Group items tagged

This is a video about a giant ant colony and the 3D structure of the nest. Amazing footage about one of a superorganism.

Wow, that's spooky - we did some work on organ regeneration, didn't we?

want have ....

very nice!!! thanks for sharing ...

"When in the desert he came up with the idea to use the two dominating features in the desert -- the sun and the sand -- in his next project.". I wonder where we should send him next.

Arts project with implications for space science... Awesome! Note how this guy is dressed in the middle of an Egyptian desert, lol...

Something for the ACT! It costs just ~$5000.

nice indeed! just have to find a good project for it ...

Towing an iceberg from Newfoundland to the Canary Islands: how 3D computer simulations are used to study iceberg melting and fuel consumption in this concept.

12 new NIAC 1 studies - many topics familiar to us ... please have a look at those closest to your expertise to see if there is anything new/worth investigating (and in general to be knowledgeable on them since we will get questions sooner or later on them)
Principal Investigator Proposal Title Organization City, State, Zip Code
Atchison, Justin Swarm Flyby Gravimetry Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218-2680
Boland, Eugene Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed Techshot, Inc. Greenville, IN 47124-9515
Cash, Webster The Aragoscope: Ultra-High Resolution Optics at Low Cost University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0389
Chen, Bin 3D Photocatalytic Air Processor for Dramatic Reduction of Life Support Mass & Complexity NASA ARC Moffett Field, CA 94035-0000
Hoyt, Robert WRANGLER: Capture and De-Spin of Asteroids and Space Debris Tethers Unlimited Bothel, WA 98011-8808
Matthies, Larry Titan Aerial Daughtercraft NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Miller, Timothy Using the Hottest Particles in the Universe to Probe Icy Solar System Worlds John Hopkins University Laurel, MD 20723-6005
Nosanov, Jeffrey PERISCOPE: PERIapsis Subsurface Cave OPtical Explorer NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Oleson, Steven Titan Submarine: Exploring the Depths of Kraken NASA GRC Cleveland, OH 44135-3127
Ono, Masahiro Comet Hitchhiker: Harvesting Kinetic Energy from Small Bodies to Enable Fast and Low-Cost Deep Space Exploration NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Streetman, Brett Exploration Architecture with Quantum Inertial Gravimetry and In Situ ChipSat Sensors Draper Laboratory Cambridge, MA 02139-3539
Wiegmann, Bruce Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS) NASA MSFC Huntsville, AL 35812-0000

Eh, the swarm flyby gravimetry is very similar to the "measuring gravitational fields" project I proposed in the brewery

Nice renders!!!

I think the image of the pine tree nicely illustrates both effects.

lots still to discover on Mars

WPT overview paper ...

The Robobee takes off without guide wires! It is still powered via a wire, and the control is done with the help of a VICON system and on an external computer, but this still is an amazing feat!

The way they make this thing is just as impressive. The manufacturing technique is "pop-up book" folding, a method that has been developed by the same group and that allows a two dimensional monolithic MEMS structures to be easily assembled into a 3D structure. I actually put this as an item of the "Technology List 2020" on the wiki this morning.

I agree, manufacturing is the amazing thing here ..... as soon as the power-consumption/density problem is solved these things will really take off :)

Let's all start up some crazy space companies together: harvest hydrogen on Jupiter, trap black holes as unlimited energy supplies, use high temperatures close to the sun to bake bread! Apparently it is really easy to do just about anything and Deep Space Industries is really good at it. Plus: in their video they show Mars One concepts while referring to ESA and NASA.

hmm aside from the technological feasibility, their approach still should be taken as an example, and deserve a little support. By tackling such difficult problems, they will devise innovative stuffs. Plus, even if this doom-to-fail endeavour may still seem you useless, it creates jobs and make people think... it is already a positive! Final word: how is that different from what Planetary Resources plan to do? It is founded by a bunch of so-called "nuts" ... (http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/) ! a little thought: "We must never be afraid to go too far, for success lies just beyond" - Proust

I don't think that this proposal is very different from the one by Planetary Resources. My scepticism is rooted in the fact that - at least to my knowledge - fully autonomous mining technology has not even been demonstrated on Earth. I am sure that their proposition is in principle (technically) feasible but at the same time I do not believe that a privately funded company will find enough people to finance a multi-billion dollar R&D project that may or may not lead to an economically sensible outcome, i.e. generate profit (not income - you have to pay back the R&D cost first) within the next 25 years. And on that timescale anything can happen - for all we know we will all be slaves to the singularity by the time they start mining. I do think that people who tackle difficult problems deserve support - and lots of it. It seems however that up till now they have only tackled making a promotional video... About job creation (sorry for the sarcasm): if usefulness is not so important my proposal would be to give shovels to two people - person A digs a hole and person B fills up the same hole at the same time. The good thing about this is that you can increase the number of jobs created simply by handing out more shovels.

Meet the incredible shrinking material. Most things swell when they warm up, creating engineering headaches, but now a 3D-printed material has been configured to contract instead. When two interlinked materials expand at different rates, they can warp or crack. It's a problem in buildings, bridges, electronics and anything else that is exposed to a wide temperature swing.