If simply flying your RC plane isn’t quite giving you the thrill it used to, it could be time to upgrade your firepower. The plug and play Quanum bomb system might be just the bad idea you were looking for.

Looking disturbingly realistic and being dangerously easy to install, the Quanum RC bomb system could spell trouble if found in the hands of the wrong remote control pilots.

Though RC bombs aren’t exactly a new idea, Quanum’s $17 kit seems simple and effective. The system sticks onto the underside of any RC aircraft, size .25 or larger, and can be triggered by an extra servo channel in your receiver. The bomb itself is made of a durable nylon. You can fill it with any payload your fiendish heart desires. Packing it with chalk powder results in a nice plume of smoke; filling it with strawberry jam results in hilarity of some sort.

The system includes an extra release plate so you can design and drop your own custom armaments: a bouquet of flowers for an unsuspecting loved one or maybe some fertilizer over your pumpkin patch. JUST KIDDING. Load that sucker up with a water balloon and then it’s bombs away. [Nerd Approved]

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Remote Control Bomb System Tests Your Powers of Restraint [Rc]

Ever wondered how a beast like the Hindenburg zeppelin—a gigantic 803 feet in length and 130 feet in diameter structure—was built in the 1930s? Here’s the answer: With the biggest ladders you can possibly imagine. [Thanks David Keyes]

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How Did They Make Zeppelins? [Image Cache]

We’ve covered Life, BBC’s just-as-jaw-dropping follow-up to Planet Earth, a few times before. Mike Gunton, the program’s executive producer, offers more insight into how they made nature look so incredible.

In this clip, Gunton explains some of the cutting-edge technology that is instrumental to capturing nature in such an impressive fashion. In addition to the advances in time lapse high-speed, and low-light photography, Gunton mentions the development of the “Heligimbal,” a stabilized mount which allows photographers to fill an entire frame with action from over a kilometer away.

On the advances in macro photography, Gunton notes: “[There are] such advances that actually you don’t really feel like you’re in a miniature world anymore. So, for example, when you’re with a column of ants on the march, it feels like you’re with a herd of wildebeests on the migration…Emotionally what that’ll do is it’ll make you feel like you’re really part of their lives”

Mike Gunton will be speaking at the Entertainment Gathering conference in Monterey, California, next month.

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The Amazing Macro Shots of BBC’s Life [Photography]

This is Sofia. Like the Italian actress, it will turn heads everywhere it flies. Not because of its cleavage, but because this Boeing 747 has a 15 by 14-foot door on it, which opens to reveal a 2.5-meter telescope.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy—which went through $500-million in modifications after two decades of engineering—has finally been tested after its construction, flying at 15,000 feet and 415km/h with the door fully open. The test was a complete success, and in 2010 they will start testing the telescope itself. [Flight Global]

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This Boeing 747 Flies With a 15-Foot High Door Wide Open [Airplanes]

NASA has came up with a rather simple and clever idea that may save a lot of lives: An expandable Kevlar honeycomb cushion that would absorb the impact force in an aircraft crash. NASA’s Karen Jackson is hopeful about it:

I’d like to think the research we’re doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives. We crash-tested the helicopter by suspending it about 35 feet (10.7 m) into the air using cables. Then, as it swung to the ground, we used pyrotechnics to remove the cables just before the helicopter hit so that it reacted like it would in a real accident.

The test—which imitated the conditions of a “relatively severe helicopter crash”—appeared to be a success, although NASA is still going through the data collected by the 160 sensors on board, and the four crash test dummies with torsos specially designed to simulate the behavior of internal organs.

Created by engineer Sotiris Kellas at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Viginia, the kevlar honeycomb is not permanently deployed: It’s always flat until it expands in the case of emergency, much like an airbag but using a flexible hinge instead of inflating. [NASA via PopSci]

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Aircraft Crash-Absorber Shield May Save Your Life One Day [Airplanes]

Unlike most luggage locators, this version plays a 30 second user-recorded message in addition to lighting up like a Christmas tree whenever the remote is pressed. Of course, it would be better if the range extended beyond 45-feet.

Waaaay beyond actually. That way you can bitch at the baggage handlers tossing your luggage off a plane in Alaska while you sit in the airport in Philadelphia. [TYNKE via TRFJ via OhGizmo]

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The Talking Luggage Locator Needs Better Range [Travel]

Hudson River water landings? Those are so yesterday, man. Somewhere in the Congo today there’s a pilot who, after a slight, um, miscalculation, crash landed his plane in a lava field.

Now, we can make light of this incident because all 117 passengers and crew walked away from the crash largely unharmed. The only real casualty was the captain’s ego, although I think he’s probably the talk of the terminal this morning. I mean come on—lava!

And check out this crazy quote from MSNBC:

The plane was flying from Kinshasa to Goma, and passengers had warned the crew that there were heavy clouds, Radio Okapi said.

Since when do the passengers do in-flight risk assessments for the crew? [MSNBC via Geekologie]

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Your Move, Captain Sullenberger [Airplanes]

Magic Mouse owners lusting for multi-finger gestures on a PC can stop wishing. Some good ol’ fashioned hackery pulled Windows drivers from the latest Bootcamp update. You can grab them here, report back with results. [Uneasy Silence, thanks Dan!]

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Magic Mouse Drivers for Windows Now Available [Apple]

The new terminal at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport is the world’s largest earthquake-safe building. You’re looking at the over two million square feet of scaffolding that support it, all resting on top of giant geological roller skates.

Instead of being built on top of the soil, the whole structure rests on over 300 isolators. These giant bearings let the building move laterally during an earthquake. After Istanbul got rocked by a magnitude 7.4 monster in 1999, and another major quake predicted to occur within the next 30 years, you can see why engineers decided to make this massive building shake-resistant.

As terrible as a massive earthquake would be, it would be incredible to see a building this huge move from side to side. Maybe we will in a future “World’s Strongest Man” event. [Wired]

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The World’s Largest Earthquake-Safe Building [Architecture]

This is the Shinshin ATD-X, the prototype of what could be Japan’s very own stealth fighter if they don’t get to buy Lockheed Martin F-22s. It’s very sleek, but I’m sad it doesn’t transform like a Varitech.

The Japanese military seems to be very happy about it, although it’s not clear it will ever pass the prototype test phase. For now, only a full scale mockup for radar profiling—it appears as a group of insects or a bird, they say—and a RC model have been built. [Flight Global]

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Japan Developing Its Own Stealth Fighter Jet [Airplanes]

Esquire has the Nth feature on unmanned air vehicles changing the face of war. The opening photo, however, is a sleek, quite unique view on the dome that houses all the sensors is a Reaper UAV. Cool, deathly design. [Esquire]

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The Eye of Death [Image Cache]

Esquire has the Nth feature on unmanned air vehicles changing the face of war. The opening photo, however, is a sleek, quite unique view on the dome that houses all the sensors is a Reaper UAV. Cool, deathly design. [Esquire]

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The Eye of Death [Image Cache]

Esquire has the Nth feature on unmanned air vehicles changing the face of war. The opening photo, however, is a sleek, quite unique view on the dome that houses all the sensors is a Reaper UAV. Cool, deathly design. [Esquire]

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The Eye of Death [Image Cache]

The AT&T vs. Google Voice debate has gotten much more interesting/entertaining, thanks to a letter from AT&T to the FCC, loudly trashing Google—and even the FCC themselves, for allowing Google to run rampant. There’s some serious animosity here.

In the letter, AT&T outlines a lot of their specific problems not just with Google Voice but with what they see as lack of regulation of Google as a whole. Their first main point is that Google Voice isn’t merely software (which wouldn’t be regulated by the FCC), but seeing as how it connects calls between users, it should be seen (and regulated) in the same way as typical wireless carriers. They’ve asked for an FCC investigation of GV before, but now we’re getting some more in-depth reasoning and, even better, some smack talk. The salient paragraph:

But Google Voice is far more than just a software application. Rather, Google Voice uses telecommunications (supplied by its wholesale partner Bandwidth.com) to transmit voice calls between end users and it thus unquestionably constitutes “interstate and foreign communications by wire or radio” under the Communications Act, placing it squarely within the Commission’s jurisdiction. Indeed, Google Voice appears to be a telecommunications service insofar as it transmits ordinary telephone calls between customers using the public switched telephone network.

AT&T further contends that if Google is not regulated, they could easily use their position as de facto “gatekeeper” of the internet to block access or visibility to cloud software or sites which they see as competition to their own services:

Indeed, if the Commission cannot stop Google from blocking disfavored telephone calls as Google contends, then how could the Commission ever stop Google from also blocking disfavored websites from appearing in the results of its search engine; or prohibit Google from blocking access to applications that compete with its own email, text messaging, cloud computing and other services; or otherwise prevent Google from abusing the gatekeeper control it wields over the Internet?

In terms of call blocking, Google does admit to blocking certain numbers, which they claim as sex lines (which have a high cost to connect). But AT&T found that they block more than just sex lines, which if true would make Google’s position as a proponent of net neutrality less tenable:

In fact, Google is blocking calls to, among others, an ambulance service, church, bank, law firm, automobile dealer, day spa, orchard, health clinic, tax preparation service, community center, eye doctor, tribal community college, school, residential consumers, a convent of Benedictine nuns, and the campaign office of a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

AT&T has some smack-down words reserved for the FCC, too. In AT&T’s view, it is the Commission’s duty to hold Google to the same standard to which they believe everyone else has to conform.

And as an agency committed to “preserving a free and open Internet,” the Commission should show no hesitation in ensuring its Internet principles are applied evenhandedly to the “network providers, application and service providers, and content providers—including Google—who are expressly subject to them today.

That’s kind of formal language, but the message is clear: Oh, snap! FCC and Google, you done got served: How dare you show such favoritism! On the other hand, as TechCrunch points out, AT&T ends the letter by saying they don’t agree that the FCC should expand its position on net neutrality:

AT&T once again emphasizes that the principles in the existing Internet Policy Statement are serving customers well in their current form and there is no sound reason to radically expand and codify those principles.

Basically, AT&T is saying that they don’t want the FCC to pursue changes in policy, but if they must, Google better be regulated as much as anyone else.

The whole letter reads like whoever wrote it is modulated but really angry about how everyone’s on Google’s side. It doesn’t look like AT&T is about to give in and support Google Voice anytime soon, that’s for sure. [TechCrunch]

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AT&T: Google Is So Evil, They Even Block Calls to Nuns [Google Voice]

You saw the 3D images more than a year ago, and here’s the real thing: The all new, amazing, and near-supersonic Gulfstream 650. The cockpit, with four 14-inch multifunction LCDs with enhanced vision display, looks even cooler than the renderings:

The new Gulfstream 650 can take you anywhere in a 8,000 miles radius at Mach 0.925 and 41,000 feet. It is powered by dual Dual Rolls-Roice BR725 engines, which makes it 33% quieter, emitting 5% fewer NOx emissions and 10% less smoke than its predecessor.

The G650 also has the latest in electronics, with fly-by-wire controls and large multifunction screens that can combine real time video, night vision, and 3D renderings for military-grade visuals. Yes, that splash you heard was Larry Ellison, Al Gore, and John Travolta getting wet. [Flight Global with photos by Jon Ostrower]

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Insanely Rich People Get New Insanely Awesome and Shiny Flying Toy [Airplanes]