Wind tunnel testing of a waverider model at Mach 10 and 40 km altitude conditions finds:
-Stagntation temperature of 1877°C
-Stagnation pressure of over 20 MPa
-Significant shift in the physical properties of the air itself
scielo.br/j/jatm/a/pppR8
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The icy moon Mimas, hanging in space against a backdrop of mighty Saturn.
Goodnight from Australia, friends!
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NASA's Very Large Subsonic Transport Planes study:
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/
The triple constraint of >600 passengers, >9260 km range and having to fit within existing airport bays leads to some interesting designs, like 'C-wings' and semi-blended bodies.
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Jupiter - 92 moons
Saturn - 83 moons
Uranus - 27 moons
Neptune - 14 moons
There's the equivalent of 27 solar systems orbiting these gas giants. It's a great opportunity for scifi with shorter travel times.
phys.org/news/2023-02-j
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'The Battle for Sol': exciting space scene for the hard scifi Torchship RPG by .
I spot radiators, magnetic nozzles and O'Neill cylinders.
#space #art by .
artstation.com/artwork/d0mgbw
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HiP-CT is a new technique that can hierarchically image whole human organs, beginning with the resolution of a human hair (25μm/voxel) down to a resolution where we can see single cells (1.5μm/voxel) [full video by Paul Tafforeau: buff.ly/3x3QwJo-]
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Slava Bobrov
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Cold accretion in the early Universe allowed stars of 100,000 solar masses to form:
arxiv.org/pdf/2301.10263
It lends further credence to the theory that supermassive black holes are born of huge 'seed black holes' that arose from early massive stars.
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So what’s the difference?
A solar flare is a powerful burst of energy that can be spotted as a sudden flash of light.
Fun fact: Traveling at the speed of light, the energy from flares can take 8 minutes to reach Earth!
GIF
read image description
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There is a reference in this SDI-era report to a 'General Electric SPAS study' from 1988.
In it is described a 200 MWe MHD generator, later described as a "GE pebble bed reactor MHD ".
More importantly, it has component masses.
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/
Does anyone have it?
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It's volcanoes we have to watch out for:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.384
They killed Venus, caused most extinction events and Large Igneous Provinces happen every 0.1-1 million years, enough for their effects to overlap and send Earth into a catastrophic 'hothouse' climate.
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The Doomsday plane: one of four Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Posts meant to act as a survivable operation center for the US president, Secretary of Defense or successors.
#art by Tim Samedov.
artstation.com/artwork/G8B2v4
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Exploring the farthest objects in our solar system using a Direct Fusion Drive:
arxiv.org/pdf/2009.12633
Trajectories and travel times are explored for a 2 MW and 10,000s Isp version of that engine.
Mission dV of 60-80 km/s allows sub-decade missions to Pluto, Eris or Haumea.
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Destroying cancer using artificial DNA:
scitechdaily.com/a-completely-n
'Hairpin' strands of DNA meets miR-21 microRNA in cancer cells and causes them to reveal themselves to the immune system, which triggers their elimination.
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The YF-22 recovers from a flat spin in seconds using thrust vectoring.
youtu.be/VOro3MDF_sI
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The Lunar Surface Access Module from 'For All Mankind'.
It's 10.8 tons and fuelledd by lunar-derived hydrolox propellants.
#space #art by Patryk Urbaniak.
artstation.com/artwork/XnkEA3
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UCL researchers grow 'mini-eyes' in a lab:
ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/nov/
These organoids will become testbeds for study and treatment of diseases that affect light-sensitive rod cells in our eyes. Normally they are inaccessible to researchers.
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JWST discovers some of the earliest quasars in the Universe:
arxiv.org/pdf/2211.14329
These are large galaxies (10 billion solar masses) that appeared just 800 million years after the Big Bang. A curious feature is supermassive black holes that aren't at their exact center.
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A hot-bleed two-stage turbine that uses carbon-carbon disks to operate at 2750K:
aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.106
It would be used on nuclear thermal rockets to drive the propellant turbopumps.
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The DSV Daedalus 2, a spaceship from 2097 that would ferry passengers from Earth to Saturn.
#space #art by
artstation.com/artwork/mzrRV9
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623 km/h top speed, from a 400 kW electric motor.
Quote Tweet
Exactly one year ago the #SpiritofInnovation took to the skies to break records as the world’s fastest all-electric aircraft. Today, we look back on this fantastic achievement on the road to zero-emissions flight @UKAeroInstitute @evolito_ltd
ow.ly/KWr150LEIav
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How much electrical power is needed to farm in space?
space.nss.org/wp-content/upl
With the most efficient set-up using photobioreactors, it's 10 kW/person with 83% of it going to pumping fluids.
It can climb to 672 kW/person in an export farm with animal proteins.
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Analysis of the moon Miranda's craters and their softened features reveals that the planet is coated with a roughly 1km thick layer of regolith.
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.384
It was likely sprayed onto the moon by Uranus' rings over millions of years.
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Can’t stop watching this simulation from showing the tsunami wave that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago
Waves reached 2.5 miles high!!
Fascinating to see the reverberation inside the Gulf of Mexico
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NOAA Education
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Timelapse taken with a lattice light-sheet microscope showing malaria parasites (cyan) lacking the PCRCR protein complex failing to enter ed blood cells (pink):
youtu.be/274N1V5Wucc
This proves that PCRCR is essential for malaria infection and can be targeted for treatments.
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Variants on a 3D-printed spacecraft to be used at the end of the movie 'Ad Astra'.
#space #art by Finnian MacManus.
artstation.com/artwork/4bVmVq
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Bacteria don't outnumber human cells in our own body.
They're roughly equal in number.
New counts find 40 trillion bacteria and 30 trillion human cells in a 70 kg person:
sciencenews.org/article/bodys-
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We see something -> we don't understand it -> we invent a new particle to explain it.
This time it is 'dark photons' that experience a mysterious fifth force and cause the unexplained heating of intergalactic gas clouds when they flip to regular photons.
space.com/dark-matter-da
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If we create a reflective surface that absorbs <0.01% of all sunlight wavelengths, we would have the basis for a solar sail that can dive right up to the sun's surface and boost off the 47,000x light pressure there while remaining below 300°C.
Exit velocity would exceed 400 km/s
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A most spectacular scene by : the 300 gigaton impact of Shoemaker-Levi 9 in Jupiter's atmosphere.
The top of the mushroom cloud is tall enough to catch sunlight while the bottom glows red with heat.
#space #art
artstation.com/artwork/yJ8JeO
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I'm thrilled to announce CRITICAL MASS is now on sale in audio, e-book and hardcover formats!
penguinrandomhouse.com/books/651844/c
read image description
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The aftermath of the K-T impact. furious volcanism continues weeks after the event, the resulting plume wrapping around Earth. Nearby land areas are largely scoured to the bare rock by mega tsunamis, which washed over the closer secondary craters. Acrylic on illustration board.
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A study of the potential cost savings from a PBO fibre orbital tether:
arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.
One interesting option was to combine it with a two-stage gas-gun: it would launch 1.76 ton payloads to 5.8 km/s, to be caught by a tether with a tip velocity of 3.4 km/s. Total $25/kg.
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Watch the shockwaves from this M4A3E8 'Easy Eight' Sherman's 76.2mm cannon being fired:
youtu.be/xpJ8EoGmLuE
The shell is 7 kg at 760 m/s. It's tracked by a rotating mirror at 3000°/s and filmed at 28,500 fps.
Incredible work by .
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Concept art variants for a satellite. It's interesting how many plausible arrangements there are for solar panels.
#space #art by Alex Pi.
artstation.com/artwork/DAdWbo
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It's great to find a recent reference to how efficient diode lasers can get.
opg.optica.org/ol/abstract.cf
These diode lasers produced near-infrared beams at 81% efficiency at 0°C, 75% at 25°C.
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Speed Agile
Powered Lift System Concept Demonstrator
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