To reduce the radiation hazard for manned missions to Mars and beyond, a high specific impulse-high thrust system is needed, with a nuclear bomb propulsion system the preferred candidate. The propulsion with small fission bombs is excluded because the critical mass requirement leads to extravagant small fission burn up rates. This leaves open the propulsion …
China is by far the biggest consumer of HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) technology. The government has said it wants to spend $269 billion through 2015 on building about 200,000 kilometers of new 330-kilovolts-and-up transmission lines — almost the equivalent of rebuilding the United States’ 257,500-kilometer transmission network from scratch. Of that, State Grid Corp. …
There is a High Voltage DC supergrid technology roadmap. (107 pages. Mar 2013.) Direct Current becomes more cost effective at longer distances versus alternating current. At similar voltage level, a DC line can transmit more than double the power at about half the losses compared to an AC line for a 1000 kilometer line. Phases …
DARPA is developing skin-adherent sensors are to monitor troops vital signs possibly in real time. Military scientists believe that using the device — preferably a tattoo — to track heart-rate, temperature or bio-electric response during various training situations will help them crack the code of combat fatigue. The solicitation, which opened last month, hopes new …
These are a couple of off topic stories of wealth. 1. H.L. Hunt was a billionaire Texas oil tycoon who was the inspiration for the character of JR Ewing on the TV show Dallas. Two of his 14 children were William Herbert and Nelson Hunt. They were the billionaire Hunt brothers who tried to corner …
Superpower Inc plan to increase critical current by 5 times and make other improvements to high temperature superconductors. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog …
If we can get petawatt picosecond lasers that shoot 75 million times per second then we will have laser fusion space propulsion with an ISP of 900,000 There is a 55 review from 2012 of the current status of high energy laser systems. If the fiber lasers could shoot 1000 times more frequently then we …
The International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN) has proposed a new laser system composed of massive arrays of thousands of fibre lasers, for both fundamental research at laboratories such as CERN and more applied tasks such as proton therapy and nuclear transmutation. Lasers can provide, in a very short time measured in femtoseconds, bursts of energy …
The difference between 28 and 20 nm is about 20 to 25 percent accord to Nvidia’s Chief Scientist Dally. Therefore, process doesn’t matter that much anymore. If Nvidia is clever about architecture and circuit design, then can make up for the fact that Nvidia has competitors [Intel] that are a node ahead. Chip stacking is …
Rick Nebel used to run the IEC fusion project at EMC2. EMC2 fusion is a promising approach to commercial nuclear fusion. Richard Nebel was interviewed in May, 2009 by Nextbigfuture on EMC2 fusion. Rick left the EMC2 Fusion project a few years ago. He left for a multi-billion opportunity for a DC Transformer. ∙ Dynamo …
The University of Michigan has developed a laser-powered terahertz source and detector system that transmits with 50 times more power and receives with 30 times more sensitivity than existing technologies. This offers 1,500 times more powerful systems for imaging and sensing applications. “With our higher-sensitivity terahertz system, you could see deeper into tissues or sense …