This isn't a normal motorcycle. (Credit: XCOR) Testing spacecraft components is no cake walk. It’s expensive and can require subjecting them to tremendous amounts of stress and wear and tear, but it’s necessary. You can’t just blast them up into suborbit and hope they work. This rendering shows the Lynx

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Motorcycle gets spacecraft propulsion parts

(Credit: Wayne Cunningham/CNET) Long battling a reputation for luxury without performance, Lexus released the IS-F and LFA models, both cars of limited appeal. Now the company offers convincing performance on a more popular platform, the new GS 350. The F Sport package for the GS 350 makes all the difference, adding aggressive tuning to both engine and transmission, along with an adaptive suspension. This is no mere cosmetic package. Thus equipped, the GS 350 shows impressive handling and gear-holding up to high revs.

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2013 Lexus GS 350: An aggressive new package

A test of an autonomous tractor spraying an apple orchard without a driver. (Credit: Screen capture by Martin LaMonica/CNET) Someday soon, FedEx packages could be transported by autonomous planes and apple trees sprayed by driverless tractors, says aerospace and robotics expert Mary “Missy” Cummings. Cummings, a professor of aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was interviewed today at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference in New York, where she offered her views on the state of the art in autonomous vehicles. The work of Google and automakers has shown how cars can drive themselves in some situations.

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Robotic planes, tractors loom behind autonomous cars