Successful technologies today seldom come about due to a grand “Eureka” event. Rather, they come from lots of people all having little Eurekas and little “damn, I was sure that would work” moments. -Clark Lindsey
We use orders of magnitude here, so powers of ten. Elon Musk presented the Terafab idea yesterday, here.The idea is to manufacture so many chips per year that they would use a terawatt of power, or 10^12 W. US electricity Continue reading
Solar, wind and nuclear are already causing closing of many coal plants.Energy usage has plateaued in the west and everybody s CO2 intensity is going down, see previous post and any news about China. AI is increasing energy usage but there s Continue reading
Let s look at three example regions: China, EU and USA. All graphs from https://ourworldindata.org/ In electricity generation China is still growing, while the others have plateaued. Everybody s carbon intensity is going down. So, as an upshot, CO2 emissions per capita Continue reading
Highlighting some similarities where features of an older design can sometimes, if squinting right, be found in newer designs. Sometimes it s fairly obvious, sometimes slightly surprising. (All images created with Gemini) Ramp inlets F-15 is iconic, but everyone knows it Continue reading
Energy storage is needed to solve the variability of renewable energy. Main contenders are hydrogen and batteries. These can be built in regions that don t have large lakes or mountains for leveling hydropower. Which ones should we build? To get Continue reading
Fossil fuels have been cheap. They have been used to produce electricity, reduce iron, make fertilizers and heat homes.This has caused large carbon dioxide and methane emissions that can not continue. Fossil fuels will be phased out. Electricity Nuclear power Continue reading
The starting position SpaceX currently has the Falcon 9 we know well. The first version flew in 2010. It uses kerosene fuel with gas generator Merlin engines. The engine cycle is conservative and performance is fine. Falcon 9 has reusable Continue reading
Histories and documentaries of aircraft tend to just plainly list aircraft performance. The next generation of aircraft is just better than the previous one, but it s rarely explained how this is possible.This is especially curious regarding aircraft like the F-4 Continue reading
Based on the fly through video published in spring 2022 Body Inner body panels arrive pre-cut to rough shape at 0:20 They are shown to be stamped to a 3d shape, and the extra is cut off at 0:23 The Continue reading
The VTOL variant, F-35B, has the lift fan behind the cockpit. This means weapons bays or the inlet ducts can not be on the centerline, behind the cockpit instead they are on the sides. This applies to all the Continue reading