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The Naval Academy hasn’t taught midshipmen how to navigate by the stars in nearly 20 years, but it’s reintroducing the old-school approach to maritime travel. Why use a sextant instead of computers and GPS? Worries about ships stranded by cyber-attacks, which have the Navy re-thinking its reliance on tech.

The Capital Gazette talked to Naval Academy employees about the decision to bring back the shuttered program:

“We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great,” said Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, the deputy chairman of the academy’s Department of Seamanship and Navigation. “The problem is,” he added, “there’s no backup.”

This doesn’t mean that the Navy will suddenly have itself a bunch of Ernest Shackleton types. They’re only getting three hours of celestial navigation training right now—hardly enough to provide a realistic buffer against cyber-attack induced technical difficulties.

Midshipmen started receiving instruction this past summer at the Naval Academy, which is adding more courses. The Class of 2017 will be the first to graduate with the instruction.

[Washington Post | Capital Gazette, h/t Sultana Khan]

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

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The Navy Is Teaching Celestial Navigation Again as a Backup Plan Against Hackers 

A tuxedo, a martini, and a gun. Good looks, charm, and always so impossibly cool. That’s James Bond. Also James Bond: a dude who totally abuses his license to kill and offs a lot of people in his movies. Auralnauts did their always fun kill count and showed all the deaths that all the James Bond have caused.

The final answer: 362 (with 29 killer puns). It’s fun to see the silly kills that have happened throughout the series.

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How many people have all the James Bonds killed in all the movies?

Earlier this week, NASA uploaded an incredible treasure trove of images to a new gallery on Flickr: unprocessed photographs from all of the manned Apollo missions. They represent an incredible look into what the astronauts saw on their missions to the moon.

NASA’s astronauts are known for taking some of the world’s best pictures, but this gallery is a chance to see the raw results: untouched and unprocessed pictures of space. They’re high-resolution images that are perfect for reprocessing.

You can check out the entire gallery here, but we’ve pulled out some of our favorites from the over 8,400 images:

Apollo 7

S-IVB stage during rendezvous maneuvers.

Rendezvous with the S-IVB stage.

Looking down into the clouds.

Apollo 8

Earthrise.

Lunar Surface.

Looking back on the way home.

Apollo 9

Lunar Lander rendezvous and extraction.

Russell Schweickart’s EVA.

Apollo 10

The lunar surface.

Command Module Charlie Brown.

Apollo 11

Buzz Aldrin on the ride out.

Neil Armstrong, shortly after landing.

Buzz Aldrin carrying sensors.

LEM returning home.

Apollo 12

Astronaut on the lunar surface.

Lunar surface

Research

Astronaut Alan Bean.

Earth on the ride out.

Lunar Module landing

Apollo 13

Damaged parts.

Lunar Lander, unused.

Apollo 14

Lunar EVA

Commander Alan Shepherd Jr.

Lunar experiments

LEM

Apollo 15

Experiments

Lunar mountains

Astronaut and Lunar Rover

Astronaut, LEM and Lunar Rover

Apollo 16

Astronaut Thomas Mattingly

Commander John Young

Mattingly

Young

Apollo 17

Commander Gene Cernan

Commander Eugene Cernan during Lunar EVA

Pilot Ron Evans retrieving film canisters.

Command Module

Cernan, post EVA.

[Planetary.org]

Photo Credits: NASA

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Our Favorite Images From NASA’s Incredible New Apollo Gallery

Given the challenges with precision, building functional machines with a household 3D printer isn’t easy. And that’s why it’s all the more impressive that someone on the RC Groups forum has used a 3D printer to make a fully-functional scale model of a Boeing 787’s GE-built turbofan jet engine.

Harcoreta’s scale replica, which includes over 60 3D-printed blades and vanes on the inside, isn’t just a model destined to collect dust on a shelf. It actually produces more than enough thrust to power a remote-controlled airplane, and that’s exactly what its creator intends to use it for.

To make the design and build of the replica even more challenging, but also more accurate to the real thing, Harcoreta has even incorporated a functional thrust reverser into his engine. So when he’s eventually bringing an RC airplane in for a landing, he’ll be able to stop his creation in time before it runs off the end of a runway. [RC Groups via The Awesomer]

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This 3D-Printed Working Model of a 787’s Jet Engine Has Impressive Thrust