DARPA has picked four companies to design new aircraft to revolutionize vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) flight capabilities. For generations, new designs for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft have remained unable to increase top speed without sacrificing range, efficiency or the ability to do useful work. DARPA’s VTOL Experimental Plane (VTOL X-Plane) program seeks to …
We covered Princeton Satellite Systems nuclear fusion space propulsion work last year. Here is some new work and designs. A paper explores the use of a rocket engine based on nuclear fusion to rendezvous with and move an asteroid. The engine is based on a 5 MW Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) and is presented in …
Rolls-Royce is designing unmanned cargo ships. Control centers will command hundreds of crewless ships. Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says. They might be deployed in regions such as the Baltic Sea within a decade, while regulatory hurdles …
Robert Hoyt, Tethers, Unlimited, Inc., 2013 Phase II Fellow SpiderFab: Architecture for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures Spiderfab – build in space and make structures 10 times bigger A starshade twice the diameter to enable 16 times the earth sized planet finding capability for the same price On orbit constructed solar array using a tension …
PNAS – Nanowire nanocomputer as a finite-state machine Fundamental limits soon may end the decades-long trend in microelectronic computer circuit miniaturization that has led to much technological and economic progress. Nanoelectronic circuits using new materials, devices, and/or fabrication methods face formidable challenges to provide alternatives for future microelectronics. A key advance toward overcoming these hurdles …
1. In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani forcefully asserted that Iran would not destroy its nuclear centrifuges “under any circumstances”. Rouhani’s comments come just days after the U.S. and Iran began to implement a deal which the White House claims will scale back Iran’s nuclear program. The Obama administration claims …
North Dakota added another 28000 barrels of oil per day to reach 973280 barrels of oil per day for the month of November, 2013. North Dakota seems likely to have reached the 1 million barrels of oil per day level in December, 2013 If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on …
Nvidia introduced its next-generation mobile processor, Tegra K1, at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The 192-core super chip, built on Kepler architecture, brings “the heart of GeForce and the soul of Tesla to mobile computing,” said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at the company’s press event on Sunday. The Tegra K1 comes …
In 1996, Zubrin founded and is president of Pioneer Energy, a Research and Development firm Colorado. The company’s focus is to develop mobile Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) systems that can enable CO2-based EOR for both small and large oil producers in the United States. The company has also developed a number of new processes for …
A new system, dubbed “WiTrack”, uses radio signals to track a person through walls and obstructions, pinpointing her 3-D location to within 10 to 20 centimeters — about the width of an adult hand. “Today, if you are playing a game with the Xbox Kinect or Nintendo Wii, you have to stand right in front …
IEA monthly oil report is up. The estimate of global oil demand for 2013 has been revised up by 130 kb/d, to 91.2 mb/d, on stronger-than-expected 3Q13 OECD demand growth of 320 kb/d. Global demand is now seen advancing by 1.2 mb/d in both 2013 and 2014, to reach 92.4 mb/d in 2014. Global oil …