Tag: engineering

The World’s First Everything-Proof Underground Luxury Community

2:59 pm

The world’s first everything-proof underground luxury community. Fun quote:

The Barstow bunker was built to withstand a 50-megaton nuclear blast 10 miles away, 450mph winds, a magnitude-10 earthquake, 10 days of 1,250°F surface fires, and three weeks beneath any flood. Vicino says that a soon-to-be-installed air-filtration system will also neutralize any biological, chemical or nuclear attacks. The Barstow branch will stock enough food and clothing to sustain 135 people for at least a year, and in a lifestyle that Vicino describes as compact but luxurious, like being on a cruise ship.

Leave a comment

The state of NASA’s commercial crew program

10:05 am

The state of NASA’s commercial crew program. Key quote:

The Obama administration requested $3.3 billion for commercial crew services over the next three years, but a so-called compromise bill forged in the Senate slashed the proposal in half. After months of heated contention, the House of Representatives finally agreed to the Senate authorization bill in late September, calling for $1.6 billion for the commercial program.

Leave a comment

X-37B goes missing.

10:07 am

Spaceweather.com noted yesterday that the amateur astronomers have reported the X-37B space plane missing. It did not show up when expected, based on its known orbit. Key quote:

It’s possible that the X-37B has landed. More likely, the space plane has maneuvered into a new orbit and will be recovered again in the nights ahead.

Leave a comment

The wind-blown dunes of Mars

1:45 pm

The HiRise Camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has released some wonderful new pictures, showing what are called barchan dunes on Mars.

Barchans are crescent-shaped, with the horns of the crescents pointing downwind. One barchan is visible in the upper part of the image, with the Southeast (lower right) horns longer than the other. This trend, along with the position of the steep face of the dune on the South side, indicates that the predominant winds which formed the dunes came from the North.

There are a lot more great images on the websites above.

Wind-blown dunes

Leave a comment
1 … 447 448 449 450 451 … 453