Generally, tanks are not designed with the ability to fly, much less the ability to fall through the air from a couple thousand feet up and land safely. You can strap a bunch of parachutes to them and hope for the best, but a much more effective (and much more awesome) way to do it is to use rockets instead. Just ask the Russians.

Scientists have just figured out the means by which a certain type of microbe can convert urine into hydrazine. Yes, that's right: these tiny bugs chow down on your pee, and then poop out honest to goodness rocket fuel.

It's more or less impossible for us puny humans to duplicate the raw epic power of a lightning bolt. They can travel at 140,000 mph (or about Mach 184 if you're counting), heat the surrounding air to three times the temperature of the surface of the sun, and transmit enough energy to toast approximately 100,000 slices of bread. To study a lightning bolt, you first have to capture it, and it turns out that the best way to do that is to fire rockets at thunderstorms. Yeah, it's probably best not to try this at home.

This week, Rocketdyne completed a series of tests on their launch abort system for Boeing's future space capsule, which would power it clear in the event of a primary rocket failure. And if you like watching rocket engine test firings, we've got some tasty video for you.