NASA developing an airbag for helicopters — for the entire 'copter [NASA]

NASA's "deployable energy absorber" may appear to be a couple of oversized sponges attached to the bottom of a helicopter, but you could be looking at a safety system that helps occupants survive a helicopter crash — or even any kind of air-to-ground impact.
It's a bit like an airbag for helicopters, one that NASA aerospace engineer Karen Jackson, one of the driving minds behind the project, said of the technology that she'd 'like to think the research we're doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives.'

Right now, though, things are still very early. The test you see in the video above is of a helicopter falling rather gently from a height of 35 feet. Even still, the dummies inside didn't look so stressed out after it. Wait — do crash dummies ever show signs of stress?

[DVICE via CNET]

John Carmack's Armadillo Finally Wins Lunar Landing Challenge [Space]

After crashing the last time, Armadillo Aerospace won the $1,000,000 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge this Saturday. Needless to say, Doom-creator, Armadillo's head, and überspacenerd John Carmack was veehee happy:

Since the Lunar Lander Challenge is quite demanding in terms of performance, with a few tweaks our Scorpius vehicle actually has the capability to travel all the way to space. We'll be moving quickly to do higher-altitude tests, and we can go up to about 6000 feet here at our home base in Texas before we'll have to head to New Mexico where we can really push the envelope. We already have scientific payloads from universities lined up to fly as well, so this will be an exciting next few months for commercial spaceflight.

Scorpius was able to complete the challenge, flying the 180 seconds required to escape from the Moon's surface and reach lunar orbit. [Space.com]