Daniel Patrascu
18,939 ARTICLES
Personal motto:
"I truly believe men and fish can coexist peacefully" – George W. Bush
Following several years off the grid, Daniel is back at autoevolution, and seeing how the great crisis of the past decade made the auto industry boring, he grew bored with it too, so he slowly shifted his focus to custom cars, custom motorcycles, and other weird stuff. He also loves ranting about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
During his time at autoevolution, Daniel put his name on more news articles, coverstories, auto guides, reviews, and editorials than we care count. To slow him down a bit, he was given more responsibilities not long ago, so he is now also in charge with coordinating the editorial team on autoevolution.com.
Long time ago, Daniel also translated Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “The Fountains of Paradise” to Romanian for Paladin Publishing.
NASA Sends OTA Update to a Vehicle 140 Million Miles Away
17 Apr 2023, 12:22 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Aside from Earth, Mars is the only place in our solar system where a sizeable number of human-made wheeled vehicles can be found. To date, five rovers, as we call them, have been sent there, but only two are at the moment active. America sent th...
Largest USAF Elephant Walk Ever Had 4,000 People and 80 Aircraft on the Same Texas Runway
17 Apr 2023, 11:08 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / The days of the Second World War were perhaps the harshest our species had to endure, but they are also the origin point of some ideas and concepts we still use today. Like, say, something called the elephant walk. Back in WWII, it was common fo...
Space-Based Solar Farms Will Soon Trap the Sun's Energy and Beam It Down to Earth
17 Apr 2023, 09:56 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / It's now perhaps clearer than ever that the world we live in has been significantly and possibly irreparably affected by our activities. The biggest harm to the environment is of course caused by our huge energy needs, the satisfaction of whic...
Harley-Davidson Gilda Is the Classy Night Train That Moves and Stops Only for One
17 Apr 2023, 08:33 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / It's been a long time since Harley-Davidson pulled the plug on the Night Train model. A Softail motorcycle by trade, the two-wheeler came about in 1998 and stayed around, as a bike rolling out the factory doors with the official Milwaukee bles...
You Will Not Feel Like Captain Picard in the Mach 9 Stargazer Spaceplane
8 Apr 2023, 22:16 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Before becoming famous as the captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Federation starship, Jean-Luc Picard was a member of the crew serving aboard the USS Stargazer. That would be a Sagan-class ship that is quite important for Trekkies. I wonder w...
Harley-Davidson Graphite Is a Beautiful Collection of Curved Lines and Impressive Hardware
8 Apr 2023, 21:16 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Many of the custom Harley-Davidson motorcycles we see crossing our screens every day have been pulled out of production for so long that few of us still remember them in their stock form. Yet modified versions of most of these machines are timeless...
Someone Planned a Crewed Mission to Mars in the 1960s and It Would Have Been Spectacular
7 Apr 2023, 23:12 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Earlier this month, NASA announced the creation of the Moon to Mars Program Office. It is, if you like, the agency's first official commitment to taking our species to the Red Planet. But we’ve known Mars is a prime target for space exp...
Harley-Davidson Trojan Horse Had the Head of a Xenomorph Alien, Killer Wheels
7 Apr 2023, 21:16 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Things are so dynamic over at Harley-Davidson that it doesn’t happen all that often for a motorcycle family to be around for decades. The Street Glide is one of the exceptions, and a custom version of one is the reason why you’re readin...
Lightsabers, Darth Vader and Speeder Bikes Are Part of LEGO's New Star Wars Dioramas
7 Apr 2023, 11:09 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Earlier this week, Danish toymaker LEGO pulled the wraps off the newest iteration, in tiny plastic brick form, of Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing Starfighter. Coming together from 1,949 pieces that sell for $239,99, it is one of those Star Wars-relat...
Starship Hanging Mid-Air Before Stacking Looks Distressing and Comforting at the Same Time
7 Apr 2023, 10:20 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Assembling a rocket-spacecraft combo for launch is a complicated and exciting business. It’s the process through which a spaceship is connected to its booster(s) and other required equipment it needs, and it most often than not, as least when...
Here’s Uranus Like You’ve Never Seen It Before, There's More to It Than Sheer Beauty
7 Apr 2023, 09:33 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / We, humans, like to pride ourselves with our fascination for rocky worlds. After all, they have the biggest chance of harboring some kind of life. But rocky worlds are generally boring to look at, and nothing beats gas and ice giants in terms of co...
New Hypergolic Propellant Engine Is Not Meant for Use on Earth
7 Apr 2023, 08:38 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Whereas up until recently we lived in a world where new engine development was mainly done in the automotive industry, the resurrection of humans’ interest in space exploration has some interesting side effects. Like the flood of new and exci...
LEGO Brings Back the X-Wing Starfighter, Bigger, More Detailed, and Quite Pricey
6 Apr 2023, 12:27 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Despite what you may feel as an individual, the many Star Wars series Disney keeps rolling out are proof enough that the George Lucas-imagined universe still has enough kick left in it. And the constant release of related products comes to reinforc...
Small Supercharged Rotary Engine Has the U.S. Army All Worked Up, We Should Be Too
6 Apr 2023, 11:04 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Looking at all the incredible machines roaming our roads these days you’d be inclined to believe it can’t get better than this when it comes to the combustion engines they use. But if you ask a crew named LiquidPiston, there’s mor...
New Submarine Hunter-Killer Ship in the Works, the Fourth of Its Kind
6 Apr 2023, 10:21 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Several modernization programs are currently being run by the Royal Navy, but few of them are as high-profile as the one centered around the new Type 26 frigates. This one is so important, in fact, that the launch of one of them even had a British ...
Canada-Made BrightDrop Zevo Electric Vans Coming to a Road Near You Soon
6 Apr 2023, 08:23 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Just two years ago, in 2021, American carmaking giant GM decided it would be best to venture into the commercial delivery segment with something not many other companies are offering at the moment: electric delivery vans. And it seems this idea was...
This Is the Fourth Bombardier Global to Fly With Strange Apendix on Its Back
5 Apr 2023, 12:13 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Because of an airplane the military calls the E-3 Sentry, every time we average Joes hear the word AWACS we immediately imagine an aircraft with a flying saucer of sorts attached to its back. But that is not the only configuration required for a wa...
F-35 Lightning IIs to Get New Electronic Warfare Systems as Part of Block 4 Upgrade
5 Apr 2023, 11:29 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Just six days into 2023 a new and improved variant of the F-35 Lightning II fighter airplane took off from the Edwards Air Force Base in California. It spent 50 minutes in the air, moving over the Mojave Desert, in a bid to see if something called ...
Triumph Bonneville T120 DGR Is a Black-Tie Motorcycle Only Few Will Get to Enjoy
5 Apr 2023, 10:15 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / It’s been more than three months since British bike maker Triumph had anything interesting to tell us. After announcing back in December it is ready to start testing sustainable fuels for its bikes, Triumph seems to have had nothing else of i...
Harley-Davidson Vivir Is Custom Sportster With a Message and a Hidden Elephant
5 Apr 2023, 08:47 UTC · By: Daniel Patrascu / Have you ever wondered why some custom Harley-Davidsons turn out so great while others are a matter of personal interpretation? Well, that would be first because these bikes are the result of hard work performed by more or less talented hands, but ...