thequibble

It seems that the latest space shuttle mission which left the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on 11th May 2009, has hit a slight glitch. The lift off appeared to go quite smoothly, however, upon close examination of the lift off footage from one of the cameras mounted on the fuel tank, clearly show some debris hitting the underside of the shuttle.

The image showing debris hitting the shuttle undercarriage.

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The new Dodge EV

On my usual read through autobloggreen.com I come across a rather interesting story about the Dodge EV. Even though I am currently working in the Auto industry it seems that I have been living in a box, since this is the first time I have come across this vehicle. The Dodge EV is Chrysler’s attempt to challenge the much hyped Tesla. While the Dodge EV is still pretty much still a prototype, the car exhibits the good acceleration you would expect with an electric vehicle, but also a rather pleasing ride (as explained by the journalist in the video). There does, however, seem to be a few drawbacks which should hopefully be solved before the production vehicle in released. The main one being the power supply. The vehicle is intending to use larger lithium-ion batteries than the Tesla in order to improve contact reliability, which leads to a rather cramp vehicle. This will hopefully be resolved by improved battery packs with smaller package sizes.

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The X-45 experimental UAV.

Boeing’s airborne laser project might be on slightly shaky grounds but this isn’t stopping them from the continued development of its fighter sized UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), named Phantom Ray. The UAV is going to be built using technology developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/U.S. Air Force/U.S. Navy Joint-Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program. Read the rest of this entry »

EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space company) have come up with an idea to reduce the number of future satellites from turning into space junk. The idea proposed by EADS is the addition of “sails”  such that orbiting satellites could passively drag themselves back to earth when no longer required.

The system is called IDEAS (Innovative DEorbiting Aerobrake System). The current idea would be to remotely activate a series of booms which hold gossamer sails, which would increase the drag acting upon the satellite, thus reducing its orbital velocity and slowly reducing its orbit until it falls back down to earth. While typical orbital decay takes anytime between 50 and 100 years, satellites equipped with IDEAS wold return in less than 25 years. Read the rest of this entry »