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NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is keenly interested in nanotechnology – an approach that can reduce the mass and improve the performance of aerospace systems. NASA computer modeling analysis has shown that composites using carbon nanotube reinforcements could lead to a 30 percent reduction in the total mass of a launch vehicle. “No single technology would have that much of an impact to reduce the mass of a launch vehicle by that much,” explains Michael Meador, Program Element Manager for Lightweight Materials and Manufacturing at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Tensile properties of a carbon nanotube fiber-based

Lockheed Martin plans to build the fly the first prototype of a mach 6 SR-72 hypersonic plane as early as 2018. the SR-72 will be a strike and reconnaissance aircraft that tops Mach 6. Hypersonic technologies, including a combined cycle propulsion system that blends a rocket engine and a supersonic jet engine, are now sufficiently advanced to allow the planned SR-72 project to begin. China’s Turbo­aided rocket­ augmented ram/scramjet combined cycle China is looking to free jet test a Turbo­aided rocket­ augmented ram/scramjet combined cycle (TRRE) engine later this year. Concept combines three main propulsion systems—turbine, rockets, ram/scramjets—in just two

China’s economic growth will accelerate because the country will finally get leaders who aren’t scared, a former advisor to China’s central bank said Wednesday. “The most important reason is that there is a new group of officials being appointed … (who will emerge) around the 19th Party Congress which will be in mid to late October,” said Li Daokui, who is now Dean of the Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Li said the Chinese economy will grow 6.9 to 7 percent by 2018 from 6.7 percent in 2017. China posted 6.7 percent GDP growth in 2016, the slowest

NASA’s technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years and testing is due to start in September, 2017 and end in January 2018. NASA Game Changing Development program backed Kilopower, with the goal of building and testing a small fission reactor by Sept. 30, 2017, the end of the current fiscal year. The project is costing about $15 million. The test reactor, which is about 6.5 feet tall (1.9 meters), is designed to produce up to 1 kilowatt of electric power, but to keep costs down, the test unit does not include a full array

The US believes North Korea fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday, two U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News — a significant step forward in Pyongyang’s weapons program. The ICBM, which is believed to be “two-stage,” officials said, would have a range of at least 3,500 miles, and thus be capable of reaching Alaska. Other sources indicate the missile range is 7,000 km (4200 miles). The 4200 mile range missile would cover the entire Asian continent and can reach any target from Hawaii to Australia, India and Scandinavia. The North Korean regime earlier Tuesday claimed it successfully fired a

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) Global Debt Monitor 2017 report shows that growth in global debt has slowed over the past several years, particularly in mature economies. However, Emerging Market economies borrowing more heavily, global debt has set a new record high of USD217 trillion (over 327% of GDP) in early 2017. The IIF report highlighted “rollover” risks, especially in emerging markets that have borrowed in hard currencies such as euros and dollars. Such debts will become costlier to service if Western interest rates rise and currencies strengthen. While U.S. interest rates have already been raised four times, the

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has ambitious plans to put an astronaut on the moon sometime around 2030, according to new proposals from the space agency. This is the first time JAXA has publicly explored sending astronauts anywhere beyond the International Space Station, a JAXA spokeswoman said Friday. The idea is to first join a NASA-led mission in 2025 to build a space station in the moon’s orbit — part of a longer-term effort by NASA to reach Mars. Tokyo hopes that contributing to the multinational mission and sharing Japanese technology will land it a coveted spot at the

India plans to commission its first fast breeder reactor (FBR) by the end of this year at Kalpakkam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. India’s Prototype Fast Breed Reactor will produce 500MW of power. India would be the second country worldwide to have a commercial reactor currently produce power through a fast-breeder reactor. Russia owns the other commercially run FBR, the Beloyarsk Nuclear Plant. Countries such as the US, France, and Japan have also experimented with fast breeder technology programmes. France had a commercial fast breeder (Superphenix reactor) from 1985 to 1998. India’s nuclear power program has been focused

Tesla Motors Model 3 mass-market electric car will begin production on Friday after passing regulatory production requirements. The first car will roll off the assembly line two weeks ahead of schedule. Tesla has scheduled a “handover party” for the first 30 customers for July 28. Planned Model 3 Production by Month in 2017 July 30 August 100 Sept 1500 Oct 5000 est Nov 11000 est Dec 20000 Looks like we can reach 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in Dec — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 3, 2017 Handover party for first 30 customer Model 3's on the 28th! Production grows

NASA approved the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) which will fly a spacecraft into an asteroid and measure the deflection. NASA is also developing a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and use it in an enhanced gravity tractor asteroid deflection demonstration. The spacecraft will then redirect the multi-ton boulder into a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it and return with samples in the mid-2020s. This Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) is part of NASA’s plan to advance the new technologies and spaceflight experience needed for a

The first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — is moving from concept development to preliminary design phase. Artist concept of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. DART, which is moving to preliminary design phase, would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL “DART would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate what’s known as the kinetic impactor technique — striking the asteroid to shift its orbit — to defend against a potential future asteroid impact,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense

Carnival of Space 516 is up at links through space. Planetaria – New Horizons team successfully observes transit of next KBO target, and clouds on Pluto. Images of seven possible clouds on Pluto, as seen by New Horizons. The other bright layers are haze in the thin atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI Nextbigfuture – Spacex had two successful launches in one weekend and has new titanium fins able to handle indefinite number of flights with no service Nextbigfuture – If EMdrive is real and scales with Q factor then we get almost Star Trek level Technology Nextbigfuture – Solar powered EMdrive

The IMF has increased the projected GDP growth for China to 6.7 percent in 2017 and average annual growth of 6.4 percent between 2018-20. Previous predictions from the IMF had China at 6.2% or less GDP growth from 2018 to 2020. Based on the lower projections the IMF had China with purchasing power parity GDP increasing for $16600 now to $23960 in 2022. If China matched the improved GDP growth then per capita GDP would be about $24800 in 2022. It would still another 10 to 15 years beyond 2022 (2032 to 2037) for China to move up from slightly

China’s launch of a new heavy-lift rocket, the Long March-5 Y2, carrying what the government said was its heaviest ever satellite, failed on Sunday. The same rocket type had been expected to take China’s latest lunar probe to the Moon this year and to return with samples. It is not clear how the timetable for that mission could be affected by the failed launch. Last year, China had a successful launch of its first Long March 5.

SpaceX is looking to extend its soaring flight rate with a third Falcon rocket launch in nine days, as the company works off a backlog of missions that piled up after an accident 10 months ago. The company’s 39th Falcon 9 rocket is being prepared for liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:36 p.m. EDT Sunday (July 2). The launch of Intelsat 35e to geostationary orbit some 22,300 miles up means the booster will not have enough fuel to make a return landing. Spacex is on pace to launch more than 20 Falcon rockets this year, including

China is has nearly completed build up of missile shelters, radar/communications facilities, and other infrastructure on Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi Reefs. In February, AMTI (Asian Maritime Initiative, CSIS) identified eight hardened shelters with retractable roofs at each of the Big Three, which Reuters had earlier reported would house missile launchers. China has now built four additional shelters at Fiery Cross. The annual Pentagon military assessment expects China to base three regiments of military aircraft on the various island bases. The US military has had numerous close passes of the islands to show the US exercises freedom of navigation. A

Michael Hippke has calculated how to have multi-megabyte communication speeds between a laser pushed sail probe and a telescope at our solar systems gravitational lensing point. Previously Hippke had determined how to use stellar photon pressures of the stellar triple α Cen A, B, and C (Proxima) together with gravity assists to decelerate incoming solar sails from Earth. Hippke works out the problems of interstellar communication and communication using the gravitational lensing points in more detail. There have been past work on interstellar communication using gravitational lens for improved performance as reported here at Nextbigfuture. There was a 238 page

China continues to have an economy that is growing at about 6 to 6.5% over the next three years and about 5-6% for a few years afterward. China’s middle and affluent classes continue to grow. This has and will continue to see a growing insurance and financial market. China is shifting from family and village support to insurance and other developed approaches. China’s health and life insurance markets will more than double by 2030. It will likely double by about 2026 from 2017 levels. The Chinese insurance market has grown at a furious pace in recent years. Between 2000 and

Stars exploding as supernovae are the main sources of heavy chemical elements in the Universe. In these star explosions, radioactive atomic nuclei are synthesized in the hot, innermost regions during the explosion and can thus provide insights into the unobservable physical processes that initiate the blast. Using elaborate computer simulations, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) and the research institute RIKEN in Japan were able to explain the recently measured spatial distributions of radioactive titanium and nickel in Cassiopeia A, a roughly 340 year old gaseous remnant of a nearby supernova. The computer models

Errors in how scientists account for water loss from leaves may be skewing estimates of how much energy plants make through photosynthesis and cause errors in the models of how individual leaves function and even of the global climate. The errors are particularly pronounced when a plant’s water supply is limited — a condition of increasing interest as plant breeders and climate scientists grapple with the effects of global warming. Researchers have long assumed that the main way that plants lose water is through leaf pores called stomata. When water is abundant, the stomata open wide to let carbon dioxide

IBM scientists have made carbon nanotube transistors smaller and faster silicon transistors. Carbon nanotube transistors have long had the potential to be better than silicon, but this is the first time when that promise has been realized. Now IBM and others will have to scale up superior carbon nanotube devices. IBM scientists have been experimenting with carbon nanotubes, rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms just 1 nanometer, or a billionth of a meter, in diameter. But difficulties working with the material have meant that, for optimal performance, nanotube transistors have to be even larger than current silicon transistors, which are about

Lockheed Martin is using turbine rocket combined cycle (TRCC) to build a mach 6-10 hypersonic plane. The TRCC is an engine that switches between turbofan, ramjet and scramjets for subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flight. The TRCC engine will be tested on a fighter-sized flight testbed by 2020. They would then try to develop a Mach 6, unmanned spyplane by 2030 that would perform the same role as the old SR-71 Blackbird. The hypersonic spyplane would enter highly contested and defended airspace at altitudes of 18 and 62 miles, using its speed to outrun enemy defenses. Hypersonic planes could fire hypersonic

At asphalt volcanoes in the Gulf of Mexico that spew oil, gas and tar, mussels and sponges live in symbiosis with bacteria providing them with food. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and colleagues from the USA have now discovered deep-sea animals living in symbiosis with bacteria that use oil as an energy source and appear to thrive on short-chained alkanes in the oil. According to the researchers, bacteria closely related to the symbionts, which bloomed during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, used this ability to degrade the oil in the sea. Oil forms the basis for

The United States announced six goals to achieve global energy dominance. 1. Revive and expand nuclear energy sector 2. Address barriers to financing of overseas coal energy plants 3. Build an oil pipeline to Mexico 4. Sell more American natural gas to South Korea 5. Approve two long-term applications to export additional natural gas from the Lake Charles LNG terminal in Louisiana 6. Release new offshore oil and gas leasing program. The US will perform a complete review of US nuclear energy policy to help find new ways to revitalize nuclear energy. Nuclear Energy Institute president and CEO Maria Korsnick

Carnegie Mellon University scientists can now use brain activation patterns to identify complex thoughts, such as, “The witness shouted during the trial.” This latest research led by CMU’s Marcel Just builds on the pioneering use of machine learning algorithms with brain imaging technology to “mind read.” The findings indicate that the mind’s building blocks for constructing complex thoughts are formed by the brain’s various sub-systems and are not word-based. Published in Human Brain Mapping and funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the study offers new evidence that the neural dimensions of concept representation are universal across people

Scientists working in „connectomics“, a research field occupied with the reconstruction of neuronal networks in the brain, are aiming at completely mapping of the millions or billions of neurons found in mammalian brains. In spite of impressive advances in electron microscopy, the key bottleneck for connectomics is the amount of human labor required for the data analysis. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, have now developed reconstruction software that allows researchers to fly through the brain tissue at unprecedented speed. Together with the startup company scalable minds they created webKnossos, which turns researchers into

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute/AEI) in Potsdam found that hidden dimensions – as predicted by string theory – could influence gravitational waves. In a recently published paper they study the consequences of extra dimensions on these ripples in space-time, and predict whether their effects could be detected. LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves from a black-hole binary in September 2015 has opened a new window onto the universe. Now it looks like with this new observing tool physicists cannot only trace black holes and other exotic astrophysical objects but also understand gravity itself.

New finds of fossils and stone tools from the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, push back the origins of our species by one hundred thousand years and show that by about 300 thousand years ago important changes in our biology and behavior had taken place across most of Africa. The first of our kind. Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils. Dated to 300 thousand years ago these early Homo sapiens already have a modern-looking face that falls within

MIT engineers have fabricated a functional dialysis membrane from a sheet of graphene — a single layer of carbon atoms, linked end to end in hexagonal configuration like that of chicken wire. The graphene membrane, about the size of a fingernail, is less than 1 nanometer thick. (The thinnest existing memranes are about 20 nanometers thick.) The team’s membrane is able to filter out nanometer-sized molecules from aqueous solutions up to 10 times faster than state-of-the-art membranes, with the graphene itself being up to 100 times faster. “Only 10 percent of the membrane’s area is accessible, but even with that

Roger Shawyer, SPR Ltd, invented the EMdrive and recently gave an EMdrive presentation to the UK Defence Academy Shrivenham. EmDrive is the first true Propellantless Propulsion technology. High frequency electrical energy is directly converted to thrust. It is a resonant microwave cavity, shaped to obtain different group velocities at each end, and thus achieve a force difference as the EM wave reflects off each end plate. EmDrive is not a reactionless thruster, it is simply a new class of electrical machine. Conventional microwave technology limits the maximum Q of resonators to around 50,000, giving a specific thrust of 200 mN/kW

The nuclear industry brought more than 9 GWe of new plant on line last year, the largest annual increase in 25 years putting it on track to achieve the Harmony goal of providing 25% of electricity in 2050 using 1000 GWe of new capacity. In the World Nuclear Performance Report 2017, the Association detailed power generation and construction achievements for the previous year. The ten new reactors which came on line in 2016 added 9.1 GWe to global capacity and took the total nuclear capacity supplying electricity to the grid past 350 GWe for the first time ever. This does

Phase 1 of DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program concluded recently following a series of obstacle-course flight tests in central Florida. Over four days, three teams of DARPA-supported researchers huddled under shade tents in the sweltering Florida sun, fine-tuning their sensor-laden quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during the intervals between increasingly difficult runs. DARPA’s FLA program is advancing technology to enable small unmanned quadcopters to fly autonomously through cluttered buildings and obstacle-strewn environments at fast speeds (up to 20 meters per second, or 45 mph) using onboard cameras and sensors as “eyes” and smart algorithms to self-navigate. Potential applications for

A BAE railgun system is undergoing multi-shot rep-rate operations at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, in Virginia. Railgun firing test will continue over the next three years. The railgun system has been tested at Dahlgren’s railgun advanced research facility since November. The Navy has successfully tested a next-generation 32-megajoule railgun. The US Navy is gradually increasing the railgun firing rate and energy level. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on seapower and projection forces, said * the pulsed power units, the batteries are getting smaller and are getting more efficient * more shots are

GTM Research has found that India’s system competitive bidding, has produced record low solar pricing. India has utility PV system pricing of 65 cents per watt. This is 11 cents per watt cheaper than in China. Solar energy cost in the USA and Germany are nearly double the price of solar in India. The project is for the global price of solar power installations to continue to fall at about 4.4% per year. However, policy changes in regions or countries like the USA could increase prices where the policy has an impact.

Chinese battery companies have plans for additional factories with the capacity to pump out more than 120 gigawatt-hours a year by 2021, according to a report published this week by Bloomberg Intelligence. That’s enough to supply batteries for around 1.5 million Tesla Model S vehicles or 13.7 million Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrids per year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In 2018, Tesla’s Gigafactory will produce up to 35 gigawatt-hours of battery cells annually. Roughly 55 percent of global lithium-ion battery production is already based in China, compared with 10 percent in the U.S. By 2021, China’s share is forecast

A study in the journal nature makes the case for maximum human lifespan increasing to 125 without radical life extension. Some previous work by other researchers argue that there is a limit to human lifespan of around 115 years, with their main rationale being that the maximum reported age at death (MRAD) in Japan, France, the United Kingdom. It is 53 years until years until 2070. Researchers looked at how many 72 year old Japanese women there are now and used age specific actuarial model to forecast that at least one of those women should be alive in 2070. The

Space Battleship Yamato is a major anime movie series. The original Yamato movie in Japan eclipsed that of the local release of Star Wars. It was followed by over a dozen movie sequels. After aliens attack in 2199, the Earth secretly builds a massive spaceship inside the ruins of the gigantic Japanese battleship Yamato which lies exposed at the former bottom of the ocean location where she was sunk in World War II. This becomes the “Space Battleship Yamato” for which the story is titled. The new ship gets a space warp drive, called the “wave motion engine”, and a

1. Facebook has reached 2 billion users 2. Google's YouTube’s 1.5 billion 3. Facebook's WhatsApp 1.2 billion 4. Facebook Messenger 1.2 billion 5. WeChat had 938 million users in May 2017 (23% growth YoY) 6. QQ 861 million in Q1 2017, a decrease of 2% YoY 7. Instagram 700 million 8. Weibo 340 million 9. Twitter’s 328 million 10. Skype is at about 300 million 11. Snapchat 255 million 12. Line 217 million at Jan 2017

Microsoft has commented on the newest ransomeware attack. The attack is effecting airlines, banks, and utilities across Europe. “Our initial analysis found that the ransomware uses multiple techniques to spread, including one which was addressed by a security update previously provided for all platforms from Windows XP to Windows 10 (MS17-010),” a spokesperson said in a statement. “As ransomware also typically spreads via email, customers should exercise caution when opening unknown files. We are continuing to investigate and will take appropriate action to protect customers Kapersky indicated that is it a new strain of ransomeware virus The latest from @kaspersky

A new interactive design tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute enables both novices and experts to build customized legged or wheeled robots using 3-D-printed components and off-the-shelf actuators. Using a familiar drag-and-drop interface, individuals can choose from a library of components and place them into the design. The tool suggests components that are compatible with each other, offers potential placements of actuators and can automatically generate structural components to connect those actuators. Once the design is complete, the tool provides a physical simulation environment to test the robot before fabricating it, enabling users to iteratively adjust the design

U.S. Navy’s future unmanned tanker will use the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System developed for F35 and other jet landings on US aircraft carriers. The Navy will use the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System, or JPALS for short, to land the MQ-25 unmanned aircraft onto carriers without a human at the controls. Known as the Stingray, the Navy’s future unmanned carrier aviation air system will provide inflight refueling to the U.S. fleet’s fighters, allowing them to operate at far greater ranges than before. “When you’re talking about auto-landing a flying unmanned tanker onto an aircraft carrier, then the

OneWeb Satellites, a 50-50 joint venture between would-be constellation operator OneWeb and satellite manufacturer Airbus, has inaugurated the first serial-production line for its planned 900 communications satellites for OneWeb’s low Earth orbit constellation. “This facility is a pivotal step toward our mission to build a new global knowledge infrastructure, accessible to everyone,” said OneWeb founder and Executive Chairman Greg Wyler. “Over the past year, and thanks to the energizing support of our partners, we’ve greatly accelerated our technical progress. With this facility, we will be able to continuously iterate on the design of our satellites, launch new satellites within hours

For the first time ever, astronomers at The University of New Mexico say they’ve been able to observe and measure the orbital motion between two supermassive black holes hundreds of millions of light years from Earth – a discovery more than a decade in the making. UNM Department of Physics & Astronomy graduate student Karishma Bansal is the first-author on the paper, ‘Constraining the Orbit of the Supermassive Black Hole Binary 0402+379’, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. She, along with UNM Professor Greg Taylor and colleagues at Stanford, the U.S. Naval Observatory and the Gemini Observatory, have been studying

Spacex had two successful launches this past weekend and successfully recovered the first stages of each launch. New titanium grid fins worked even better than expected. Should be capable of an indefinite number of flights with no service. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 25, 2017 Launch at 1:25 delivering 10 satellites for Iridium. Droneship repositioned due to extreme weather. Will be tight. https://t.co/6ZcSG29B74 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 25, 2017 via GIPHY

Stable flight of a laser sail is an essential requirement of beam-driven propulsion. Centauri Dreams talked to James Benford about work towards stable beam flight. It places considerable demand upon the shape of the sail and beam. James Benford takes a hard look at where we are now in the matter of sail stability. He and his brother Gregory have analyzed it in laboratory work. There is a great deal we still don’t know. There is the need for a dedicated test facility in which deep analysis and experimentation can proceed. Dr Benford is the Chairman of the Sail Subcommittee

A high energy laser mounted on an Apache AH-64 attack helicopter acquired and hit an unmanned target. The test was conducted by Raytheon and the U.S. Army Apache Program Management Office in collaboration with U.S. Special Operations Command at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. It was the first time a fully integrated laser system successfully shot a target from a rotary-wing aircraft over a wide variety of flight regimes, altitudes and air speeds, proving the feasibility of laser attack from Apache. The system tracked and directed energy on a stationary target at a slant range of 1.4 kilometers. (Slant

Caltech engineers have developed a new camera design that replaces the lenses with an ultra-thin optical phased array (OPA). The OPA does computationally what lenses do using large pieces of glass: it manipulates incoming light to capture an image. Lenses have a curve that bends the path of incoming light and focuses it onto a piece of film or, in the case of digital cameras, an image sensor. The OPA has a large array of light receivers, each of which can individually add a tightly controlled time delay (or phase shift) to the light it receives, enabling the camera to

At the Symposium on Computational Geometry in July, Erik Demaine and Tomohiro Tachi of the University of Tokyo will announce the completion of a quest that began with a 1999 paper: a universal algorithm for folding origami shapes that guarantees a minimum number of seams. “In 1999, we proved that you could fold any polyhedron, but the way that we showed how to do it was very inefficient,” Demaine says. “It’s efficient if your initial piece of paper is super-long and skinny. But if you were going to start with a square piece of paper, then that old method would