Reaction Engines' Skylon spacecraft would make short hauls into orbit, come back, and be ready to do it again two days later.
Nick Kaloterakis
$3.6 billion: the funding a team of engineers needs to complete development of the Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, a new type of engine that could make runway-to-orbit space missions a reality
2,656: the number of times these three astronauts orbited Earth during their 166 days aboard the International Space Station (see them return home in a flaming Soyuz spacecraft)
202,586: the number of people who have applied for a one-way trip colonize to Mars (where they will probably go insane)
36 years: the length of time NASA's Voyager 1 has been traveling through the solar system. The craft has now officially entered interstellar space and is the farthest human-made object from Earth.
124,000 metric tons: the amount of chemical agent unleashed during World War I (read about how to safely dispose of chemical weapons here)
3 to 5 pounds: the weight of the bacteria the typical person carries around (enough to fill a large soup can)
$400: the price of the new 64GB iPhone 5S, which comes in gold, black, or silver and includes a capacitive fingerprint sensor
51 feet: the length of the giant robotic trucks that load, haul, and dump ore in Australian open pit mines
13 stories: the height of the solid carbon-fiber wing powering the AC72, a 50-mph catamaran that raced in this year's America's Cup
110 decibels: the noise a typical MRI scanner generates when in use-about as loud as a rock concert. GE Healthcare this week announced a new silent MRI machine
300 frames per second: the frame rate of the cameras used to capture amazing bees'-eye footage of mid-air honeybee mating
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