Popular Mechanics

In 2017, the theft of a rare toy, a Boba “Rocket” Fett prototype that was never released for sale, rocked the Star Wars collecting community.

In Lebanon, not far from the Syrian border, a crew of volunteer slackliners tries to bring fleeting moments of magic into displaced children’s lives.

As religious rules around cremation have relaxed, more and more Americans are turning to cremation as a cost effective way to deal with the dead. As Caren Chesler tours Rosehill Cemetery’s crematorium, she reports not on the process of cremation, but also on how loved ones often struggle to deal with the cremains of family members. Not knowing where to store them, urns end up in closets, garages, and in storage — liminal spaces that place the dead out of sight and out of mind.

Horseshoe crab blood is an irreplaceable medical marvel — biomedical companies bleed 500,000 of them every year. Can this creature that’s been around since the dinosaurs be saved?

A look into the immense possibility—and myriad problems—associated with a future where surgery can routinely be performed from hundreds of miles away.

A look at the community of scientists and astronomers who are designing plans to prevent Earth from being devastated by an asteroid.

At seventy-three, Bob Ballard remains the world’s most vigorous ocean explorer.

A profile of Alex Holden, a Ukrainian immigrant who lives in Milwaukee and runs a cyber security firm. His work often takes him deep into the so-called Dark Web.

02:11:21 (Robert) On a pourtant les moteurs! Qu’est-ce qui se passe bordel? Je ne comprends pas ce que se passe.
We still have the engines! What the hell is happening? I don’t understand what’s happening.

Unlike the control yokes of a Boeing jetliner, the side sticks on an Airbus are “asynchronous”—that is, they move independently. “If the person in the right seat is pulling back on the joystick, the person in the left seat doesn’t feel it,” says Dr. David Esser, a professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Their stick doesn’t move just because the other one does, unlike the old-fashioned mechanical systems like you find in small planes, where if you turn one, the [other] one turns the same way.” Robert has no idea that, despite their conversation about descending, Bonin has continued to pull back on the side stick.

The men are utterly failing to engage in an important process known as crew resource management, or CRM. They are failing, essentially, to cooperate. It is not clear to either one of them who is responsible for what, and who is doing what. This is a natural result of having two co-pilots flying the plane.

You’re six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations—and lived to tell the tale.