DARPA is funding a nuclear thermal orbital flight demonstration by 2025. The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program is to demonstrate a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system on orbit. NTP uses a nuclear reactor to heat propellant to extreme temperatures before expelling the hot propellant through a nozzle to produce thrust. Compared to …
The Perseverance Mars rover has the Ingenuity Mars helicopter drone. This solar-powered helicopter drone has a mass of 1.8 kg (4.0 lb). Ingenuity has had its third flight. It is expected to fly up to five times during its 30-day test campaign scheduled early in the rover’s mission. It will fly at altitudes ranging from …
Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis discuss optimistic views of the future in wide-ranging topics from energy and communications to knowledge and transport, the importance of making humanity an interplanetary species plus the duo will announce the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition. XPRIZE Carbon Removal is aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity – fighting …
Gartner Hype Cycle is misapplied because really nothing should get past the starting point if it does not have significant funding, a first product and then a first sale. The hype cycle is misapplied and most successful technologies do not go through the hype cycle. An analysis of Gartner Hype Cycles since 2000 shows that …
SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour is launching four astronauts launch from Earth to their new home in space, the International Space Station. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, …
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) raised its 2021 capital expenditure target to $30 billion which is up from the $28 billion plan in January. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said TSMC expects to invest about $100 billion during the next three years to increase capacity and R&D for leading-edge and specialty technologies. 80% of the budget …
A draft of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) released in March 2021 showed government plans to reach 70 GWe gross of nuclear capacity by the end of 2025. China is currently just short of 50GWe of nuclear. Annual average new nuclear capacity has been 2005 to 2020 is 3.4 GWe/yr and this will increase from …
USNC-Tech has a NASA NIAC phase i study for a compact twenty thousand-watt, 500 kg dry mass, radioisotope-electric-propulsion spacecraft design powered by a novel Chargeable Atomic Battery (CAB) that is capable of ∆Vs on the order of 100 km/s with a power system specific mass of 5-8 kg/kWe. This would be over five times faster …
A DNA construct is an artificially constructed segment of nucleic acid. It can be isolated or integrated in another DNA molecule. A recombinant DNA construct is produced by laboratory methods. Polynucleotide constructs with at least one disruption or tearing responsive promoter and at least one sequence encoding a fiber-forming protein. A cell with such constructs …
A turtle carries its own habitat. While reliable, it costs energy in transporting mass. NASA makes the same trade-off when it transports habitats and other structures needed for human and other applications on lunar and planetary surfaces “on the back” of its missions. During Phase 1, NASA Ames Research Center identified a novel biology-based solution …
A Phase 1 NASA NIAC study proposes to create soil from carbon-rich asteroid material, using fungi to physically break down the material and chemically degrade toxic substances. They will use fungi to help turn asteroid material into soil. The basic idea is to inoculate carbonaceous asteroid material with fungi to initiate soil formation. Fungi are …