Features

• Categorized in 17032

  Aviation’s Next Great Leap

  Strapping rockets onto an aircraft creates a new breed of space plane. Look for cheaper satellite launch, ultrafast package delivery, and hypersonic passenger transport that would leave the Concorde in the dust.
• Categorized in 17035

  Putting Teeth in the Biological Weapons Ban

  Pound for pound, microbes such as anthrax rival nuclear weapons in their ability to inflict mass casualties. But the enforcing the existing treaty banning biological weapons must not compromise the biotech industry’s valuable trade secrets.
• Categorized in 17032

  Honey, They’ve Shrunk the Rover

  The Sojourner vehicle that trekked across the Martian surface captured the world’s fancy last summer, but we haven’t seen anything yet. Next will come rovers that can roam miles across Mars and “aerobots” able to survey other planets.
• Categorized in 17036

  The Art of Renaissance Engineering

  A new exhibit illustrates how innovative techniques of graphic representation transformed this emerging discipline.