Update: Sorry, that last panel looks like a Photoshop. You fooled us, guy with rudimentary knowledge of the human anatomy!

[Washington Times via Consumerist]

The testing sequence lasted for a week, and was designed to "demonstrate the distribution, conversion, control and consumption of electric power on board the airplane. Completion also verifies the accuracy of the installation of systems on the first 787."

[Dreamliner in Gizmodo]

It's a clear sign of the desperations airlines are feeling with the prices of jet fuel rising to, ahem, stratospheric levels. With jatropha costing 20-30% less than fuel, it looks like an attractive alternative. It's not derived from a food source like ethanol is, which is a big plus for ANZ. It's also a hearty plant that can cope with poor soil and a lack of water, making it easy to come by. You know, because it's a weed. What did you think the headline meant? [FlightGlobal; Thanks Jason!]

This software will look for nervous face touching, profuse sweating and various other ticks that passengers do all the time. A guy from UCSD built a similar system, but says it only identifies people correctly 70% of the time and only under optimal conditions, which don't exist in airplanes. Sounds foolproof! [Newscientist via Boing Boing]

One version was apparently inflated by adding water to special pellets which produced gas. Another version says the engine itself, sans prop, pumped the plane up. Either way, it quickly became airworthy and, as a raft as well, could use a body of water as a takeoff strip.

One of the agents involved told the Spycraft authors that it was a viable invention: "We tested it and it worked out pretty good." He admits, though, that the project was killed, probably because of "politics." When a similar crisis emerged later on, the agent thought to pull it out of storage and put it to work, but by then, it had rotted and cracked in a secret CIA warehouse. (They probably shouldn't have put it right next to the Arc of the Covenant.) [More CIA Spytech from the Spycraft Book]

This composite material is made of hollow fibers that are filled with an epoxy resin that will leak out if damaged. The researchers claim that this resin can return the structure to 80-90% of its original strength when dried. It is also colored so that ground crews have an easy visual on areas where repair is needed. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this technology is confined to minor damage, so any major cracks could still send you plummeting towards the Earth. Still, it would be a tremendous improvement that could result in lighter, more fuel-efficient aircraft down the road. And the best part is that we probably won't have to wait forever to see it implemented. Researchers believe that the self-healing technology could go commercial in as little as four years. [Press Release via Wired]

Looking at the gamut of fuel cells (and not just the methanol ones covered in the ruling), the FAA appears to be afraid that the little chemical powerplants might explode. According to an FAA report from April 2: "Fuel sources [in fuel cells] range from highly flammable to relatively inert."

In addition to standard evaluation, the FAA says it will conduct "flammability tests...on existing fuel cartridges." And not just on individual units. From what I can tell of this report, somewhere the FAA will soon, or already has, set fire to bulk containers of fuel cells, and tried to ignite fuel cells that are in operation, connected to laptops or other electronics:And I thought my job was fun. [Press Release on DOT Ruling; FAA PDF on Flammability Testing]

"This year we have 125 partipants," show organizer Frank Tiano told us, "with 40 hobby vendors and coverage from 35 magazined from all over the world." In a good weather day, Top Gun gets 10,000 drooling spectators.

Looking at the detail and size of these beasts, we can understand exactly why.

Frank also confirmed to us that the A-10 featured in Popsci.com was going to participate in the competition, as well as many other new entries. So if you are around, it's a complete must, Maverick's glasses not required (but recommended.) [Top Gun—photos by Palmer Johnson, DVD video available from Wildberry Productions]

NOTE: if you're planning on assisting the Top Gun 2008 event, contact us at tips@gizmodo.com if you want to collaborate with us.

Watching him explain it, the genius of Dr. Bevilaqua's F-35B Shaft Driven Lift Fan is obvious. After all, the invention is quite simple. According to Bevilaqua, the best way to create power from the engine is by using a turbine. That power then gets moved forward using a shaft that connects to a fan, providing the vertical lift on the front of the plane—and all while the turbine exhaust is redirected to the ground to lift the back of the plane.

The result is a supersonic plane with great maneuverability. Like a car, Bevilaqua explains, the pilot starts the engine, engages the clutch that activates the lift fan, increases power—and off it goes. To make things even better, the bleed air coming off from the top runs over the winds so the F-35B handles smoothly while going vertically, "like if it was mounted on a hydraulic lift."

The idea, he says, came at the very end of a nine-month study to see if it was possible to do a supersonic successor to the Harrier for the Marine Corp. "I had to come up with a way to increase the thrust of a jet engine so that you could take off vertically, but yet not make it impossible for the airplane to go supersonic."

Dr. Bevilaqua—who started working with Hans von Ohain, the German engineer who invented the jet engine with the Heinkel He 178, and encouraged him to think not about math but about engineering—sketched his first idea on a napkin, which was a turbine with a drive shaft sticking out the front of the engine. He got it to a propulsion expert at Skunk Works to see if it was feasible or not. From there it was transformed from paper dream to reality: Lockheed Martin applied for the patent in 1990, which ended up being one of the factors that landed them the massive $200 billion contract for the Joint Strike Fighter against Boeing's X-32.

[Govexec, Global Security, Skunk Works and Wikipedia via The DEW Line]

Delta is planning on installing the Cozy Suite in its Boeing 777 and 767 economy class aircraft by 2010. Plus, the impending merger between Delta and Northwest could mean that travelers loyal to the latter company might reap the benefits of these new seats as well. Until then, you will just have to suck it up or spring for a higher class ticket. [Thompson Solutions via DVICE via Crunchgear]

• The quality is patchy and keeps most in-flight calls short and tinny-sounding. One receiver of an OnAir call complained that it sounded like "talking to a small robot."
• Hefty roaming charges of up to 3 euros ($4.72) a minute.
• Calls made from the plane to the ground usually need a few tries to actually connect. Calls made from the ground to the plane tend to go directly to voice mail.
• Only six passengers can get a signal at any one time to avoid interfering with aircraft equipment. OnAir says the capacity will double to 12 in the coming weeks.
• Blackberry users had trouble downloading email messages.

Oh yeah, and there's that whole factor of whether people want to be disturbed by other passengers yakking on cellphones in the first place. At least one other airline, Lufthansa, decided not to offer the service after customers pointedly asked them not to. [New York Times]

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According to the always entertaining Richard Quest, the delays have been caused precisely by the new technologies and manufacturing strategies that Boeing is using for the 787. Mainly, the biggest problem seems to be with the carbon fiber modules being manufactured all through the world, which then have to be brought and put together at Boeing's Everett factory in Washington, using their gigantic cargo Dreamlifter.

But as Quest points out, there will have to be major changes to this process because, at the end of the day, "the reality is that they have discovered they can't do it" in this way. One of these immediate and most serious changes, will likely require a redesign of the 787's wingbox.

As a result of these troubles, Boeing has ended with "new revised schedules" and an "extraordinary embarrassment" comparable to the humiliation that EADS had as a result of the multiple delays on the Airbus A380.

The even-worse thing is that, while it's understandable that companies like Boeing and EADS may have setbacks in the construction of these giant next-generation machines, the problem doesn't end in the technological embarrassment: Boeing will have to pay compensation to the airlines who have already bought 850 Dreamliners—which is "far more than any other aircraft at this stage"—and were expecting them on time.

Nightmareliner indeed. [CNN]

[Ares via Danger Room]

Would this thing fly? Most probably not. Should someone try to make something similar for real? In a word: YES. [Dezeen]

You will only need an on-board base in the plane. The base will relay all calls to a satellite, which will pass them to the ground-based cell network. According to the BBC, the service will start appearing as early as next month, starting with Air France—which apparently is ready for deployment—and following with low cost airline Ryanair. For sure, one thing that is not going to be low cost are the calls themselves.

Expect to pay an arm and a leg for this air roaming, even while government agencies are already watching for abusive practice. [BBC News]

!We offer you a business idea at its finest!

If you even before you come in a cocktail bar, you can then in a real airplane ambience in the first-class seats and swing are just out of the daily routine.

You will be doers of style stewardesses served and get in front of it flies in the holiday.

For Hawaiian (or just what you like) Music you start you to relax.

The clouds are flying only way to the windows of passing (obviously, this requires the intake of extra substances, J.) ... to realize with a Endlosposter, which has two roles held.

If you read the whole thing to make huge hits you, you have installed a hydraulic plate below and let the whole story with a little froze every half hour off and land.

The entire course will be displayed on the Angurtdisplays.

Sun offers an opportunity to all cases not so quickly, so without prejudice to!

Enjoy offer!

Needless to say, we've already placed our bid. [eBay —thanks Johannes]

The report comes after investigators finished looking into an accident that happened last November. Part of the airframe of a F-22A fell off into the engine intake, causing a whopping $1.2 million of damage.

And, while we understand that machines so amazingly complex will always have flaws that need to be ironed out, let's hope they used SuperGlue with the F-35 Lightning II. Or gum. [The Dew Line]

You see, in order to offer every first-class passenger a shower, the airline will have to add one metric tonne of water to its payload, dragging a carbon cost of around 50,000 lbs. per trip.

All part of the luxury experience, right? No one has seen photos of the upcoming A380 first-class cabin, but it is allegedly something on par with the "seven star" Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, and that it makes Singapore Airlines' front end—with double beds and dining "environments"—look like a dog's backend.

Sure, an in-air shower might negatively impact the earth in catastrophic and irreversible ways, but think about it this way: the only people who will make use of it come from oil wealth, so they probably wouldn't give a shit to begin with! [Times UK via Luxurylaunches]

"The aircraft flew very well, exceeding my expectations," Kromberg said. "I was surprised by the amount of power on the takeoff roll. And the handling, particularly with the gear up, was phenomenal. The aircraft was very stable flying in formation with another airplane. It was really a joy to fly."

So there you go: two thumbs up from Señor Flipper. I don't know about you, but I'm happy that the $40 billion total development costs have resulted in a plane that handles phenomenally well with the gear up (which is more than you can say about the Strategic Defense Initiative).

The F-35, nicknamed Lightning II in honor of the WW2 fighter P-38 Lightning, has flown only 28 times, all of them except this one commanded by Lockheed Martin's own test pilots, Jon Beesley and Jeff Knowles. The last flight happened on March 12th, for its first aerial refueling test shown here:

The F-35 Lightning II is scheduled to debut in 2011, after its maiden flight back in 2006. Powered by a Pratt & Whitney F135 afterburning turbofan capable of delivering 40,000 pounds of force, with an additional Rolls-Royce Lift System for the F-35B short take-off and vertical landing variant, the F-35 has been designed to be the número uno strike fighter in the world until around 2040.

At that point, we all hope that 1) no more modern fighters would be needed after that date, or 2) they develop Veritech fighters to defend Earth against the Zentraedi. [LockheedMartin and Wikipedia]

The British manufacturer Martin-Baker started work on ejection seats before the Germans and Swedes developed them, entering service during World War II. It was Martin-Baker, however, the company that perfected the downward-ejecting systems operated by a spring. Their first test happened in 1946, when a factory fitter ejected from a Gloster Meteor MkIII at 320mph and 8,000 feet over Oxfordshire.

The Mk. 5 seat was installed in the Grumman Cougar, as well as other classic fighter planes like the Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, the F-8 Crusader, the Grumman A6 Intruder or the F11 Tiger.

Grumman Cougar

The Mk. 5 used an ejection gun mechanism, obviously not present in this restored seat which comes mounted on a stainless steel base.

And yes, your wife will love you if you get one. But only if you let her put some nice petit-point cushions on it. [Martin-Baker, WIkipedia, 1stdibs via Born Rich]

The increased speed and power comes from its dual Dual Rolls-Roice BR725 engines, which provide with 4.6% more thrust than its predecesor—the BR710—while being 33% quieter. It's not much better on the emissions front (sorry, Mr. Ex-Vicepresident): only 5% fewer NOx emissions and 10% less smoke.

The coolest thing about the Gulfstream 750, however, is the technology that goes in. The flight controls —with fly-by-wire and dual hydraulic backup controls—and their advanced vision system, which combines enhanced vision with synthetic 3D rendering (SV-PFD) to give you military-grade visual assistance.

The cockpit has a four large 14-inch displays, an LCD HUD II which provides with the enhanced vision you see above and the SV-PFD. The control of the multifunction displays is quite nice, with an analog pad built onto the pilot's joystick itself.

All state-of-the-art toys everywhere. The catch for the billionaires of this world? These technological wonders are not available today: the unveiled craft is a mock-up of the whole thing. The $58.5 million Gulfstream 650 won't be ready until 2012, which apparently will raise the total price for $65 million. Or, if you live in Europe, $101 million. [Gulfstream 650]

As with most lofty goals, there are major obstacles to contend with. First and foremost, the designers are going to have to figure out how to power such an aircraft over the course of these long missions. Oh, and it will have to do it while carrying a 1000 pound payload in the fearsome winds at a 60,000—90,000 feet. No problem right? As for the design, the Vulture will most likely draw on NASA designs like the one pictured above, but there is no definitive time table on when we might actually see a working craft. [Flight Global via CNET via DVICE]

SCARAB Aviation Lab spokesman Gregory Omelchenko told us that the Sirius and the Iris are "still in the design phase," but they are planes that "will be manufactured in the future." The company says they work with the Federal Space Agency, the Moscow Aviation Institute and Sukhoi, the third largest manufacturer of fighter airplanes in the world, including the mighty SU-3X series. Hopefully, that means that they will be able to make them into a commercial reality instead of just being some dream designs out of a Star Wars movie.

The two-seat Evolution DT model, however, is just "a few weeks from being completed and readied for commercial production," so if you are looking for a low-cost pod to fly with a co-pilot, get $11,500 ready. Like the one-seat Evolution ST, these are also hand-made with and get shipped "60 days after payment," according to Gregory. [Scarab via Sense4Fun]

The system began its life as a variation of another crazy scheme using by spec-ops in World War II. Then, instead of a helium balloon they used a pair of poles, which were then grappled with a plane towing cable and hook. At the beginning of the 50s, Robert Edison Fulton Jr.—and inventor working for the CIA— thought about using a weather balloon and a nylon line.

He presented his invention to his boss, director of CIA technical research Admiral de Florez, who directed him to the military. The Office of Naval Research put him to work and by 1958 the first real Skyhook pick-up took plac, when a Navy P2V got US Marines' Staff Sergeant Levi W. Woods with less shock than a parachute opening.

Th Air Force stopped using it in 1995, after years of winching people to the skies using C-130 Hercules and with only one casualty in 17 years of use. Long range helicopters made the system less useful, but Fulton's invention is still alive in other armies: in 2001 a British Hercules rescued an injured spec-op soldier in Afghanistan.

And besides, any device that gets to be used in an actual James Bond movie (Thunderball) gets extra points for us. [Wikipedia]

That's on one flight, "JetBlue Flight 641, will depart from New York's Kennedy Airport at 8 a.m. Tuesday, bound for San Francisco." And after that, she will be a needle in a haystack, impossible to find as it travels from port to port to port. At least it is a step in the right direction. [WSJ]

Pilots who fail the authentication test when they approach Israeli airspace will be denied entry. Should a plane go ahead, ignoring further warnings, Israel will consider it hostile and scramble fighter planes for an interception.

"You can't bluff this system," Dani Shenar, chief of security for Israel's Transportation Ministry, told Reuters. "It provides a higher level of confidence that the aircraft is being controlled by the right people, which is a huge asset in terms of avoiding unnecessary security alerts."

That could mean a "stretch" Airbus A380 could be adjusted to hold as many as 1000 passengers depending on the carrier. Airbus will begin developing the larger version after the standard plane reaches full production in 2010. Dubai-based Emirates Airline, the company's biggest client, has already shown interest, saying it would buy a new model when they become available. [Kansas via Luxist]