In terms of the scale of the effort for colonizing North America, I think it is useful to compare the size of the naval fleets of the time and other historical benchmarks. We know how large the military is today and the share of the total economy that it has. It will be more useful …
Flight Global reports that european researchers developing a magnetic heat shield that could augment or replace the traditional ablative materials hope to make a test flight in the next decade. Under development by EADS Astrium, with support from German aerospace centre DLR and the European Space Agency, the magnetic field-protected vehicle will be launched from …
Carnival of Space 130 is up at Chandra Blog This site provided the technology highlights of week 39-45, which included 13 space related highlights Colony Worlds speculates on the wonders of the solar system 200 years after humans set foot on Mars. The wonders relate to colonization speculation based in the actual conditions of different …
1. Drexler comments on the Caltech work “Self-assembly of carbon nanotubes into two-dimensional geometries using DNA origami templates” This achievement is a milestone in framework-directed self assembly of composite nanosystems, a line of development that I’ve argued is a strategic direction in atomically precise fabrication — useful in itself, and as part of a technology …
Moller International (OTCBB: MLER) is pleased to announce that it has successfully developed and tested a damage resistant, carbon fiber blade technology that increases durability for the ducted fans used in its Skycar® and Neuera™ VTOL aircraft product lines. This improvement reduces blade rotating inertia, allowing the fans to respond quicker to roll and pitch …
These blue cells are human mesenchymal stem cells that have become senescent –- or lost the ability to divide — after X-ray irradiation. This image, obtained using senescence-associated β-gal staining, helped Berkeley Lab scientists better understand the process that triggers senescence in mesenchymal stem cells. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National …
After seven years of theoretical work and raising money, five months of design, five months of construction and assembly, and a week of testing, LPP (Lawrenceville Plasma Physics) now has a functioning dense plasma focus, Focus-Fusion-1. The first shot, using helium as the fill gas, was achieved at 5:29 PM today, Oct.15, and the first …
Left) Carbon dome structure on an iridium substrate, indicating the tightly bound atoms at the edge of the island (C), the weakly bound atoms at the center (B) and intermediate atoms (A). (Right) Photoelectron spectrum at 970 K showing the contributions from the edge (C), center (B), and intermediate (A) atoms in the dome structure. …
1. A new invisibility cloak for sound could help doctors find tiny tumors or hide submarines from enemy sonar. “Our focus is not about dampening noise, but to guide sound waves around structures,” said Nicholas Fang, a professor a the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and coauthor, along with Shu Zhang and Leilei Yin, …
Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) announced that they are cooperating for a multi-polar world. The first summit of heads of state of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — ended with a declaration calling for a “multipolar world order”, diplomatic code for a rejection of America’s position as the sole global …
Carnival of space 96 is up at Astroengine. This site provided an article on the quantum fractal theory of space time. Planetary society blog looks at water on Mars. 21st Century Waves feels we are close to space colonization starting in 2015. Astroblogger considers asteroids at the L4 and L5 points Greg Fish, a popular …