I follow Yutaka Igarashi's work for some years now. I first notice him in a Cinema 4D ad in a magazine featuring his amazing one-seat helicopter. What he lacks in quantity, with a concept appearing every few years, he more than makes up in quality. The attention to detail and most importantly the imagination of his concepts is amazing.

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A week ago six Β‘astronautsΒ’ were enclosed in a special facility near Moscow in order to simulate a journey to Mars and back. They will stay there for 520 days in order to simulate the 250 days to get there, a 30 day stay and the 240 days to get back. This is the largest in a line of smaller similar experiments (the previous one lasted 109 days). The special facility in the Moscow Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) is build in order to simulate the conditions and parameters of a trip to Mars. Of course two factors, gravity and radiation are left out for obvious reasons.

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The most popular aerobatics show is definitely the Red Bull Air Racing world championship. It is a series of events that is organized mostly over water (usually ports) where small aerobatic planes are timed over a course defined by nylon inflatable cones. The events are very spectacular and they are broadcasted live at Red Bull's website. Sometimes they are too spectacular as you can see in the image below where pilot Matt Hall touched the water (twice!) but managed not to crash.

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This photo of a Group B Toyota Celica could have been taken on TTE in the 80's but it is actually a sample of the excellent work of Mäkelä Auto-Tuning from Finland. Founded by Kari Mäkelä in 1978 as a racing team, MAT has enjoyed success in local rallying championships and apart from preparing racing cars (mostly for rallying) it also does great restorations.

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Space shuttle Atlantis with its six-astronaut crew returned after 12 days in space. This is the last mission for Atlantis and the first of the final space shuttle missions. Discovery will fly for the last time in September (STS-133) and Endeavor in November (STS-134). The STS-132 mission was problem free, Atlantis delivered the Mini Research Module-1, (called "Rassvet" in Russian) and the crew performed several EVAs.

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Amphibian aircraft once very popular are nowadays very rare and few companies invest in this sector. One of them is the Japanese ShinMaywa, a firm that deals with various industrial and high-tech applications and aircraft construction. ShinMaywa has a long tradition in amphibious aircraft and the US-2 is its latest product. It is derived from the similarly looking US-1 (for sometime the -2 was called US-1kai - for improved) that first flew in the '70s. It may look similar to older amphibious aircrafts (even the WWII era ones) but the US-2 is a highly advanced aircraft, adapted to its role of maritime patrol, search and rescue and firefighting.

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Military UAVs is a booming sector and more and more companies (and countries) are entering this field first as users and manufacturers. Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) started this MALE (medium altitude long endurance) UAV program 6 years ago. Three prototypes will be constructed in order to evaluate and gain experience in the design, manufacturing and using such a complete system. The TIHA is similar to a Predator A tactical UAV. It weighs 1,5t and has a wingspan of 17m. It has a reciprocating engine that drives a pushing propeller and with 250kg of fuel has an 24h endurance while cruising at over 75kts.

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I am no big fan of the original 1982 Tron movie. Although it had pioneering CGI for the time its script was too far fetched. Syd Mead designed the famous light cycles but like most of his creations they are detached from any actual engineering or motorsport content. They look as if they want to impress people that don't have any special interest in motorcycling. After 28 years there is now a new Tron film ('Tron Legacy') and instead of Syd Mead, the major designer for the new film is Daniel Simon. He is mostly known from his excellent work on the 'Cosmic Motors' concepts and the book by the same name. Where Syd Mead had a mostly artistic view, Dan Simon, himself an avid motorsport fan has an approach mostly based on engineering and inspired from the world of high technology.

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Epsilon Euskadi could take the place of the bankrupted USF1 team for the 2011 Formula 1 championship. EE is a relatively new team from the Basque country in northern Spain. In the recent years it has progressively grow in order to be a substantial motorsport firm. It now has state of the art facilities and can provide Research and Development in automotive/motorsport fields, small-scale production, racing team services and also a very elaborate education program. Epsilon Euskadi has raced the ee1 LMP1 prototype in 2008 LeMans and tried to enter the 2010 F1 championship also. The fate of the USF1 team renders the FIA team selection quite unwise. FIA president Jean Todt will contact Spanish officials these days to discuss the subject.

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