More on lighter than air Graphene
Graphene Aerogel
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Category Archives: Technology
NASA Asteroid capture plan
Illustration of an asteroid retrieval spacecraft in the process of capturing a 7-meter, 500-ton asteroid. Credit: Rick Sternbach / Keck Institute for Space Studies
Does this support the the eSpace thrusts towards space resource capture? I think so and as such if done right with partnership with eSpace entrepreneurs it’s the right thing to do.
Why Tesla thrives while Fisker dives | MIT TR
Tesla Model S
Tesla has had it’s ups and downs while Fisker has had it’s blips and boops, but Elon Musk’s (Tesla and SpaceX) has proven to be a serial innovator with a bloodhound nose for the right technical – business mash up. This MIT Technology Review piece comparing these two iconic eCar companies seems right on. And points to the government force fed A123 battery company as a compounding problem.
Fisker Karma
Edited the title only…
Do Wind Turbines Need a Rethink? | Innovations
Do Wind Turbines Need a Rethink? | Innovations.
Windmills don’t stink, and they have a grace that few industrial artifacts stain. I just hope they don’t rust.
Graphene foam
Graphene, the material in pencil ‘lead’ has come to be seen as the new wonder carbon, fist it was Buckyballs (Bukminsterfullerene) then nanotubes, now graphene. Each a version of molecular carbon, one in the form of various size soccer ball like structures ( hexagonal flats giving it the form and name since Buckminster Fuller was the prophet of geodesic structures like domes, the last generation of fabric over structure aircraft, etc.) Nanotubes are fine latticework tubes (hexagonal lattice) and graphene is at its most basic a single atom thick sheet lattice (hexagonal again!) graphene has some extraordinary properties of interest to electrical, electronic, electo-optic, structural and other engineering technologies, it could be the basis of ‘the next industrial revolution.’
One of the latest latest graphene breakthroughs is its formation into open cell foams, some that are actually lighter than air! On the order of helium making it potentially possible to form foam balloons that fly. This piece describes the potential to use this ultra light material as a bio scaffold for the creation of organs etc,
Plans for SpaceX booster flyback advance
Had not realized this was progressing as fast as it appears to be, still it is years not months, but neither is it decades.
Video of Xombie flight…wow. | Wired
Short Wired piece with a fantastic video of a precision take off flight and landing of the Xombie test vehicle.
Trip the LED fantastic
3D Printed rat skeleton, no longer: yucky, fragile, tiny…. | Wired
Another use for low cost 3D Printing, think about it, exact models of all sorts of biological specimens: surface, organs, bones, shells, exoskeletons, etc, scaled to a size that students or scientists can use for discussion, learning, planning, etc.
This World and Others 