If an elevator stretching from Earth into space could ever be built, it could slash the cost of space travel. But a controversial new study suggests that building and maintaining one would be an even bigger challenge than previously thought, because it would need to include built-in thrusters to stabilise itself against dangerous vibrations.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered a complete inventory of the nation's nuclear arsenal and all associated components after the discovery last week that four secret nuclear missile parts had been mistakenly sent to Taiwan, an error that went unnoticed for more than 18 months.
A recently declassified US Army report on the biological effects of non-lethal weapons reveals outlandish plans for "ray gun" devices, which would cause artificial fevers or beam voices into people's heads.
President Bush said Thursday that Iran has declared that it wants to be a nuclear power with a weapon to "destroy people," including others in the Middle East, contradicting the judgments of a recent U.S. intelligence estimate.
The U.S. Defense Department is leaving open the possibility of developing a conventional long-range missile for deployment on submarines, despite stern congressional warnings against fielding anything that might be mistaken for a nuclear weapon during launch.
Space is littered with millions of bits of orbiting garbage leftover from missions. The flying flotsam can delay launches and could potentially smash into spacecraft. Now some creative ideas are emerging for how to sweep up the junk.
The U.S. Air Force intends to field the first system explicitly designed to help counter anti-satellite missiles and other threats, The Rapid Attack Identification Detection Reporting System (Raidrs) Block 20, which they intend for it to collect data from open and classified sources to provide predictability in the event of an ASAT attack.
As if forecasting whether asteroids will hit the Earth wasn't hard enough, it now seems that primordial black holes could surprise us by nudging a rock or two our way.
A beautiful pinwheel in space might one day blast Earth with death rays, scientists now report. Unlike the moon-sized Death Star from Star Wars, which has to get close to a planet to blast it, this blazing spiral has the potential to burn worlds from thousands of light-years away.
China is developing weapons that would disable its enemies' space technology such as satellites in a conflict, the Pentagon said in a report released last week. The report also said "numerous" intrusions into computer networks around the world, including some owned by the U.S. government, in the past year seem to have originated in China.