Supersonic Travel May Return by 2023

The last Concorde may have completed travel in 2003 but that doesn’t mean supersonic travel came to an end entirely. Three aviation start-ups are hoping to bring Mach speed back by 2023—and plan to tackle the faults of the previous airplane. First, not all companies are planning to reach Mach 2 (as the Concorde did) but max out at Mach 1.1 to 1.8. Further, they’ll …

Farewell Studio Ghibli Co-Founder, Isao Takahata

Co-founder of the influential Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata has passed away at 82 years old. Takahata (who started the studio with Hayao Miyazaki) wrote and directed some of the most magical and poignant animated films of the past 50+ years—including the heart-wrenching “Grave of the Fireflies,” an anti-war film based on a short story by Akiyuki Nosaka. Heavily inspired by French literature and film, he …

Track All Things Orbiting Earth Daily

The brainchild of James Yoder, a future Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin, the website stuffin.space offers a realtime 3D map of Earth as seen from outer space—and it includes tracking visualizations for everything in orbit, refreshing daily. Yoder takes orbit data from Space-Track.org and pairs it with the satellite.js Javascript library in order to ascertain satellite positions. The …