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The Experimental Honda Business Jet With A Strange Turbofan Design

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While most small aircraft are made out of a combination of aluminum and fiberglass, the MH02 was the first ever all-composite jet, meaning that all structural components of the jet were made out of a carbon fiber-epoxy resin material. The carbon fiber wonder was just under 37 feet long and had a wingspan of over 36 feet. Its two aforementioned turbofans pumped out a combined 2,464 pounds of thrust, allowing it to reach speeds of 353 knots (or 406 miles per hour).

Unconventional design notwithstanding, the MH02 never saw the light of day or real production aside from the prototype. Honda never intended the MH02 to take to the sky as a production jet and its sole purpose was to act as a test bed for Honda’s flight-related projects. The MH02 wasn’t going to win many prizes in the looks department, but the data collected during its flight proved to be invaluable to the future HondaJet. It showed that the company responsible for making the Honda Accord was capable of making a feasible passenger jet, further cementing Honda’s reputation as the producer of just about anything that has an engine, turbofan or otherwise. 

[Featured image by Morio via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 3.0]

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10 Apple Vision Pro Features Already Available With Meta Quest

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Apple’s headset features a number of high-definition cameras which record the room around you and relay that recording to the device’s impressive screen. As a result, you can see exactly what’s going on in the room, and this can serve as a background to what you’re doing. Once again, however, this innovative feature is already available on Quest headsets, where it is known as Passthrough — although it varies in quality. 

Older headsets, like the Quest 1 and Quest 2, use a greyscale Passthrough system, which appears in black and white. The Quest Pro has color Passthrough, though this is the same greyscale system as its predecessors use but with color added before it hits your eyes. As a result, it isn’t what you’d call an HD experience.

That said, the Quest 3 is putting a heavy emphasis on augmented reality and may have a higher-quality Passthrough feature. It may also include the depth sensor that was supposed to be built into the Quest Pro, which will be very useful for augmented reality experiences. Instead of trying to tell the headset where the floor, walls, or tabletops are, the depth sensor can just work it out. 

Either way, you can see your surroundings through a Quest headset. In addition, you can also select various environments to work in on the Quest if you hate the things you’re surrounded by in reality — just like you can with the Vision Pro.

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Features Of The Eurofighter Typhoon That Make It One Of The Best Fighter Jets Ever Built

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Like a lot of military technology, development of the Eurofighter Typhoon began around the Cold War. It was intended as a revolutionary aircraft that would defend Europe as a new time of uncertainty unfolded, as a joint venture between Spain, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Equipped with a pair of Eurojet EJ200 afterburning turbofan engines and at a cost of $90 million each, the Eurofighter was also expected to keep pace with the developments such aircraft as the United States’ formidable Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, according to Aerocorner. Alas, its fielding was no easy ride: The collaborative nature of development proved difficult to manage, and certain futuristic elements of the aircraft made its development time-consuming and costly. It wasn’t until 2002 that it began serving the U.K., German, Spanish, and Italian militaries, before being purchased by Austria and Saudi Arabia as well.

The Eurofighter Typhoon boasts revolutionary technology to aid in both defensive and offensive endeavors.

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Elon Musk Says Tesla Is Open To Licensing Out Autopilot And Other EV Tech

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Now, Musk’s offer isn’t a philanthropic endeavor to redeem humanity from the environmental burden of gas-guzzling cars. Licensing only means the automaker that eventually bites will have to pay a fee for every car in which the Autopilot tech is used, just the same way Arm collects royalty for its chip design. But the bigger question is, who will embrace Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) tech?

In 2016, Musk claimed at a conference that “a Model S and Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person.” Multiple accidents happened in the years that followed, some allegedly due to issues with the Autopilot system in Tesla cars.

Interestingly, when Musk’s claims about Tesla Autopilot tech were brought forth in a lawsuit involving a fatal crash, Musk’s defense argued that those statements were possibly deepfakes. In January, another bombshell allegation dropped in which it was claimed that early promotional videos for the self-driving tech weren’t real, but staged. In light of these things, there’s a big question with no clear answer: given Tesla’s checkered track record with its in-house Autopilot tech, would any rival EV maker be willing to utilize the system in its own cars?

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