Many forecasters, like Peter Zeihan, were predicting economic disaster, disruption and shortages from the Russia-Ukraine war. The over $1 trillion semiconductor chip industry would be wrecked from a shortage of neon gas. 70% of the gas is made by Ukraine and Russia. The prices did shoot up but now have come back down and semiconductor …
Since 2021, Blue Origin has been making solar cells and transmission wire from regolith simulants. Using regolith simulants, their reactor produces iron, silicon, and aluminum through molten regolith electrolysis, in which an electrical current separates those elements from the oxygen to which they are bound. Oxygen for propulsion and life support is a byproduct. Above …
Solid robots can now move, melt and reform like the T-1000 in the movie Terminator 2. Magnetoactive liquid-solid phase transitional matter. Highlights • Magnetoactive phase transitional matter (MPTM) is made of NdFeB embedded liquid metal • MPTMs can reversibly switch between solid and liquid phase • MPTMs can solder electronic components and assemble parts in …
Multilayer Dielectric Ceramic Solar Sails for 100X Greater Speed for Space Travel
Optically transparent aerogel is essentially a lightweight foam made of silica, the material of beach sand, and consists mostly of air. It reduces the rate of heat loss by tenfold. This transparent insulating material is bonded onto the top of off-the-shelf equipment for producing solar hot water. A copper plate with a heat-absorbing black coating …
NASA plans to launch the Psyche mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid that is also called Psyche. The critical design review is done and construction has started. They plan to launch August 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The asteroid Psyche is largely metallic iron and nickel. It is similar to Earth’s core and could …
Extreme metamaterial ceramic solar sails survive a close pass of our sun to reach speeds of 60-70AU per year which is over 0.1% of light speed. Theis propel low mass spacecraft using a dive to extreme proximity to the sun (just 2-5 solar radii). This velocity is 20 times more than Voyager 1. The technology …
SpaceX has a fleet of three prototype Starships (SN5, SN6, and SN7). The SN5 and SN6 bodies are fully stacked. The SN7 has survived a 7.6 bar pressure test. Elon indicates that the 304L steel alloy performs better than the 301 steel. A failure of the 304L led a lead instead of burst. In 6 …
Using the method of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis, NUSTMISIS scientists created HfC0.5N0.35, (hafnium carbonitride) which is close to a desired theoretical composition. It has a high hardness of 21.3 GPa and can withstand temperatures over 4000 degrees celsius. The hardness is higher than in other promising materials, such as ZrB2/SiC (20.9 GPa) and HfB2/SiC/TaSi2 (18.1 GPa). …
Human use of materials has been used to define human history and technological progress. An article that I wrote on Linkedin, reviews human material usage from the stone age to diamond and beyond. Here is a summary of the Linkedin article. The Stone Age never ended if we consider cement and concrete part of the …
Australia developing warmer, cheaper and more robust quantum computing with qubits that need thousands of dollars of refrigeration instead of millions of dollars. Most current quantum computers need multi-million-dollar refrigeration and as soon as you plug them into conventional electronic circuits they’ll instantly overheat. Professor Andrew Dzurak and his team at UNSW Sydney have a …