Benny Kirk
1,726 ARTICLES
Tritium: A “High-Octane”, Ultra-Rare Fusion Fuel We Can’t Make Nearly Enough Of
28 Jan 2023, 00:38 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / After the National Ignition Facility in California's first successful scientific breakeven through nuclear fusion, mankind is all the more serious about reaching the promised land of near-limitless fusion energy. Perhaps the most pressing prob...
Gulfstream's G700 Flexes on Competition, Sets 25 Speed Records for Luxury Business Jets
26 Jan 2023, 23:38 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Common, working-class folks may have a certain disdain for private jets. But even the most jaded among us have to tip our caps to Gulfstream Aerospace for their excellence in engineering their newest large business jet, the G700. 25 new world recor...
SpaceX Falcon 9 Does Its Best Heavy Duty Pickup Truck Impression, Hauls 19 Tons to LEO
26 Jan 2023, 19:09 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Regarding SpaceX's spectacular reusable Falcon 9 booster rocket, we've become used to their launches as almost a routine part of the news cycle. Not every satellite launch is worthy of coverage, but one that sets the record for heaviest p...
At Long Last, The Long Island Rail Road Begins Service to Grand Central Terminal
26 Jan 2023, 01:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / For well north of a century, there was a duality of sorts regarding New York City's commuter rail system. As of this morning, all conventions are out the window. Thanks to the completion of a public works project some thought might never finis...
Mitsubishi F-4 EJ Kai: The American Phantom II Jet Powered Up Like an Anime Hero
25 Jan 2023, 07:08 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you're of a certain age, you can't help but draw parallels between the real world and our favorite anime. It helps when you're talking about a jet fighter developed by the Americans before the Japanese got their hands on them. The...
NASA/DARPA Want to Test Nuclear Fission Engines by 2027, Can They Bring Us to Mars?
25 Jan 2023, 00:50 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's one thing when NASA alone wishes to design something. With an annual budget that wouldn't cover sharpening the pencils in the military-industrial complex, there are bound to be some shortcomings. But when the military bigwigs at DARP...
Igor Sikorsky Was the Henry Ford of Helicopters, Founded His Company 100 Years Ago
24 Jan 2023, 03:14 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / People tend to forget that Sikorsky Aircraft used to build something other than helicopters in its early days. As one of the earliest American aerospace manufacturers still in operation, it takes brains, guts, and a profound mastery of aeronautical...
We Need to Stop Treating Low Earth Orbit Like a Landfill, ESA Vows a Solution
22 Jan 2023, 18:53 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Does anyone remember that scene from Futurama where the Planet Express ship blasts off into orbit, pushing a huge torrent of junked satellites out of its way? You'd be shocked at how close to reality that scene is in 2023. It's to the poi...
This One Nuclear Power Plant Makes a Fifth of Its Nation’s Energy, Could One Day Be More
21 Jan 2023, 03:14 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In 35 years or so, the Romanians ditched communism, joined NATO, and nabbed the most controversial social media influencer in the history of the internet. But intertwined in all this, Romania played host to an energy plant that silently brought the...
NASA and Boeing Team Up to Build the Greenest Airliner in History, Sports 2 Sets of Wings
20 Jan 2023, 00:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let's take a minute or two to talk about airliners. If you haven't been in the loop, Boeing finished production on the last 747 quad-engined double-decker jetliner. As a metaphorical book-end on the era of gigantic, thirsty passenger jets...
Rockwell XFV-12: Proof the British Build Better VTOL Jets Than the Yanks
19 Jan 2023, 19:40 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / American and Soviet pilots alike had their jaws hit the floor the first time they saw the British Hawker Siddeley Harrier take to the sky as if by magic back in the late 1960s. Though on paper, the British RAF and Royal Navy had a fraction of the r...
South Korea Stands With Japan, Will Not Back Down on Nuclear Energy
18 Jan 2023, 17:43 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Allow us to paint a picture for you. The day is January 16th, 2023. The venue is Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. In front of a raucous crowd gathered for Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week's opening ceremony, South Korea's President Yoo...
Ukrainians Want A-10s and F-16s in Their Arsenal, But Will They Actually Get Them?
18 Jan 2023, 15:15 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / From the United States alone, over $50 billion in weapons, military assets, and monetary liquidy was sent in 2022 to a Ukrainian military under attack. All the extra support from EU nations more or less doubles this. But if the Ukrainians had t...
Avia S-92: Germany's First Jet Fighter Reborn in Czechoslovakia
16 Jan 2023, 23:38 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / By early 1944, it's thought that German military aircraft technology was as much as five to ten years more advanced than anything the Allies had at their disposal at the time. Nowhere was this more apparent than the Messerschmitt Me-262. T...
This NASA Probe Snaps Exoplanets in the Habitable Zone, Just Tagged Another
12 Jan 2023, 20:05 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Thus far, NASA, the ESA, and all the world's space agencies have located in excess of 3,000 interstellar planet systems and 5,000 "exoplanets" orbiting around these spectacular groups of mother stars. But there's a definite hier...
MiG-21 LanceR: Forged By the Soviets, Now Flying for NATO
11 Jan 2023, 23:49 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 (NATO Codename: Fishbed) is one of the defining single-engine jet fighters of any nation in the 20th century. A platform that's so easily adaptable and beloved by its pilots that a handful of Air Forces 60 years pos...
This Man Put the Entire Soviet Space Program on His Back, He Deserves Our Respect
10 Jan 2023, 05:11 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You may have the impression that the Soviet Union's space program was something of a joke. You know, because they failed spectacularly and at great personal expense to put a human being on the Moon before the United States. But make no mistake...
New American Supersonic UAV Will Mimic Russian and Chinese Fighters, Packs AESA Radar
9 Jan 2023, 22:16 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Fifth-generation fighter jets aren't the sole domain of the U.S. anymore. Russia and China currently field jet fighters that, at least on paper, match the capabilities of the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II. This presents an interesting ...
Russia Completes Latest Su-57 Felon Stealth Fighter Deliveries, NATO Probably Indifferent
8 Jan 2023, 07:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You may have heard through the grapevine that Russia, as entrenched as they are in their "special operation" in Ukraine, just collected a fresh batch of their prized Sukhoi Su-57 gen-V jet fighter (NATO Codename: Felon). It was the jo...
These Two Sports Cars Have Nothing in Common, Aside From Their World-Beating Exhaust Notes
6 Jan 2023, 16:23 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Tastes in engine exhaust notes are as subjective as your preference in pizza. That said, it's one thing to grow fond of the sound your 25-year-old Honda Civic makes when it gets a rust hole in its catalytic converter. But there's a handfu...