Benny Kirk
1,726 ARTICLES
Christmas Bullet: The Catastrophe of an Airplane That'll Make You Go Bah-Humbug.
24 Dec 2022, 18:13 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Happy Holidays, everybody! Allow us to celebrate the season by looking at an airplane with the word Christmas right in the name. As it happens, the plane in question is perhaps the biggest steaming pile of you-know-what that ever left an American p...
Convair NB-36: The Bonkers American Bomber With a Nuclear Reactor in its Belly
23 Dec 2022, 18:49 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Only a few airplanes could be pointed to and said in confidence were designed by an absolute mad lad. But among these names, one stands out as being especially bizarre, bonkers, and certifiably loony tunes. Say hello to the Convair NB-36, the B-36 ...
Nuclear Reactors Could Solve the Planet's Energy Issues, But Only if We Let Them
23 Dec 2022, 17:43 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The world is on the brink of an energy crisis and only one thing's for sure, fossil fuels will only satisfy for a little while longer. Humanity has some tough choices when all the dino juice is pumped out of the ground in the near future. ...
Detailing the Life of InSight - Mars' Most Underappreciated Space Probe Lost Today
22 Dec 2022, 01:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Space probes without the benefit of being a rover tend to get lost in the news shuffle as more exciting mobile probes explore other heavenly bodies with a certain degree of autonomy. If you ask us, this shouldn't be the case. NASA's InSig...
Raytheon Wraps Up First Test Run of New Jet-Electric Hybrid Engine, First Flight in 2024
21 Dec 2022, 19:16 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / ICE-electric hybrid automobiles are nothing new. If anything, they're downright routine. But hybrid aircraft, on the other hand, now that's a much trickier animal to tame. But if there were ever a group capable of bringing turbine-electri...
Mars' First Powered Aircraft Aces 37th Flight, Stays Airborne for 55.2 Seconds
21 Dec 2022, 04:04 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / One frosty December morning in 1903, the Wright Brothers and the first heavier-than-air manned aircraft on Earth managed to cover a maximum distance of 852 feet (251.5 meters) over four flights. That was before the brothers damned the thing as unfl...
Elon Musk's Starlink Internet Nets One Millionth Subscriber, Dunks on the Haters
20 Dec 2022, 23:04 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Products with Elon Musk's name on them range in usefulness from his trademark flamethrower to a microsatellite system bringing reliable, high-speed internet to the masses. For the moment, we'll be celebrating the latter of those two. The ...
Helion Trenta: A Nuclear Fusion Reactor Unlike Anything You've Seen Before
20 Dec 2022, 19:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If we told you a team of nuclear engineers just completed a fusion reactor that could blow everything else into last week, would you believe us? It's not like we're dealing with an energy source powerful enough to "save" humanit...
This 1969 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe Has Seen Less Miles Than Most Cars This Old
19 Dec 2022, 01:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It took me less than 18 months to reach 15,000 miles (24,140.1 km) in my 2021 Mitsubishi. On average, Americans reach that mileage in even less time. So when we find a classic 1969 Chevrolet Impala rocking less mileage than most 2021 models, you kn...
Brooklyn Queens Expressway: The New York City Highway That Even Locals Can't Stand
18 Dec 2022, 16:54 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Last year, we told the story behind the Cross Bronx Expressway. A section of New York City freeway with a dark reputation held in part by its seemingly endless hideous accidents, bumper-to-bumper gridlock, and splitting historic neighborhoods in ha...
Los Alamos NERVA: The American Nuclear Engine That Could Have Taken Humans to Mars
18 Dec 2022, 16:35 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The age of nuclear fusion may soon be upon us if recent advancements are anything to go by. What this means for the future of space travel has yet to reveal itself. But make no mistake, nuclear-powered spacecraft engines are nothing new. Albeit, po...
Dassault and Airbus Join Forces to Help Build Europe's First Gen-Six Jet Fighter
16 Dec 2022, 17:11 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you thought the F-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon probably couldn't stave off a joint Russian/Chinese invasion on their own, it turns out the French Dassault and German Airbus have a similar line of thinking. With the help of a newly inked &eur...
Zombified 1971 Chevy C10 Crying Out to Be Raised From the Crypt
16 Dec 2022, 14:07 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The only time we won't roll our eyes and groan when someone says they don't build something like they used to is in regard to classic pickup trucks. Now that even a Ford Maverick or a Hyundai Santa Cruz has as many features as an old luxu...
Meet the IndyTruck: Team Hoonigan's IndyCar V6-Swapped Honda Ridgeline
15 Dec 2022, 17:02 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The Honda Ridgeline may best be described as the dollar menu value meal version of a light pickup truck. A VTEC V6-powered unibody truck that didn't have obvious critical flaws but wasn't exactly a world conqueror either. Well, who be...
This 1979 Hearse Ditched its Anemic Gas V8 for a 6.5-L Detroit Diesel
15 Dec 2022, 01:47 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Do you wish it could be Halloween all year round? Or maybe you want to drive around role-playing as WWE's The Undertaker. Well, this is the car for you, a 1979 Cadillac Hearse with an extra helping of spicy sauce. When Americans think of H...
NASA's Perseverance Rover Records Eerily Scary Martian Dust Devil, Sounds Earth-Like
14 Dec 2022, 18:46 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / On the surface of Mars, the atmosphere is so razor thin that future colonizers would be wise to build an underground solar radiation bunker. But there's still enough atmosphere to make some truly astounding sounds. Sounds like humanity was luc...
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter: The Supersonic Jet Fighter That May Actually Be Cursed
11 Dec 2022, 16:31 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / It's a lot closer to Christmas than it is to Halloween right now. But because it's Celebration Month here at autoevolution, we've decided to focus on something very, very spooky. On the face of it, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter may ...
Parker Solar Probe: The Bugatti Chiron of NASA Space Probes, Six Decades in the Making
11 Dec 2022, 14:20 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The last time we checked in on NASA's Parker Solar Probe, it'd just taken the brunt of a solar storm straight to the face and lived to keep on trucking. It's just another feather in the hat of a space probe that's shattered reco...
Lockheed XV-4 Hummingbird: America's Failed VTOL Rival to the Original Harrier
11 Dec 2022, 12:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / What is it about VTOL military airplanes that billion-dollar aerospace companies just can't seem ever to get right? Well, as it happens, making a jet aircraft reliable at vertical takeoff and landing might as well be classified under rocket sc...
London Cab TX5 Farelady by Kahn: Classic Black Cab Outside, Baller Like a Bentley Inside
9 Dec 2022, 01:23 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Any vehicle with at least two rear seats can realistically qualify as a taxi. But there is still a definite hierarchy when it comes to taxis that live on past their years as cultural icons. With the possible exception of New York's Ford Crown ...