Ann Thompson

In the repository or "Room of Drums" at Wright Patterson Air Force Base 55 gallon barrels of fuel from all over the world are stored. There are liquid fuels made of coal from South Africa. There's also one made from camelina, a weed. Others come from animal fat. Some have been tested on cross country flights.

The Cincinnati Observatory is celebrating an anniversary this weekend. It was 168 years ago that a prominent Cincinnatian made the city the "Birthplace of American Astronomy."

Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel must have been a pretty convincing guy. In the mid-1800s he went door to door to collect 25 dollar donations for a telescope and observatory. Cincinnati Observatory Outreach Astronomer Dean Regas tells the story.

Alternative fuel is playing an even bigger role in the U.S. government’s aviation plan.  Within the next year the latest National Aeronautics Research and Development Plan will be released and a large portion of it focuses on alternative fuels. Wright Patterson Air Force Base is playing a leading role, in part because it can moderately scale up lab production  for commercial companies. WVXU's Ann Thompson took a tour to see how it's made, where it's tested and what unusual samples the Air Force is storing. She reports in "Focus on Technology."