Carnival of Space week 13 is up at the liftport blog My submission was the improvement/variant of a hypersonic skyhook Colony Worlds discusses a skyhook for Mars that would reach down to within 11 kilometers of the surface He refers to it as an orbital space elevator. Mars orbiting space elevator reaching out from Phobos …
Wired has an article on accurate athletic anticipation which can be called field sense or perceptual ability or what Wayne Gretzky can see on the hockey ice Comparing experts to amateurs in tennis, experts knew what would happen with the direction of a tennis serve roughly a third of a second earlier. What separated the …
Australia has tested a hypersonic scramjet that exceeded mach 10. They went at about 6850 mph. Scramjet principles are described here at wikipedia Scramjet programs are listed and described here The fastest US test was the the third X-43 flight. It set a then speed record of 6,600 mph (10,620 km/h), [about mach 9] on …
A company Wildhorse is going to study extracting Uranium from coal flyash. From the 50 million tons/year of flyash that is generated in Europe, there is 100 to 300 ppm uranium. This would be 5,000 to 15000 tons of Uranium that could be recovered. The US generates over 100 million tons of flyash each year …
Another indicator of accelerating progress. The Memjet technology uses a series of individual MEMS-based inkjet nozzles, fabricated using conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques. Each chip measures 20 millimeters across and contains 6,400 nozzles, with five color channels, the company said. A separate driver chip calculates 900 million picoliter-sized drops per second. For a standard A4 letter …
China has jumped ahead with three sweeping reforms to solidify its growth, bolster its financial markets, and more rapidly transform itself into a 21st century market economy. China has just created what could soon be the largest investment fund in history. Economists expect the Chinese government to allocate $200 billion to $400 billion to the …
Fuelcell Energy is the leading company for stationary larger fuel cells. Their cost out program quotes prices coming down from $3800 to 3400/kw and to below $3000/kw in volumes which seem to be expected in 2007. They are selling about 20MW. They have bids out for about 91MW. If cost reduction is in the 8-15% …
Wired magazine has an interview with David Deutsch, the father of Quantum computers I agree with almost everything that he says about Dwave, Quantum computers and nanotechnology. I have pulled what are my highlights from the interview. On quantum computing gaining mind share with the Dwave announcement.He replied: the field [quantum computing] doesn’t need acceptability. …
The Economist had an article called “The world’s first practical quantum computer is unveiled” Scientific American has the article First “Commercial” Quantum Computer Solves Sudoku Puzzles Scientific American article by JR Minkel feels that proof needs to wait to next year with more peer reviewed articles and the 1024 qubit version. It quotes Seth Lloyds …
The National Cancer association has listed the percentage of avoidable cancers with different environmental causes. Proportion of cancer deaths caused by different avoidable cancers Causes Percent 1981(US)* Percent 1998(UK)** Tobacco 25-40 29-31 Diet 10-70 20-50Medicines 0.3-1.5 Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. …
New Scientist has an article about a new fab@Home system for $2400 The fab@home This system is in the fabber category which has different systems of different capabilities. The MIT Fab lab is described in many places The MIT fablab is more expensive at $20,000-40000 There is also the inexpensive Reprap system which is about …