However, in our defense, the technology that we are familiar with is limited to our everyday use. Hence, Wasabi asks the question, "What technologies are out there that are utterly fantastic, yet for intentional or non intentional reasons escapre us?" In short, what are we missing? Submitted for your approval, eight technologies that are in use today that may have not hit your radar... Share and enjoy...
2300 degree Thermal
Tiles you can Touch
HRSI tiles (black in color) provided
protection against temperatures up to 1,260 °C (2,300 °F). There were 20,548
HRSI tiles which covered the landing gear doors, external tank umbilical
connection doors, and the rest of the orbiter's under surfaces. They were also
used in areas on the upper forward fuselage, parts of the orbital maneuvering
system pods, vertical stabilizer leading edge, elevon trailing edges, and upper
body flap surface. They varied in thickness from 1 to 5 inches (2.5 to 13 cm),
depending upon the heat load encountered during reentry. Except for closeout
areas, these tiles were normally 6 by 6 inches (15 by 15 cm) squares. The HRSI
tile was composed of high purity silica fibers. Ninety percent of the volume of
the tile was empty space, giving it a very low density (9 lb/cu ft or 140
kg/m3) making it light enough for spaceflight.[1] The uncoated tiles were
bright white in appearance and looked more like a solid ceramic than the
foam-like material that they were.
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HRSI was primarily designed to
withstand transition from areas of extremely low temperature (the void of
space, about −270 °C or −454 °F) to the high temperatures of re-entry (caused
by interaction, mostly compression at the hypersonic shock, between the gases
of the upper atmosphere & the hull of the Space Shuttle, typically around
1,600 °C or 2,910 °F).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9Yax8UNoM
Plasma Propulsion Engine
NASA is making a
plasma propulsion engine (VASIMR) which would make the trip to Mars a matter of
weeks instead of months and will be tested in space onboard the ISS next year!
Also, they are performing lab tests that involve trying to create
a modified Alcubierre FTL warp drive.
VASIMR is a
plasma-based propulsion system. An electric power source is used to ionize fuel
into plasma. Electric fields heat and accelerate the plasma while the magnetic
fields direct the plasma in the proper direction as it is ejected from the
engine, creating thrust for the spacecraft. The engine can even vary the amount
of thrust generated, allowing it to increase or decrease its acceleration. It
even features an "afterburner" mode that sacrifices fuel efficiency
for additional speed. Possible fuels for the VASIMR engine could include
hydrogen, helium, and deuterium.
The use of hydrogen as
the fuel for the VASIMR project has many side benefits, according to researcher
Franklin Chang-Diaz. In addition to being the director of the Advanced Space
Propulsion Laboratory, Chang-Diaz is an astronaut who has flown into space on
seven missions, more than any other NASA astronaut. "We're likely to find
hydrogen pretty much anywhere we go in the solar system," he said. What
this means is that a VASIMR-powered spacecraft could be launched with only
enough fuel to get to its destination, such as Mars, and then pick up more
hydrogen upon arrival to serve as fuel for the return trip home. Another benefit
of hydrogen fuel is that hydrogen is the best known radiation shield, so the
fuel for the VASIMR engine could also be used to protect the crew from harmful
effects of radiation exposure during the flight.
Electrical power
sources for the VASIMR engine could include such things as a nuclear power
system or solar panels. For long-range flights, Chang-Diaz said, the best
option is nuclear power. "Nuclear power is definitely a must if we're
going to go to Mars," he said. This means that VASIMR could be integrated
with NASA's recently announced Project Prometheus proposal to develop nuclear
power generators for spaceflight.
Ring Gyroscopes
A
ring laser gyro is a cavity, around the perimeter of which laser beams are
induced to travel in opposite directions. The two beams meet at a detector,
which measures their frequency with great precision. If the assembly is rotated
around an axis normal (perpendicular) to the lasers' plane of travel, then the
beam traveling with the direction of rotation will, due to the Doppler Effect,
show a slightly increased frequency (a blueshift) whereas the other beam will
show a correspondingly decreased frequency (redshift). Careful measurement of
this phenomenon allows the user to measure the rotational accelerations placed
on the assembly with great precision. From there, math and physics allow the
measurement of translational acceleration on the assembly. Note that the ring can be active or passive. In the latter case, the cavity is simply a reflective medium, and laser light is fed in from outside the system. In the former case, an excited plasma is placed in the ring, and it lases itself to produce the requisite laser beams.
Tractor Beam
Though the tractor beam only works
under very specific conditions on a microscopic scale, it involves a principle that’s
been known for centuries, since Johannes Kepler first deduced that it was the
pressure of light that pushed comet tails outward from the sun. This light
pressure has already been harnessed for solar sails and attitude controls for
satellites, but the St. Andrews team has found a way to turn this pressure into
a negative force.
This negative force is produced in a
laboratory set up by a mixture of very specific properties of light and the
object being moved. In the St. Andrews experiment, a Gaussian beam (a light
beam where the profile is described by a Gaussian mathematical formula) is
generated by a VERDI V5 laser. This beam is directed through a lens and then
passes through a suspension of dielectric spheres set between two coverslips.
The bottom slip is a half-silvered
reflecting mirror that reflects part of the beam back to the source. The
incoming and reflecting beams interfere with one another and produce a standing
wave. Based on the properties of the spheres and their location, the standing wave
shapes in such a way that the light force pushes the spheres back toward the
laser source.
Putting it simply, the standing wave
at a particular spot near the light source interacts with spheres of a
particular size and mass in such a way that the light waves push in the wrong
direction. It’s a bit like a dinghy moored at a pier where the current is
moving away from the pier, but produces eddies that push the dinghy back into
the pier.
Transparent Aluminium
The invention submitted by Scotty of
Star Trek in (Star Trek, IV), transparent Aluminum has come true. Aluminium oxynitride or AlON is a transparent
polycrystalline ceramic with cubic spinel crystal structure composed of
aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. It is currently marketed under the name ALON by
Surmet Corporation.[3] ALON is optically transparent (≥80%) in the
near-ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic
spectrum. It is 4 times harder than fused silica glass, 85% as hard as sapphire
and nearly 15% harder than magnesium aluminate spinel. The material is stable
up to 1,200 °C (2,190 °F).[1] It can be fabricated to transparent windows,
plates, domes, rods, 
3D Printing
Now surely if you read this newsletter, you are familiar with 3D printing, but perhaps what you didn't know is that complext objects with moving parts can be scanned and printed without assembly right out of the box. Even with color distinctions of different parts. In short, they have 3D printers
that can scan a wrench, feed
that data to the printer and out comes a working plastic wrench. No deburring
or assembly necessary, just take the finished wrench out of the printer. Full
color options, too. Amazing. So need a tool on the space station? Just scan it on earth, transmit the data and print it on the station...
Amazing Grace (I Was Blind, but Now I Can See)
Paul Bach-y-Rita, a
neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison has devoted much of
his career to a single, revolutionary concept: that our senses are
interchangeable. The brain, Bach-y-Rita and many other neuroscientists believe,
is an organ of astonishing plasticity: If one part of it is damaged, another
part can serve the same function. To prove the point, his collaborator Kathi
Kamm, a professor of occupational therapy at the university's Milwaukee campus,
has strapped a small video camera to my forehead and connected it to a long
plastic strip hanging from my mouth. A laptop computer reduces the camera's
image to 144 pixels. Those pixels are converted to an electric current that is
sent to the business end of the plastic strip—a 12-by-12 grid of electrodes
that rests on my tongue.
1.8
gigapixel ARGUS-ISWorld's highest resolution video surveillance
Argus
Panoptes is the name of a giant of Greek mythology who had a hundred eyes and
who was said to be “all-seeing”. What an appropriate name for DARPA’s latest
wide area monitoring system, described as the “next generation of
surveillance”. When mounted on a drone, ARGUS (which stands
for Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System)
has a 1.8 Gigapixels video system that allows the constant video
surveillance of a small city, complete with the tracking of moving objects and
incredible zoom-in capabilities. 17500 ft.. 5000 hours of high
definition footage to get details of up to 6 inch objects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=13BahrdkMU8
Source(s):
- http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/argus-the-technology-that-takes-video-surveillance-to-another-level-video/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RV_FLIP
So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”
____________________________________________________________
About Rick Ricker
An IT professional with over 21 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.
For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085 x502
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