Benny Kirk
1,727 ARTICLES
Zaporizhzhia: The Full Story of the Ukrainian Nuclear Plant Besieged by Russia
23 May 2023, 03:36 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When people conjure images of nuclear power plants, it's usually an image of Chornobyl (Chernobyl), Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and that's about pretty much where that list ends. But by the end of the 2020s, there's a good chance t...
13 Years Later, GTA IV's Episodic Expansions for PC Have Replay Value for Days
22 May 2023, 00:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / What was the last game you could put your hand on your heart and say you enjoyed just as much in 2023 as you did 15 or so years earlier? With Grand Theft Auto turning the big 15 this spring, we thought it was high time to get acquainted once again ...
War Thunder Fans Declare War on Gaijin Entertainment, Review Bomb Their Steam Page
21 May 2023, 17:30 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / So, you decided to make Gaijin Entertainment's War Thunder your go-to vehicle-based combat simulator, huh? You poor unfortunate soul, you. Not that we could blame you; it's a fantastic game on paper. One with more tanks and aircraft to gr...
Spotlight USA: Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome Is Where Long Lost Warbirds Come Back to Life
21 May 2023, 05:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / So often, the First World War is skipped over in people's interest in military aviation. Especially with the modern wargaming crowd obsessed with all-aspect missiles and laser-guided bombs, it feels like most people's interest in the fiel...
Fairey Gannet: The Plucky Story of the Ugliest Attack Jet Ever Built
21 May 2023, 00:26 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / On the photogenic spectrum of British military planes, at one end sits the de Havilland Hornet, with everything else sitting very much below the Hornet on the totem pole. But at the polar opposite end, on the side of unapologetic ugliness, sits the...
50 Years Ago: NASA's Skylab Wrote the Playbook for the ISS
20 May 2023, 19:48 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Space stations, big metal tubes in low-Earth orbit pressurized to roughly the same atmospheric pressure you'd find on sea level so a bunch of squishy, fragile meat sacks can conduct science experiments and learn to live in an environment our L...
15 Years Later: Here’s Why There Will Never Be Another Game Like GTA IV Ever Again
15 May 2023, 03:20 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / That timeless cringe-worthy quip, "They don't build things like they used to," applies just as much to video games these days as it does a late-60's-vintage big block V8. But unlike muscle car engines, we can't, in good fai...
China Could Beat NASA's Artemis to the Moon, Here’s Why That Might Not Be a Bad Thing
14 May 2023, 19:47 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In the first episode of season one of Apple TV's hit series For All Mankind, an alternate-reality America is forced to watch in abject horror as Alexei Leonov, a Soviet cosmonaut, plants a hammer and sickle flag down on the lunar surface, maki...
Sukhoi Su-75 Checkmate: Russia’s Own F-35 Rival or Kremlin Vaporware?
14 May 2023, 01:02 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If an oak tree in the Siberian forest falls and nobody's around to hear it, did it even happen? More to the point, if a prized Russian gen-V fighter jet designed to fight the F-35 fails to make its first flight for another calendar year, shoul...
These Are the Five Greatest Machines Ever Built by Mitsubishi (There’s Only One Car)
12 May 2023, 02:23 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you're a petrolhead, you might forget Mitsubishi has its hands in almost every manufacturing sector. But now that the vehicle lineup at an average North American Mitsubishi dealer has roughly the same appeal as a two-month-old loaf of bread...
Access Denied: These Canceled Jet Fighters Prove NATO Doesn't Always Get Its Way
11 May 2023, 01:03 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / When a NATO-affiliated military wants something, it gets it, right? With hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to sift through across 31 member states, you may find it interesting that even NATO doesn't get its way 100 percent of the time. In...
Westinghouse AP300: A Mid-Size Reactor Designed to Make Coal-Fired Power Stations Obsolete
5 May 2023, 23:56 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Around the world, the majority of the world still derives its energy from dirty, pollution-heavy, and toxic petrochemical-fired power stations. As the world at large scrambles like headless chickens to convert to something resembling a carbon-free ...
Merlins Over Jerusalem: How Israel Got Their Hands on Spitfires and Mustangs After WWII
4 May 2023, 21:48 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / They say the howl of a Rolls-Royce/Packard Merlin V12 from both the British Spitfire and the American P-51 Mustang is like listening to the essence of freedom itself. But outside their exploits bringing the fight to German Messerschmitts and Japane...
Ferrari in the Sky: The Story of the Italian Biplane That Flew Circles Around Spitfires
4 May 2023, 02:22 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let's be honest. Certain eras of military aviation are held in higher regard than others. World War Two is at the top of this hierarchy, obviously. While Korea, Vietnam, and maybe the Six Day War and Desert Storm all take other subjective plac...
Tested: ‘Hot Wheels: Rift Rally’ the AR Game With a Wicked RC Car Kids Will Actually Enjoy
2 May 2023, 06:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The last time I played with a Hot Wheels set, the Hot Wheels: Acceleracers cartoon was still airing episodic mini-movies on Cartoon Network every couple of months. Or, in other words, it's been almost 20 years since I'd even bothered...
PZL M-15 Belphegor: The Remarkable Story of the World's Only Jet Engine Crop Duster
30 Apr 2023, 02:50 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Jet turbine airplanes tend to be built for one reason alone, speed. Why even bother employing the use of one for any other reason? Right? Well, that wouldn't explain the existence of the PZL M-15 Belphegor. With a top speed no better than that...
Turkey's First Commercial Nuclear Reactor is Packed With Russian DNA, Will Soon Go Online
29 Apr 2023, 08:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / By virtue of being geopolitically located at the gateway between Europe and Asia, Turkey can take advantage of certain national conditions that other nations can't. For instance, Turkey manages to be one of NATO's founding members and eve...
Douglas A2D Skyshark: The U.S. Navy's Idea of an Engine Swap During the Cold War
28 Apr 2023, 20:57 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Engine swaps will always be awesome. Something about taking an existing vehicle, gutting everything under the hood, and swapping it for more powerful hardware appeals to us in a visceral way. But this isn't just true of cars and motorcycles. I...
This Japanese Ship Sank With Thousands of Allied POWs Aboard, Just Rediscovered
26 Apr 2023, 00:51 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Armchair war historians like to think they know all there is to know about the Second World War. They often fancy their knowledge of all things Barbarossa to Berlin and Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima as unparalleled. But sometimes, pieces from the war t...
Rocketdyne XRS-2200: The Fascinating Story Behind the Coolest Rocket Engine Ever Built
24 Apr 2023, 23:46 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We could all probably draw a rough sketch of a booster rocket and its engine if needed. You know, a giant pointy metal cylinder tapering into a spire at the top end and a bell-like shape at the bottom, where the engines are located. It's a bas...