Los Alamos growing high-efficiency perovskite solar cells

Researchers revealed a new solution-based hot-casting technique that allows growth of highly efficient and reproducible solar cells from large-area perovskite crystal. The researchers fabricated planar solar cells from pervoskite materials with large crystalline grains that had efficiencies approaching 18%, among the highest reported in the field of perovskite-based light-to-energy conversion devices. The cells demonstrate little …

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Israel armored personnel carrier has more armor than Merkava Tank

Israel designs its tanks and armored carriers with a high focus on soldier survivability. Namer is an Israeli armored personnel carrier based on a Merkava tank chassis. They weigh 60 tons. They have a crew of 3 and can carry 12 soldiers. Top speed is 40 mph and it has a range of 310 miles. …

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Spacex Heavy Animation Video showing reuse

When Falcon Heavy lifts off later this year, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. Thrust at liftoff is equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft operating simultaneously. Animation shows the Spacex heavy boosters returning SOURCES – Youtube Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and …

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Carnival of Space 376

The Carnival of Space 376 is up at the Urban Astonomer Universe Today – ‘Death Star’ Ocean? Seven Moons That Could Host Huge Hidden Liquid Reservoirs Newly released data from the Cassini spacecraft suggests there are big liquid reservoirs underneath the surface of Mimas, a moon of Saturn. A global layer of liquid water thick …

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Elon Musk Solar Scaling plans could enable solar power to go from unsubsidized 18 cents per kwh to 9 cents

Solar panel costs are not as important now, it is balance of system costs. Although having higher efficiency panels reduces the size of the solar installation which reduces balance of system costs. Home solar is dominated by Solar City and Vivint which together are half of the US residential market SolarCity climbed from 28% to …

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Direct drive nuclear fusion propulsion

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 …

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Train and plane accidents

So when Spain and France have rail accidents there are no people claiming ut beacuse of corruption in the construction of the system like after China s hugh speed rail accident. The Spain and France accidents happened with high speed trains that were on the conventional rail part of the system. The train in Spain …

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