How hard would it be to replace Russian oil and gas exports to Europe and then to Asia? Brad Templeton wrote on Facebook that 50% of Russians get their income from the government, which gets 43% of its revenue from oil and gas and is 1/3rd of the GDP. Putin rules only because Europe keeps …
Plug-in electric car sales in China in October 2021 more than doubled October 2020 to over 325,000. Battery electric cars are now over 13% of China’s total new car market. The share of battery electric cars is rapidly growing in China and Europe. Germany is 30% EV. A rapid shift four to six year shift …
Airbus is developing and building JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) spacecraft for the European Space Agency, which will study Jupiter and its icy moons. In May 2022, JUICE will begin a 7.6 year cruise to Jupiter to spend three and a half years in the Jovian system. Its main mission will be to explore the …
Ukraine’s army commander Gen Ruslan Khomchak says Russia has deployed 28 battalion tactical groups near Ukraine’s eastern border and in Crimea. This is 20,000-25,000 troops. Russian officials have not confirmed that, nor given any precise figures. The Russian military has confirmed that an airborne assault brigade – about 4,000 troops – is being redeployed to …
In 2014, Arianespace had 60% of commercial launch but they were passed by SpaceX in launch market share in 2017. Paris and Rome have created a “working group on the future of European launchers” which will deliver conclusions in September. SpaceX was third place in number of launches in 2014 and 2015. SpaceX passed Russia …
Oxford Photovoltaic is building the world’s first volume manufacturing line for perovskite-on-silicon tandem solar cells. Oxford is working with leading photovoltaic equipment supplier, Meyer Burger. They will install a silicon heterojunction solar cell line, enhanced with production equipment for the perovskite top cell. The fully integrated line will be built at an industrial site in …
ESA’s exoplanet mission Ariel, scheduled for launch in 2029, has moved from study to implementation phase, following which an industrial contractor will be selected to build the spacecraft. Ariel, the Atmospheric remote-sensing infrared exoplanet large-survey mission, addresses one of the key themes of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme: What are the conditions for planet formation and …
The European supercomputer Leonardo, managed by Cineca, that will be installed at the end of 2021 in the new data center located in Bologna, will be based on Atos BullSequana XH2000 technology, and feature nearly 14,000 NVIDIA Ampere architecture-based GPUs and NVIDIA Mellanox HDR InfiniBand. It will deliver 10 exaflops of FP16 AI performance. It …
Sweden did not lockdown its economy or close its schools in response to the coronavirus. They did ban gatherings of over 50 people. Sweden has been able to keep most of its economy open. Sweden’s deaths per million from Coronavirus is lower than Italy, Spain, France, UK, Netherlands and Ireland. Sweden is only slightly worse …
The World is projected to have over $9 trillion in economic losses from the Great Lockdown. This assumes a relatively prompt and successful reopening of the world economy. The Second quarter could see the US and other major economies with up to -40% GDP growth. China’s GDP was negative in the first quarter this year. …
The Washington IHME models are being adjusted downwards for COVID-19. The US death estimates were over 90,000 and are back to 81,000. There are hopes that the lower range of 40,000 to 65,000 deaths could be achieved. The adoption of mask-wearing by most Americans should reduce the spread and improve the numbers. Europe is now …