[Nick Poole] does a lot of custom work with vacuum tubes — so much so that he builds his own vacuum tubes of various shapes, sizes, and functions right on his own workbench. While the theory of ...

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems shows off the lab where its solar thermal propulsion system will be developed.

like a regular vacuum. As the rollers go over debris, the suction from the robot pulls the debris off the rollers and sucks the debris into an internal, bagless chamber. To move debris toward ...