Russian fighter jets are being shot down in Ukraine by US Stinger missiles and Ukraine’s soviet era air defences. The Ukrainian defense ministry claims its forces have destroyed about 100 Russian fixed-wing aircraft. Independent observers have confirmed at least a dozen of those kills. Verified losses include five Su-25 attack planes, two Su-30 and four …
Elon Musk speaks at the opening of the Tesla Berlin Gigafactory. Thirty cars were delivered at the event. The opening was delayed for many months. The first phase of the factory will produce 500,000 to 700,000 cars per year. It should produce about 1000-2000 cars per week in Q2 (April-June) and then ramp towards 10,000 …
SpaceX will launch the remaining OneWeb satellites. OneWeb is not directly competing with SpaceX Starlink for providing satellite communications. The satellites in the OneWeb constellation are approximately 150 kg (330 lb) in mass. This is half of the mass of the latest Starlink satellites. The 648 operational satellites are to operate in 12 near polar …
NASA Advanced Innovations Concepts has funded research to combine a heat shield and solar thermal propulsion system to perform a solar Oberth maneuver in order to achieve the highest possible escape velocity from the solar system. This will enable missions ten to hundreds of times further than Pluto out to the Kuiper Belt Objects or …
ISW has determined that Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some …
I, Brian Wang, have researched the car chip shortage. Many people have said that the car chip shortage will clear up by the second half of 2022 but they are wrong. The car chip shortage will last until 2024. Tesla has already been handling the shortage better than the other car companies and I have …
NASA Advanced Concepts has funded research for a high performance spacesuit for future Mars Astronauts. Dr. Bonnie Dunbar is a former NASA astronaut and is now a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M. Some of her fellow astronauts couldn’t fit in an Extra Vehicular Activity suit – more commonly known as a spacesuit. Her …
China can transport about 40,000 troops in the first day for an invasion of Taiwan. IF none of the ships and helicopters and planes are shot down while crossing 100 miles of open water. If 40,000 troops could make it onto Taiwan, the Chinese troops would be outnumbered 4 to 1. Nextbigfuture has already gone …
The CDC will report that the US will pass 1 million cumulative COVID deaths in the next 25-40 days. The CDC reports the cumulative total at 946,000 as of March 15, 2022 and the seven day moving average is about 900-1200 daily deaths. It will be in April for the CDC figures but March for …
Will cheap anti-tank missiles mark the end of the Tank era? Raytheon and Lockheed Martin make the Javelin missile. The Javelin costs $178,000, including the launch system and missile and each replacement missile costs around $78,000. Tanks cost $1 million to $8 million each. Russian tanks are in the lower cost range of $1 million …
Russia is still slowly taking some smaller cities in the southeast of Ukraine but the Kyiv offensive is bogged down. What we have clearly learned is that Russia’s military and its equipment remain second rate. Russia has taken significant chunks of Eastern Ukraine but that seems to be the limit of their capability. Russia would …