Carnival of Space week 60 is up at slacker astronomy This site submitted an article with a preview of the space elevator and lunar lander games. The article heavily focused on the space elevator. Centauri Dreams talks about really big and slow space colonization ships (multi-generational Arks with 10 thousand year travel times). There is …
Although China’s economic size on an exchange rated basis has passed Germany this year and will pass Japan in 2009 and will probably pass the United Statesin 2016, China is still classifed as a lower middle income country by the World Bank. This means that using a 3 year average of exchange rates and looking …
Businessweek discusses Obama’s plan to increase the marginal tax rate back to the level under Bill Clinton and before the Bush tax cuts Of the 149 million households filing federal income taxes for 2006, some 3% reported income between $200,000 and $500,000; fewer than 1% claimed income above half a million dollars. The Bush administration …
Italian researchers study the problem of thermoelectricity and propose a simple microscopic mechanism for the increase of thermoelectric efficiency. Basically their theory is that thermoelectric conversion of heat into electricity can reach the Carnot limit and have some new computational modeling to guide development toward that goal and to model materials in a way that …
Russia released a plan to build 42 nuclear power plants by 2020. Previously the target was about 35 nuclear reactors. Seven reactors are under construction and 31 are operating. FURTHER READINGThe basic requirements [target goals] for fuel have been set as: fuel operational lifetime extended to 6 years, improved burn-up of 70 GWd/tU, and improved …
From the designers of Skylon, a fairly practical spaceplane designs, comes the Mach 5 A2 commercial Concorde replacement. The A2 and the Scimitar engine are more affordable and longer lasting versions of the Skylon spaceplane and Sabre engine. Analysis of the Development, Production and Operating costs suggests that the average ticket price would be comparable …
The New Scientist reports onboron nanotubes that will have many superior properties over carbon nanotubes According to Xiaobao Yang, Yi Ding and Jun Ni from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, the best configuration for boron is to take the unstable hexagon lattice and add an extra atom to the centre of some of the hexagons …
Accelerating future had reviewed systems for getting into space in 2006 I had covered the EM drive but is definitely one of the long shots with a lot of unknowns in the science (ie. I seriously doubt that it will work). My preferences are for: Bussard IEC fusion earth to orbit spaceship. Credit: Tom Ligon …
Carnival of space 31 is up at outofthecradle.net My contribution is my article on combining the newly announced nuclear “battery” with Vasimr plasma propulsion engine technology. there is discussion about the Chinese space program which currently has a probe orbiting the moon There is discussion about the economic develop of the moon Out of the …