What the smart types don’t know will hurt us all. Cost savings of bringing troops home are nowhere near what wonks expected because much of the cost of foreign bases were borne by the locals and when the troops are home we get to pay it all…
Eye Candy
The city is MINE …BWAHAHAHAH!
Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield cover of David Bowies Space Oddity click and see!
Inhabitat article on Seahorse inspired armor and it has 3Dprinting to!
A related article at ABCNews
In a gerotor motor, the outer ring’s gear teeth remain stationary while fluid flow turns the internal rotor. This drawing is of a six-pointed gerotor assembly. To see a motor’s internal components in action, view the YouTube video, Motion Study of the Gerotor Motor at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iooA0mJzEIE.
Machine Design has always been one of the best engineering teaching magazines out there and this article on hydraulic motors is an example of why. Informative and elegant graphics, straight forward, intelligent and direct (without dumbing down) explanatory prose. OK it’s about hydraulic motors but it’s cool, neat, etc, especially in this age of the maker revolution.
phys.org : Reports from “Humans 2 Mars Summit” suggest dust may prevent human settlement of Mars by Bob Yirka
…. perchlorates appear to be widespread on the planet’s surface. The fine dust material produced by perchloric acid has been known to cause thyroid problems in people here on Earth.
Just as problematic, … is gypsum…. been known to cause a condition similar to black lung in coal miners in people exposed to it for long periods of time.
… known presence of silicates on the Martian surface—if breathed-in they can cause reactions with water in the lungs and result in the creation of harmful chemicals.
Martian dust could pose health hazards because of the difficulty of removing it from space suits and boots. … fear the dust would build up in air filters and living quarters, adding yet another life threatening element to the list of other known hazards (traveling and landing safely, exposure to radiation and cosmic rays, etc.) for the people who seek to colonize the planet.
You can always find some pretext for why not to do something.
This sort of narrow thinking is why it the Mars colonization effort by somewhat older unworried warriors is a great idea, they will lead the way, they may die earlier…will almost certainly die earlier than they would on Earth but in the big picture they will be immortal.
I think that a commercial fly by of Mars possibly convoying with early colony equipment makes a lot of sense. Drop off a 3D printer to start fabbing buildings or building parts. The fly by would work on the tech of getting there and of living in space for long periods. Multiple (4 in a Bigelow Cross?) inflatable Bigelow modules would make a light weight but spacious habitat that one or two couples could live in for the time needed. I would boost and decelerate the complex with an earth orbital tug and have minimal onboard propulsion since its pointless mass to take with you. With the right kit of science and DIY they would keep busy doing various types of investigation the whole time.
Big picture:
All possible in the next twenty years, tenish if we really pushed, and I think we could commercial/ kick start/survivor fund the whole bloody thing…
Megan McArdle at the Daily Beast, Get Ready for the War on Data, this is grim because I see this as presaging a descent into tribal distrust and the end of the great experiment we have called America.
State of solar system missions as of October 2012 (Credits: Olaf Frohn).
FromSpace Safety Magazine, who knew there was such a periodical?
New research key to revolutionary ‘green’ spacecraft propellant at Phys.org
Got me interested in this new material…liquid…which is REALLY cool, in a hot sort of way, look at this briefing by the Air Force Research Lab…this Rocket Fuel burns at 1600degC but it just sort of fizzles if thrown on a fire, sits there when hit by a hammer, does not create clouds of toxic fumes and while not a great ice cream topping is not wildly poisonous either…and this stuff was actively developed, not just stumbled across. Such is the power of modern research tools and materials knowledge.
The GPIM project aims to introduce AF-M315E as a green alternative to hydrazine (Credits: NASA).
Daily Beast: Asymmetric Information – Megan McArdle – fearlessly pointing out home truths shown by the Oregon healthcare study worth a look. But I thought this graphic remarkable on its own.
“I would argue that essentially anyone who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a non-industry grade 3-D printer can literally make a plastic cloak overnight,” said Yaroslav Urzhumov, assistant research professor in electrical and computer engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Urzhumov said that producing a cloak in this fashion is inexpensive and easy. He and his team made a small one at Duke which looks like a Frisbee™ disc made out of Swiss cheese. Algorithms determined the location, size and shape of the holes to deflect microwave beams. The fabrication process takes from three to seven hours.
“Computer simulations make me believe that it is possible to create a similar polymer-based cloaking layer as thin as one inch wrapped around a massive object several meters in diameter,” he said. “I have run some simulations that seem to confirm this point.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-do-it-yourself-invisibility-d.html
Well ain’t that just Harry Potter cool?
This World and Others 