SKYLON is an unpiloted, reusable spaceplane intended to provide inexpensive and reliable access to space. Currently in proof-of-concept phase, the vehicle will take approximately 10 years to develop and will be capable of transporting 12 tonnes of cargo into space. The critical piece of new enabling technology is the pre-cooler and heat exchanger. Those parts …
Infineon Technologies AG has produced the first chips (“first silicon”) on a 300-millimeter diameter thin wafer for power semiconductors at the Villach site in Austria. This makes Infineon the first company in the world to succeed in taking this step forward. The chips now produced on a 300-millimeter thin wafer exhibit the same behavior as …
Flight Global – Testing is under way to demonstrate the heat exchanger technology crucial to a hybrid air- and liquid oxygen-breathing rocket motor that Oxford-based Reaction Engines believes will enable single-stage-to-orbit flight. The Sabre engine is intended to power a reusable, runway take-off and landing unpiloted spaceplane called Skylon, which promises to put payloads of …
Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, led the development of a solution-based technique for fabricating core/shell nanowire solar cells using the semiconductors cadmium sulfide for the core and copper sulfide for the shell. These inexpensive and easy-to-make nanowire solar cells boasted open-circuit voltage and fill factor values superior to conventional planar …
An ULTra PRT on a test track in Cardiff. Credit: ULTra PRT. Technology Review – ULTra PRT (ULtra “personal rapid transit”) could soon be branching out beyond Heathrow airport. The company has proposed systems similar to that at Heathrow for 10 cities in the United States. The City of San Jose has already committed $4 …
NY Times – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is approaching completion of an ambitious study that concludes that a meltdown at a typical American reactor would lead to far fewer deaths than previously assumed. The conclusion, to be published in April after six years of work, is based largely on a radical revision of projections of …
The United States is “within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda,” Leon Panetta declared, as he traveled to Afghanistan for his first visit there as Secretary of Defense. Panetta said intelligence gathered during the raid at Osama bin Laden’s compound has lead the United States to target 10-20 key al Qaeda leaders. “If we can …
Phononic Devices has advanced semiconductor materials for high efficiency thermoelectric devices. The DOE ARPA-E gave them $3 million in funding. They expect to start selling the devices to electronics cooling-and- refrigeration customers near the end of 2012. Phononic Devices materials and devices are expected to more than double thermal-electric efficiency — compared to conventional thermoelectrics …
The SonicStar supersonic business jet concept was unveiled at the 2011 Paris Air Show It will cruise at mach 3.5 by leveraging superconductors to achieve 70% more efficiency. The aircraft will have a cruise fuel efficiency below 1.05 lbs. of fuel, per pound of thrust, per hour at Mach 3.5. Jet-A, JP-4 and JP-7 fuel …
Flower-like defects in graphene can occur during the fabrication process. The NIST team captured images of one of the defects (figures a and c) using a scanning tunneling microscope. A simulated image from their computer models (figure b) shows excellent agreement. Credit: Cockayne,Stroscio/NIST. A class of decorative, flower-like defects in the nanomaterial graphene could have …
Human Gene Therapy Journal – The success of gene therapy will depend on the ability to advance viral delivery vectors to commercialization At an ever-increasing pace, there is promising news regarding clinical results using investigational gene therapy products is emerging, including several exciting advances with recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV). Yuan and coworkers present an improved …