What a Beauty! A Bugatti designed aircraft could soon fly

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

The ENGINEER :In the wings: recreating the Bugatti 100P
Almost eighty years ago aircraft design was still more art than science and what science there was revolved around slide rules and mechanical, even human, calculators, but they took chances and pushed boundaries.

This aircraft used the period’s (late ’30’s early ’40’s) advanced composite, plywood, made of hardwood and balsa wood as well as sophisticated aerodynamics to achieve a remarkable projected performance, 500 MPH, at a time when 300 was fighter fast. This aircraft had a cooling system similar to the breakthrough one in the P51 mustang, a half decade earlier, and the composites were used in the famous British strike bomber the Mosquito, also a half decade later. But the original of this remarkable aircraft never flew, being shipped out of the path of the oncoming Nazi army and ending up as decayed parts in the Experimental Aircraft Associations museum in Oshkosh WI. Now a team of enthusiasts are building a replica they expect to fly soon.

Motley Fool // Is Sony the Next Apple?

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Is Sony the Next Apple?
By Leo Sun – June 26, 2013

There is a lot of evidence suggesting that Cook doesn’t know where to go from here – Apple’s stock buyback, dividend, and bond sale all indicate that the company could become a slow-growth tech stock like Microsoft and IBM. The iPad Mini and iOS 7 also suggested to investors that the road ahead would be reactionary, rather than revolutionary.

… Sony has expanded into is the phablets category, … a 6.4-inch screen …seriously pushing the acceptable size limit of a smartphone.

Although the Ultra seems like a goofy attempt to capture some of the phablet market from Samsung, I believe that it could gain some serious ground when used in tandem with the SmartWatch 2 and a Bluetooth headset. Many consumers could stow the Ultra in a bag, while using the SmartWatch to check on basic information and tasks while using a Bluetooth headset to make calls or listen to music. To view movies, make video calls or games, the Ultra could be brought out and used like a normal tablet.

I’m no sure Apple has lost it’s mojo but I agree there is evidence of it.

I think that the latest iteration of blue tooth and general tech advances definitely plays to the padPhone+smartWatch+headSet combo and maybe, maybe Apple missed it.

Apple IMO also has missed the stylus revolution, pads of all sizes need sophisticated hand writing, sketch, art input capability to jump another level of ubiquitous usefulness.

I hope Apple is looking at things like 3D Printing, scanning and model manipulation and creation, in the same way they took on the 2D Printing world, there would be a real break out stroke.

Building with wood on a Major Scale

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Shiver me timbers. Architects plan wood skyscraper for resident life
Jun 21, 2013 by Nancy Owano

The wooden skyscraper is gaining attention as “green” news because of the wood factor proposed. A number of points in wood’s favor: C. F. Møller’s team noted how timber production releases less carbon dioxide than steel or concrete production, at a time where construction accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide generated from humans. Concrete and steel command a large part of the market, but wood-supporters note that wood is a lightweight, renewable material that can bear heavy loads in relation to its weight.

In general, the word “wood” makes some people nervous because of fears of fire. Architects who favor wood, however, argue that wood is safer than other types of building materials and can be more fire resistant than both steel and concrete. Earlier this year, an article in the Toronto Sun took note of what Geoff Triggs, building code consultants expert, had to say about the use of wood in high-rise construction. Rather than using small two-by-fours super-compressed mass timber is used to make very large panels. The compressed lumber is as strong as concrete but lighter. The compression process creates dense wood blocks that are difficult to burn.

To Dream of Space

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell: The Case for Commercial Rockets
PM catches up with SpaceX’s Shotwell to find out about the company’s Grasshopper tests, the way to get to Mars, and how she’d like to see space in person.
Read more: SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell: The Case for Commercial Rockets – Popular Mechanics

What I’d love to have is some sort of inflatable structure that comes out of the top of Dragon—a clear inflatable structure. This is a visionary thing, not an engineering thing, but I can imagine popping out of the Dragon hatch into this clear sphere floating around in space.

YES!

EADS eFan electric training aircraft

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

From: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/06/e-fan-electric-airplane A tiny ducted fan aircraft, only about 40 hp and it can do aerobatics, 1 hour touring around or about 30 min of loops etc.

People still say that battery technology is throttling eTech but I see huge amounts of work based an nano tech, material tech, graphene / carbon tech, etc which points to continued significant improvements in battery energy density etc for many years to come. Along with the rapid improvement in light strong structures, much of it fueled by carbon fibre technology, the improvements in electric propulsion, electronics, sensors, etc one wonders if the Jetsons are really all that far off…

The Romans did it

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

This image shows a drill core of volcanic ash-hydrated lime mortar from the ancient port of Baiae in Pozzuloi Bay. Yellowish inclusions are pumice, dark stony fragments are lava, gray areas consist of other volcanic crystalline materials, and white spots are lime. The inset is a scanning electron microscope image of the special Al-tobermorite crystals that are key to the superior quality of Roman seawater concrete. (Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley)

Roman technology was very advanced, their society collapsed due to political and social forces not for a lack of tools.

Tyranny of Data, McNamara’s whiz kids to Google’s geek culture

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Body count: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara briefing the press on Vietnam at the Pentagon in 1965.

Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514591/the-dictatorship-of-data/#ixzz2V67sF8kO From MIT Technology Review
Seems to me that McNamara epitomized the dark heart of the blue model industrialization, he was trying to make central planning work using the tools of capitalism. Big data has the the potential to make Stalinist (central planned top down industrial society) real like no tool before it. But at the same time the underlying technology will make centralization ever less attractive overall, ever less economically efficient. Some nations may fall to Big Data / Big Brother but they are not likely to become conquerors by economic or military coercion because the Maker States will be so much more resilient and efficient. Of course that assumes short sighted politicians/bureaucrats don’t take us all down some ‘consensus’ path because of short term returns that fools take as structural not ephemeral.

For Hubble, a long healthy life possible, could it be extended further?

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

3D printing antennas, is seen replacing conventional tech in production

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

According to Optomec, Aerosol Jet printing utilizes aerodynamic focusing to precisely deposit nanomaterials to produce fine feature circuitry and embedded components without the use of masks or patterns. The resulting functional electronics can have line widths and pattern features ranging from 10’s of microns to centimeters.

Read more at: http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130531-optomec-is-3d-printing-antennas.html
The combination of 3D printing and Materials Technology, particularly the ‘nanoscale’ materials or the materials we now understand at atomic scale, is changing the world more quickly than some see. It is not always obvious because in the end the devices are not that different than what came before, just better, smaller, longer lasting, stronger, etc. over a relatively short time it is amazing what small increments of change, multiplied by thousands of applications and dozens of iterations, can build up to.

MIT Technology Review // Ant sized computer

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Mini computer: The tiny KL02 microcontroller, made by Freescale, was created to enable swallowable wireless computers, and contains an energy efficient processor, memory, and RAM.

Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514101/wanted-for-the-internet-of-things-ant-sized-computers/#ixzz2V1JeGDvp
I wonder what operating system it runs?