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US based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, became the first private company to success fully put a payload into orbit.
Their liquid fuel rocket, Falcon1 put a payload into orbit from a US military facility on Omelek Island in the Kwajalein Atoll yesterday.
It was their fouth try, but if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Robert Heinlein would have been proud of their success.
Filed under: Space | Tagged: Private Space Venture, Robert Heinlein, Space | 2 Comments »
Ok, it’s a little thicker, but still way cool. Tiny web server aren’t that new. I remember seeing webservers that fit in a matchbox years ago.
The fact that you can etch this board yourself and that it uses a SD card instead of eeprom is slick.
Filed under: Gadget, Internet | Tagged: Gadget, Internet, web server | 2 Comments »
No embryo required. So say the researchers at Harvard Medical School. They are claiming to have developed a method that will produced stem cells from adults that are “potent” as embryonic stem cells.
This method has a benifit over embryonic stem cells. These adult stem cells could be grown from a patients own tissue. This would allow them to be transplanted without triggering immune rejection.
This method also avoids the ethical issues many have with harvesting embryonic stem cells.
Filed under: biotech | Tagged: adult stem cells, biotech, Harvard Medical School, medical, stem cells | Leave a comment »
The interesting twist to their technology is that method doesn’t use a plant that people typically use for food (like corn, sugarcane or sugar beats). So not only doesn’t this solution use food products, it doesn’t require actual farm land (i.e. land used to grow food) to produce the fuel.
Sapphire claims that they can set up a production facility in the desert. The steady sunlight is an important factor in their production, and the salt water can be shipped in.
Their stated goal is to product 10,000 barrels a day, which in the national economy isn’t that much. It is however, 10,000 barrels a day that isn’t pumped out of the ground, and will be produced domestically.
Filed under: biofuel, Energy | Tagged: alternate fuel, biotech, gasoline | 4 Comments »
Electical solar power at the individual homeowner level is no longer the exclusive realm of the uber-ecowarrior or the Heinlein inspired individualist determined to live “off the grid.”
It’s mainstream now. The concrete proof of this has arrived. Solar Power Panel Rustlers!
Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics.
Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints.
Filed under: Energy, solar power | Tagged: crime, Energy, solar energy | 3 Comments »
Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge are working to get electic cars to market. It looks like Chevy is going to beat to the market with the Volt though.
These new entries are still “Concept Cars,” so I’m taking their “late 2010” release date with a chunk of salt.
Keep in mind that introducing a lot of plug in hybrids or pure electric cars into the market is either going to require new sources of power (home based cheap solar and industrial scale Nuclear for example) or some serious inovations in electrical grid management.
Filed under: alternate fuel cars, Energy, Nuclear Power, solar power | Tagged: electric car, Energy, energy grid, environment | 4 Comments »
The MIT Tech Review has a story about an Atlanta, GA based start up named Suniva.
What makes Sunvia’s product interesting is that they have made the manufacturing process cheaper. They are squeezing a little more efficiency out of their cells (20%, which is up from the industry standard of 17%), but the cost reduction is the big story.
With Sunvia’s process, electricity from solar power can be produced for 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. That is a competative rate in the United States. Lower costs will result in more solar power being used to generate electricity. More use of solar power on a small scale will also help on a larger utility scale.
Cheaper electric solar panels will result in more individual homes adopting them. The more homes that can power their A/C system from solar during the summer, the less demand there will be on the utility grid during peak hours. Solar panels could be used to charge a set of batteries during the day that would then charge a plug in hybrid car during the night.
Filed under: Energy | Tagged: clean energy, Energy, solar power | 5 Comments »
The MIT Tech Review has a story about a new process for turning plant sugars into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Another interesting aspect of this story that the byproducts of the process can be used to create other industrial chemicals and plastics. This further reduces independence on fossil based oil products.
The process under development will “employ chemical reactions instead of microbial fermentation. They use catalysts at high temperatures to convert glucose into hydrocarbon biofuels. The process works thousands of times faster than microbes do because of the higher temperatures, so it requires smaller, cheaper reactors, Dumesic says. The catalysts and reformer systems that they use are similar to those used in oil refineries, which would also make the process simpler.”
Simple is good.
Filed under: biofuel, Energy | Tagged: alternate fuel | Leave a comment »
It looks it could be. 12 year old William Yuan has a project entitled “A Highly-Efficient 3-Dimensional Nanotube Solar Cell for Visible and UV Light.”
The kicker here is that his system harnesses UV light as well as visible light. Current solar cells only work off the visible light.
The trick will be finding a partner who won’t screw him.
Filed under: Energy | Tagged: clean energy, invention, solar power | Leave a comment »
Tesla Motors announced their second model, the Type S. They are following up thier popular roadster model with a sedan. The Type S is planned to sell for about $60,000. That’s half the price of their current Roadster model.
The Type is also a purely electric car with a projected range of 200 miles on a single charge.
Filed under: alternate fuel cars | Tagged: electric car, sedan, Telsa | Leave a comment »
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