gene-h

28 ms·

241.
by gene-h 9y ago
They already completed the equivalent thermal power tests last year[0], and you most certainly don't need to do electrical tests at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. How much progress they've actually made at this point is not clear f
242.
by gene-h 9y ago
The US does in fact produce plutonium 238 now, not much but production is being scaled up[0]. From what I understand, most of the issues with developing new nuclear power sources stem from funding shortages. NASA canceled their Prometheus n
243.
by gene-h 9y ago
Well the thing to wait for is not Musk's self-driving cars, but Musk disrupting the tunnel boring machine industry. Sure, Musk might not like public transit, but his boring company could very well offer tunnel drilling services. Any im
244.
by gene-h 9y ago
It depends really. High temperature superconductors were incredibly hyped when they first came out, but the problem is they had a limited critical current and critical field strength so applications were(and to some degree still are) limite
245.
by gene-h 9y ago
This reminds me of this one Siggraph paper where they did full bristle and fluid level simulation of paint and a paint brush[0][1]. [0] http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~wang.3602/Chen-2015-WB/Chen-2... [1] https:&#x2
246.
by gene-h 9y ago
What's interesting is the engine for the insectothopter, it appears to be a plastic bladder compressed with a cantilever spring. Inflating the bladder with gas pulls the wing down, which is itself something like a leaf spring, and then
247.
by gene-h 9y ago
To actually give the stupid-ass rocket something to do, people in congress have proposed doing a Europa mission. Congressman Culberson is even pushing for the Europa Clipper mission to have a lander. Although it is a bit unusual in that fun
248.
by gene-h 9y ago
There are two problems with this lifetime and power supply in that order. The first is that the lifetime was only 3000 beats, which at 40 beats a minute translates to about an hour and a half of use. In comparison, the jarvik 7, one of the
249.
by gene-h 9y ago
I am extremely doubtful of this future. A big part of the reason we are considering soft robots today is safety, that if the robot hits a human it won't hurt them. If we can make robots smart enough that they never hit humans this is n
250.
by gene-h 9y ago
I believe soft actuators have hidden costs. While the actuators themselves may be cheap, the valving and pumps may not be.
251.
by gene-h 9y ago
No, because the capacitors discharge very fast. The problem is they want capacitors that discharge fast and have a high energy density, which means that during such a crash we could get an explosion or maybe even an EMP.
252.
by gene-h 9y ago
No they actually mean power. Supercapacitors can energy faster than lithium batteries can(more power). While batteries have power densities hundreds of watts per kilogram, supercapacitors can release thousands of watts per kilogram. Now if
253.
by gene-h 9y ago
This is a very bad article. NASA has investigated how a lensless mirrorless telescope could actually be made using photonic integrated circuits[0]. There are even mass benefits too. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/content/low-m
254.
by gene-h 9y ago
The question we should be asking as more ubiquitous devices are built with comparatively large amounts of computational power is not what will run tetris, but what won't run tetris?
255.
by gene-h 9y ago
It has been proposed that we could construct one of these nuclear potato guns to launch things into space[1]. One digs a multi-kilometer deep borehole in say a salt dome(easy to drill), lines that with steel, puts a bomb at the bottom, some
256.
by gene-h 9y ago
This project requires millions of square kilometers of high tech satellites. If we could make millions of square kilometers of high tech satellites then we could probably make millions of square kilometers of solar panels here on earth, and
257.
by gene-h 9y ago
If this is really the case, it's a pretty big deal. While water is important in keeping humans alive, one big near term application is propellant. Being able to make H2-O2 propellant on the Moon could reduce the costs of lunar return m
258.
by gene-h 9y ago
Being submerged wasn't bad, it was the water that flowed into my nose near the end of the scan that was bad. It was in no way as bad as waterboarding(especially since I was able to immediately get out), but enough to throw me into a bi
259.
by gene-h 9y ago
I did not mean for my post to make waterboarding seem to be simply unpleasant. It is not, it is horrible and inhumane practice whose use cannot be justified. That being said getting a good scan required me lying on my back holding still as
260.
by gene-h 9y ago
There are number of problems with this, the big one being the difficulty of reading and writing DNA. In addition, while storage may be very dense, it is somewhat environmentally sensitive. IE a single cosmic ray can cause DNA breaks. This p
261.
by gene-h 9y ago
This approach has been tried before and was used to make a solar cell with record efficiency[0]. This approach might be needed to get up to 50% efficiency. [0] http://www.electronicproducts.com/Sustainable/Solar/Pri
262.
by gene-h 9y ago
As far as planes go, an intriguing option is liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen has a large energy density by mass, which is why we use it in rockets. There have been proposals on how current airliners might be converted to run off of hydrogen in th
263.
by gene-h 9y ago
I once scanned myself at a maker fair in a similar manner. A swimming pool of blue dye with a camera facing above was used so that objects could be scanned by looking at their outline in the blue dye as they were dipped in(a different appro
264.
by gene-h 9y ago
I wouldn't be too worried about the software, the human brain is pretty good at adapting to things. A great demonstration of this was an experiment where congenitally blind people were able to 'see' by sitting in a chair with
265.
by gene-h 9y ago
A kids book from 1972 proposed something similar, deliver packages by weighting them for neutral buoyancy and pumping them down pipelines[0]. [0] http://2010book.tumblr.com/post/324091567/the-restaurant-kit...
266.
by gene-h 9y ago
Honestly, I think it's more worth focusing on the near term ethical problems of such technology rather than the far off ones. So let's say that this project does pan out, and three years down the road we determine a programmer wit
267.
by gene-h 9y ago
My only worry with this is that it might be too focused on developing technology rather than doing basic science to make such things possible. Time and time again trying to develop the tech before the science is ready has not been very frui
268.
by gene-h 9y ago
And if it wasn't for some bad code and quality control, we could have a much better idea of what the monolith is[0]. Heck if the Fobos-Grunt mission was successful we could have up to 200 grams of phobos dirt back on Earth right now. T
269.
by gene-h 9y ago
So that's the beauty of it being a nuclear reactor as opposed to an radioisotopic thermoelectric generator. An RTG will be very radioactive at the time of launch, a nuclear reactor need not be. As long as one doesn't start the rea
270.
by gene-h 9y ago
I recently saw a presentation by some college students that investigated the feasibility of running ocean gliders on nuclear power. The proposal was to use a nice sized chunk of strontium 90 for a radioisotopic thermal generator. This would

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