Paul March updates the Mach Effect Propulsion Work indicating some new challenges have been discovered and reviews the use of the effect for communication. When trying to optimize an M-E device, there are so many conflicting design parameters to contend with that that one cannot make general assumptions and be sure of the results. I …
Attainability of high velocities for impact ignition (page pdf) by Winterberg To reach the flyer plate velocities in excess of 1000km/sec required for impact ignition, it is proposed to combine the ablation acceleration of a dense hydrogen jet by its isentropic compression in a convergent Prandtl-Meyer flow, magnetically insulated by the Nernst effect against the …
China’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) in approved August, 2009 to two strains of (genetically modified) GM rice and one of GM maize for small-scale field trials — the first time that China has granted safety certificates to staple food crops. A document published on the website of the MoA’s Biosafety Management Office in October said …
New Scientist reports that the NASA panel appears strongly in favor of orbital fuel depots to lower the cost of space exploration. This site has covered fuel depots before and also is strongly if favor of using orbital fuel depots. Fuel depots would allow NASA to mount moon missions without spending billions of dollars developing …
Centauri Dreams discusses how applying Devon Crowe space bubble ideas with nanotechnology could fully enable the ideas of Robert Forward for interstellar solar sails. The prior article about Devon Crowe’s space bubble concepts. Prior article on the state of solar sails Prior article on putting the brakes on laser mirror solar sails Article on laser …
The most interesting study released from the March 2007 meeting is Devon Crowe of PSI corporation for making large space structures from bubbles that are made rigid using metals or UV curing A single bubble can be 1 meter in earth gravity, 100 kilometer in low earth orbit or 1000 kilometers in deep space. Foams …
The Chinese government supports university research and gives them money to pay for the use of the service [supercomputer grid]. That is better than to spend money on buying thousands of separate smaller systems and none of them can do significant work. China only has two supercomputer centers now. Steve Chen is recommending and apparently …