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motoriginal:

Peter Wheeler’s End of Days

Quite possibly the most bizarre vehicle to ever actually be built, the TVR Scamander RRV (Rapid Response Vehicle) was Peter Wheeler’s last project before he died. The project was started in 2003 and has been a work in progress up until now.

The idea is a go anywhere vehicle. Rough land, asphalt, and water is no match for the Scamander. It’s a one-off vehicle that was tested on Peter Wheeler’s own farm and is completely amphibious.

The details of the “car” are many. It has 11-inches of ground clearance, 11” travel in the front, 15” travel in the rear, double wishbone suspension all around, a pickup truck style bed, a sliding canopy, 3-seats with driver front & center, one seat folds down for a stretcher, and it has a mid-mounted 300hp V6 engine to which a rear propeller is attached.

Instead of side & rear view mirrors it has cameras with video screens inside and the driver visibility is unmatched due to panoramic windows and additional windows in the front wheel wells to see exactly what you’re driving over.

The Scamander looks like it was built in another galaxy and delivered to earth through a wormhole. This vehicle could probably make its way across Mars (if there was any air and water of course). Can you say Hollywood appearance?

The only unfortunate thing, Peter Wheeler never got to see the vehicle finished as he died in 2009 but thanks to his team of extraordinary engineers who have spent most of the 21st century making this vehicle a reality, it’s finally finished.

Check out some of the videos on youtube below.

video 1 | video 2 | video 3

kari-shma:

Birthday Card | via: Swissmiss

the-star-stuff:

NASA’s 10 Greatest Science Missions

10. Pioneer

Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, respectively, were the first spacecraft to visit the solar system’s most photogenic gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Pioneer 10 was the first probe to travel through the solar system’s asteroid belt, a field of orbiting rocks between Mars and Jupiter. 

9. Voyager

Shortly after the Pioneers made their flybys, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes followed. They made many important discoveries about Jupiter and Saturn, including rings around Jupiter and the presence of volcanism on Jupiter’s moon, Io. Voyager went on to make the first flybys of Uranus, where it discovered 10 new moons, and Neptune, where it found that Neptune actually weighs less than astronomers thought.

8. WMAP

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001, may not be as well-known, but it measures with unprecedented accuracy the temperature of the radiation left over from the Big Bang.

7. Spitzer

Another spacecraft with a profound effect on cosmology and astrophysics is the Spitzer Space Telescope, which observed the heavens through infrared light. This light, which has a longer wavelength than visual light, is mostly blocked by Earth’s atmosphere.

6.Spirit & Opportunity

Intended for just a 90-day mission, these workhorse Mars rovers have far outdone themselves, and are still chugging away on the red planet more than five years after landing. Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, landed on opposite sides of the planet in January 2004. 

5. Cassini-Huygens

This joint NASA/ESA spacecraft, launched in 1997, reached its destination, Saturn, in 2004. Since then it has been in orbit around the ringed world, taking one stunning snapshot after another of the planets rings, moons and weather.

4. Chandra

Since 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been scanning the skies in X-ray light, looking at some of the most distant and bizarre astronomical events. Because Earth’s pesky atmosphere blocks out most X-rays, astronomers couldn’t view the universe in this high-energy, short-wavelength light until they sent Chandra up to space. 

3. Viking

When NASA’s Viking 1 probe touched-down on Mars in July 1976, it was the first time a man-made object had soft-landed on the red planet. (Though the Soviet Mars 2 and 3 probes did land on the surface, they failed upon landing). The Viking 1 lander also holds the title of longest-running Mars surface mission, with a total duration of 6 years and 116 days. The spacecraft also sent the first color pictures back from the Martian surface, showing us what that mysterious red dot looks like from the ground for the first time.

2. Hubble

The most-loved of all NASA spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope has name recognition around the world. Its photos have changed the way everyday people figure themselves into the cosmos. The observatory has also radically changed science, making breakthroughs on astronomical issues too numerous to count. 

1. Apollo

NASA’s best space science mission? The one humans got to tag along on, of course! Not only was sending a man to the moon monumental for human history, but the Apollo trips were the first to bring celestial stuff back to Earth and greatly advanced our scientific understanding of the moon. 

(n-a-s-aから)