Rendering Inferno Download PDF

Flames leap 200 feet in the air and burn at 2,000 degrees. A rain of fire sets thousands of acres ablaze. The smoke jumpers may get the glory, but the battle is being won by the wildfire simulation brigade.”

It was one of the worst years for wildfires in Montana’s history: In 2003, more than 2,300 fires torched three-quarters of a million acres—nearly 20 percent of the total burned by wildfires across the US. The western part of the state was hardest hit, especially in late August, when multiple blazes devoured tens of thousands of acres of pristine Rocky Mountain wilderness. Some 2,000 firefighters were deployed throughout the region, as well as nearly every available fire engine, bulldozer, helicopter, and water-tanker plane. Local commanders were flying wildfire specialists in from around the country. Continue reading →

Cold Rush Download PDF

Long hours. Subfreezing winds. Months of absolute darkness. Welcome to the South Pole, where the coolest science outpost on earth is being built atop 9,000 feet of solid ice.

After a grueling 18 hours on the ice, Jerry Marty wanders into the communications center at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and collapses on a tattered sofa. It’s midnight and the place is quiet. As the National Science Foundation’s representative for the station, Marty is, in effect, the mayor of the South Pole. A lanky 55-year-old with fair hair and a broad mustache, he is overseeing construction of a $153 million research facility that will replace the Pole’s current structure—a 27-year-old geodesic dome that is slowly being buried under mounting ice and snow. The sleek new station will have it all: from private rooms outfitted with Ethernet and telephone hookups to modern labs and medical facilities—plus a cozy bar where researchers can host their time-honored Slushy Night in style. By 2006, after 15 years of planning, design, and construction, South Pole scientists and support staff will have a home fit for the 21st century.

But building the new station is a tremendously complex endeavor that demands precision choreography among 85 onsite construction workers, contractors in Denver, architects in Honolulu, administrators in Washington, DC, and a 10,000-mile supply chain that begins aboard a cargo ship in Port Hueneme, California, and culminates at the Pole six weeks later with the daily arrival of up to seven ski-equipped cargo planes. Hence, Marty sleeps by the radio in the “comm center”—if any one of these variables goes awry, he needs to be the first to know. Continue reading →

The New Mobile Infantry Download PDF

Battle-ready robots are rolling out of the research lab and into harm’s way.

Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch retired from the Army last fall, filling out the paperwork in an out-processing office of the Pentagon on the morning of September 10, 2001. In his three years at the helm of the Defense Department’s Tactical Mobile Robots Program, Blitch had funded nearly a dozen academic and corporate research efforts. Their goal: building bots to replace human soldiers and rescue workers in dangerous situations. Barrel-chested and brawny, the 43-year-old Special Forces officer was leaving to direct the Center for Intelligent Robotics and Unmanned Systems at the Science Applications International Corporation, an engineering outfit and defense contractor in Littleton, Colorado. He planned to start the 1,500-mile drive the following day.

With news of the terrorist attacks, though, Blitch scrapped the trip. He removed his belongings from the flatbed trailer hitched to his pickup, loaded up a set of tactical mobile robots, or TMRs-most about the size of a football and fitted with rugged treads and an assortment of sensors—and headed for New York. On the road, Blitch donned his fatigues, dug out his military ID, and worked his cell phone, summoning colleagues from Florida to Boston to pack up their finest tactical robots and rendezvous at Ground Zero. “When I arrived, we passed through 32 checkpoints,” he recalls. “People were asking, ‘Who is this guy in camouflage running around with grad students and robots?'” Continue reading →