Engine and electrical improvements will allow the F35 to add combat lasers in the mid-2020s

Pratt and Whitney is proposing improved power, electricity and efficiency for the F35 engine. Increased electrical power and better heat management would allow for combat laser pods to be added to the F35. Electrical and thermal upgrades would be available by 2023, along with the thrust and fuel efficiency improvements. They previously had proposed about …

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Currently 34 uncontained large wildfires in USA

There are currently 34 uncontained large wildfires in the USA. Over 763,079 acres (over 1100 square miles) have burned. On July 4th, wildland fire activity has picked up throughout the western states. Five new large fires were reported. Fires in Colorado, Nevada, and California made runs that burned thousands of acres yesterday. Firefighters continue to …

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Lightweight exoskeletons and robotics arms could finally be the start of mainstream military enhancement

Lockheed Martin ONYX powered lower-body exoskeleton can increase mobility and reduce fatigue of its users. ONYX detects what the body is doing and provides support at the exact time it is needed. Sensors distributed on the exoskeleton report speed, direction, and angle of movement to an on-board computer that drives electro-mechanical actuators at the knees. …

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Quadrupling Wealth with a ten billion person Global City

There were time and motion studies in the early 20th century which found that if a city could have double the population then productivity would increase and per person income would increase by 7%. Currently the world is about 56% urbanized. Only 10% are in megacities with population over 10 million. 100% urbanization would double …

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ThorCon Molten Salt Reactor can be safe and scalable to 100 GW per year within a decade

ThorCon is a graphite-moderated thermal spectrum molten salt reactor that will produce 250 MWe power. It will be cheaper than coal energy. Coal is 5 cents per kilowatt hour and Thorcon will be 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. The basic concept is similar to the MSRE (Molten Salt Reactor Experiment) in ORNL which was built and …

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A voltage breakthrough with perovskite solar cells to edge closer to commercialization

A new technique has produced the highest performing inverted perovskite solar cell ever recorded. A team of researchers from Peking University and the Universities of Surrey, Oxford and Cambridge detail a new way to reduce an unwanted process called non-radiative recombination, where energy and efficiency is lost in perovskite solar cells. The team created a …

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18 qubits entangle using six photons

Arxiv – 18-qubit entanglement with photon’s three degrees of freedom They used * 30 single-photon interferometers in total. * The outputs are detected by 48 single-photon detectors Scheme and experimental setup for creating and verifying 18-qubit GHZ state consisting of six photons and three degrees of freedom. a. The generation of six-photon polarization-entangled GHZ state. …

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US Army making 100 kilowatt lasers to defend against drones, rockets and mortars

Raytheon Company is developing a 100 kW class laser weapon system preliminary design for integration onboard the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles. This is a $10 million U.S. Army’s High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstration program contract. It is expected that there will be a follow up $130 million contract starting in 2019. The laser …

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Liquid Piston gets more DARPA funding for 30KW engine 30 times smaller than todays engines

DARPA has awarded LiquidPiston an additional $2.5 million to continue development of its 30kW X4 rotary diesel engine prototype, bringing DARPA’s total funding of the engine technology to $6 million. When development of the fully packaged engine is complete, the 30kW X4 engine is expected to weigh just 30lbs and fit into a 10” box, …

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