Category Archives: Design

SpaceX Did It – What It Should Do Next

Posted on Wed, 2015-12-23 by gravityloss

Congratulations to SpaceX who landed the first stage intact. Assuming cost is roughly related to stage mass and engine count, reusing the first stage saves 9/10 of the whole rocket cost. If they can run the stage ten times, that … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Depot, Design, engines, industry, Launchers, Lunar, RLV:s, Spacecraft, SpaceX, Transportation | Leave a comment

“Space Is Hard” Is The Wrong Answer

Posted on Mon, 2014-11-03 by gravityloss

They say “Space is hard” Orbital Sciences crashed a rocket equipped with two 40 year old engines. Physically that old. They were an interim solution and they were working towards new engines. We don’t know at this point if the … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, engines, Homebuilt, industry, Journalism, RLV:s, Suborbital | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Three kinds of hybrids

Posted on Tue, 2011-05-24 by gravityloss

The next fifteen years. Pure Electric – will be marginal Battery energy density will probably be lousy and they will be expensive so that pure electric cars can’t fill that many needs in the next fifteen years. What kind of … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Design, Energy, engines, industry, Motivation, Thorium, Transportation, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

A big manufacturer is bringing out a 192 megapixel 35 mm full frame DSLR camera

Posted on Thu, 2011-03-31 by gravityloss

Can’t disclose my source right now, but a big Japanese camera maker has been secretly working on this ever since the first small sensor interchangeable lens systems by its competitors Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony started getting some market share. … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, industry, Photography, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Fukushima status on Wednesday March 16 and what it means

Posted on Wed, 2011-03-16 by gravityloss

Here’s my estimate of the situation. I’m no nuclear engineer but I know something… We use data from JAIF: And an annotated picture of a GE boiling water reactor from UCS: Now, using the above: At least half of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, industry, Science Links, Thorium, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

21st Century Jet – Making The Boeing 777

Posted on Wed, 2011-03-09 by gravityloss

The movie’s available on Google Video, embedded above. Enjoy!

Posted in airplane, Architecture, Art, Design, engines, industry, RLV:s, Transportation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Movable Strake Front

Posted on Thu, 2011-02-10 by gravityloss

Described by Barnaby Wainfan in the nineties: And in use in 2010 (click to get huge full view): Here’s another view of the beautiful Sukhoi T-50 / PAK FA: All photos from Sukhoi.

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How much light?

Posted on Sat, 2010-12-04 by gravityloss

This 1:1 crop contains a clue: More below

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Camera Systems

Posted on Sat, 2010-11-27 by gravityloss

Back when digital cameras started appearing around the turn of the millennium, it pretty quickly turned out that just making a digital version of an 35 mm SLR camera was not a very efficient move. The image quality with full … Continue reading →

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Even more on Skylon

Posted on Sat, 2010-10-30 by gravityloss

They stop airbreathing at 2 km/s. Let’s compare this to staging. Assuming an upper stage of the weight of Skylon at that point (230 t), what kind of a rocket would be required for that? With a hunch of 3000 … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, ESA, RLV:s, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment