How to get an international driver's license
How to get an international driver's license
July 10, 2025 | 9:06 PM GMT
An IDP, an international driver's permit, is a safe bet if you plan on renting a car abroad. Travel reporter Natalie Compton shows how to get one from AAA.
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Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Absolutely Wild Horsepower Numbers Behind Your Next Flight
Jerry Seinfeld once quipped, "Why do we even use the term 'horsepower'? Is that to further humiliate horses? The space shuttle rockets have 20 million horsepower. Is there any point in still comparing it to the horses?" Yes, Jerry, it's because kilowatts and megawatts aren't as poetic. Gigawatts is a cool word, though, as long as you pronounce it as "jigawatts" like Doc Brown. Still, horsepower has a good ring to it, and it's just more fun to say that a Koenigsegg One:1 has 1,341 mighty steeds, or an Airbus A380 has a total of 300,000 stallions powering its gravity-defying trajectory into the sky. Look at that last number again. 300,000 horsepower at takeoff! Splitting that figure between the jet's four engines yields 75,000 horsepower each. Convert 300,000 horses back to science-speak, and you get 224 megawatts. Now, that may not be poetic, but it does have a terrifying ring to it, like we're equating jet thrust with nuclear explosion power. Maybe Christian Von Koenigsegg was on to something with the one-megawatt option. Let's see how megawatt rolls off the tongue in a sentence: With more than a megawatt of power at its disposal, Koenigsegg broke its own record by going 0-250-0 mph in 28.27 seconds in the Jesko. Ooh, okay -- maybe megawatt can stir strong emotions. Read more: These Cars Have The Best Wings Ever Car engines and jet engines work on thoroughly different principles -- unless you want to discuss the Chrysler turbine car -- so discussing the horsepower ratings of jets requires digging into technical nitty-gritty. The type of jets you see in most, if not all, commercial airliners are turbofans, though there are other jet types, such as ramjets, scramjets, turbojets, and turboprops, among others. In a turbofan, incoming air goes through the first set of fan blades and gets channeled in two directions simultaneously. These are the core compressor and a burner, where it's ignited and sent through a nozzle, as well as around the engine to create thrust like a normal propeller. The nozzle thrust and fan thrust combine to provide a complete thrust package. Since this is a car enthusiast website, you're probably at least passingly familiar with how piston engines operate -- tiny explosions push pistons to convert up-down energy to rotation energy -- so let's focus on the important point that piston engine power figures measure shaft power. The conversion process to find what a jet engine's shaft power would be is surprisingly simple. Multiply the jet's thrust, which is pounds-force (lbf), by the airspeed of the aircraft. You can either break out your TI-86 from college or go to the Calculator Academy website's Thrust to Horsepower calculator. The current most powerful jet engine in the world, GE Aerospace's GE9X, can produce 134,300 lbf. This is the engine that will be used in Boeing's 777X, which will reach an estimated top speed of 652 mph. Since the 777X uses two GE9X engines, we'll put 268,600 lbf in for thrust. Multiply 268,600 by 652, and we get an astounding 467,006 hp, or about 467 Bugatti Veyrons, plus or minus a lawnmower. Since the Boeing 777X isn't technically an airliner you can fly on yet, let's do the horsepower calculation for the current Boeing 777. The 777 can top out at 683 mph and uses a pair of GE's GE90-115B turbofan engines, which produce 115,000 lbf each. That still comes out to a healthy 418,907 hp. For metric system fans, that's 312 Megawatts. If you want larger numbers, you don't have to stick with horses. has a comparison tool where you can convert the pulling power of horses to dozens of other animals. Interestingly, the tool says that a horse can put out about 28 horsepower max, which is only slightly more than what biologists R.J. Wassersug and R.D. Stevenson estimated in 1993, which was about 24 horsepower. Sticking with that 28 hp figure, the horsepower converter tool estimates a chimpanzee has the same peak output as 0.03 horses, or a max of 0.87 hp. So, in a sentence that surely hasn't been written before, the Boeing 777 has 481,502 chimp power (cp?), which equates to 359 megawatts. There's no way you woke up this morning thinking you'd have the tools to directly convert the strength of chimps to megawatts, and yet, here you are. Think about that on your next commercial flight. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why Boeing Retired Its Iconic C-17 Globemaster III
Boeing is reportedly considering resuming production of its C-17 Globemaster III jet, discontinued in 2015. That's going to be quite a trick since the Long Beach, California factory that made the plane has long been shuttered and is currently for sale. That said, some of the equipment and assembly lines might be salvaged and relocated to a new facility, which raises the question of why the supersized cargo hauler was discontinued to begin with. Few jets besides the Lockheed C-5M Galaxy can match the C-17's 164,000-plus-pound cargo capacity or its range of 6,230 nautical miles when empty. However, the C-17 has an advantage over the C-5M Galaxy because of its more compact footprint, which allows landings on remote, undeveloped runways as short as 3,000 feet. Its brace of four Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines make 40,440 pounds of thrust each. Converting that thrust figure to horsepower, we come up with about 223,444 horsepower at the jet's cruising speed of 450 knots (518 mph). The contents of the C-17's voluminous cargo hold could range from humans to military vehicles like tanks and helicopters. It's ironic that recent conflicts like Russia's war against Ukraine and flare-ups in the Middle East have rekindled interest in the C-17, because most of the reason it was discontinued was lack of demand. That's not unlike the fate of another famously large aircraft, the Boeing 747 passenger jet, which is mostly gone from commercial flight except for these airline holdouts. Read more: You'd Only Drive These Cars If They Were Free Development of the C-17 was begun in the 1980s by McDonnell Douglas, which Boeing later acquired. Test flights commenced in 1991 and by 1995, the first squadron was declared operationally ready. Fast forward to 2013, by which time the U.S. Air Force's entire purchase order was complete, although a few international buyers' planes had yet to be completed. Meanwhile, the 2011 Budget Control Act led to significant cuts in U.S. defense spending that weren't ideal for the future of the C-17, which was expensive both to purchase and maintain. For example, charging $151,000 for soap dispensers that should have cost about $2,000. The Department of Defense put it blandly in its 2010 budget request: "DOD does not need additional C-17 aircraft. Therefore we are ending production under this program." Boeing manufactured a total of 279 C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, and the company says 275 of them are still in service. The Air Force is the largest operator, with 223, while the remainder are scattered all over the globe. In 2003, the C-17 inserted almost 1,000 soldiers at once via parachute during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Besides combat missions, the C-17 also aided humanitarian relief efforts with cargo like food and medical supplies following natural disasters in Japan, Haiti, and other locations. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
Motor 1
an hour ago
- Motor 1
‘Will Inevitably Clog Your System:' Woman Uses A/C Recharger in Her Miata. Then Viewers Warn Her
A Miata driver recently discovered that recharging the A/C system seemed to fix their engine idle, though the two issues aren't actually connected. TikTok user @skeeteryata, who owns a 1991 Miata, said she used a DIY A/C recharge kit and was surprised by what happened next. 'Who knew recharging your A/C would make your car idle normal?' she wrote, noting that before the recharge, her Miata idled at 2,000 RPM with the A/C on. 'Wow, who knew?' she added in the caption. As of this writing, her video had pulled in more than 140,800 views. What's An A/C Recharge Kit—and Will It Damage Your Car? An A/C recharge kit is a do-it-yourself solution designed to refill your car's air conditioning system with refrigerant, usually when levels drop due to normal wear or small leaks. In some cases, it can temporarily boost cooling performance . Don't let convenience fool you, though. These kits are billed as easy fixes, yet they don't tackle the underlying issue. If your A/C is consistently low on refrigerant, there's probably a leak—something only a professional can properly diagnose and repair. They also come with risks. Refrigerant is a toxic chemical that, if mishandled, can cause breathing problems or serious eye injuries. Overfilling the system can wreck your A/C compressor, and improper use may release harmful chemicals into the environment. There's also the issue of precision. When your A/C system is completely empty, it needs to be refilled based on the specific weight recommended by the manufacturer. Professionals use specialized tools to measure this accurately. DIY kits, however, rely on basic pressure gauges, so even if the pressure looks right, the actual refrigerant volume could be off. Too much can damage your system; too little, and your A/C won't cool properly. Compatibility is another concern. Most DIY kits use R-134a refrigerant, which works for many cars made after 1994. But older models, like the Miata that @skeeteryata drives, may require R-12, and many newer vehicles now use R-1234yf. Mixing refrigerant types can seriously damage your A/C system. So, if you're unsure what your car takes, DIY charging isn't the way to go. In short, while these kits may offer a quick fix, they come with a margin for error that could cost you more in the long run. If your A/C issues persist—or if you're dealing with an unfamiliar system—play it safe and call your local mechanic. Will Using One Affect My Car's Idle? Not directly. As @skeeteryata noted in the comments of her video, her Miata was idling rough and also had A/C issues. After using a DIY recharge kit, her car suddenly started to 'idle normal'—but that's likely a coincidence, not cause and effect. 'So many people acting like they know my car better than me,' she replied under the post. 'It was just a goofy post, I know adding refrigerant ain't gonna cure all my issues.' The bottom line is that recharge kits are meant to fix cooling issues, not engine performance. If your car's idle is off, there's probably something else going on—and a can of refrigerant won't fix it. Viewers Warn Against DIY Kits Commenters on @skeeteryata's video didn't hold back, calling DIY A/C recharge kits 'garbage' and warning they could do more harm than good in the long run. 'Now when ur AC fails it's going to need the whole system replaced instead of just getting to the root cause,' one wrote. 'They don't just lose refrigerant, they leak, and ur filling it with anti-leak which will inevitably clog your systems.' 'If u recharged it but didn't fix it, ain't it just gonna leak again?' another asked. 'If you need to recharge, it means there is a leak,' added a third. But @skeeteryata stood her ground. In the comments, she reminded critics that the post was meant to be lighthearted, not a how-to guide. 'I know this isn't a universal fix,' she wrote. 'I know what's wrong with my car and why it idles rough. I was just saying I added refrigerant and my A/C problems got better. I'm not dumb, I promise.' Motor1 has reached out to @skeeteryata via a TikTok direct message. Now Trending 'Hertz Tried to Sue Us:' P.I. Rents Nissan Altima. Then He Shares What You Should Always Do Before Leaving the Rental Lot 'I Work as a Valet Driver and Brooo:' Man Starts His New Chevrolet Colorado. Then He Notices An Unprecedented New Feature Get the best news, reviews, columns, and more delivered straight to your inbox, daily. back Sign up For more information, read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use . Share this Story Facebook X LinkedIn Flipboard Reddit WhatsApp E-Mail Got a tip for us? Email: tips@ Join the conversation ( )
