Category Archives: Science and Technology

Sci-Tech: The SailRocket goes where no sail boat has gone before

Here’s a fascinating article about the Vestas Sailrocket, which broke what was considered a hard limit on sail boat speed:  How a Boat-Plane Hybrid Shattered the Sound Barrier of Sailing – Autopia/Wired.com

When I traveled to Namibia a year before, I had met a daredevil yachtsman with his eyes on a big prize. But now that he has it, all Larsen can talk about is the hydrodynamic frontier. “What we are discovering is that things are not as black-and-white going through this barrier as we thought they were,” he says. The mixture of air, vapor, and very high speed water wrapping itself around a boat at the limit is dynamic and extremely hard to model by computer or even simulate in a high-speed flow tank. To understand it, you must explore it directly, through experimentation. You need SailRocket.

Sci-Tech: Vorbeck graphene speeds up Li-ion battery charging

Vorbeck Materials has used its graphene based material to improve lithium batteries for significantly faster charging: License will lead to faster-charging batteries for phones, electric vehicles – PNL/Phys.Org.

What’s encouraging is that this is already getting out of the lab:

Prototypes of Vorbeck’s battery technologies were already on display earlier this month at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Sci-Tech: Update on Paul Moller, Space Sciences, UrbanAero & Aerofex

I’ve been checking in on  Paul Moller and his SkyCar project occasionally since the late 1980s when I read an article in the Economist about his project.  He has been working on flying cars since the 1960s and has made a few millions along the way with spinoff inventions such as the SuperTrapp muffler and a line of compact rotary engines. But still no flying car.  Just hovering cars as seen in these videos.

Via the Spaceports blog comes a pointer to an announcement from Moller that a Chinese based firm has agreed to provide $80M initially and up to $480M to get a VTOL vehicle in production:  Moller Forms Joint Venture with Athena Technologies, Inc. – Moller

DAVIS, Ca. January 23, 2013–Moller International, Inc. (MI) (OTC-QB: MLER), the developer of the Skycar
® and Neuera™ aircraft announced today that it has received a signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreeing to create a US-based Joint Venture (JV) with Athena Technologies Inc. of Harbor City, California. The goal of the newly formed JV is to establish co-production for its aircraft in the US and the People’s Republic of China.

Under the provisions of the memorandum, MI will team with this US company-led JV to jointly produce numerous models of its vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. The JV will initially invest $80 million (USD) of a planned $480 million investment with the objective of producing a variety of VTOL aircraft by 2014. Production will include the Skycar® 200 LS, Skycar® 400, Skycar® 600 and Neuera™ aircraft.

MI is to retain its Intellectual Property (IP) while providing the JV with aircraft designs,ready-to-install Rotapower® rotary aviation engines, and the requirements for the airframe and flight control systemhardware to be produced in China. The JV is to provide all necessary production funding, purchase a 35% ownership in MI and provide MI with 25% fixed ownership in the JV for a period of 10 years

The full text of the announcement is available at: Moller-Athena-MOU.pdf

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Meanwhile, the company Space Sciences Corporation in New Mexico has an agreement with Moller to commercialize an early version of the SkyCar. In this Moonandback interview from last October, the  co-founders of the firm  “talk about their activities over the past year in developing vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) craft – a putative Flying Saucer” : John D’Alessandro and Lindsay Quarrie – A Flying Saucer Update – Moonandback.

[Update Jan.30.13: In Part 2 of the interview they “talk about how a flying saucer excites the public and kindles the educational experience, and they look at some of the applications for a vertical takeoff and landing flying vehicle” : John D’Alessandro and Lindsay Quarrie – The Cool Factor – Moonandback.
]

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As I’ve mentioned before, I think the best hope for a practical VTOL flying car will be more along the lines of the Israeli UrbanAero AirMule. You can follow its progress via their  updates and videos & downloads. The Aerofex Tandem Duct Aerial Vehicle  takes a similar design approach:

Research to protect astronaut vision + Research into better satellite vision

NASA lays out a plan to investigate the effects of prolonged weightlessness on vision: ISS Program Takes On Astronaut Vision Problems – Aviation Week.

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DARPA is supporting a project called Membrane Optic Imager Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE), which is developing very lightweight optical  elements that could greatly improve the resolution of imaging from geostationary orbit: DARPA Moire Project Seeks Real-Time Space Imaging – CitizensInSpace.org.