SpaceLiner is an advanced concept for a suborbital, hypersonic, winged passenger transport, which is currently under investigation at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, or DLR) since 2005. The DLR projected that, if funded and development is continued, it could field an operational spaceplane in the 2035-2040s. It appears that Germany …
Lockheed Martin expects production of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to expand significantly over the next several years. At nearly $1.5 trillion in lifetime costs, the F-35 is the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon. So far the Pentagon has only purchased about 220 of the 2,400-plus F-35s it planned to buy, …
Gasoline prices are below $2.51 per gallon across the USA except in California. California has a refinery strike and a special California only blend of gasoline. Drivers across the USA are paying $2.33, which is 29 cents more than the $2.04 of a month ago. California had a refinery fire at the Exxon Mobil plant …
A new process, being developed by SRI International, takes fewer steps, uses less energy, and produces titanium powder, rather than ingots. The powder can be pressed and fused into something that’s very close to the shape of the final product, which reduces the amount of machining required. SRI’s process uses plasma arcs to facilitate reactions …
Semiconductor manufacturers are developing other solid-state technologies, some of which could succeed flash and other forms of solid-state memory in the not-too-distant future. 451 Research provides computer memory analysis at computerweekly. Chip makers have been approaching the limits to which they can reduce NAND flash manufacturing process sizes for some time. In 2013, the time …
IMEC has a roadmap to 5 nanometer features on chips. At 5nm, chip makers will need to supplement extreme ultraviolet lithography with direct self-assembly techniques (above). Prototypes now in the lab look promising (below) but are still well above the target of 10 defects/cm2.. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review …
From Adam Crowl coverage of the starship conference. John Cramer a physicist from the University of Washington, well-known to SF fans via his “Alternate View” columns in the “Analog” science fiction magazine, as well as several novels. John focused on the use of wormholes to allow rapid transit to other star systems. Simply put, wormholes …
By 2015, China will have a high-speed railway network that will encompass almost all its cities with a population of more than 500,000, the State Council said on Tuesday. The State Council issued a plan for building a comprehensive transportation network. The plan says China should complete the construction of a high-speed railway network with …
University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates. Electronics printed on low-cost, flexible materials hold promise for antennas, batteries, sensors, solar energy, wearable devices and more. Most conductive inks rely on tiny metal particles suspended …
Nature – Observational work conducted over the past few decades indicates that all massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres. Although the luminosities and brightness fluctuations of quasars in the early Universe suggest that some were powered by black holes with masses greater than 10 billion solar masses the remnants of these objects …
A research team working under Natcore Technology Inc. co-founder Prof. Andrew Barron has fabricated two families of multilayer quantum dot films, one with silicon quantum dots and the other with germanium quantum dots, both of which have demonstrated the ability to produce a photo-generated current. Natcore’s scientists have discovered that its LPD (Liquid Phase Deposition) …