Benny Kirk
1,726 ARTICLES
One of Artemis I’s Cube-Sat Missions Is in Deep Trouble, Time Running Out for Lunar Orbit
6 Jan 2023, 01:30 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / As far as its primary objectives are concerned. You know, taking off like a dragster, sprinting to Lunar orbit, and returning without so much as breaking a sweat, Artemis I was a complete success. Its secondary cube cube-satellite mission, on the o...
Gilmour Space: The Aussie Team Ready to Make Satellite Launches Truly Affordable
5 Jan 2023, 22:56 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / In the 1960s, space travel, be it human-crewed or satellites, was the domain of superpower governments and their propaganda machines. In the 2010s, these privileges were handed to an upper echelon of the wealthiest private upstart aerospace firms o...
Shenyang J-11: The Chinese Sukhoi Clone That Just Played Chicken With a U.S. Jet
5 Jan 2023, 01:39 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Remarkable footage was making the rounds at the end of last month detailing an encounter between a NATO-aligned Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft and a Chinese twin-engine jet fighter. One that looks an awful lot like an old Soviet example. ...
Walter Cunningham, Apollo 7's Lunar Module Pilot Has Passed Away Aged 90
4 Jan 2023, 21:00 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We all remember Neil Armstrong's famous words as the Apollo 11 astronaut took the first living, breathing human steps on the surface of the Moon. Small steps and giant leaps for man and mankind. But the story of those who came before Apollo 11...
France's Nuclear Energy Grid Is the Toast of Europe, But It's Not Enough to Save Everyone
3 Jan 2023, 23:24 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Europe is on the brink of an energy deficiency it hasn't seen since the Second World War. But not because of the imminent threat of invasion, as was the case 80 years ago. But rather largely due to a Russian invasion somewhere 2,400 kilometers...
NASA Sounds Alarm on Chinese Moon Landing Ambitions, Could Claim Pieces for Themselves
3 Jan 2023, 00:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you asked most NASA personnel before 2023 if they thought they were engaged in a space race a la the 1960s, they'd likely say politely yet firmly that they aren't. A firm dedication by NASA to exist to advance spaceflight and not as a ...
30 Years Before Boom, Sukhoi and Gulfstream Nearly Built a Mach 2 Capable Business Jet
2 Jan 2023, 18:35 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Supersonic civilian jets can be a challenge even for the wealthiest and most well-equipped global superpowers. Only the Concorde has ever been even remotely close to successful. By successful, we mean even made it into service past 12 months. B...
Arsenal VB 10: The Forgotten Twin-Engine French Superprop Revived by War Thunder
31 Dec 2022, 18:48 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / "Paris outraged, Paris shattered, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated." These words left Charles de Gaulle's lips as the last Axis forces retreated out of liberated French territory in 1944. The newly free nation's first post-wa...
Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces - A Fun Prop-Fighter Nintendo Game Powered by Ace Combat
30 Dec 2022, 06:03 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / More realistic arcade-adjacent dogfight simulators like War Thunder do better justice to piston-engine fighter planes than the Ace Combat series. Piston fighters were only introduced to the game exclusively in Ace Combat Infinity for the Playstatio...
The Ins and Outs of Dragonfly: NASA's Incredible Plan to Put an Aerial Drone on Titan
30 Dec 2022, 00:52 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The last time we looked at a proposed space probe designed to explore the surface of Titan, it was a one-of-a-kind machine, designed to float over a sea of liquid methane that dwarf all but the biggest of Earth's H2O seas. Titan MARE ...
This Interstate Took the Worst Winter Storm In Generations on the Chin, Still Reeling
29 Dec 2022, 00:15 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Interstate 90 is one of the most polarizing stretches of roadway in the United States. Stretching 3,021.2 miles (4,862.18 km) from Logan International Airport in Boston all the way to Seattle, the colossal intercontinental highway faced an altogeth...
NASA's $25.4 Billion Budget for 2023 May Sound Like a Lot, but It's Not
28 Dec 2022, 20:19 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Every year, the United State's joint houses of Congress gather to flesh out the country's military and spaceflight budgets for the following 12 months. Albeit, not usually at the same time. In any case, this typically involves watching mo...
The F-15 Eagle Has a Flawless Kill-to-Loss Ratio, Its Accident Record, Not So Much
28 Dec 2022, 01:47 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / One hundred four confirmed kills and zero losses. This is the defining statistic of the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle and all its variants. But don't let the barely hidden propaganda tell you otherwise. The F-15 is not an invincible wonder plan...
Russia Built This Forward-Wing-Sweep Jet Fighter Prototype In the Middle of Falling Apart
27 Dec 2022, 20:08 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent creation of modern Russia was less of a swift, catastrophic implosion and more of a slow, drawn-out, constant state of barely contained chaos for most of the 1990s. That was at least until the rise of...
This 1928 Ford Model A Rocks a Venomous Cobra in the Middle, Not the Front
26 Dec 2022, 06:18 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / There are restomods, there are sleepers, and then there's stuff somewhere in between. This 1929 Ford Model A customized with hardware far newer and more powerful than anything Henry Ford ever dreamt of meets the in between criteria. We fou...
11 Years Post Fukushima, Japan Won't Back Down From Nuclear Energy
25 Dec 2022, 23:02 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Japan is a force to be reckoned with. You wouldn't have guessed it if most history textbooks ended in September 1945. But nearly everything that happened afterward was nothing short of miraculous, despite some not-so-smooth sailing at times. T...
Minnesota Congressman Drafts Bill Touting Tax Credits for EV 4x4s
25 Dec 2022, 18:26 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Our review of the Polaris Ranger XP Kinetic was one of the downright highlights of 2022 here at autoevolution. With speed, maneuverability, and capability unlike any EV side-by-side on the planet. But starting at $24,999 MSRP for the base model, yo...
Ace Combat Infinity: A Wonderful, Long Lost Combat Flight Game We Wish Never Shut Down
25 Dec 2022, 09:30 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We love Ace Combat around here. But the series struggles to be consistent at times. The Playstation-exclusive fourth and fifth games are certifiable classics, and the sixth installment in the series for the Xbox 360 also has its fans. But between s...
NASA and China May Dominate Mars, but the Soviets Are Still Kings of Venus, Here's Why
25 Dec 2022, 05:32 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Soviet space program post-1966 is somewhat of a cruel joke. It's as if the tragic, untimely death of Sergei Korolev in 1966 doomed the Soviet Space Program to endless failure from the N1 to the Buran. Those two flagship programs combined s...
Here's How Nuclear Fusion Could Change the Auto Industry Forever, It's Great News for EVs
24 Dec 2022, 21:42 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Back in the 1950s, the Ford Motor Company was fairly certain that nuclear fission power was the way forward in the automotive industry's far future. Happily, Ford's engineers had better sense than scaling down a fission reactor and shovin...