These holes full of rubble would sure slow me down on the expressway, even if they are a little bit aggressive as a speed deterent. If you hit one of these at more than a a few miles per hour, you would risk breaking an axle, or at least blowing out a few tires.
I took a trip to Houston recently for a friend’s wedding. While there, he gave me a pretty extensive tour of NASA’s facilities. We saw three things that really surprised me. Read the rest of this entry »
This week’s Economist nicely presents the current status of global nuclear power development.
The Generation IV International Forum (GIF, a consortium of 10+ countries) has drawn up plans for six new reactor designs. From these six, they will whittle down to the design that becomes the standard for the fourth generation of nuclear power plants. These six designs range from merely updated designs to entirely new types of fuels and coolants.
Amazing video (embedded below) of James May from Top Gear taking a ride to the edge of space (70K feet) in a U2 Spyplane. The flight suit looks like that of an astronaut and plane looks like a menacing bird. It’s 100 foot wingspan is balanced by inline wheels when landing. The entire system is from the 1950’s. At one point James realizes that he and his pilot are the highest people in the world except for a few astronauts on the International Space Station. Quite stunning. I can’t wait until we can take trips to edge of our atmosphere. It’s not far off my fellow engineers and space enthusiasts. Read the rest of this entry »
Scientific American has created a ridiculously interesting infographic on sustainable energy sources. The article outlines a plan to get the world off of fossil fuels in 20 years. That’s 100% clean, sustainable energy by 2030. Although not feasible for a number of economic and political reasons, it is still damn interesting to see how the authors (Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi) plan this out. Give it a good read, there are a few surprises in there, particularly re: wind vs. solar.
Let’s face it — engineers see a lot of numbers in their everyday jobs. While generally comfortable with math and numbers, I doubt many of us take the time to actually visualize what those numbers actually mean.
The speed of light is a great example. Every engineer knows that it’s 299,792,486 m/s^2. In more common (for us Americans) terms, it’s about 186,000 miles per second. But how fast is that, exactly?
Well, the moon is a good example. While really close to Earth in astronomical units, it would be a pretty long walk to reach there, if such a journey were possible. But humans have been to the moon and around the far side. It’s as far as we’ve ever managed to travel in one journey. So how far is it, in relation to the speed of light?
Above is how a basic info graphic explaining how a railgun works. Below is the General Atomic’s new Blitzer Railgun’s test apparatus.
While not as huge as some of the vacuum tube-based mainframes of the 1940’s, it was still pretty damn large for an accounting calculator.
Here are some still-shots of the revolutionary machine:
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Civil engineers slow traffic with huge holes in the road