Apart from the most obvious fact that these two boats are all composite, winged 30 knot racers, they are also laced with cutting edge electronics and sensors.

Case in point: The helmsman for the USA boat BMW/Oracle racing is outfitted with a Heads Up Display glasses that shows him all the wind information and rigging load information and allows him to make adjustments that would just be impossible without.

He looks like a member of the Borg.  Resistance is futile.

Update: Here is a picture of the cyborg in action:

Stanford has competed in the DARPA grand challenge and won it in the past, now they are planning to race a car up Pikes Peak at race speeds.  The car will be controlled entirely by GPS therefore it is not quite as impressive as the integrated monitoring systems such as the roof mounted LIDAR that their “Stanley” car incorporated, but the speed of ascent is  Impressive in its own right.

Cool beans.

India Launches First Unmanned Mission to Moon

The unmanned Chandayaan-1 spacecraft blasted off from a launch pad in Sriharikota in southern India, shortly after dawn, Wednesday, as the nation watched on television.

BBC backstory.

and the launch.

Flying Cars, Jetpacks and Rocket Racers, Oh My!

The Experimental Aircraft Association Annual AirVenture Show in Oshkosh Wisconsin.  Which includes exactly what the title of the Popular Science video says it does.  Flying cars  (although we don't see it fly), jetpacks (although its actually a prop-pack not jet and it only "flies" 15 feet and under control of two guys on the ground)

The Rocket Racer section sounds pretty cool and they had one up in the air screaming along on it's rocket.  And the PR guy looked a little like another PR guy I know, talking about the business plan and the consumer.

As a very interesting side note:  The Experimental Aircraft Association's site has been partially pwned!  At there very same time as one of your peaks of popularity.  An article in Pop-Sci, linked via Instapundit.  They just need to remove the index.html file from their server, it's not the default document so this is a rookie pwn.

...in retrospect after a bit of researching, this is in fact a fail!  The hacker thought he knew what he was doing but his weak skillz are exposed.  He didn't replace the default document.  Only index.html (not even default.html)

Screenshot.

Rookie.

Look! In the Sky. It’s a Rocket Racer.

eh...what?  It wasn't you?  Oh it must of been one of the other many daredevil astronaut/test-pilot types that read the rivet.  It's one of our core demographics you know...the astronaut.

Racers in rocket-powered aircraft will fly four laps around a five-mile “track” at anywhere from 150 feet to 1,500 feet above the ground. The planes, designed to fly at 340 miles an hour, will start side by side, two at a time. The pilots include professional test pilots who received their training in the military and a former astronaut.

This is a great idea...

Red Bull Air Race already has a competition with acrobatic prop planes.  I guess that isn't hairy enough.  I mean 240+ miles an hour, doing flips and stuff...not enough.

Add rockets.

Race 'em together.

50% faster.  100% louder.  100% more dangerous...what's not to like.

I saw this episode on Top Gear (which is an awesome show BTW) wherein they raced a Bugatti Veyron against a Euro-fighter.  The fighter jet had to go 1 mile vertical and back and the Bugatti had to go 1 mile horizontal and back. 

Well here is a home video of the event.

Pretty cool.

Oh alright, here's the original: