Slash X Ranch Cafe roadhouse and way than any computerized map. The Road Warriors, almost
hightail it over to Buffalo Bill’s to nosh, listen to a smooth- from their inception, had been riven by two distinct parental
rock cover band, and follow the race progress on two huge factions. One group, consisting of Alice Parker, a USC electri-
screens running bits of video footage shot from DARPA heli- cal engineering professor, and her husband Don Bebel, an
copters as the bots made their way to the finish line just out- engineer at Northrop Grumman, had mentored a group of
side the Buffalo Bill’s parking lot. But what to do when the technically sophisticated students—first among them Joe
race was effectively over by 9 a.m. and officially over by 11? Bebel, the couple’s wunderkind 16-year-old son—who had
At noon, the Buffalo Bill’s opera- worked up their own Linux-based
74
tions center had the sad, pretentious operating system to drive the team’s
look of an overproduced birthday COUNTDOWN TO IGNOMINY [1] Carnegie autonomous Acura. An opposing
party or bar mitzvah for which the Mellon’s Red Team warms up in the predawn group of engineer parents emerged
guests had all declined to show up. The darkness of race day, just before receiving who resented what they perceived as
T H I S PA G E : M AT T H E W J O H N S O N - R O B B E R S O N / C M U
eye couldn’t fail to notice one tall, pow- the 2,000 GPS waypoints that defined the Parker’s and Bebel’s proprietary atti-
erfully built 60-year-old man slumped Grand Challenge course; [2] an ecstatic tude toward the project and who
back in his chair. William “Red” Whit- Road Warrior watches as the Palos Verdes jumped at any chance to jettison the
High School Doom Buggy makes its most
taker, CMU robotics professor and successful qualifying run—a full half circuit
homegrown Linux system for a com-
eponymous leader of the Red Team, of the track—before crashing into a parked mercial Windows-based one that they
had made sure he was in Primm well car; [3] SciAutonics II’s modified Israeli regarded as technically superior and
ahead of the 10-hour deadline, even as dune buggy idles prerace; [4] John Hind of far more feasible for the non-nerd stu-
his team’s vehicle, Sandstorm, was Team Spirit of Las Vegas engages in some dents—in many cases, their own
being dug out of the Daggett Ridge feverish last-minute coding of the vehicle’s kids—to work with. By the time the
communications software; [5] Joe Bebel
dirt. “We’ve come back from worse,” he and fellow Road Warrior Chris Kleinhen
team arrived at the California Speed-
said, looking utterly poleaxed. tweak the operating system; [6] the Terra- way, the Road Warriors had ruptured
Whittaker and his team were ar- Max 32,000 pound behemoth off to a good at the seams, with Parker and Bebel
guably the one group that might have start—before being stymied by some bushes. banished to the sidelines, and Joe and

82
1
2 3
4 5

94
D.A.D. BRINGS his high-tech peers conscripted by the regnant adult mentors
to work with the prefab Windows-based system they despised.
HOME THE BACON
In a field of teams using off-the-shelf
The results on the test track were equivocal. The new adult
team committed the fatal error of accidentally erasing its
operating system code, which was by some accounts work-
tech, one delivered true innovation. ing very well. Late-night or all-night programming sessions
DARPA ultimately cares little about the fate of civil- at Fontana became routine (one 15-year-old student, Dan
ian robots in the Mojave Desert. Yet it cares very Jacobowitz, briefly wound up in the hospital for dehydra-
much about the development of new robot technol- tion), as did a series of qualifying attempts that were embar-
ogy, technology that will enable unmanned vehicles rassing in their cumulative awfulness. Finally, Joe and the
to autonomously monitor their surroundings, avoid Linux warriors were brought in for one glorious autonomous
boulders and potholes, and race to targets. By those run using the original Linux OS. The Doom Buggy navigat-
criteria, the race did have a winner: Digital Auto ed around more than half of the course, through cones, sand
Drive of Morgan Hill, California, which developed traps and fences, before crashing into a planted obstacle, a
an innovative new robot vision system that, team car parked on the track. “It was our one moment of glory,”
leaders claim, nearly won them the race. said Graham Robertson, Palos Verdes science teacher and the
In theory, the team’s strategy is simple: Avoid the team’s faculty leader. “I was thrilled that the students had
struggle to combine data from multiple “active” sens- done it and the adult mentors celebrated along with them
ing systems like radar and lidar. Create a real-time even though they say that that system is not the way to go.”
3-D map of the course in front of the vehicle with Added Joe, with characteristic diplomacy, “It was a nice
video cameras alone. Choose a safe path through the moment to have one team again.”
upcoming terrain, then point the steering wheel At around 3:30 a.m. on the day of the race, the 15 Grand
down that path. Now do it while flying through the Challenge competitors received from DARPA a CD contain-
desert at up to 60 mph. The team, led by engineers ing the 2,000 or so GPS waypoints that described the
David Hall and his brother Bruce, mounted two digi- Barstow-to-Primm course. The Red Team fed the information
tal video cameras atop their 2003 Toyota Tundra. A into the Sandstorm’s mapping software; in 10 minutes’ time
processor transforms the images from the cameras it had mapped out the exact route it intended to follow. Pro-
into a 35-billion-pixel terrain map, and redraws that jected race time: 13 hours—3 hours over the limit. From his
map 60 times a second. For each one of these up- après-battle station at Buffalo Bill’s, Whittaker seemed
dates, another processor creates up to 100 possible almost to savor the moment. “The easy thing to do would
paths through the terrain, then rates each path based have been to relax and show up at the parking lot in Primm
on how flat is is, how close it is to the DARPA-defined at 7 p.m., in 13 hours,” he said. “But we entered this challenge
course, and the size of the obstacles on that path. that was declared a year ago, and for us 10 hours was sacred.”
(The team completely avoids the problem of object The Red Team went back to the software, tweaking up vehi-
recognition by treating every bush like a boulder, cle speed and slicing the margin of error. “I was clear,” Whit-
and avoiding both.) Repeat the process 60 times a taker said. “Let it run. Victory or death.”
second: 35 billion pixels, 100 paths. And so death it was. That Sandstorm expired near the top
Yet for all of D.A.D.’s innovations, a football-size of Daggett Ridge, just a switchback away from 15 miles of clear
rock lodged under a tire and ended its journey sailing, was not, Whittaker feels, a reflection on route or rac-
at mile 6.0. The team’s downfall lay not in its stereo- ing strategy, which he regards as perfection itself. “By the time
scopic image system. Rather, a feedback loop wasn’t we finished,” he said, “we were tuning the vehicle to mud pud-
set properly, and the computer didn’t provide enough dles.” The exact explanation for why Sandstorm carved a turn
gas to barrel over the rock. Disappointing, yes, but too sharply and nearly flipped over the side of an embank-
the team remained optimistic. “If we only had two ment awaits exhaustive analysis of the onboard data. But the
more programming days,” says Bruce Hall, “we team is agreed that the vehicle’s sensing systems had not fully
would have completed the course.”—MICHAEL MOYER recovered from a rollover crash during an overly ambitious
test run 10 days before the race. A quarter million dollars’
IN SUPER STEREOSCOPIC 3-D: D.A.D.’s vision quest. worth of electronics was crushed in an instant. The team rose
to the occasion—“that galvanizing moment that levels a team
to its knees so that it rises to its own greatness,” in Whittaker’s
Churchillian formulation. The parts were replaced, but the
vehicle’s ability to reliably avoid obstacles was never quite the
same. Sandstorm whacked fences and poles on that perfect
route even before it entered its fatal hairpin turn.
AT THE EVENING RECEPTION at Buffalo Bill’s, the DARPA offi-

cials couldn’t congratulate themselves enough for a job well
C O U R T E S Y D A R PA
done. Even the disappointing matter of a 142-mile race that
View a photo gallery from the race at popsci.com/exclusive
121
BEFORE, DURING . . . AFTERMATH Sing Yiu Chung, the Blue Team’s programming whiz (left), makes some last-minute adjustments before the
autonomous motorcycle’s 50-foot qualifying run. Top right: SciAutonics II’s dune buggy, on its way to a 6.7-mile run. Bottom left: The Palos
Verdes High School “Doom Buggy,” after crashing into a concrete barrier. Bottom right: Team ENSCO, kiboshed after 0.2 mile.
128
lasted only 7.4 miles was jocularly laid at the feet of course on the team,” Palos Verdes student leader Chris Seide exulted
designer Sal Fish, the president of the SCORE off-road racing to the assembled multitudes.) DARPA’s Tom Strat anticipates
organization. “The first part [of the course] was definitely the some 500 aspiring entrants, five times the number this year.
hard part, and I definitely blame Sal Fish,” DARPA director And while much of this year’s field was unable to cope even
Anthony Tether declared in celebrity-roast high spirits. He with preliminary trials—the first day at Fontana, only two
was on firmer ground when he advanced an oft-repeated yet of eight bots attempting to qualify made it out of the gate—
nonetheless plausible argument that the race had succeeded the consensus is that, with the benefit of experience, next
admirably in its primary mission of galvanizing engineers year’s second-time contenders ought to be ready to rumble.
(even those still in high school) to get to work on a new gen- From DARPA’s perspective, what’s not to like? This just gives
eration of autonomous support and supply vehicles. them another round of technological innovation paid for
Clearly, the Grand Challenge strange brew of technical mostly by someone else.
audacity and Johnny-get-your-laptop populism had touched While Grand Challenge 2004 had its moments of winging-
some kind of national nerve. “I haven’t seen this much inter- it improvisation, who’s to say it wasn’t the right hot-house
est in something related to national security since the days atmosphere to grow the next generation of American
of the Apollo space program,” Tether declared, before roboticists? The Blue Team’s Anthony Levandowski, for
announcing that Grand Challenge 2005 would go for- one, learned something about grace under pressure. “Right
ward—this time with a $2 million prize. According to Red before the demonstration, the crowd was cheering and we
Whittaker’s e-mail “Race Log”—a kind of computer diary of were so excited that we forgot to switch the bike over from
Captain Ahab-ian obsession—filed in late March, “The autonomous to drive-by-wire,” he said. “Next time, I’ll have
Grand Challenge will be completed in September or Octo- it tattooed to my arm.”
ber of 2005, hence about 550 days remain to race day.”
The media might be a little wary about a full-court cover- Joseph Hooper has written for The New York Times Maga-
age of next year’s race, but evidently the people who build zine, Men’s Journal and Esquire. He previewed the DARPA
and sponsor robots can’t wait. (“Next year we’ll have seniors Grand Challenge in our March issue.
92 POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004 142

B
Boeing, Boeing,Gone?
The world’s greatest aviation company hasn’t launched a new airliner in 14 years. If the ultra-efficient technology
of the 7E7 fails, Boeing could be grounded.
BY BILL SWEETMAN
ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN HESHKA
oeing’s best hope for survival as an aviation giant sits in a

small warehouse in a Seattle industrial park. It’s a mock-up of the interior of a new jet, the 7E7
Dreamliner. Representatives from major airlines are steadily marching through it, trying to
decide whether they want to buy it. From a passenger’s perspective, the 7E7 design is appealing:
Artfully tapered arches frame a backlit ceiling. Bigger than normal windows reach above eye
level. Electronically dimmable glass replaces clumsy plastic shades. Overhead bins big enough to
swallow four full-size roll-ons blend smoothly into the ceiling.

But airline reps are interested in more than passenger business—Pan American and British Overseas Airways Cor-
amenities. They want to know whether Boeing—a company poration—flew Stratocruisers. Not only was the airplane leg-
that seems to be running out of feet to shoot itself in and that endary, so were the parties in its lower-deck bar, a cozy space
is rapidly losing its supremacy to Europe’s Airbus—can deliv- reached by a spiral stairway and lit by the warm glow of flam-
er the 7E7’s promised savings and operational benefits. More ing engine exhaust. Though passengers loved the Stratocruiser,
pressingly, they want to know whether Boeing can actually fol- only 56 were ever sold; its large size made it too expensive
low through and build the Dreamliner. The company’s credi- to operate. The Stratocruiser was the inspiration for the
bility took a hit in 2002 when it scrapped plans for the Sonic upstairs lounge on the 747. That lasted about five years, until
Cruiser, a radical, tail-first jet that was supposed to fly as much airlines realized they could more profitably use the space for
as 100 mph faster than today’s airplanes. Alan Mulally, Boe- additional passengers. This time, Teague and Boeing have
ing’s unquenchably enthusiastic commercial airplanes boss, made sure that design appeal doesn’t come at the expense of
had presented the Sonic Cruiser as a sure thing, the biggest revenue-providing seats.
innovation in air travel since the jet engine. Then, nothing. With the Dreamliner, Boeing’s top management, including
Boeing is promising that the Dreamliner will deliver a full 7E7 senior vice president Mike Bair and Boeing commercial
20 percent cut in fuel burn, and that its performance and oper- airplanes CEO Mulally, is challenging Air-
ating costs will handily beat those of its closest rival, the Air- bus’s strategy of building huge double-deck-
bus A330-200. Creating technology that lives up to such expec- er airplanes like the A380. The real future of
tations will be difficult and risky, but Boeing has no choice: air travel, according to Boeing, isn’t super-
This is its only commercial jet in development. Dreamliner jumbos flying between mega cities; it’s
chief engineer Walt Gillette concedes: “It could be the end of smaller airplanes connecting the midsize
us” if the new jetliner does not succeed. cities that most people travel to.
These are stormy times for the 88-year-old Today few pairs of cities are connected by intercontinental
company, which launched the jet age in 1958 nonstop flights. If you live in Minneapolis, for instance, you
with its elegant 707. Last year, Airbus deliv- can fly direct to just three cities on the other side of the Atlantic
ered more jets—305 to Boeing’s 281. It was or Pacific. Any other destination involves a plane change. The
the first time another company had sur- same, more or less, applies to Denver, Manchester, Lisbon and
passed Boeing in jet sales. Airbus also has Osaka. Why? The smaller long-range jets on
orders for 129 of its A380 superjumbos, the market today (around 250 seats) are
scheduled to fly in 2005, while Boeing’s icon- expensive to operate, Mulally explains, so air-
ic 747 is in trouble: Two attempts to sell lines funnel passengers through hubs where
improved versions have fizzled, and Boeing they can fill a bigger, more economical 777
delivered only 19 last year. In October, weak or 747. But the 7E7 will be both small and
sales forced Boeing to end production of its efficient, Boeing claims, making it possible
200-280-seat 757, and the 245-375-seat 767 to open up hundreds of city pairs. The re-
probably won’t survive unless the company can close a deal to sult: faster, more convenient travel for the
build 100 tanker versions for the U.S. Air Force. “Internally, majority of passengers, who will be able to
they realize that they’re down to the 737 and 777,” says Byron bypass congested hubs. “How would you
Callan, who studies the aerospace industry for Merrill Lynch. rather travel?” Mulally asks.
Boeing officials have more than a sales slump to contend Boeing predicts airlines around the world
with. Congress is scrutinizing the company’s proposed $17 bil- will buy its midsize 7E7 in vast quantities—
lion lease of 100 refueling 767s to the Air up to 3,500 in the next 20 years—and that, by
DREAM TEAM: Boeing’s fate now hinges on
Force—initially because of the high cost of the 7E7 project, being led (from top) by contrast, Airbus’s 555-plus-seat A380 will be a
the deal but more recently because of Walt Gillette, Klaus Brauer, Randy flop, confined to a few high-traffic routes like
alleged improprieties. In November 2003, Baseler, Mike Bair and Alan Mulally. Singapore to London. With its cash reserves
chief financial officer Mike Sears, heir drained by the big airplane, Boeing officials
apparent to CEO Phil Condit, was fired. Condit’s investigators say, Airbus won’t be able to compete with the Dreamliner.
had learned that Sears made overtures to a senior Air Force The 7E7 will come in three versions. The baseline 7E7-8 will
procurement official, Darleen Druyun, about a Boeing job carry 217 passengers in a three-class cabin, with a range of up
while Druyun was still overseeing the tanker project. One to 9,800 miles—New York to Hong Kong, for example. A short-
week later, Boeing’s board of directors asked for Condit’s head range 7E7-3 will have the same body length and shorter wings,
and replaced him with Harry Stonecipher, a 67-year-old for- together with a lighter airframe and landing gear (Japanese air-
mer company executive coaxed out of retirement. One of lines, in particular, want an airplane that will fit the same gate
C O U R T E S Y T H E B O E I N G C O M PA N Y
Stonecipher’s main tasks, in his own words: “We’ll spend an as the 767 that they use today). And down the line, Boeing
awful lot of time restoring our reputation. We have to deal plans a longer-body, heavier 257-seat 7E7-9 with a Singapore-
with the perception that we’re a bunch of crooks.” to-New York range—9,600 miles.
It’s not exactly the best time to try to sell a risky new proj- The Dreamliner will be all things to all people, Boeing
ect to a wounded, risk-averse airline industry. insists. In addition to offering airlines better performance at
a lower price, it will cosset passengers with bigger windows
THE SEATTLE-BASED design firm Teague Associates, which and wider seats. It’s being painted as the Leatherman of jets,
created the Dreamliner’s interior, first partnered with Boeing able to make money carrying 200 passengers from New
in 1947 on the Stratocruiser. The aristocrats of the airline York to Hong Kong but also performing well on 3,000-mile

[ MAKING THE 7E7 FLY
BOEING’S AMBITIOUS DESIGN SEEKS TO CUT
AIRLINE COSTS, BOOST PASSENGER COMFORT.
Electrically powered cabin-pressurization
systems and hydraulic pumps will
Some customers want a cockpit that
looks and feels like the 20-year-old
777, so pilots can be trained to fly both
require extensive testing to convince air- airplanes. Others want a more modern
Long-range Dreamliners will have lines that they won’t increase mainte- cockpit with bigger display screens.
I
193-foot wingspans; short-range nance costs.
versions will be 20 feet narrower.
I
Problem: Designing a wing that
works well in both sizes.
I
High-bypass engines save fuel, but are

I I
larger in diameter. The trick will be
mounting them on the airplane without The inboard skins of the carbon fiber Some airlines want Boeing to give the
adding weight—from a longer engine wing, where the loads are greatest, will pilots Airbus-like sidestick controls. Boe-
pylon, fatter nacelle and longer landing
gear—that offsets their efficiency. I be thick and will incorporate complex
curves. So far, nobody has succeeded in
mass-producing such parts.
ing thinks that old-style yokes are safer;
most of its customers, who fly both Air-
bus and Boeing jets, don’t agree.
Boeing will be working overtime to live up to the high expectations it is creating with the electrical ones. Removing air bleeds from the
Dreamliner, both among airline customers and their passengers. Though addressing the engine boosts efficiency. If the engines have
needs and desires of both are often distinctly separate efforts, the 7E7 engineers are exploit- to feed the cabin with pressurized air, they
ing some interesting overlaps. The use of composite materials in the fuselage, for example, must be bigger so they will run properly
will not only keep the airplane’s weight down, making it more fuel efficient, but will also when all the bleeds are working at maxi-
make the installation of larger, heavier windows less costly. The 19 x 11-inch windows, the mum capacity (for example, if one engine
largest on any current commercial airplane, will give passengers a view to the horizon. has failed). That means that they are pump-
The stronger composite fuselage also permits an increase in cabin pressure. The 7E7 cabin ing extra air most of the time.
will be pressurized to 6,000 feet altitude, rather than 8,000 feet; the extra 2,000 feet made Boeing will welcome passengers onto the
a huge difference to volunteers who helped with tests. Another environmental consideration: 7E7 with sweeping arches, dynamic lighting
humidity. Airliner cabins are typically kept to Death Valley humidity levels—about 10 percent —the ceiling will feature a calming, simu-
—to avoid moisture build-up in the bilges, but composites don’t corrode, so the 7E7 will be lated sky that enhances the perception of
closer to the 20 to 30 percent minimum recommended by environmental health standards. spaciousness—larger lavatories, and more
Boeing is pursuing numerous other advances. It is removing from the engine the gear- spacious luggage bins. The Dreamliner will
driven hydraulic pumps that drive the controls and landing gear, and valves that bleed com- offer wider seats and aisles than competing
pressed air to pressurize the cabin and keep ice off the wings, replacing these systems with models in every class. “Our 7E7 passengers
will enjoy a more relaxed and spacious
environment that makes their flights more
comfortable,” said Klaus Brauer, Boeing's
interior specialist.

domestic flights within the United States, or on shorter trips at the aft edge of the wing reveals a set of simple, multipur-
within Japan with 250-plus passengers squeezed into tighter pose moving surfaces, replacing complex flaps.
seats. Or, with 440 passengers in nine-abreast seating, it could The biggest innovation in the 7E7 is that most of the wing
make 2,000-mile holiday flights from Northern Europe to and body will be made from carbon-fiber composite—strong
beach-party destinations. Airlines love such versatility— strands of pure carbon bonded together with resin. Fighter
among other things, it makes airplanes easy to resell and wings and jetliner tail surfaces have been made from carbon
boosts their book value. fiber since the early 1980s; Boeing plans to make the 7E7 from
The trouble is that Boeing’s various goals for the 7E7 con- the same fibers and resins that it uses on the 777 tail.
flict. Wider seats mean a wider cabin, and basic geometry tells There is no reason a composite wing can’t be built. Boeing
us (at least those of us who weren’t passing notes in math made carbon-fiber composite wings for the 7E7-size
class) that the volume of a cylinder goes up with the square of B-2 bomber 15 years ago. The question is whether the weight
the diameter. Result: more savings are worth the cost
weight and more drag. Versa- (the B-2 was not exactly
tility isn’t free either. More
range and a bigger payload
demand more fuel, a stronger,
Dreamliner chief cheap, even by Pentagon
standards). A jetliner’s wings
engineer Walt
carry greater loads than the
heavier wing to carry it and tail, so the skin must be
bigger engines to handle the inches thick, comprising
greater weight.
Gillette concedes “It hundreds of plies of fiber.
“The challenge isn’t building
BOEING ENGINEERS aren’t
could be the end of
an aircraft but building so
counting on fundamental de- many airplanes economically
sign changes to fulfill their each month, and physically
grand vision. The company
recently backed away from its us“ if the new jetliner laying down that amount of
material,” says Bair, adding,
does not succeed.

research into a radical airliner “It’s not insurmountable.”
design, the Blended Wing It had better not be insur-
Body (BWB), a flying wing. mountable, because Boeing
The retreat caused some con- has no backup, such as an
troversy within Boeing, be- advanced aluminum struc-
cause more than a decade of design work has indicated that a ture, in the works. “There’s no fallback,” says Bair. “We know
blended wing body could be more efficient than a conven- we can make it work.”
tional jet—and cheaper to build. George Muellner, Boeing’s The fuselage presents different challenges. A jetliner’s fuse-
vice president for Air Force programs, has complained of a lage is under constant stress from cabin pressure in flight.
“tube-and-wing mentality” at the company. (Today Boeing When it’s built from aluminum, designers worry about fatigue,
would rather not talk about the BWB at all. Though the con- the gradual weakening of the metal. Composites are impervi-
cept is being pursued for military applications, the BWB page ous to fatigue, which is caused by metal’s crystalline struc-
has been excised from the company’s Web site. A request for ture—something composites don’t have. The bad news: Im-
an interview with the BWB’s creator, Boeing senior technical pact damage can cause the composite plies to separate,
fellow Robert Liebeck, draws an instant, snippy response: weakening the skin even though the damage remains invisible.
“Our market forecast for the next 20 years does not include While tail surfaces are safe from most impacts, airplane
commercial applications for the BWB concept. Since our bodies are not. In Bair’s words: “There are areas on the fuse-
leadership is of one mind on this issue, we don’t believe a fur- lage that get attacked by ground equipment, by a galley serv-
ther interview on this subject is necessary.”) ice truck on a rampage.” The solution, says Gillette, is
Since they aren’t introducing a new design, the 7E7 looks to embed in the 7E7 fuselage electronic sensors that can
like a smaller 767 or a 777—with a nose job. A sleeker nose detect changes in stress patterns that are caused by internal
will reduce drag and cockpit noise, program manager Mike damage. The sensors will be linked to a “neural net” computer
Bair points out. Don’t expect the shark-like tail from the that “learns what normal is.” If a hungover loader on the
artists’ concepts to appear on the real airplane, but a close look Heathrow ramp misjudges his distance, “the system knows
A RIVALRY IN THE MAKING

1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
[
Boeing 707, introduced in 1958, launches the jet Boeing introduces Boeing’s iconic 747, In 1982, Boeing’s 767
age. It’s expensive, but its speed (doubling that of the 737 in 1967. It introduced in 1970, becomes the first long-
piston- becomes the best- doubles the size of range airliner to be
engine selling and longest- most airliners. Upstart allowed transoceanic
airliners) running airliner in pro- Airbus delivers its first flights with just two
makes it duction. The jet has commercial jet, the engines. The Airbus
productive. since undergone two A300—the first twin- A320, in 1987, is the
extensive makeovers to aisle, twin-jet airliner. first highly automated,
keep it competitive. Boeing sees no threat. fly-by-wire aircraft.

AIRBUS ASCENDANT: The super-jumbo A380, a massive two-deck airliner that will carry more than 555 people, could place Airbus on top for good.
it’s been hit and that its response to the load is different.” GE’s GENX is expected to use 20 percent less fuel, for the same
Because composites don’t expand or contract with chang- power, than the GE engine on the Airbus A330-200. The GENX
F R O M T O P : C O U R T E S Y A I R B U S ; C O U R T E S Y T H E B O E I N G C O M PA N Y
ing temperatures as much as metal does, it’s easier to build the is based on the technology used in the GE90-115B, just enter-
airplane from large “snap-fit” components, saving assembly ing service on Boeing’s 777, and currently the world's most
time, Gillette says. Boeing wants to build its body “barrel” sec- powerful engine, capable of producing 115,000 pounds of
tions in one piece, using robots to wind fibers around a 20- thrust. Rolls-Royce’s Trent 1000 engine builds on the Trent
foot-diameter tool. And switching from aluminum alloys to 900, which the company is developing for the A380.
composites will align Boeing with a larger research and devel- The 7E7 will replace some pneumatic and hydraulic sys-
opment community. “The world is working on toughened tems with electrically powered ones. Hydraulic technology,
composites [for railroads, bridges and autos],” says Gillette. On such as the pumps that bring landing gear up, is reliable, but
the horizon: nanotubes and new fibers that may be 10 times it’s unique to aerospace, so the entire cost of developing it
stronger than carbon. ends up in the price of Boeing’s jets. Electrical systems are
Composites save an impressive amount of weight—the 7E7 more universal: “The whole world wants to develop high-
will weigh 10 tons less than the shorter-range A330, says Boe- power electric generators and controllers,” Gillette says. As a
ing—but that translates into a fuel-burn savings of only 2 to result, electric-powered devices should become more efficient
3 percent. The biggest single fuel saver will instead be the and less costly.
7E7’s new engines. In April Boeing picked General Electric
and Rolls-Royce to build new engines for the Dreamliner, DESIGNING AND BUILDING an all-new jetliner is a venture
rejecting a proposal from a third competitor, Pratt & Whitney. that leaves little change out of $10 billion. That’s one of many
reasons why aerospace is no place for wimps. Nobody takes
that risk without solid commitments from customers. Boeing
is already soliciting 7E7 orders from key buyers like Singapore
1990s 2000s Airlines, an acknowledged leader in long-distance travel, and
[
In 1993, Airbus introduces the Airbus confirms launch All Nippon Airways, a likely launch customer for the short-
A330 and A340—similar, larger of the two-deck A380. range model. “Launch” customers—those who buy airplanes
versions of the A320. In 1995, Boeing, having said off the drawing board—are taking a risk of their own. But
Boeing delivers the 777, a versa- there’s no market for Boeing has a track record of delivering airplanes on time and
tile, fly-by-wire jet. the A380, unveils its
Sonic Cruiser proposal.
on spec, and the upside is often a significant discount. Boeing
Low interest from air- will likely need to secure buyers for up to 100 Dreamliners
lines kills it in 2002. before it turns on the money spigot. Outwardly, there’s no lack
of confidence: Officials say they hope (CONTINUED ON PAGE 134)
y

HOW2.O
YOUR LIFE ON TECH >
HACKS, UPGRADES,
PROJECTS, GRIPES,
TIPS & TRICKS
THIS MONTH • Pitting all-in-ones against SLRs 101 Procurement: Japanese imports 108 • 5 THINGS. . .
GROK • The future of Internet worms 101 Tech Support: RSS feeds, reader tips, INTERNET WORMS WILL DO TO
OGLE Think Tank case mod, This is Broken 110 ATTACK YOU IN THE FUTURE
BUILD • The Luddite: Casio Exilim EX-Z40 103 You 2.0: Game Ready muscle
HACK recovery machine 105 From the Frontier: GPS mapping in Tajikistan 108 GET INSTANT
ACQUIRE 1 An instant-messaging worm
INTEGRATE • Make your own classic arcade 104
EXPERIMENT • Unlock your GSM cellphone 106 could infect 200,000 com-
puters in 60 seconds by tar-
geting IM vulnerabilities that
allow it to spread without
your double-click. Use soft-
ware like Norton AntiVirus
2004 that scans IMs.
PRETEND TO BE A FRIEND
2 A Microsoft-impersonating
worm recently infected 1.5
million machines in 24 hours.
Worms will get even better
at duping you into opening
them by spoofing your most-
used e-mail contacts. Create
a keyword with friends that
signals a legit attachment.
APPEAR TO BE A PEER
3 KaZaa was the apparent
launch pad for MyDoom,
and P2P threats jumped 46
percent in the second half of
2003. Avoid .exe files from
P2P sites, and scan all
downloaded files with up-to-
date antivirus software.
FLASH YOU
4 Today, worms spend time
DEPT: H2.0 Labs INVESTIGATOR: Mikkel Aaland TECH: Digital cameras searching for security holes.
RETAIL: $1,000 But so-called “flash” worms
THE BATTLE OF THE

ACQUIRE
to $1,300 will be programmed with a

STREET: $780 to $1,300 list of previously identified
PROSUMER DIGITALS BEST: Sony DSC-F828,

Nikon D70
insecure machines, allowing
them to start infecting almost
instantly. Watch for software
FINDINGS: Got a grand? A new crop of models brings the
(under development) that
all-in-one vs. SLR debate to the digital realm. Steal Splurge
monitors network traffic for
identical packets coming and
going—usually a worm.
Here’s the old logic: Digital SLRs—those bulky, expensive cameras with the interchange-
able lenses—are for pros and hardcore hobbyists, while the cute little cameras with the MUTATE
built-in lenses (all-in-ones) are reserved for weekend shooters, who willingly trade some 5 New polymorphic worms
image quality for size and convenience. mutate every time they
Well, not anymore. Both Canon and Nikon now offer prosumer-aimed SLR kits (camera send, evading apps that
body and lens) for about the same price (around $1,000) as some new top-of-the-line only scan for known worm
TOMER HANUKA
fingerprints. Expect antivirus

8-megapixel all-in-ones. So now that you have a choice, which one should you choose?
software that also looks for
We put six models through controlled studio tests and a battery of everyday shooting situ- worm behavior, such as new
ations, including an 8-year-old’s birthday party, complete with mock pirate invasion. Both programs initiating network
types of cameras captured beautiful images, but that’s where the similarities stopped. >> connections.—KATE ASHFORD

H2.0 How 2.0 > H2.0 Labs // The Luddite
TWO DISTINCT BREEDS Those electronic innards also mer use a sensor that’s physi- C-8080 Wide Zoom is biased
Before you can understand allow all-in-ones to live in much cally smaller and therefore to slight overexposure and un-
what these cameras do and smaller bodies than SLRs. The more prone to electronic dersaturation, while the Sony
don’t do well, you need to un- Canon PowerShot Pro1 and “noise.”) And though these all- DSC-F828 tends to create flat
derstand how they work. SLRs Nikon Coolpix 8700, for ex- in-ones capture 8 megapixels images and the Rebel falls
possess a traditional optical sys- ample, are nearly half the size and the SLRs only 6, we had short on sharpening. (See the
tem (a mirror and prism) that of the Canon Digital Rebel or no trouble producing high-qual- chart below for specific per-
can work with different lenses Nikon D70. ity 16-by-20-inch prints from ei- formance judgments on each
to transfer an image to both the ther. (Many factors—sensor of the cameras.) But, again,
viewfinder and the sensor. All- IMAGE QUALITY design, optics, processing—are these are minor shortcomings
in-ones accomplish the same For all their inner (and outer) as important as pixel count in on otherwise excellent images
task using only electronics, but differences, at this level both producing decent images.) and all can easily be fixed us-
this gives them functionality not types of cameras take excep- Which is not to say all six ing the camera’s settings or im-
possible with SLRs, like captur- tional photos. The only situa- cameras will give you the same aging software (a topic we’ll
ing video or giving you a live tion in which one category image, particularly when explore in depth next month).
preview of your shot on the outperformed the other was in shooting in JPEG mode (which
LCD. (SLRs only let you review low light, where the all-in-ones calls on the camera’s internal RESPONSIVENESS
photos there; you must frame produced significantly grainier processor) with default settings. Here the debate comes into
shots in the viewfinder.) images than the SLRs. (The for- For example, the Olympus sharp focus. In short, if you
shoot static things like grand
> The all-in-ones canyons and fruit bowls, either
type of camera will serve you
well. But for shooting action—
NIKON COOLPIX 8700 hyperactive kittens, cheetahs in
$1,000; street: $800
the bush or just your kid’s soc-
cer game—SLRs are the cate-
gorical hands-down winner.
Overall responsiveness
CANON POWERSHOT PRO1 refers to all of the functions
$1,000; street: $940 that determine how quickly a
camera is ready to capture the
shot you want. For example,
start-up time—how long it
takes the camera to power up
and the zoom lens to extend—
for most of the cameras was a
reasonable 2 to 3 seconds (the
D70 started up almost instantly
and the CoolPix 8700 took 6
JOHN B. CARNETT
seconds). Shutter lag—another
area that’s long been a prob-
OLYMPUS C-8080 WIDE ZOOM lem with digital cameras—was
SONY DSC-F828 $1,000; street: $780 almost nonexistent among
$1,000; street: $850 these six models.
HOW THEY STACK UP CAMERAS RESPONSIVENESS USER CONTROLS ACTION FLASH LANDSCAPES
Test images were taken
using the cameras’ Canon Digital Rebel Excellent Excellent Excellent Good Excellent
highest-quality JPEG
settings and reflect Nikon D70 Excellent Excellent Excellent Good Good
out-of-the-box per- Canon PowerShot Pro1 Fair Good Fair Good Excellent
formance. Shooting in
these cameras’ RAW
Nikon Coolpix 8700 Fair Poor Fair Good Good
mode will produce Olympus C-8080 Fair Fair Fair Good Excellent
different results. More Sony DSC-F828 Good Good Good Good Good
on RAW next month.

THE Diary of a
INTEGRATE
Tech Resister’s
> The SLRs ISO, the Sony to 800, the rest
from 50 to 400). With the
LUDDITE Temptation
SLRs, it’s a no-brainer: Turn a

NIKON D70 few dials. The all-in-ones rely EPISODE 3, PART I:
$1,300; street: same more on LCD-based menus TUESDAY, NOON I admit it:
and submenus, requiring more I’m excited. I’ve been want-
fumbling and more glances at ing a camera that’s easy to
the user manual. The Coolpix carry, and this one is
8700 doesn’t even have the smaller than my wallet.
courtesy of icons, just a button TUESDAY, 2 P.M. Manuals are
that brings up cryptic text on for grandparents. I’m ready.
the control panel like “SE 1,”
for portrait mode, or “SCE 2,”
for party/indoor mode.
CANON DIGITAL REBEL

H2.0 RECOMMENDS . . .
$1,000; street: $900 Moral of the story: (most) of
these all-in-ones are not just
for amateurs anymore. For CASIO EXILIM EX-Z40
anyone who wants great all- $400; casio.com
At the 8-year-old’s birthday viewfinder and the LCD just af- around performance, we sug- BARRIER TO ENTRY Controls
not terribly intuitive
party, the SLR advantage be- ter the shutter was released, gest the Sony F828. It’s not as
THE LUDDITE LIKES Size, video,
came obvious. Before the pi- slowing our shot-to-shot time. responsive as the SLRs but numerous settings
rates landed, the children were The SLRs, meanwhile, with was by far the best of its cate- VERDICT I’m not giving it back
pretty calm, giving us time to their optical viewfinders and gory, and it has a fast manual-
play with prefocusing our shots. manual zoom, caught the ac- zoom 7x Carl Zeiss lens. It I snap a few shots of the of-
The all-in-ones took years (OK, tion we wanted every time can also shoot 640-by-480- fice, but it feels as if some-
several milliseconds) longer to and were almost immediately pixel video at 30 frames per thing’s not quite right.
auto focus than the SLRs—only ready for the next shot. The second until your memory card TUESDAY, 3 P.M. I discover
the Sony came close. D70 even has a continuous- is full. Note that the Sony is a playback. Apparently, I was
Once the pirates stormed shooting mode that can take hulk—if size and weight are recording video clips. Didn’t
F R O M L E F T: J O H N B . C A R N E T T; C O U R T E S Y C A S I O
the beach, the all-in-ones, with three photos per second until important, consider the compe- know it had video. Sweet.
the exception of the Sony, sim- the memory card is full (others tent and compact Canon Pro1. WEDNESDAY, 11:30 P.M.
ply could not keep up. Their have slower burst modes, lim- SLRs still rule for those who Recording videos of drunken
electronic zoom controls were ited to a handful of shots). shoot a lot of action or need St. Patrick’s Day revelers
too sluggish to capture the additional flexibility, and we elicits unfriendly stares. Time
panicky scattering children, USER CONTROLS love the Nikon D70. It’s a few to put camera away.
and the view through their The chaos on the beach also hundred bucks more than the FRIDAY, 3:15 P.M. At the hos-
electronic viewfinders was so demonstrated to us how sim- Rebel, but its better kit lens justi- pital to take pics of a recov-
jerky and blurred, we never ple (or insanely difficult) it is fies the added cost. ering friend. Battery dead.
knew exactly what we’d get a to adjust settings like file type, For a detailed review of Go home, recharge, return.
shot of. The all-in-ones also image quality and shutter each of these cameras, as well Memory full. Can’t find
produced a brief but disorient- speed on the fly (incidentally, as examples of our test shots, delete. Finally spot a trash-
ing blackout in both the the SLRs go as high as 1600 go to popsci.com/h20. can icon. Free some space.
MONDAY, 10 A.M. Notice
there are 21 settings, in-
cluding one called “text.”
LOW LIGHT PORTRAITS SHARPNESS EXPOSURE COLOR-CAST Shoot a magazine page
(very Bond) and the result is
Excellent Excellent Soft Slightly under Orange/magenta shockingly readable.
Excellent Excellent Slightly soft Slightly under Neutral TUESDAY, 7 P.M. I plug the
Fair Excellent Slightly soft Normal Slightly magenta/orange camera into my laptop,
press the USB button, and
Fair Excellent Slightly oversharp Slightly under Slightly magenta/orange
the weekend’s photos pop
Fair Excellent Perfectly sharp Normal Neutral up on the screen. Amazing.
Fair Excellent Slightly soft Under Slightly magenta/orange Now what do I do with
them? (Editor’s note: Find out
next month.)—GREGORY MONE

H2.0 How 2.0 > DIY // You 2.0
DEPT: DIY INVESTIGATOR: Paul Wallich TECH: Homemade

arcade ASSEMBLING THE ARCADE
BUILD
MAKE YOUR OWN ARCADE COST: $50 to $800

TIME: 20 to 40
[1] Get a used game cabinet.
Try eBay, arcade suppliers or
With emulating software, an old PC and an empty game
FINDINGS: hours junkyards.
cabinet, you can recreate a classic arcade in your living room. Dabbler Master [2] Strip out the guts, keeping
the joysticks and firing buttons.
[3] Mount a 17- to 21-inch CRT
monitor behind the cabinet’s
Space Invaders. Battle- faceplate (a sheet of plywood
zone. Pac-Man. Donkey and some L-shaped shelf brack-
Kong. Mortal Kombat. Any- ets make a nice cradle).
one who spent a geeky ado- [4] Install MAME on an old PC (at
lescence haunting loud, least a 300MHz P2) and place it
dimly lit arcades knows that in the bottom of the cabinet.
playing those games on a [5] Connect your control panel
PC just isn’t the same—a key- to the PC so that each joystick
motion and press of a button
board is a poor replacement
represents a key or combination
for a joystick, and most PCs 1 of keys (see “Cooking the con-
don’t stand up to even a sin- trols,” below).
gle full body slam.
2
[6] Load the ROM data for the
So Tim Eckel, a self- 8 games of your choice. (You can
employed systems analyst, buy and download ROM images
devised a compromise. He 7 [see “Sources”] or get them free
loaded an aging PC with with gaming hardware.)
MAME, a program that emu- [7] Wire a button to a key on
lates old hardware so it can your hacked keyboard that will
simulate dropping in a quarter.
run more than 2,700 arcade
[8] Destroy your old high score.
games, and mounted it in a
real game cabinet rescued
from the junkyard. Replacing SOURCES
the picture tube with a used > arcadeathome.com
monitor and wiring con- 3 Most of what you need to know
trollers to a keyboard, he and links to most of the rest
4
squeezed the entire arcade > mame.net
of his youth into one fairly The original emulation software,
inexpensive box. able to reanimate 2,700+ games
Dozens of enthusiasts > macmame.org
have followed the trail he MAME for Macs
> starroms.com
blazed—check out
Download licensed game ROMs
arcadeathome.com for a
> hanaho.com
gallery of home-built boxes,
Hot Rod Joystick control panel
and the other “Sources”
($100), includes 14 games
(right) for all the info you > wicothesource.com
need to create your own. Arcade parts
> happcontrols.com
5 6 Even more arcade parts
> hagstromelectronics.com
Keyboard encoders
THE HOMEMADE ARCADE

SHOPPING LIST You’ve got a few options for wiring your control panel. The sim-
Arcade cabinet free to $200 Cooking the controls plest is to buy a prebuilt arcade-quality panel with a keyboard
Used PC with cable that plugs into your PC. Slightly more complex is a keyboard emulator, which has wire inputs for
keyboard free to $150 the controls on one end and a keyboard cable on the other. The ultimate DIY solution is to open up an
Used monitor free to $150 old keyboard and solder wires from the salvaged buttons and joystick to the traces for the keys that
New controllers, you want the PC to think you’re pressing. Keyboards work by scanning a matrix of horizontal and ver-
MCKIBILLO.COM
including joysticks,
tical wires with a key at each intersection, so you’ll have to figure out the position of the keys you want
buttons, trackball $50 to $350
to connect to, and then tell MAME which keys represent which commands (instructions included with
MAME free
MAME). One warning: If you make completed circuits on multiple columns and rows at the same time,
Game ROMs free to $5
the keyboard matrix scanner may think some switches are active when they aren’t, or vice versa.

YOU
INTEGRATE
At the Intersection of
2.0 Technology and the Body
I DON’T NEED any reminders GAME READY ACCELERATED use the device, which was in-
that I’m getting older, but after RECOVERY SYSTEM troduced in 2002, and rehab
one particularly intense ski $2,000+; gameready.com centers, trainers and schools
day at Jackson Hole last win- TECH Pressurized water-cooled are getting on board. The tech-
ter, my left knee had the gall sleeve soothes aches nology is even being used to
to get sore and swell, as if in- DOES IT WORK? Ohhhh yeah help multiple sclerosis patients
dignant that it was part of a lower their body temperature,
body no longer 18 years old. and pressure is based on the reducing symptoms. Of course,
Fortunately, a friend told me technology in NASA space at $2,000 (plus the cost of
about a unique “cold therapy” suits, which Game Ready’s reusable sleeves), you might
machine called Game Ready. founder helped design. need an NBA contract to af-
About the size of a boombox, Pressure and cold are half ford one, but you can always
Game Ready pumps ice water the standard RICE therapy— bug your gym, trainer or phys-
into sleeves that are wrapped rest, ice, compress, elevate— ical therapist to get Game
over your knee (or any other for sports aches, and Game Ready (or wait until the price
COURTESY GAME READY INC.
body part), then uses a vacuum Ready blows away a simple inevitably comes down). It’s
pump to compress the sleeve, ice pack because the user- worth the effort: The day after
much like a blood-pressure cuff controlled pressure and tem- treatment, my swelling was
tightens around your arm. The perature remain constant. gone and my college years
computer-controlled valve sys- * Not Steve More than 130 professional were in sight—impressive con-
Casimiro
tem that regulates temperature and college sports teams now sidering I’m 42.—STEVE CASIMIRO
H2.0 How 2.0 > Void Your Warranty
DEPT: Void Your Warranty INVESTIGATOR: Mike Haney TECH: Cellphone phones, you can find free soft-
unlocking ware at unlockme.co.uk that
TAKE THE SHACKLES OFF
HACK
COST: Free to $50 will calculate your phone’s

TIME: 15 minutes code, or just post a request on
YOUR CELLPHONE the site’s forums and wait for
a friendly hacker to reply.
FINDINGS: Cell providers lock your phone for a reason; Dabbler Master
here are a few reasons to unlock it. If your phone is from any
other manufacturer, check out
gsm-software.com, which will
While number portability uses GSM) and use it on a lo- WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH? e-mail you a code for $10 to
may have freed your cell digits, cal network to avoid paying Cingular and AT&T $20. A few hard-to-crack mod-
your phone is still a ball and for international roaming, or 850/1900MHz els require a data cable that
chain, locked into one carrier’s even buy a European phone T-Mobile 900/1900MHz sends the phone a code from
service. These subsidy locks (they tend to be ahead of us in European 900/1800MHz software on your computer.
U.S tri-band phones
keep you from walking away cell tech) and use it here. Have Of course, there are a cou-
850/900/1900MHz
before the provider can re- an old phone lying around? Un- European tri-band phones
ple of catches: Even within the
cover that big discount you got lock it and keep it as a spare. 900/1800/1900MHz GSM network, carriers use dif-
when you bought the phone. The key is the subscriber Quad-band “world phones” ferent frequency sets (see
But it doesn’t have to be so. identity module, or SIM, card, 850/900/1800/1900MHz chart, left), so if your phone
If you have a GSM phone, which stores the essential infor- only supports one band, your
you can unlock it and switch mation—carrier, number, con- coverage area may suffer.
to any GSM network carrier tacts—in all GSM phones. So store here or overseas). Also, special carrier-specific
(the big three are AT&T, Cin- once your phone is unlocked, The phone’s lock is de- features like picture messaging
gular and T-Mobile). You can switching carriers or phones feated by inputting a special may not work on an unlocked
also take an unlocked phone simply means popping in a code (see “Unlocking the phone. But hey, every freedom
overseas (most of the world new SIM (available at any cell 3595,” below). For Nokia has its price.
UNLOCKING THE 3595
We unlocked a Cingular Nokia 3595 to pop in a prepaid Vodafone SIM from New Zealand. The Other phone hacks
screen below left is what we saw with the new SIM inserted before unlocking. To get the unlock > Just about every cell has its
codes, we posted a request at unlockme.co.uk with the 3595’s serial number and carrier. The hacker’s bag of tricks—things
next morning, we had two codes: #pw+197824120263746+1#; #pw+807711135262232+7#.
like adding custom games and
wallpaper, using MP3 snippets
as ring tones or even (don’t do
2 Next we this) stealing service.
punched in the > To figure out what can be
first code, hit- done—and how—on yours, try
ting the * key cellphonehacks.com, which has
several times
forums for each phone com-
to get the p, w
and + symbols pany and provider. If you dig
(don’t ask through the cell-geek boasting
why; that’s just matches that fill many of the
how it works). threads, you can usually find
some how-to’s for your phone.
> I got lucky and found sites
dedicated to hacking my Veri-
zon LG VX4400 using a $23
data cable from RadioShack
and a free program called
BitPim (bitpim.sourceforge.net).
So far I’ve used the phone as a
modem, removed the Verizon
banner, added a shot of Johnny
Cash at Folsom Prison to my
JOHN B. CARNETT
1 To enter a code, the phone 3 When we finished, a “Restriction wallpaper and changed my ring
must be on, with no SIM in- Off” message flashed, and when we tone to The Jeffersons’ theme . . .
serted. Our Cingular card inserted the Vodafone card, the probably all child’s play to a
was behind the battery. phone began searching for a signal. hardcore hacker, but it feels like
movin’ on up to me.—M.H.

H2.0 How 2.0 > From the Frontier // Procurement
chat room we found the impossi- OZIEXPLORER

69 72 75
Talas
FROM
Arys
Tajikistan
ya
Syrdar
$85; oziexplorer.com
Shymkent
ble: a complete set of high-res

International Boundary 42
INTEGRATE
Kyrgyzstan
Toktogul Suu
TECH GPS mapping

Kazakstan Saktagychy National Capital
THE FRONTIER
q
Chirchi al Oblast Capital
Chatk
Soviet-era topographic maps for

Kara-Kol
Naryn
Chirchiq Railroad
software Shardara
Bogeni
Tashkent
Angren
Namangan
Jalal-Abad 0 25
Road
50 75 Kilometers
Tajikistan (and 17 other obscure

(Dzhala-Abad)
Sirdaryo Ohangaron 0 25 50 75 Miles
LOCATION Tajikistan
Andijon
TECH SOLUTIONS IN FAR OUT PLACES zbekistan Guliston

Obanbori
Qayroqqum Sy
rd
ar
iya
Qugon
Farghona
Osh
locales), downloadable from UC Jizzakh

Khujand Konibodom
Isfara
Kyzyl-Kyya
Suluktu
Berkeley (lib.berkeley.edu/ legible grid for an entire map

Uroteppa Kyrgyzstan Sary-Tash
Samarqand uu
Kyzyl-S
Dar''yal Zarafsho
n Ayni
Panjakent
China
THE YEMENI, Chechen and Syrian eart/topo.html). I printed two from just a few points. Since
Surkhob
Dar''yal
Qarokul 39
Garm
Tajikistan
mujahideen who once trekked dozen Pamiri maps at Kinko’s, our maps did have degrees- Tursunzoda Dushanbe
Orjonikidzeobod
Norak
eryo
ni
Denow rtang Dar''ya
Pa
al Ba l Mu Murghob
hond
al
rghob
Dar''y
''y
mountainous Tajikistan are now and smuggled them past border minutes-seconds readings in
Dar
on
Surk
farnih
Kulob
Dar''y
Taxkorgan
al Ko
Qurghonteppa
l Vakhsh
al Oq
Dar''y
rghon
su
gone, but still few Western tourists guards at the Dushanbe airport. the corners, we opened the
Dar''ya
Khorugh
mir
''yal Po
Nizhniy Dar
Termiz Feyzabad
Pyandzh ni
Am
Pa
venture into the country’s Pamir Still, we had a problem: The map JPEGs in OziExplorer,
u
''yal
Dar
D
ary
Dar
ya
a
Kondoz
-ye
Eshkashern Lasht
Mazar-e
Qon
Sharil
du
z
Afghanistan Pakistan
Mountains, in part because no maps used Soviet coordinates, which then created for each
r
Kuna
Gilgi
t 36
Baghlan Gilgit
one knows where to go. There so the Western readings on my map a grid that my GPS
are no up-to-date guidebooks, GPS wouldn’t help us find our lo- could read. That allowed me to crumbs led us through a 10-day
and nary a map store. cation on the maps. A friend at mark the coordinates of way- trek, navigating a 15,000-foot
That didn’t stop my friend Lars the United Nations in Dushanbe points along our route—river pass to become the first Western-
and me from buying tickets to saved the day with a program he crossings, glaciers, peaks—and ers in 12 years to enter the
Tajikistan last summer. Before our had on his PC called OziExplorer, download them into the GPS unit. lovely valleys above the village
COURTESY THE JOSH MCKIBLE COLLECTION

departure, in a lonelyplanet.com which can extrapolate a GPS- The trail of virtual bread- of Sangvor.—MCKENZIE FUNK
• Procurement Japanese imports >

Japan kicks our ass when it comes to gadgets. Their cellphones are years ahead,
their laptops are tiny, their toys so odd you have to lust after them. But many of the
best are released here months after their Japanese release, if at all. ¶ Fortunately, a number of sites let you order directly from Tokyo; some
will even install an English OS or handle warranty service. ¶ Japanrush.com focuses on supercompact laptops like the 1.8-pound Sony PCG-
U3. Audiocubes.com sells only high-end music gear, including the $2,500 limited-edition Audio-Technica ATH-L3000 leather headphones,
while tokyoflash.com specializes in limited-edition watches. ¶ Chicago-based dynamism.com covers the whole gadget range, from the
Samsung Nexio 5-inch wide-screen PDA to Sony’s 4-megapixel digicam with Bluetooth, and even accepts laptop trade-ins.—MIKE HANEY
H2.0
TECH SUPPORT
GROK
> ATTENTION H2.0 READERS: This is your page, full

of the feedback we get from you at h20@time4.com and through
the forums at popsci.com/h20. ASK A GEEK is your chance to pick
the brains of The Geek Chorus—H2.0’s panel of advisers and tech
wizards. THE TIP SHEET is a sampling of your best tips, tricks and
hacks. YOUR GEAR features the most drool-worthy gadget you’ve
bought lately (this month, we’re showing off one of the cool case
mods you sent us). Finally, THIS IS BROKEN gives you one of our
favorites from Mark Hurst’s site thisisbroken.com.
> The Tip Sheet

Game Boy Cable Hack
The Game Boy Advance Link Cable shouldn’t connect to an
old-school Game Boy without a special adaptor—both ASK A GEEK: PHILLIP TORRONE
have six-pin connectors, but the GBA cable has a little nub
that prevents it from plugging into the GB. Solution: Cut off
the nub. Do it on both ends and you’ll have a universal link
Q: What are RSS feeds and
cable for all Game Boys.—Kyle Nelson, Missoula, Mont. why would I use them? —Joel Waller, Austin, Minn.
Cleaner Digital Audio
Sending digital audio straight from your computer to your
stereo adds noise and distortion. Instead, route it through an
external processor like Xitel’s $50 Hi-Fi Link. One end plugs
A: If, like me, you obsessively comb dozens of news sites
and blogs to get your daily info fix, RSS is a godsend.
Instead of actually visiting each site, waiting for your browser
into a USB port, the other into RCA jacks on your stereo, and to load pages and slogging through ads and graphics, you
it even comes with 30 feet of audio cable.—H2.0 Staff can breeze through the latest content from all your favorite
sites in one text-only window.
Getting All the Ink Out Here’s how it works: Download a free RSS reader (try
A “low ink” warning from your inkjet printer means the car- newsgator.com for PC or ranchero.com/software/net
tridge is 80 percent used. Keep it in till you see “empty”— newswire for Macs), and subscribe to a site’s feed (RSS is a
at that point you’re down to 2 or 3 percent.—H2.0 Staff function of XML, so look for a
PHILLIP TORRONE is H2.0’s
button on the site that says ei-
all-purpose tech-DIY geek,
with credentials that include ther “RSS” or “XML”). Then
a blogging Aibo, a portable open your reader to get the
geek gym and a full-time gig most recent headlines and
YOUR GEAR as director of product devel-
opment for Fallon World-
story summaries from any site
you’ve subscribed to. Want
IN RESPONSE TO OUR CALL for case mods in the wide. Follow Torrone’s latest to read the full text? Just click
F R O M T O P : T O M E R H A N U K A ; C O U R T E S Y C L I N T O N M A C K AY
March issue, Clint Mackay submitted his Think obsessions at his site,
Tank: a custom-painted case inspired by a flashenabled.com (RSS feed
it and your browser opens to
Harley-Davidson fuel tank. It packs a 2.8Ghz available), and see that page. You can even send
Pentium 4, 200GB hard drive, 6-in-1 card reader popsci.com/h20 to meet the RSS feeds to your phone or
and AM/FM CD stereo that works even when the rest of The Geek Chorus. PDA to read them on the go.
computer is off.
Mackay now
sells built-to-
order models
starting at
THIS IS BROKEN
WHEN THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE CENSORS GO TOO FAR. . .
$1,500, includ-
ing monitor
and printer.
See more at
outofthebox
computers.com.
See more examples of things broken at thisisbroken.com.

FYI
FACTS,
ANSWERS,
ODDITIES &
ENTERTAINMENTS
FOR A MONTH
OF SCIENCE
DEPARTMENT OF ODD APPLICATIONS within ferromagnetic materials like

iron. When you magnetize iron by
CORRECTING CORPORATE
introducing an external field, the indi-
GROUPTHINK WITH
vidual particles all line up. Even after
SIMPLE PHYSICS
that external field is removed, the par-
A reader inquires: I read something re- ticles stay aligned, held there by the
cently about physicists who study cor- cumulative force of their neighbors.
porate boards. How is this science? Battiston’s application of the model
It’s in the method: Inspired by is, well, a little different. He works in
the recent rash of corporate scandals, complex networks theory, which is the
scientists Stefano Battiston and study of interacting systems—from
Gérard Weisbuch of the Ecole Nor- flocks of birds in flight to computers
male Supérieure, in Paris, applied an wired through the Internet. To exam-
80 year-old pillar of statistical physics ine the corporate network, Battiston
called the Ising model to big business. graphed the directors of the Fortune
N AT H A N F O X
The Ising model was developed to 1000 companies. He started by repre-

explain the orientation of particles senting each board member with a

FYI
point. In a simple world, the graph
would look like 1,000 separate islands,
each a cluster of points representing
the directors who sit on that com-
pany’s board. But in reality, directors
often hold multiple seats. So, when
two individuals sit on more than one
board together, Battiston draws a line
between them. Those directors create,
in networkspeak, an interlock graph.
Now we get back to the magnets.
Ideally, Battiston says, when a
board convenes, all the individuals are
unbiased. That’s your piece of iron.
But if A and B sit on another board to-
gether, they’re more likely to share
some opinions, and to try to sway the
rest of the board to their side. “From
the point of view of the group,” Battis-
ton says, “this is like a small external
field acting on the board as a whole.”
The Ising model applies here be-
cause it is mathematically equivalent
to a model that sociologists use
to describe herd behavior, a well-
documented phenomenon in which
the undecided try to align themselves
with the majority. In other words,
people follow the consensus the same
way particles follow their neighbors.
Battiston’s group has even devised a
way to measure the force of the afore-
mentioned field. They calculate the
force of a lobby based on the topol-
ogy, or shape, of the interlock graph.
So, if A sits with B on an outside
board, their interlock graph is a sim-
ple straight line. But if B also sits with
C on a third company’s board, and C
with A, their interlock graph forms a
triangle, which generates a stronger
field. Granted, a powerful lobby might
not be a bad thing. A company run
by executives with profligate spend-
ing habits could benefit from a frugal
lobby. But the reverse is also true:
A lobby of free-spending bigwigs
might sway their peers.
Battiston says that some European
companies have expressed interest
in his work, but the model has never
been tested on an actual board of
directors. Perhaps they’d be too fright-
ened of discovering that it actually
works.—GREGORY MONE
FYI
allow him to move fluidly between
military hardware, disaffected ex-
hackers and the dark world of
acronym-rich intelligence services.
Technical jargon rarely upstages The
Zenith Angle’s characters, but Ster-
ling’s not afraid to delve into the
BOOK OF THE MONTH details, either. In casual narrative
asides, Vandeveer rewrites simulation
A CYBERPUNK SPIN ON
software for orbital debris, creates
CAPTAIN AMERICA
a remote-control piloting system
Two and a half years after September for business jets, and builds a high-
11, the attacks still cast a long shadow security supercomputer from PCs
on world events. Government investi- bought on eBay.
gations examine official actions Sterling’s book is a bold effort to re-
before and after that day, and the best- capture a disturbing period in recent
seller lists are crowded with book- U.S. history, and it does so effectively.
length analyses of the causes and In Vandeveer, Sterling has created a
effects. With his new novel, The posterboy for post-9/11 America:
Zenith Angle, science fiction writer determined, but also aggressive and
and futurist Bruce Sterling offers a confused. At the close of the novel,
fictional, tech-heavy take on this after a troubling few years, he’s back
confusing era, and on his feet but unsure of the way. Just
proves himself a more like the rest of us.—ED FINN
than suitable guide.
The Zenith Angle DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMICAL EMERGENCIES
harks back to his roots
THE KILLER ASTEROID
as the founder of the
THAT WASN’T
cyberpunk zine Cheap
Truth, except that he Every day, Harvard University’s
shifts his focus from the future to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) posts a
recent past. Derek Vandeveer, the list of newly identified asteroids and
story’s hero, undergoes an unlikely comets on its Web site. NASA tele-
transformation from a familiar boom- scopes spot the space rocks as part
era supergeek into a kick-ass cyber- of the agency’s asteroid survey, but
punk version of Captain America. with only a few initial sightings, the
After watching the towers collapse on range of possible paths for each new
television, Vandeveer abandons his asteroid is huge. That’s why MPC
startup’s lab, drives cross-country to astronomers post the data on the
commune with his Yoda-like grand- Web: They enlist amateurs across the
father—who imparts his wisdom as world to search for the asteroids, and
a former Skunk Works scientist— the additional sightings allow them to
and eventually ends up working on refine each object’s orbital path. One
network security for U.S. government night earlier this year, one of these
spooks. The book traces Vandeveer’s skygazers noticed something that
moral awakening from happy lab rat concerned him: Object AL00667
to troubled infowarrior protecting seemed to be headed for Earth, and it
America’s digital frontiers. The action was coming in fast. Here’s the time-
accelerates when Vandeveer learns line of that near emergency.
that an immensely expensive infrared
spy satellite is under attack—he has JANUARY 13
to figure out how to destroy a cleverly 17:15 EST: MPC receives its list of
disguised laser weapon to protect it. visible asteroids. Tim Spahr, an MPC
Sterling’s sharp prose and easy astronomer in Cambridge, begins
comfort with the poetry of technolust computing potential orbits.
17:50: The data, as usual, is scant: four
coordinates per object, for five objects
THE POPSCI READING LIST total, generated from 70 minutes of
For our monthly column on the best
science books, as well as notable observation. Less information means
author Q&As and more, check out: a greater number of possible orbits.
www.popsci.com/books Spahr posts the whole range on MPC’s
Web site and heads out to dinner.
FYI
17:59: Reiner Stoss, an amateur astro-
nomer in Germany, informs Yahoo’s
Minor Planet List message board that
a near-Earth object—an asteroid or
comet orbiting in Earth’s neighbor-
hood—named AL00667 “is predicted
to become brighter by over 4 magni-
tudes in just 24 hours . . . and the
speed is increasing.” In other words,
it’s getting closer, fast. Due to poor vis-
ibility, Stoss is unable to search for it.
18:48: Another list member, former
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab astronomer
Alan Harris, responds, “I can calculate
on a desk calculator that this is an
impact trajectory.”
19:08: Harris alerts three prominent
asteroid researchers: Steve Chesley, a
senior scientist at JPL, Clark Chapman
of the Southwest Research Institute in
Boulder, Colorado, and, most impor-
tant, Don Yeomans, the director of
NASA’s NEO program office. Harris
notifies them of the possibility that
AL00667 could strike within days.
20:30: An agitated Chesley calls the
MPC looking for Tim Spahr. MPC
director Brian Marsden, working late,
answers the phone and asks if he can
help while Spahr is in transit. Chesley
relays Harris’s findings.
20:55: Marsden isn’t worried, as the
uncertainty regarding the orbits is so
great, but he agrees to help. He sup-
plies Chesley with MPC’s raw data.
20:57: Marsden sends an e-mail to
Peter Birtwhistle, a reliable astro-
nomer in England, requesting obser-
vational data on AL00667.
21:01: Although the weather is clear,
Birtwhistle responds that his equip-
ment’s setup precludes him from
seeing far enough north to spot the
asteroid.
21:51: In search of more amateur
assistance, Marsden alerts the
Astronomical Society of Kansas City.
JANUARY 14
0:23: Dick Trentman and Dick
Fredrick, acting on Marsden’s request,
respond that even with clear Kansas
skies, they can’t find AL00667
anywhere near the predicted Earth-
impacting orbit.
FYI
2:19: Still concerned, Steve Chesley in-
forms Chapman, Yeomans and Harris
that of 819 orbits he calculated, as
many as 40 percent predict impact.
He also notes that the asteroid ap-
pears to be 30 meters wide—small
enough so that it would explode high
FLIRTING WITH DISASTER
in the atmosphere, but, according to For several tense hours this past
some studies, large enough to cause January, a group of NASA and
damage on the ground. amateur astronomers frantically
4:30: Chesley and company receive an searched for asteroid 2004AS1.
e-mail from Colorado-based amateur
C O U R T E S Y G R E AT S H E F F O R D O B S E R VAT O R Y, U K
Brian Warner, who, despite an exhaus- Garreth Wilson adjusted their soft- There’s no official protocol yet for
tive search, can’t find AL00667. ware so that it will alert the as- what to do if they had confirmed that
15:20: After analyzing a new crop of tronomer who is posting new asteroid the asteroid was headed for Earth—
data, MPC astronomers find that the data when one of the potential orbits just a telephone chain extending from
asteroid, now catalogued as 2004AS1, outlines a collision course. But the real MPC to Yeomans and NASA NEO
was 20 million miles away from benefit of the events may have been chief Lindley Johnson, and eventually
Earth—far off the impact trajectories. the test of NASA’s amateur astronomy on up to administrator Sean O’Keefe
The threat is officially defused. network. Following the initial panic, and, if necessary, the president. But
MPC handled the situation correctly let’s hope that if the amateurs do spot
To prevent such panics in the fu- by actively seeking additional sight- an incoming asteroid, those phones
ture, Marsden and MPC programmer ings from the amateurs. start ringing quickly.—JOE BROWN
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 82) a ’53 Dodge, ’52 Mercury headlight bezels the YMCA was around in 1954 (it turns
my apartment. The interior smells or hubcaps from a ’53 Oldsmobile Fiesta. out, though, that sit-ups and push-
good, with its high-grade upholstery. The Nash has turn signals, which ups aren’t a bad workout, and they’re
The automobile came into its own in were invented in the ’30s, but no auto- cheaper than a gym membership). That
the ’50s, becoming more than a means of matic transmission or, alas, power steer- evening, unable to order movie tickets
transport or a sign of affluence but a fash- ing.24 And that’s not the only thing that’s online, I arrive an hour early at the
ion statement, an expression of individu- missing. “We’re breaking every modern Ziegfeld, a glamorous single-screen
ality. “This wasn’t about going to Pep law,” says Shiller, who is president of the theater serving New York since 1927,
Boys and getting a bright yellow neo- Antique Automobile Association of to ensure I get a seat to Cold Mountain.
prene steering wheel cover,” Jeffrey Love, Brooklyn. “No seat belts, terrible fuel
a Los Angeles mechanic who specializes emissions.” If we were on the highway, DAY 7:
in classic car restoration, tells me over the we would get about 20 mpg and hit 70 DIETARY DISTRESS
phone. “It was guys going to the junkyard comfortably; here in the city, we get It’s ironic: Just when heart disease rates
and buying specific parts off cars”—like 10 mpg and lots of envious stares. began to decline due to a shift toward
headlight rims from a ’53 DeSoto, the After the joyride I find myself at a loss. healthy eating,26 the TV dinner, that
grille from a ’50 Mercury, side trim from I can’t go to yoga25 or the gym, since only enemy of the arteries, made its debut.27
24 Chrysler introduced hydraulic years, but the modern-day craze 100,000. In the 1950s, life insur- saving modern appliances and the
power steering in 1951, and by the that led to designer mats, hip hop ance companies, looking for ways fascination with the television. More
mid-’50s it was gaining popularity. soundtracks, and model Christy to shell out less money, embarked than 10 million TV dinners were
The ’39 Oldsmobile was first to fea- Turlington in the lotus position on on a campaign to educate American sold in the first year of national dis-
ture an automatic transmission; in the cover of Time is fairly recent. women about the risks of fat and tribution. For 98 cents, customers
the mid-’50s the option became heart disease, and to encourage could choose among Salisbury
more common, as automakers tried 26 In 1950, approximately 585 out them to cook more healthful meals. steak, meatloaf and fried chicken.
to woo female drivers. of every 100,000 people in the U.S. The phenomenon was immortalized
developed heart disease. By 1999, 27 In 1953, Swanson responded to in 1987, when a TV dinner tray was
25 Yoga practice goes back 2,000 that figure fell to fewer than 268 per two postwar trends: the lure of time- placed in the Smithsonian Institution.

As I pick through the frozen-food aisle dumplings and tofu. As I put my less- advertising an amazing new phone with
of my local supermarket, looking for than-nourishing-looking food in the a great plan. But I hesitate—and then
something era-appropriate, I notice that oven, I can almost feel my life expectancy when I’m ready, he’s gone. In another, a
Swanson has introduced a new frozen go down.28 “It looks worse than airline friend spills water on my cellphone and
Hungry Man All Day Breakfast, consist- food,” Piper says. It tastes worse, too, denies it. In my most frequent dream I
ing of eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon and somewhere between sawdust and a dial a friend’s number over and over, but
home fries. It’s 1,030 calories and con- freeze-dried leather shoe. I keep dialing it wrong.
tains 64 grams of fat (21 of them satu- Clearly, I need my head examined. I
rated), 2,090 mg of sodium and 690 mg DAY 8: make my way to the Upper West Side to
of cholesterol. That’s 320 percent the CELLPHONE DREAMS see Dr. Louis Linn, a 90-year-old psychia-
amount of fat the USDA says a typical 35- By day, I’m cool. Piper says she doesn’t trist and psychoanalyst who has been
year-old man should consume in a day. remember a time when I was so calm. At practicing for more than 50 years.29 His
I return home with a more sensible night, evidently, I’m not. The tech-stress head of white hair and his red leather
TV dinner of beef, carrots, potatoes and dreams are getting worse. In one, I work couch are straight out of central shrink
apple crisp to find that Piper has cooked on the ground level of a huge building. A casting. I tell the doc my tech deprivation
herself a great looking meal of pan-fried Sprint salesman is going office to office, has left me confused and depressed, and
ask what the course of treatment for a
guy like me would have been in 1954
28 According to the CDC, in 2001 my life expectancy was 75 years; my fiancée’s, 80. In 1954, I
should I continue to spiral downward.
would have been expected to live just 67 years, and she would have made it, on average, to 73.
The answer is literally a stunner: electro-
29 Freud first lectured in the U.S. in 1909; in 1943, U.S. intelligence officers commissioned a psy- convulsive therapy, or shock therapy.30
choanalysis of Adolf Hitler; by the ’50s, the method was used to treat many mental disorders. Americans’ postwar enthusiasm for
30 Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) debuted in the 1940s. Up to 600 volts of electric current were
technology boosted the popularity of
delivered to the brain through electrodes placed on either side of the patient’s head. Patients, who
shock therapy, Dr. Linn tells me (he was
were strapped to a gurney but not given anesthesia or muscle relaxants, often suffered bone frac- introduced to it while serving in WWII).
tures from flailing; they experienced severe memory loss as well. But shock therapy was misused during

its heyday—administered for such for psychiatric disorders in the 1950s: friend in the neighborhood I can scam a
unlikely conditions as psoriasis and lithium, thorazine and Elavil among couple of bucks from, but without my
homosexuality—and fell from favor in them. While these drugs are still pre- Palm I don’t know her address. After
the 1960s. (Ken Kesey’s 1962 satire on scribed, they’ve taken a backseat to scouring the streets for a working
the treatment of mental illness, One Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and their ilk:31 Last pay phone (an increasingly rare com-
Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, helped gal- year, Americans filled more than 142 mil- modity), I put in my last quarter—and
vanize anti-shock-therapy sentiment.) lion prescriptions for these new antide- get a busy signal. Of course the phone
More recently, though, shock therapy pressants, known as SSRIs. Alas, SSRIs eats my quarter. I feel sorry for people
has undergone a renaissance, and is aren't the silver bullet. They can take who still have to use these things on a
now considered a legitimate last-resort weeks to kick in, and their side effects, regular basis, and recall the comment
treatment for severe depression that like loss of libido, aren’t trivial. But just as famously attributed to William Gibson:
does not respond to other, less drastic, in ’54, when shock therapy was wildly “The future is already here, it’s just not
methods. Today’s patients are medicated overused, SSRIs are being prescribed at evenly distributed.”
beforehand to prevent injury, and they what some say is an irresponsible rate. Then a surprisingly novel idea strikes:
undergo electric pulses that are shorter That makes me queasy too. Suddenly I’ll go to the bank—not the ATM foyer
and directed only at the right side of the I decide I feel a lot better. Gotta run. but the bank itself. Approaching the
brain, to avoid damaging the language counter, I explain to a cheery-looking
and memory centers that reside in the DAY 9: teller named Diane that I need cash. She
left hemisphere. Nevertheless, memory THIS IS NOT A STICKUP! asks me to swipe my card. I don’t have
loss remains a troubling side effect. The winter’s big freeze is upon me when my card with me, I say. “Well, then how
Noting my squeamish reaction to the I find myself miles from home and out can we know how much money you
notion of shock therapy, Dr. Linn informs of money, with no way of getting more have?” she asks, with what she clearly
me that medications were also available so I can take the subway home. I have a regards as impeccable logic.
“Doesn’t the bank have any other way
31 The first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, Prozac, debuted in 1988. SSRIs have fewer harsh to access my account?” I counter.
side effects than their predecessors, so offer the possibility of depression relief for more people. “What you’re doing is making my job

harder,” grumbles Diane, less cheery.
Despite these inconveniences, there
are times when I feel liberated from a
world in which you can download
Bubba Sparxxx or Eminem ring tones
for under $1; where Americans can
now drop thousands of dollars on kid-
ney dialysis—for their pets; and which
includes the celebrity death pool site,
Youbettheirlife.com (Motto: You can’t
cheat death, but you can profit from it).
DAY 10:
MY GIRL + QUIET = BLISS
On the last night of my ’50s show, Piper
and I stay in and nest. We are reading—
something I have been doing a lot more
of—while David Garland’s Saturday
night public radio show, Spinning on Air,
plays in the background. I love these
quiet, seemingly hard-to-find moments
at home. The host queues up a record-
ing by a little-known artist named Con-
nie Converse whose name yields exact-
ly zero results if you Google her. As
Garland’s guest Gene Deitch explains,
Converse sang songs “in a way that they
just melted your heart . . . but was way
ahead of her time.” Garland spins a wist-
ful and romantic song that Converse
wrote herself, and that was recorded in
Deitch’s living room in 1954. “With the
grass so dark and tall,” Converse croons,
“we are lost past recall.”32
But not I. In just 12 hours, I’ll be
returning to the real world—a place
where my cellphone makes me jump,
SportsCenter dominates my living
room, 432 e-mails demand my reply
and my mom knows how to find me.
Once again I’ll be able to enjoy Show-
time’s The L Word on demand—along
with strong, overpriced coffee. For
now, though, I remain curled up with
my girl, two cats at our feet, AM/FM
radio softly illuminated, phone un-
plugged. For a few more hours it is
1954. And it’s a very good year. ■
Larry Smith was the executive editor of

Yahoo Internet Life until it folded in
2002. He writes for ESPN: The Maga-
zine, Salon.com and Men’s Health.
Thanks to his recent low-tech interlude,
he has curtailed his obsession with
checking gawker.com.
32 Check out chanteuse Connie Con-

verse’s tune at wnyc.org/shows/
spinning/episodes/01092004. It’s lovely.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 99) This was news to Emirates Airline, the region’s star business,
to score their first Dreamliner sales as early as this summer. which alone has already ordered 43 of the new giants. “We’re
“When we launch the 7E7,” says Randy Baseler, Boeing’s vice not saying Emirates is wrong,” Boeing’s Baseler says cautiously.
president for marketing, “the real question is who’s going to “We have different views and that’s okay.”
sign up for an A330-200.” Brown’s caustic reply: “Anyone who says that is living in a
Boeing intends the Dreamliner to lift off in 2007 and enter parallel universe.” Brown also points out that fuel is just part
service the following year. The assembly line will be located of an airline’s total operating costs, and modern airplanes are
in Everett, where Boeing builds the 777, 767 and 747, but most already so efficient that fuel represents less than one-fifth of
of the work will be done elsewhere. Specially modified 747s, the total. Result: Even if the 7E7 beats the A330 on fuel burn
with bulging upper bodies and side-hinged tails, will bring by 20 percent, that’s equivalent to just 4 percent of operating
fully assembled wing and body pieces into Everett from sup- costs. Also, the baseline version of the 7E7 is smaller than the
pliers around the world: The entire wing, for example, will be A330, which is bad for the bottom line because basic operat-
built in Japan. The assembly line will move at double-quick ing costs remain stable (for example, all airplanes have two
time. It may take as little as three days to click a 7E7 together. pilots, regardless of size). “Crank all those numbers in, and
If Airbus officials are worried, they conceal it well. When you’ve got a 1.8 percent difference in cash operating cost,” says
asked whether the company intends to launch a competing Brown. “That’s not enough to set the world on fire.”
aircraft, vice president for market forecasts Adam Brown There’s just one point on which Airbus and Boeing agree:
replies: “Don’t hold your breath. We don’t see an urgent need They can’t both be right. And observers like Merrill Lynch’s
to act in response to the 7E7.” Callan don’t think Boeing has much choice but to stay its
For one thing, Brown contends, Airbus doesn’t buy Boeing’s course. “If they come back with another paper product,” he
vision of a point-to-point future. The clash of views became says, referring to an airplane like the Sonic Cruiser that never
very apparent at the Dubai air show this past December. There, gets beyond the design stage, “the suppliers are going to say,
Boeing issued a forecast showing that Middle Eastern airlines ‘You can’t waste our time anymore. If you can’t take the risk,
would need only 43 A380-size airplanes in the next 20 years. forget it.’” If Boeing doesn’t launch the 7E7, says Callan,
“they’re done.” ■
Boeing’s roster of failed aircraft: popsci.com/exclusive
Bill Sweetman is a POPULAR SCIENCE contributing editor.

LOOKING BACK
OCTOBER 1919
FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE ARCHIVES
HAIL FIGHTERS AND THEIR

STRANGE DEVICES
By 1919, hail cannons had been discredited—but people
intent on changing the weather refuse to give them up.
In the 1890s, grape growers in Europe erected thousands of so-called hail can-
nons near their vineyards. The mouths of the guns were fitted with sheet-iron fun-
nels; farmers loaded them with gunpowder (but no projectiles) and fired into an
approaching storm. Theory held that excess cloud moisture condensed around
the smoke particles, forming rain instead of crop-damaging hail. But after dev-
astating hailstorms in 1902 and 1903, most hail cannons were dismantled,
and scientists pronounced them worthless. Some ideas, though, refuse to die.
Today hail-averse folks hurl sound waves at storms with acetylene-fired cannons,
hoping the noise will prevent hail. Says Roelof Bruintjes of the National Center
for Atmospheric Research: “There is no scientific basis to it.”—MARTHA HARBISON
Other stories from the October 1919 issue:
CUTTING DOWN AIR RESISTANCE

In 1917, Glenn Curtiss built the largest wind
tunnel in the United States—7 feet in diame-
ter—in Garden City, Long Island (above).
A 400-horsepower motor drove a propeller,
which generated wind speeds of 100 mph.
DECREASE YOUR WAISTLINE—

INCREASE YOUR LIFELINE
Encased in a hybrid Exercycle-sweatbox, head
alone protruding, the user burned calories
while enjoying the benefits of a “Turkish,
Roman and electro-therapeutic bath.”
STILL ANOTHER MOUSETRAP TO

ADD TO YOUR COLLECTION
A Mississippi inventor crafted yet another better
mousetrap: When an unwary rodent strayed too
far along a wooden plank, the board flipped,
dumping the creature into a bucket of water.
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Scientists Preview Th e Day Af ter To m o rrow

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GEEK TO LIVE ON TECH JUNE 2004 popsci.com

mower; 20 products in 2 pages

74 Tech ’54, Where Are You? We

84 DARPA’s Debacle in the Desert 32 84

94 Boeing, Boeing, Gone? Aviation

Editor-in-Chief Scott Mowbray

Bad Weather Bids Design Director Dirk Barnett

After reading the script of this summer’s climate-disaster

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Each month in our You 2.0 column (page 105), STEVE

The drama-packed qualifying rounds for the DARPA Grand

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Reassessing Radioactivity their dose rates are very low—

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AHAB, CAPTAIN PAGE 92

It’s a one-door. No, a hatch-side. Put it this way: The

POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004 15

SPECS: 1.3MP; 8x digital zoom; 2.3-inch display;

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DEVELOPERS EMBRACE Given the complexity of engineering convincing graphics,

THE PIECE PROCESS

and Rockstar Games’ Max Payne 2, which came out in late 0

*AS ESTIMATED BY DFC INTELLIGENCE; †IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

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Coleman Exponent Flex 5

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN KANTOR POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2004 23

GRASS GUZZLER HATE MOWING? TRY IT FROM

ONE SMART CHOPPER THE HYBRID POWER SYSTEM

THE KEY TO LEISURE

INFOGRAPHIC: JASON LEE; CHARLES MARAIA (2)

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LEAN, MEAN, FREAKING MACHINE

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constructive to fix a modern engine either. What are you going to 20

matic parking worsen the situation?

parallel parking. Having good visibility and feeling in control is much

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