natelieportman: Natalie Portman by David Slijper for Elle UK...

http://ift.tt/1iRSeAO

natelieportman:

Natalie Portman by David Slijper for Elle UK (February 2010)

Reposted via F&O Forgotten Nobility

caferacerpasion: 🏁 caferacerpasion.com 🏁 Honda CX500 #CafeRacer...

http://ift.tt/1iRSeAO

caferacerpasion:

🏁 caferacerpasion.com 🏁 Honda CX500 #CafeRacer “BBCR507’‘by BBCR engineering [TAGS] #caferacerpasion #honda #caferacersofinstagram #caferacerxxx #caferacerporn #caferacerculture

Reposted via F&O Forgotten Nobility

Reaction Engines UK plans integrated hypersonic engine tests by 2020-2021 with joint strike fighter sized engine

http://ift.tt/2aB80ot

Reaction Engines of the UK has scaled back its design for the Sabre engine to bring about a demonstrator that is more affordable and better suited to early applications, including a potential X-plane.

The Oxfordshire-based firm has been developing a turbine that combines both jet and rocket technologies to achieve rates five times the speed of sound, to fly anywhere in the world in just four hours.

Rather than aiming for a demonstrator that can achieve more than 150,000 lb thrust, the firm will instead now target an engine size capable of roughly 44,000 lb thrust, according to Aviation Week Network.

Reaction Engines has gotten funding from the UK and EU government and has partnered with BAE systems.

In 2015 BAE agreed to buy a 20% stake for 20.3 million pounds as part of an agreement to help develop Reaction's Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) hypersonic engine designed to propel the Skylon orbiter. The shift is likely due to the increased interest from the United States' Air Force Research Laboratory.

Reaction Engines has gotten about $10 million to continue work on the SABRE engine from the ESA. $80 million was pledged by the British government for the engine.

The US Air Force could provided billions if Reaction Engines becomes the favored approach to achieve hypersonic fighter and spy planes.

A smaller engine could be used in multistage vehicles or hypersonic craft the size of an X-plane.

‘It is now more affordable, more rapid to execute and will potentially find its first application quicker,’ Reaction CEO Mark Thomas told Aviation Week Network.

‘It’s a quarter of Sabre, effectively. In an application for something like Skylon, the engine would have four combustion chambers connecting to the single nozzle, a bypass system and the same turbomachinery, intake and heat exchanger.

Currently rockets have to carry liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to power them and the cost of carrying this heavy fuel is expensive.

The new engine creates its own liquid oxygen by cooling air entering the engine from 1,000°C to minus 150°C in a hundredth of a second – six times faster than the blink of an eye – without creating ice blockages.

Along with a JSF-sized engine for the ground demonstrator, the firm plans to solve the power gap between air-breathing and rocket engines.

While the engine is still in the design phase, the firm plans to see three main test phases stretching into the 2020s.

It’s hoped that the first test will take place within the next 12-15 months, the CEO tells AWN, with a focus on the heat exchanger and the core.

The team will move on to the integrated engine tests in 2020-2021.

Russia plans to have mach 5 hypersonic missiles by the early 2020s Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation hopes to create a weapon that would be able

to hit targets at hypersonic speeds by the early 2020s, according to a statement by the corporation’s general director Boris Obnosov.

The corporation is now working on this project together with scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Advanced Research Foundation under the Military-Industrial Commission in a bid to produce a missile capable of reaching Mach 5, or around 3,800 miles per hour – five times the speed of sound.

SOURCES - RBTH, Daily Mail UK, wikipedia

Reposted via Next Big Future

Nootropic : Methylene Blue – The Mood, Memory and Energy Enhancer

iMac is Getting All Touchy Feely!

http://ift.tt/heniQP

The iMac Flow concept connects users with their computer like never before! From the fingerprint security scanner (similar to that of the iPhone) to the full-screen, multi-touch display, the design is highly focused on tactile input.

The touch display allows users to work more efficiently and faster with everyday tasks. You can connect specific settings and actions to every dactylogram. This opens limitless opportunities when working with office applications, graphic design and video games. With all that touching, this all-new iMac also features a system to accumulate additional energy using heat from human hands for supplemental power!

Its full screen display is made of sapphire glass with liquid hardware inside. All additional ports and connectors are removed, leaving the final unit as aesthetically minimal as possible. Interaction with other gadgets requires wireless connectivity and synchronization between devices.

Designer: Herman Haydin

Reposted via Yanko Design

Robert Zubrin's Nuclear Salt Water Rocket Design

http://ift.tt/2aB80ot

Robert Zubrin is best known for his advocacy of the manned exploration of Mars.

Zubrin also had a design for interplanetary propulsion called the Nuclear Salt Water Rocket.

A nuclear salt-water rocket (NSWR) is a theoretical type of nuclear thermal rocket. A conservative design for the rocket would be fueled by salts of 20 percent enriched uranium or plutonium. The solution would be contained in a bundle of pipes coated in boron carbide (for its properties of neutron absorption). Through a combination of the coating and space between the pipes, the contents would not reach critical mass until the solution is pumped into a reaction chamber, thus reaching a critical mass, and being expelled through a nozzle to generate thrust.

The low 20% enrichment level is what is permitted for nuclear energy reactors. The system would achieve an ISP of about 67300. This would be about 20 times more efficient than most chemical rockets. Exhaust velocity would be 66 km/second.

The 300 ton design has a thrust of 2.9 Mlb, and a T/W of 40 is assumed. The specific impulse is 6730 s, and the tankage fraction is 0.04. The very high thrusts inherent in the NSWR causes this system to depart LEO with an acceleration of 3.4 Earth g's. The total jet power output of the engine is 427,000 MW.

The NSWRs is like a hybrid between fission reactors and fission bombs.

In the mission described, the NSWR used 83.6 tonnes of
aqueous propellant (41.8 for each of TSI and EOI), 16.7 tonnes out which is uranium.

Of this uranium, 3.34 tonnes are actually fissile U235. This is rather a large amount of U235 to expend on a single mission but if NSWRs should come into use, large amounts of Pu239 or U233 could be bred (out of U238 or cheap Th232, respectively) in either fission breeder reactors or (much better) fusion/fission hybrid reactors. These fissiles could serve equally well in an NSWR as U235 and could be made cheap enough that propellant cost would not be a significant problem.

The exhaust of the NSWR is highly radioactive, as no attempt has been made to retain the fission products within the engine, however, with an exhaust velocity of 66 km/s, the radioactive products are emitted with a velocity far exceeding the escape velocity of the Earth and, providing the engine was directed to thrust perpendicular to the radial vector connecting the spacecraft in LEO to the Earth's centre (i.e. tangent to the direction of circular orbital velocity), the amount of contaminant reaching the Earth could be insignificant It is thus appropriate to contemplate using the NSWR for LEO departure. Of course, if public concern prevented such an application, NSWRs could still be used on high energy missions by boosting the spacecraft first to a hyperbolic excess velocity of say 3 km/s with an NTR, and then firing the NSWR a 4 days later when the spacecraft was a million kilometres away from Earth

The potential ultimate performance is calculated with more optimistic assumptions.

Consider for example, an NSWR utilizing a 2% uranium bromide solution with 90% enriched U233, and obtaining a 90% fission yield. Assuming a nozzle efficiency of 0.9, the exhaust velocity of this system will be 4725 km/s, or about 1.575% of the speed of light (a specific impulse of 482,140 seconds). If the 300 tonne Titan mission spacecraft is endowed with 2700 tonnes of propellant (for a mass ratio of 10) a maximum velocity of 3.63% of speed of light could be obtained, allowing

the ship to reach Alpha Centauri in about 120 years.

Deceleration could be accomplished without the use of substantial amounts of rocket propellant by using a magnetic sail (or "magsail") to create drag against the interstellar medium.

In a more ambitious approach, one could envisage a group of interstellar emigrants selecting a small ice asteroid with a mass of 30,000 tonnes and using it as propellant (together with 7,500 tonnes of uranium obtained elsewhere) for a 300 tonne spacecraft. In this case the ship could obtain a final velocity of about 7.62% light speed, and reach Alpha Centauri in about 60 years.

Reposted via Next Big Future

This 3-Mile-Long Nazi Resort is Being Resurrected as a Luxury Getaway

Investigation confirms Russian missiles shot down Malaysian jet over Ukraine

http://ift.tt/2aB80ot
A Dutch-led investigation team said Wednesday that the surface-to-air missile that downed a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people aboard, came from Russia and was fired from territory held by pro-Moscow separatists.

Investigators stopped short of directly accusing Russia of complicity in the attack on the Malaysia Airlines jet, and declined to name any suspects publicly.

The evidence was based on intercepted telephone conversations between separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, as well as open-source photographs and satellite data, investigators said.

“It may be concluded that Flight MH17 was shot down on 17 July 2014 by a 9M38 series missile launched from a BUK trailer.

Read more »

Reposted via Next Big Future

Elite Dangerous concept art by Badger

http://ift.tt/pzChxX
Bunch of concept art from Elite Dangerous by Josh Atack. An interview with Josh.
































Keywords: concept spaceship art design illustration digital paintings by josh atack badger badgertracks.net for massively multiplayer space epic elite dangerous video game developed and published by Frontier Developments
Reposted via concept ships

China's next stealth fighter the FC31 Gyrfalcon will continue to close the technology gap with the USA

http://ift.tt/2aB80ot

China is working on a second prototype of its FC31 (aka J31) fighter.

It is a smaller jet than the China's J20. China should have 12 of the J20s built by 2017. The FC31 could begin deployment around 2022.

The

FC-31 Gyrfalcon is a twin-engine, mid-size fifth-generation jet fighter currently under development by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation.

New scaled models displayed at the Zhuhai Airshow revealed several planned differences from the first 31001 flying prototype. The differences include a stealthier cockpit, a next-generation helmet mounted sight, holographic cockpit displays, EOTS, aerodynamic revisions and more powerful engines.

The 01 prototype powered by two indigenous WS-13E turbofan engines flew for the first time on July 1, 2016.

The National Interest has an analysis of the F35 vs the J-31 Recently revealed details concerning China’s Shenyang FC-31 fighter

suggest that the aircraft not only looks like the Pentagon’s Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), but it also offers comparable aerodynamic performance. But the real question is how far along Beijing has come in the development of subsystems like radars and engines. Moreover, there is the question of how well Chinese industry can integrate all of those disparate technologies into an operational aircraft.

The Chinese FC31 jet was based on stolen JSF (F35) technology—and could eventually be more or less a match for the American jet. “I think they’ll eventually be on par with our fifth-gen jets—as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well,” a senior U.S. military aviator said.

The F-22 might be able to generate a kill ratio of thirty-to-one today against the Chinese J-11 Flanker, but the U.S. Air Force has only 120 combat coded Raptors. The Raptor might only generate a three-to-one kill ratio against the J-31 or J-20, which means attrition will take a serious toll on U.S. forces.

The J-31 is likely to fall short is on avionics—the aircraft’s radar, infrared search and track, data-links and especially sensor fusion. This has been hard for the USA as well.

Stealth aircraft are built to very tight tolerances—one ten-thousandth of an inch was the standard for the F-22 and the F-35 has tighter requirements still. The Chinese have never demonstrated the ability to build to those kinds of tolerances.

Even if the J-31 doesn’t quite match the F-35 technologically, one area the Chinese are currently investing in is a new long-range missile called the PL-15. It appears to be very similar to the European Meteor beyond visual range missile. Like the Meteor, the Chinese weapon is a ramjet powered missile, which should give it very long range and much better terminal phase performance than the venerable AIM-120 AMRAAM. The AMRAAM’s rocket motor burns for a few seconds and it coasts the rest of the way to the target—like most air-to-air weapons. Further, the AMRAAM is highly vulnerable to digital radio frequency memory jamming and needs to be replaced.

Russia and China are not likely to attempt to develop an all fifth-generation fighter fleet—instead, for the foreseeable future, the derivatives of the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker air superiority fighter will make up the bulk of their tactical air arsenals. The most potent Flanker derivative is the Su-35, which is a much-improved version with vastly improved avionics, engines and airframe. In the years ahead, this latest Flanker-E is likely to proliferate around the world.

Unlike a Raptor, which was designed from the outset as an air-to-air killer par excellence—the F-35 was not. The Raptor combines a very stealthy airframe with a high altitude ceiling and supersonic cruise speeds in excess of Mach 1.8. Compared to that, the F-35 can just barely touch Mach 1.6 in full afterburner. Further, the F-22 possesses excellent maneuverability for close-in visual-range dogfights––it crushes the competition in terms of turn rate, radius, angle-of-attack and energy addition at all altitudes.

Whereas a four-ship flight of Raptors cruising at high supersonic speeds in the rarified atmosphere above 50,000 feet can effectively choose when and where to fight, a flight of slower, lower-flying F-35s might find themselves forced to react to better-performing enemy planes if they are not careful.

SOURCES - Wikipedia, National Interest, chinese-military-aviation

Reposted via Next Big Future