Innovator

JAMES CAMERON

Brilliant idea

USING TECHNOLOGY TO OPEN NEW WORLDS IN SCI-FI AND REAL LIFE

James Cameron with one of the 3D camera rigs he created to film Avatar. The director plans to take a version of the rig on a dive to Challenger Deep—36,000 feet below the surface of the ocean—in a piloted submersible he also helped to engineer.

They first think of his movies: Aliens, Titanic, Avatar, The Terminator. Then they might reflect on how his films have pushed major technological advances in the entertainment industry, from the state-of-the-art visual effects that created the water tentacle in The Abyss to the high-tech SimulCam system used to film Avatar. But for Cameron, Hollywood is just the beginning. His innovations are also expanding human knowledge by exploring new frontiers. “Exploring is, in many ways, my first love,” the director says. He has led an expedition to probe the wreck of the German battleship Bismarck and helped design 3D cameras for NASA’s next Mars rover. “We let Jim shoot pictures with our cameras in Mars orbit,” says Michael Ravine, advanced projects manager at Malin Space Science Systems. “When I brought him the 12-foot-long prints, he halted a meeting and came out to sweep the floor so we had a big enough area to unroll them. He was asking questions about collapsed lava tubes while all these movie folks stood around, wondering what was going on.” Cameron isn’t a scientist—”I think of myself more as a science groupie,” he says—but there’s no telling how many have been inspired by his work. POPULAR MECHANICS correspondent Anne Thompson spoke with Cameron about his plans to dive to Challenger Deep, the real obstacle to colonizing Mars and how humanity should grapple with its greatest challenge.

POPULAR MECHANICS: Next year you plan to dive to the deepest known point in the ocean in a sub that you’ve helped design. Why?

JAMES CAMERON: I believe in exploration. These trenches, which are deeper than 6000 meters, have never been explored. We don’t know what’s there. Space exploration is really the product of governments. Most individuals can’t afford to explore space. For private exploration, we’re really bound to the Earth, and the last great frontier is the Hadal trenches.

Footage for both Titanic and the documentary Ghosts of the Abyss came from ROVs. How have your undersea vehicles evolved over time? In 1998 we started to engineer these small robotic vehicles that were designed to go inside shipwrecks. We decided to use syntactic foam—the only flotation system that works at extreme depths—structurally on the robotic vehicle, which had never been done before. Now we’re building our 23-foot-long piloted submersible, the Deep Challenger, entirely out of syntactic foam—except for the pressure hull, which is the sphere that we all sit inside.

What are the challenges of engineering to withstand deep-sea environments? At 36,000 feet, you’ve got 16,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. That translates to tens of millions of pounds distributed over the surface of the sub’s pressure sphere. If your pressure port fails, your sub is going to implode. If your penetrator fails, a jet of high-pressure water will enter the sub and cut everything in half. These are the risks that you have to engineer against. But they’re also givens from the beginning of every project.

Were there any times on a dive when you were in real danger? There have been white-knuckle moments—complete power failures, where we’ve had to use emergency ballast systems to get back. And that gives you an appreciation of the layers of technology that go into these machines to make them safe. I’ve done 75 submersible dives since 1995, and, yeah, your life is at risk anytime you go into a hostile environment like that. But you trust the engineering.

You were also very involved in developing a 3D camera for the Mars rover Curiosity before NASA’s budgetary concerns got in the way. I’m a very minor player in development of the Mastcam, the eyes of the rover that will launch later this year. The camera was originally conceived to be 3D and have two zoom lenses, [but NASA] decided to go with fixed-focal-length lenses in two different focal lengths, meaning we can’t do 3D.

You used 3D in Avatar to create a completely immersive world. What’s the value of sending 3D cameras into unexplored places like space and the deep sea? Evolution has made 3D the standard method for viewing the world. There’s a heightened sense of being physically present, so people will have a greater appreciation of exploration in general and what is specifically being learned—whether it’s on the surface of Mars or at the bottom of the ocean.

Sending cameras is one thing, but do you have any ambitions to go to space yourself? Absolutely. I was going to go up on the Russian Soyuz system. Elon Musk’s Dragon spacecraft (page 70) will have the ability to send seven people into low Earth orbit—and none too soon. The space shuttle was just sucking up a lot of money and going nowhere fast, literally—going 17,000 miles an hour to stay in orbit. That’s like Columbus going to Queen Isabella and saying, “I’m going to explore a new continent. But first I’m going to sit offshore for 30 years and study the problem of people living on small ships.”

We’ve learned a lot about Mars in the past decade. What will it take to fully explore it? I think it’ll be like ocean exploration: a mixture of humans and robotics. We could put the most capable rover on Mars, but there’s still as much as a 40-minute lag—so if we tried to tell it to avoid running off a cliff, it would be lying at the bottom in pieces for 40 minutes by the time it got the signal. If you want to get a lot of work done, you’ve got to put a human there.

What obstacles do we face in actually getting people to Mars? We could use chemical rockets to send people to Mars. That’s not the issue—it’s living on the surface. The only way to tackle that problem is to tackle that problem, not talk about it. This country has the potential to be resting on its laurels so long that it loses the capability to do the kinds of things that we pride ourselves on being able to do. No human has been outside low Earth orbit in 40 years. That’s crazy!

What is the role of science-fiction filmmaking in inspiring people to think boldly? Fantasy and imagination have driven the filmmaking process, which has driven technology. And I know from working in the sciences—especially space science and astronomy—that every one of these scientists was a science-fiction fan when they were a kid. It was an outlet for their imagination and their sense of what was possible.

POPULAR MECHANICS is going to be 110 years old next year. Where will humanity be 110 years from now? We’re facing arguably the most challenging century in human history. We have to get our act together and learn to cooperate between nations to solve global-scale problems. This is the turning point where we’ve exceeded, or will shortly exceed, Earth’s ability to support us. And we’re going to have to change our thinking. We have to be more organized and self-sacrificing and less contentious, or we’re not going to make it.

What do you think we need to do to make these changes happen? We need to start trusting science a whole lot more. We love when science gives us something we want, like the semiconductors in our brand-new iPad. But we don’t trust science when it’s a message we don’t want to hear, like we need to reduce our consumption of resources. There were warnings in science fiction, whose job has always been to imagine the future—whether an exciting future of shiny technology or a dystopian one. And now there are very real warnings from the science community, but we’re not taking them seriously. The danger is very real. We are racing toward a cliff with the top down and the radio playing. We’ve got to wake up.

You’re passionate about so many of the topics POPULAR MECHANICS covers. What does winning this award mean to you? The magazine is a mixture of science, engineering and backyard tinkering. I love that, because I like to sit at that particular nexus myself. This award symbolizes that I’ve managed to pull it off—to do something of value in those areas.

WEST PHILLY HYBRID X TEAM SIMON HAUGER, FACULTY ADVISER

A 160-MPGE CAR—AND AN AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAM FOR HANDS-ON EDUCATION

OF THE 111 TEAMS that competed for the $10 million purse in last year’s Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, only one was from a high school—West Philadelphia, where85 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. West Philly entered two vehicles—a Factory Five GTM biodiesel hybrid kit car (above) and a converted Ford Focus gasoline plug-in hybrid—and made it to the semifinals with both. “We were going up against teams that had dozens of engineers, and we had 15 students, a couple of teachers and a dream,” says adviser Simon Hauger, a teacher in the school’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. “One of the marvelous things about teenagers is they’re not daunted by that.”

After its impressive X Prize performance, West Philly won the Green Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, N.Y., last April, when its GTM achieved the equivalent of 160 mpg over 100 miles.

“I always liked fast, gas-guzzling race cars, so when I first heard the club was named the Hybrid X Team, I wasn’t so sure, but I gave it a try,” says captain Stefon Gonzalez. “It definitely broadened my horizons, not just with cars but with things like public speaking, fundraising and networking.” The after-school program also helped the high school senior (and two other teammates) land a public-transit internship with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.

“I call it the light-switch effect,” Hauger says. “This work truly enlarges the students’ vision for what they’re capable of doing. We don’t put them in a row of desks and lecture about fuel efficiency, biofuels or aerodynamics. We say, ‘Let’s solve this problem together.’”

The students so impressed Edison2 founder and Automotive X Prize champion Oliver Kuttner that he asked them to build an electric version of his Very Light Car (VLC). The team hopes to operate a nonprofit after-school project that employs students to make and sell the EVLC kit car. “When they’re done, they will have the world’s most efficient electric car by a leap,” Kuttner says.

TODD HYLTON DARPA MATT KEENNON, KARL KLINGEBIEL AEROVIRONMENT

A REMOTE-CONTROLLED AERIAL VEHICLE THAT USES ITS WINGS TO FLY—JUST LIKE AN ACTUAL BIRD

THE ASSIGNMENT WAS daunting: Build a remote-controlled aerial vehicle; make it tiny but highly maneuverable; install a camera so that pilots can navigate it into buildings using only a live video stream; and model the craft after an actual bird. “There could be no thrusters, no propellers,” says Todd Hylton, who oversaw the project for DARPA’s Nano Air Vehicle program—just two wings that flap.

Matt Keennon, an engineer for California-based AeroVironment, led the team that met this challenge, building the first-ever robotic hummingbird. “As far as we know, this is a new form of man-made flight,” says the lifelong model-airplane fanatic. Altering wing speed changes thrust, while slight modulations in wing angle send the craft zipping off in any direction. It can also hover in place against gusting wind. The team custom-built most of the aircraft by hand using machine tools, microscopes and an old-school Swiss watchmaker’s lathe to fashion parts, including tiny flanged pulleys in the flapping-wing transmission. The whole craft, including motors, battery, communication systems and video camera, weighs less than a AA battery.

The Pentagon hopes the Nano Hummingbird will usher in a new class of aerial surveillance vehicles capable of identifying targets, collecting intel and locating hostages indoors, not just on the battlefield. Law enforcement agencies might also use the drone to gather evidence—during standoffs or drug raids, for instance—and for search-and-rescue missions. During last spring’s nuclear meltdown in Japan, says Hylton, “it would have been great to have a small vehicle to fly into the reactors to see what was going on before sending in humans.”

V. REGGIE EDGERTON & YURY GERASIMENKO UCLA SUSAN HARKEMA UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE JOEL BURDICK CALTECH ROB SUMMERS

AN ELECTRIC THERAPY THAT STIMULATES SPINAL NERVES, ALLOWING THE PARALYZED TO WALK

A HIT-AND-RUN ACCIDENT in 2006 left Rob Summers paralyzed from the chest down, shattering the college baseball player’s Major League prospects. But his injury—and his athlete’s dedication—made him the ideal candidate for a one-of-a-kind experiment led by a scientific dream team. UCLA researchers V. Reggie Edgerton and Yury Gerasimenko had been studying the effects of electrical stimulation on the spinal cord in animals for decades. To test their theories in a human, they teamed with Susan Harkema, rehabilitation director at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center, and Joel Burdick, a CalTech bioengineer.

After preparing Summers with two years of physical therapy, the scientists implanted an electrode array over his lumbosacral spine, enabling them to send pulses of electricity directly to his spinal cord. This epidural stimulation amplifies motor commands to the injured area. The team believes it also activates local circuits of the spinal cord that can produce movement but that are not directly controlled by the brain. The spinal cord is “smart, and it’s plastic,” Edgerton says. “That is, it can change. It can even learn motor tasks.” The bursts of electricity, combined with the repetitious movement of the locomotor training, may awaken neural circuits that send impulses to specific body parts. “This can happen without any input from the brain,” he says.

Summers, one of more than 1.3 million Americans who live with spinal cord injuries, recovered unprecedented voluntary movement for someone with complete paralysis. “The third day they turned it on, I stood independently after not moving anything in four years,” he says. With stimulation, Summers can now bear his own weight for 4 to 25 minutes, move his toes, ankles, knees and hips on command and take a few steps on a treadmill. According to research published in The Lancet, he also resumed some bodily functions including the ability to sweat—which enabled him to work as a guest pitching coach at a baseball camp in Florida. “Prior to that, my body couldn’t handle the heat,” he says. While the scientists, who have approval for four more human subjects, are cautiously optimistic, researchers from the University of Zurich were less reserved in a commentary that appeared in the same issue of The Lancet: “We are entering a new era when the time has come for spinal-cord-injured patients to move.”

PAUL EDMISTON COLLEGE OF WOOSTER, ABSMATERIALS

A POWDER THAT STRIPS NASTY CHEMICALS FROM WATER, OVER AND OVER AGAIN

CHEMIST PAUL Edmiston has plenty of data to prove how well Osorb, a glass substance, soaks up petroleum, solvents and other organic contaminants. But he’s most convincing when he mixes motor oil with water, adds Osorb, filters off the swollen powder and drinks the remaining liquid. “It works like a nanomechanical sponge,” he says. “I’ve done trace analysis, and the water’s totally clean.”

A graduate student of Edmiston’s stumbled upon the material while experimenting with molecules for a bomb-detection device. After she added acetone to a beaker of silicas, they ballooned to eight times their normal size. She went straight to Edmiston, asking, “Did I mess up?”

Much to the contrary: The silicas, Edmiston realized, are hydrophobic, so they ignore water but grab both polar compounds (such as acetone) and nonpolar ones (such as octane) out of solution. The contaminants can be released for disposal or recycling by squeezing the nanomechanical sponge—that is, by applying heat. The swellable glass can be reused more than 100 times.

Osorb could clean up a number of intractable environmental problems, from industrial accidents to the billions of gallons of wastewater produced by the boom in natural gas fracking (hydraulic fracturing). In a pilot test at a well in Ohio, a prototype system treated 60 gallons of water per minute, slashing its petroleum content from 227 milligrams per liter to 0.1 mg per liter.

A metal catalyst in a new version of Osorb goes one step further, breaking down contaminants to environmentally benign molecules. Stephen Spoonamore, Edmiston’s partner in a startup called ABSMaterials, describes it as “a catalytic converter that works on liquids instead of gases.”

ENGINEERING TEAM LED BY: STEVEN SQUYRES CORNELL UNIVERSITY JOHN CALLAS, RICHARD COOK, PETER THEISINGER NASA JET PROPULSION LAB

ROBUST ROBOTIC SURROGATES FOR HUMANS ON MARS

FOR SIX-WHEELED, 400-POUND mechanical geologists, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have really turned on the charm, working their way into the hearts of an admiring public—and, most powerfully, those of their engineers. “We just couldn’t be prouder of those little rovers,” says NASA’s deputy administrator, Lori Garver. After landing on Mars in 2004, each rover was meant to operate for 92 days and travel about three-quarters of a mile. Nearly seven years and 20 miles later, Opportunity still motors on. Spirit performed a feat of Martian mountaineering before finally running out of power on the darker, harsher side of the planet last year. To observers such as Daniel Wilson, author of Robopocalypse and a PM adviser, “they’re a great example of the resiliency of robots and the ingenuity of humankind.”

If the rovers’ stamina wildly exceeded expectations, so have their discoveries: picture-postcard images from the surface of Mars, evidence that the planet once held water, footage of dust devils that offers insights into Martian wind. They also inspired the next generation of space explorers. This November, a new vehicle named Curiosity will be sent to the Red Planet to continue NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, which began in 1976 with the two Viking landers. It will drill into soil and fire lasers at rocks, analyze mineral samples and search for life’s carbon-based building blocks—work made possible by its intrepid twin predecessors. As John Callas wrote in a heartfelt goodbye to Spirit: “She has also given us a great intangible. Mars is no longer a strange, distant and unknown place. Mars is now our neighborhood.” For all that, brave rovers, we salute you.

SPEED WHEN ENTERING MARS ATMOSPHERE:

LENGTH: 5.2 FEET

WIDTH: 7.5 FEET

HEIGHT: 4.9 FEET

WEIGHT: 384 POUNDS

TOP LAND SPEED: AVERAGE LAND SPEED:

2 INCHES/SEC 0.4 INCHES/SEC

OPERATING TEMPERATURE (F):

-40° TO 104°

AVERAGE LIFETIME OF ROVER TRACKS:

1

LAUNCH DATE: 06/10/03

FLIGHT DISTANCE:

LANDED:

LONGEST ONE-DAY ADVANCE: 406 FEET

SHARPEST INCLINE SCALED: 30.2 DEGREES

IMAGES RETURNED:

1: GUSEV CRATER

Spirit touches down as planned in the 95-mile-diameter Gusev crater, which scientists think may once have held an ancient lake.

2: SUMMIT OF HUSBAND HILL

TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: 3.1 MILES

In pursuit of different rock types, Spirit climbs a hill roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty—becoming the first explorer ever to scale another planet’s summit.

3: HOME PLATE

TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: 4.1 MILES

Spirit finds clues that an explosive volcano formed this rocky outcrop—and that water may have played a role in its creation.

4: TROY

TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: 4.8 MILES

While driving backward, dragging a disabled front wheel, Spirit becomes mired in soft soil. The rover studies it until losing contact with NASA in March 2010.

LAUNCH DATE: 07/07/03

FLIGHT DISTANCE:

LANDED:

LONGEST ONE-DAY ADVANCE: 721 FEET

SHARPEST INCLINE SCALED: 31.2 DEGREES

IMAGES RETURNED:

1: EAGLE CRATER

After landing inadvertently in this crater on Meridiani Planum, Opportunity uses its rock-grinding tool. It discovers hematite, which forms inside deposits soaked with groundwater.

2: VICTORIA CRATER

TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: 5.77 MILES

Opportunity explores inside this stadium-size crater, finding that water has come and gone there several times in the past.

3: BLOCK ISLAND

TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: 10.7 MILES

The rover finds and analyzes this watermelon-size, iron–nickel meteorite, which holds clues to the history of the Martian climate.

4: ENDEAVOUR CRATER

TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELED: 20.8 MILES

Opportunity reaches Spirit Point on the rim of this 14-mile-wide crater—home to exposed rock outcroppings older than any the rover has yet examined.

PETER HOFBAUER ECOMOTORS

A HIGH-POWER, LOW-EMISSIONS INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE

RELATIVELY SIMPLE and lightweight, two-stroke engines (found in chain saws and outboard motors) would be great in cars and trucks, if they weren’t so dirty. “I probably spent $50 million of GM’s money proving two-strokes don’t work in automobiles,” says General Motors veteran Don Runkle. The Opposed-Piston, Opposed-Cylinder (OPOC) engine developed by EcoMotors’ Peter Hofbauer changed Runkle’s mind so thoroughly that he became the company’s CEO.

As in other flat engines (sometimes called boxer engines for the way their pistons resemble two fighters trading jabs), OPOC’s pistons move horizontally. Hofbauer’s aha! moment came one day when the former Volkswagen engineer was pondering the shortcomings of VW’s boxer engine. “I thought, my God, if you just replace the cylinder head with a moving piston and cylinder ports, it might be less complicated.”

It is—by a long shot. The engine requires less than half the parts of a similar four-stroke engine and is 30 percent lighter. The net result, says Hofbauer, is a 15 to 50 percent increase in energy efficiency, depending on the configuration. And thanks to its unique architecture and several key innovations, the OPOC releases far fewer emissions than a typical two-stroke. With a 240-hp diesel prototype, EcoMotors is focused now on the truck market; last February the company signed a licensing agreement with Navistar. “When the economy has recovered, the world will add 85 million combustion engines for cars and light trucks,” Hofbauer says. “If we can offer an engine that is efficient and competitive in production costs, it will be a success.”

An electric motor mounted to the blower’s shaft quickly spools the compressor for a fast boost; in reverse, it generates electricity off the exhaust flow. Plus, it manages exhaust pressure to minimize emissions.

Long steel connecting rods join the outer pistons to the crankshaft. With two pistons working off one combustion event, the engine behaves as though it has a long stroke—utilizing more of the available energy and increasing efficiency. Yet the crankshaft remains compact and therefore lighter.

The engine is modular, and the crankshaft of the cylinder pairs can be connected by a clutch. For highway cruising, unneeded cylinders can simply be idled and then engaged again for passing.

Gases flow in and out of the cylinder via ports in the walls, saving the complexity and weight of cylinder heads. The design of the intake and exhaust systems and combustion chamber keeps excess unburned fuel from exiting the exhaust port, reducing emissions.

JULIANA BLUM, LAURA NIKLASON, SHANNON DAHL HUMACYTE

OFF-THE-SHELF BLOOD VESSELS COMPATIBLE WITH ANYONE

WHILE TRAINING IN an intensive-care unit during medical school, Laura Niklason got a graphic view of a persistent problem. “The surgeons spent a lot of time digging around in the patients’ legs or arms looking for veins to replace main arteries,” she says. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way.”

According to the most recent National Hospital Discharge Survey, doctors in the U.S. performed 408,000 coronary artery bypass procedures in 2007, all of which required vascular grafts. And more than half of the 320,000 chronic dialysis patients need blood vessels transplanted into their arms. While tissue engineers can grow compatible vessels from a patient’s own cells, the wait time can be more than six months. Niklason, along with colleagues Juliana Blum and Shannon Dahl, decided the solution should be at a surgeon’s fingertips: Their company, Humacyte, was the first to make blood vessels that can be stored for future use.

To grow these, the researchers seed human smooth-muscle cells onto tubular scaffolds made from a biodegradable polymer. The cells produce collagen and other molecules that form a matrix as the scaffold disintegrates. Using detergent, the researchers scrub away the muscle cells, leaving nonimmunogenic vessels behind—meaning they won’t be rejected by an unrelated patient’s body.

“Think of [the vessel wall] as a sponge,” Dahl says. “It has holes that are filled with cells. Wash them away and you’re left with something you can still hold on to.”

The vessels retained their strength and elasticity after a year of refrigerated storage in a saline solution, according to a study published in February’s Science Translational Medicine. They were then grafted into animals, where, after six months, they showed no signs of fibrosis or thickening of the vessel walls.

“Since vascular disease is really the No. 1 cause of morbidity and mortality in the Western world, a way to replace diseased arteries will have huge impact, I hope, over the long term,” Niklason says, “particularly with the problem of obesity.”

Humacyte hopes to begin human trials overseas in 2012; meanwhile, the team is already thinking beyond blood vessels. The same technique could be used to grow other simple tissues, such as ligaments and cartilage, that are structurally important. Eventually, they think, labs will grow organs with complex functions—making more transplants off-the-shelf.

CORWIN HARDHAM, KENNY JENSEN, DAMON VANDER LIND MAKANI POWER

A TURBINE THAT GOES WHERE THE WIND IS—THOUSANDS OF FEET OFF THE GROUND

AS A KITE BOARDER, zipping back and forth across the surf, Corwin Hardham experienced firsthand the power of wind. As an engineer, he wanted to harness that energy with the ease and flexibility of the sport. Makani Power, which Hardham co-founded, now leads a small pack of startups eagerly attempting to tap into an unexploited resource—the strong, consistent winds blowing above 1300 feet.

To do so, Hardham, with engineers Kenny Jensen and Damon Vander Lind, did away with 90 percent of the mass of a conventional turbine—namely, the tower—and instead mounted Makani’s technology on a glorified string. But rather than resembling a kite, the sleek, 20-kilowatt Wing 7 prototype is equal parts airplane, helicopter and robot.

Weighing a mere 130 pounds and spanning 28 feet, Wing 7 takes off vertically with rotors up, rotates into horizontal flight and autonomously flies in swooping circles. Wing-mounted turbines generate electricity, transmitting it to the ground through the tether. A first-of-its-kind vertical tail wing allows the craft to transition through the various flight modes, Hardham says: “It’s a whole new take on aviation.” Eventually, fleets of autonomous, power-producing craft may be tethered to land or to buoys at sea.

With funding from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)—as well as from venture capitalists such as Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—Makani plans to develop a 1-megawatt unit by 2013 that can fly above 1800 feet, with hopes of taking it to market two years later. The company’s ultimate goal is to tap the jet streams above 23,000 feet, which contain roughly 100 times the energy currently used worldwide.

BROADBAND BEAMED BY A RUBIK’S CUBE

WITH PREDICTIONS of a thirtyfold increase in mobile data demand by 2015, Tod Sizer, head of wireless research at Bell Labs, knew something had to give. “There’s no way we can put up 30 times as many cell towers as there are today,” he says. So he did what any high-tech engineer would do—he went to his wood shop. Sizer cut a 60-mm cube, attached an aluminum plate to represent an antenna and handed it to his team, telling them to rethink everything.

Their solution, the lightRadio cube, drastically shrinks the antenna and combines it with an amplifier to boost the signal. Digital-processing functions, which currently hunker in a building at a cell tower’s base, will be consolidated in facilities up to 25 miles away. Sizer compares this Lego-block approach to multicore computer processors. “The future,” he says, “is not about higher- and higher-power solutions. It’s about lower-power solutions serving a smaller number of people with the same amount of data.” According to the company, arrays of the cubes—affixed to skyscrapers, airport terminals, bus stops—can increase broadband capacity by 30 percent while cutting operation costs and energy consumption in half.

The lightRadio cube won’t topple all towers—they’ll still be needed along roadways and in rural areas—but it should greatly reduce their proliferation. It should also revolutionize cellphone service in the cities of resource-strapped developing countries.

ELON MUSK SPACEX

A spacecraft that can deliver better performance at lower cost

IT’S BEEN a stellar 18 months for SpaceX. The aerospace company signed a $492 million launch contract—the largest in history—with satellite company Iridium Communications. It received a $75 million slice of NASA pie to develop an escape system for its Dragon spacecraft. And in December, it became the first private company ever to launch a craft into orbit and successfully recover it: After circling the Earth twice, the unmanned Dragon splashed down within a mile of its target in the Pacific Ocean.

“I think it’s important that humanity try to become a multiplanet species,” says SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. “If we’re not steadily improving our access to space, making it more reliable at lower cost and at larger scale, that will never happen.” The company says the Dragon capsule will be able to lift seven astronauts into orbit atop its Falcon rocket—more than double the capacity of the Russian Soyuz, at less than one-third of the price per seat.

NASA engineer and 2010 Breakthrough Award winner Daniel Andrews calls SpaceX’s achievements “necessary and impressive,” poised to create “very real, high-tech jobs in a new market sector.” In fact, at press time, SpaceX advertised 130 open positions.

• As a gaming device, Kinect was a hit. PM gave its user interface, Project Natal, a Breakthrough Award in 2009. But it wasn’t until hackers got their hands on the motion-control technology for Xbox 360—with its infrared camera, laser depth sensors and microphone array—that Kinect’s true potential emerged. UC Davis students used the depth sensors for 3D video conferencing; at the University of Minnesota, Kinect became a tool for identifying ADD, OCD and autism in kids; Microsoft even demonstrated a lounge chair propelled and steered with hand gestures (right). In the software development kit, Microsoft not only sanctions hacking, it provides programmers, researchers and artists with the tools to do it. That’s the kind of breakthrough-enabling attitude we love.(Free)

• The Atrix 4G is a topnotch smartphone, with a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 4G wireless speeds and a super-sharp 540 x 960–pixel screen. But what makes it revolutionary is a hidden talent: It’s also a computer. When connected to the Motorola Lapdock, the Atrix switches modes—and becomes the heart, soul and brain of an 11.5-inch laptop. With the Atrix, Motorola has taken the first step toward a future in which one device serves as the nerve center of many. ($100)

• Turning an idea into a business is hard enough without having to deal with the byzantine rules of merchant banking. Square, co-founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, makes accepting credit card payments as easy as setting up an email account. With Square’s card reader and associated apps, any iPad, iPhone or Android handset can process transactions on the spot. Signatures register on a touchscreen, and receipts go out via email. Square’s eponymous new app turns mobile devices into full-fledged point-of-sale terminals with a visual inventory; Card Case further simplifies the process, storing payment info in a secure app to allow wireless, instant purchases at Square-ready stores. (Free, plus 2.75 percent of each transaction)

• According to consumer marketing firm R.L. Polk, the average age of cars and trucks on the road today is about 11 years. In tech terms, that’s an eternity. The Asteroid, Parrot’s drop-in receiver, is a simple way to turn any older model into a connected vehicle. Powered by Google Android software, the Asteroid includes voice recognition, hands-free calling and connections for popular smartphones and media players. It also supports 3G mobile Internet, enabling apps for navigation, Internet radio and, well, anything else developers come up with. ($350)

• Seatbelts haven’t changed dramatically since the introduction of the three-point model in 1959, that is, until Ford combined rear belts with another important safety feature: the airbag. Available as an option in the 2011 Explorer, the belts activate with compressed gas via a specially designed buckle. As it breaks through the fabric, the airbag provides support for more than five times the body area of a normal belt. This reduces pressure on the chest and further secures the neck and head during an accident, especially important for children and older passengers. ($595 as part of a safety package)

Rockstar Games’L.A. Noire

• It’s the video game that could provide a definitive response to the question, can games be art? Cinema-grade MotionScan technology allows actors, such as Mad Men‘s Aaron Staton (seated), to actually play their characters (inset), giving Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire an exhilarating level of realism. A detective’s brow furrows in frustration. A witness’s lips purse. When suspects lie, it’s revealed in the lines of their faces. The effect is at once uncanny and cinematic—and certainly unprecedented. Gamers will never look back. ($50)

• Using some creative chemistry, Boral Roofing has turned a standard building material into a formidable weapon—not just against sun and rain, but also air pollution. The tile’s coating contains TiO2 (titanium dioxide), which reacts with and neutralizes NO_X (nitrogen oxide) particles in smog. The byproduct is a harmless precipitate that accumulates on the roof and washes away in the rain. That’s pollution removal at its best. No machinery. No moving parts. No energy input other than sunlight. Just a clever, air-cleansing chemical reaction. (Price: 25 percent above cost of standard roofing)

• Solar power has a problem. In order for people to make the switch, solar technology needs to be cheap. The silicon required for standard photovoltaic (PV) panels, however, is extremely expensive. Solaria struck upon an elegant solution with its monocrystalline panels: Use 50 to 70 percent less silicon. Rather than covering the entire module with PV panels, Solaria leverages a patterned-glass lens to refocus light onto a strip of solar cells. The module is durable; the proven operating life is longer than 25 years. And because the product uses the supply chain already established in traditional solar panel manufacturing, overall costs remain low. (Price: one-third less than a solar panel of comparable efficiency)

• The AmbientLED is the first credible LED replacement for the most common light bulb in America, the 60-watt incandescent—and it hits shelves just in time for new federal efficiency standards. At 800 lumens, the bulb is just as bright as its tungsten counterpart but consumes only 12.5 watts of power. And after hours of operation, it’s merely warm to the touch. Philips’s secret lies in remote phosphor technology, which generates a pleasing hue and diffuses light to create that familiar soft glow. One thing that may take some getting used to is the bulb’s longevity: The AmbientLED is rated to burn for 25,000 hours, 25 times longer than a typical incandescent. ($25)

• Contrary to what the name suggests, most “automatic” telescopes require calibration, and so take time and expertise to master. “Many people don’t have that kind of dedication,” says Eric Kopit, Celestron’s director of development. The company’s SkyProdigy series—which includes refractor, reflector (130-mm, left) and Maksutov-Cassegrain-style models—makes looking into the cosmos truly effortless. With built-in tracking cameras and a digital database of more than 4000 heavenly objects, the SkyProdigy telescopes sight themselves in less than 3 minutes, so even a first-time stargazer can experience the thrill of discovery. ($699–$799)