Michael Anissimov has a picture of a progression from World War 2 soldier to a mech. The hypothetical Mech has a hypothetical price tag of 500k-700K. Military hummers cost $150K armored and $60-75k unarmored Of course they are not autonomous, although with the DARPA program for self driving cars..we could add yet (and tack on …
Dwave Systems closed a $17M financing round as of the end of January 2008. These funds will be used primarily to push the level of integration of our chips into the low thousands of qubits by the end of the year. In parallel with this central effort we will be working on running experiments on …
Duke University engineers will reveal Friday (Jan. 11) details of an acoustic cloak fabricated from metamaterials that they claim can render objects invisible to sonar. If this works then we will have unprecedented control to hide from the effects or to enhance the effects of sound and other waves in all kinds of material. Submarines …
Iraq is producing 2.3 million barrels of oil a day, up from 1.9 million at the outbreak of war in 2003 and substantially higher than January this year, when it dipped to a low of 1.7 million barrels. Although a trillion or so dollars was spent and more trillions will be spent, there seems the …
Autopia discusses how fuel mileage will be improved. Just 58 of the 1,199 vehicle models listed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2008 Fuel Economy Guide (download zip file) get a combined city and highway fuel efficiency of 35 mpg or better. Industry experts said the first changes will be relatively subtle, relatively cheap and relatively …
Shared space programs work by tearing up the sidewalks, removing curbs and erasing street markers as part of a radical plan to abandon nearly all traffic regulations and force people to rely on common sense and courtesy instead. “Generally speaking, what we want is for people to be confused,” said Willi Ladner, a deputy mayor …
Duke Energy today submitted a combined construction and operating license (COL) application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a proposed two-unit nuclear station in Cherokee County, S.C. The proposed two-unit William States Lee III Nuclear Station will have a capacity of 2,234 megawatts. It is the first new COL with a new site …
Universe today has the 33rd Carnival of Space I contributed my discussion about bootstrapping ground launch of magnetic sails and some discussion about the need for high volume applications and the plans of Burt Rutan and SpaceshipTwo/SpaceshipThree and spaceshipFour The Space cynic does not believe that Burt Rutan can hit his goals for space tourism. …
Stripped down energy bill likely to pass An energy bill that would require cars and light trucks to have 35 mpg efficiency in 2020 is likely to pass. They failed to remove 13.5 billion in tax subsidies for oil and gas companies. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger …
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has an interesting article on some trends towards lower cost for weapon system development and faster weapon system development cycles. One aspect of the article is whether the “decide to kill” option should be left to armed robotic systems. I do not think that is as big an issue for …
Wired magazine reports on atomic clocks, which are the basis of GPS technology and help science become more accurate. The NIST-F1, this atomic clock is more accurate for prolonged periods than any other clock — an order of magnitude better than the one it replaced in 1999. When the F2 down the hall goes online …