Now, we can make light of this incident because all 117 passengers and crew walked away from the crash largely unharmed. The only real casualty was the captain’s ego, although I think he’s probably the talk of the terminal this morning. I mean come on — lava!

And check out this crazy quote from MSNBC:

The plane was flying from Kinshasa to Goma, and passengers had warned the crew that there were heavy clouds, Radio Okapi said.

Since when did passengers start doing in-flight risk assessments for the crew? [MSNBC via Geekologie]

As you might have guessed, a standard front engine avoids the afterburner setting cars on fire when the Frictionator hits the streets. [Frictionator via Jalopnik]

According to Van Tillburg, it looks more like a Cold War submarine than a WW2 ship, built for high speed underwater travel. The I-401 was its sister vessel. That one was located in 2005, and it was capable of carrying 144 people through 59,545km, it was three times the size of modern submarines. Japan wanted to use these ships to launch aerial attacks in the continental United States. To do this, it used three Aichi light bombers, each capable of carrying an 800kg bomb. When their mission was complete, the bombers returned to the submarine, landing on the water using floats.

The Japanese also had another dirty trick in their pockets: use the submarines to deploy rats infected with the plague and insects loaded with cholera, dengue and typhus. Fortunately, they never were able to put that in practice before the Americans delivered to them a fat tin-can full of atoms.

These submarines were so advanced that, after being captured and inspected by the United States, they were sunk so the Soviets couldn’t inspect them. The Japanese were the pioneers in developing advanced aerial attack technology for submarines. The sea-to-air cruise missile was developed later, during the Cold War period. Nowadays, the US Navy is working on submarine-launched drones which can take off from underwater. [National Geographic via Daily Mail]

[SFGate]

So it’s a hell of a lot cooler and more powerful than a scooter, moped or Segway — but the 1300W lithium ion–powered motor will only take you between 30km and 50km on a one-hour charge (depending on weight). That’s not enough to make it a serious mode of transportation, but if you live in an urban area it might make some sense. You don’t need a parking spot and you can ride it in like you would any other bicycle. Of course, that kind of flexibility won’t come cheap. Expect to pay €5877 ($9426) for the Grace E-Bike when it ships in January. [Grace via DVICE]

English Russia’s got a series of photos detailing how some of the largest vehicles on the planet, the 10m long, 8m high Tonka-styled mining trucks from Belarusian manufacturer Belaz, known in mining truck circles as “the Komatsu of the Balkans” (I made this up), get shipped from one place to another. The first stage is to break these things down into slightly smaller parts, though still obscenely huge. Cue comically oversized pieces of machinery in unusual positions, now:

The pieces are then transported by train, plane or flatbed truck to their destination, where they are reassembled, Transformers style, into the comically huge vehicles we all know and love/fear/resent for ruining our sense of scale. And the fun isn’t over, apparently: the 118,000kg trucks aren’t exactly morning people:

During the first start-up of an each car, engine makes such an awful noise that the human ear can barely stand it.

More heavy equipment porn at [English Russia]

[Wired]

This is the Shinshin ATD-X, the prototype of what could be Japan’s very own stealth fighter if they don’t get to buy Lockheed Martin F-22s. It’s very sleek, but I’m sad it doesn’t transform like a Varitech.

The Japanese military seems to be very happy about it, although it’s not clear it will ever pass the prototype test phase. For now, only a full scale mockup for radar profiling — it appears as a group of insects or a bird, they say — and a RC model have been built. [Flight Global]

A project of Garnet Hertz of the Pasadena Art Centre College of Design, this is a classic OutRun arcade cabinet that’s been placed on an EVT America Electric Trike with electric motors that can go up to a whopping 32km/h.

Check out the below video to see a bit more about how this thing will work.

[ConceptLab via Jalopnik]