ToughSF
@ToughSf
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Matterbeam. Author of the ToughSF blog. Original SuperNerd. Kurzgesagt Team Duck. Discord
United Kingdom
Joined March 2016
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LHS 1140b is a super-Earth tidally locked to its small, quiet red dwarf star, and thanks to recent JWST observations, we think it is a cold eyeball planet: frozen all over except for a liquid ocean directly facing the dim star.
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Nuclear breakthrough beyond theory: a Japanese cyclotron has managed to create Sodium-39.
This isotope has 2.5x more neutrons than protons. It was thought impossible but here it is:
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Rocket engineers have long had to choose between performance and toxicity.
The TOXMAX rocket concept resolves the problem decisively.
Lithium kept molten by radioactive Cesium-137, reacting with fluorine, provides superlative performance with maximum environmental impact.
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The bacterial flagellar motor can spin at 100,000 RPM in one direction, then switch gears and flip to spinning in the other direction.
How does this work?
Cryo-electron microscopy reveals some of the nanoscale mechanics involved:
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A method to unilaterally disable all nuclear bombs on Earth, remotely and without countermeasure:
It uses a 1000 TeV muon->neutrino beam to penetrate right through the Earth and decay near fissile material, forcing it to 'fizzle' and become useless.
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Why were aircraft manufacturers so eager to switch from high-performance piston engines to jet engines, despite all their early drawbacks?
The insane level of complexity piston engine design had reached is one reason. Compare cross-sections and number of moving parts here:
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A 2000 ton spaceship that's 900 tons antihydrogen, 900 tons hydrogen and 200 tons engines, structure and payload would have a deltaV of 1.59 C.
It can accelerate to 0.92C with 2.55x time dilation, enough to reach the closest star in 21.4 months subjective time.
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The first simulated black hole image: calculated by an IBM 7040 using punch-card data then the thousands of points were hand-plotted by Jean-Pierre Luminet in 1978.
And now that we have an actual photo of black hole M87, we can confirm that even this early result was accurate.
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Mars Express is an excellent animated movie that has not received the attention it deserves. Bravo to
@jeremieperin
(
@marsexpressfilm
).
Here's a space launch scene from Earth to Mars during the opening credits, with a smart title reveal:
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Watching the 47m tall Shuttle External Tank slowly tumbling in space is a little bit surreal.
Captured by a hand-held camera on STS-134.
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The X-12 nuclear-electric locomotive.
Its reactor would be held inside a 200 ton radiation shield and have a 20m long radiator car dedicated to cooling it. Steam circulating directly through the nuclear fuel would drive a turbine to generate 5.1 MW of electricity.
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Popular Mechanics 07/1988 depictions of the Arsenal Ship concept, where a single ship would carry 500 vertically-launched cruise missiles to overwhelm defences or conduct shore bombardment, replacing the effects of hundreds of air strikes over days with one launch.
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They take care to animate blood spray freezing into ice, but also have melee combat on hoverbikes atop a moon-sized mobile fortress.
casually reminded of when they busted out the hovercraft for the fortress war arc and it was the sickest shit ever
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Bunker Busters of the world.
Shared on the ToughSF discord by FLChaos.
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An aircraft carrier struck by a hypersonic railgun round. CIWS won't help intercepting those!
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The UNSC Town-class frigate equipped with a massive spinal coilgun and nuclear missiles. A detailed cross-section view and excellent renders!
#space
#art
by Robots v Dinosaurs with help from
@technouveau_art
and
@RuiHuang_art
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What causing the infamous XB-70 mid-air collision with an F-104 in 1966?
Wing vortex turbulence caused the F-104's wing to stall, flipping over and into the XB-70. The collision sliced off both the XB-70's tails, causing to enter a flat spin.
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It's out!
@ErikWernquist
magnificent short film 'One Revolution per Minute' features a luxury spaceship cruising across the solar system with a 450m rotating ring.
Watch it here (it doesn't deserve Youtube's compression):
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Demonstrating the speed of sound and that pressure waves are followed by rarefaction waves which we can see as water condensing out of the air as clouds.
With each weakening echo, another smaller cloud zips past.
Source:
Original:
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With a nuclear-reactor powered ship, there's few reasons why you don't push for top speed all the time. Basically the same running costs, only a little bit extra fuel, while delivering cargo 50% faster.
A Chinese shipyard on Tuesday revealed the design of the world's first and largest nuclear-powered 24,000 TEU container ship, Global Times reported.
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All the jet engines from the F-14 to the F-35 have the same ~117cm diameter. Theoretically they could all swap engines.
How much thrust would each plane gain or lose?
Results in the table below.
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Visually, the solar prominences appear to have a height of 64,000 km.
That's 5 Earths tall.
Holy moly, captured so many solar prominences today during the eclipse!
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The E991 series “Try-Z” experimental train, featuring an asymmetrical cabin design.
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A short animated space battle between fairly realistic spacecraft. Inspired by 'Children of a Dead Earth' and 'The Expanse'.
I love the large glowing radiators and the missile bus reacting to PDCs:
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Based on this study, I find that fairly modest exoskeleton with a 15 kW engine for power and piston-actuated springs could reach a running speed of 160 km/h.
The only limit would be how fast the operator could place the feet without sliding...
Augmented running would allow a human to run 50% faster without expending more energy:
This is done with unpowered robotic exoskeletons using springs and leg extensions to bring running efficiency close to that of a bicycle (-->18W/kg air resistance limit)
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A terraformed Venus with rings made of carbon removed from its atmosphere and many islands surrounded by an artificial ocean, depicted and mapped by Frans Blok.
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Human industrial civilization only exists thanks to a short-lived anomaly in Earth's evolutionary history that gave us coal.
The access to 25 MJ/kg in a dense, storable and easy to burn package allowed even early steam machines to bootstrap our progress into the modern era.
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While a space warship may be vulnerable to a 'mission kill' by small amounts of damage, it doesn't sink, crash or burn afterwards. It would likely sustain a lot of damage before the crew is lost or the hull becomes unrecoverable.
Is the nature of space combat doomed to be of “glass cannons?”
A single railgun or missile shot to the propellant tank and your ship is either exploded or floating in space dead. Same goes for your enemy.
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As activity on the Moon increases in the next decades, I'm sure we'll see a great diversity in lander designs appear before getting refined into perfected models, similar to 1920s aviation.
Excellent
#space
#art
by
@voyager212
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A fun concept: a mining spaceship specialized in gathering up dust and gas from planetary rings.
#space
#art
by
@pdaguilar_
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Our Solar System seems to have the rarest arrangement of planets possible:
Multiple planets of the same size (similar) is most common, followed by big planets closest to the star then decreasing in size outwards (anti-ordered).
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1-Hot metal oxidizes in air.
2-Oxide layer forms.
3-Metal is deformed, oxide layer flakes off.
4-Fresh metal exposed to air through cracks in oxide layer.
5-Air/Metal combustion produces jets of fire.
6-Repeat!
Source:
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Here's a fun fact:
Eight fully refueled Starships, staged 4 by 4, would grant the ISS enough deltaV to escape the Solar System.
Then it would become the ISS: Interstellar Space Station.
For now, this is where the ISS is headed: an unceremonious dumping into the Pacific Ocean.
A complete waste, in my opinion.
By
@hazegrayart
:
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Recreating 3D scenes using the reflections in your eyes:
A single photo is enough, but it becomes much more accurate with multiple reflections from multiple angles, like a video capturing moving eyes.
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The 'Pacifica' space shuttle with a flying booster arrangement resembling the BAC MUSTARD concept.
It delivers construction drones for a space-based solar power project.
Excellent
#space
#art
by
@voyager212
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Transitioning from turbojet to ramjet mode: this is
@hermeuscorp
's Chimera engine with a J85-21 at its core.
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Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, so you don't have to worry about providing heating power to the rocket on the launchpad.
That means the exhaust leaves behind a radioactive toxic acidic deathscape, but at least it would have a pretty red colour with purple sparks.
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An RNA polymerase reeling out RNA strands like a belt from a machine gun. The real time molecular speed is dizzying.
Short sequence from this collection of 3D animations:
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The Proteus orbital construction drone assembling solar power satellites.
Great
#space
#art
by
@voyager212
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The Heimdall 2 interplanetary vessel prepares to depart after filling its tanks at an orbital fuel depot. In the background, a reusable tanker arrives to replenish the depot.
Exceedingly good
#space
#art
by
@voyager212
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You don't send a singular probe to Proxima Centauri that'll zip through the star system and struggle to send anything home...you send a swarm that coalesces into a 100,000 km mesh network that can clearly communicate over interstellar distances!
Like this:
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Why does every single prospective space launch company seem to be spending most of their time and resources developing and testing a new unique set of engines?
Surely someone has thought to buy small engines from a supplier and focus instead on getting a vehicle into orbit.
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Actual biology continues to out-weird the wildest alien designs. A jellyfish that degenerated into a single-cell parasite that hooks itself into other animals:
A jellyfish evolved back into a single cell, doesn't need oxygen, and now lives parasitically inside the cells of other animals. Repeat: there's a single-celled jellyfish vibing O2-free INSIDE OTHER ANIMAL CELLS. Meet the hook-shaped intracellular jellyfish parasite Myxozoa 😈
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How hard is it to get rid of heat in space?
An example:
On the left, a 9 kW engine. It produces about 27 kW waste heat. A few slotted fins are enough to cool it.
On the right, a SNAP-10A nuclear space reactor. 30 kW heat, but requiring a radiator cone over 2m tall.
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The PRR T1 Steam Locomotive with a 20.7 bar boiler and 4800 kW of steam power, accurately rendered by Steve Hawirko.
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Combine high pressures, high temperatures, early metallurgy and machines meant to operate for decades, and you can get freakish boiler explosions in steam trains.
Here's the aftermath:
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The Stellarator uses a twisted torus of magnets to cancel out the uneven fields that make it difficult to contain a fusion plasma in a regular tokamak:
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Cross-section view of the Project Pluto design: a nuclear-powered supersonic cruise missile that could fly at Mach 3 below 150m altitude indefinitely, slipping a payload of nuclear warheads past typical ICBM defences.
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Venus Aerospace claims a 10% gain in Isp over 'conventional engines' with its Rotating Detonation Rocket.
That's like taking a Merlin-1D from its sea level Isp (282s) to its vacuum Isp (310s).
Their rocket engines will be used to fly a Mach 3 drone.
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The hot airflow makes clear how the turboprop thrust pushes over the wing to increase lift at any speed.
This past week, an AC-130, MC-12, and MC-130 engaged in a training operation north of the Panama Canal. The AC-130 conducted live fire drills with MC-12 and MC-130 support. Teamwork enables
#SOCSOUTH
to stay sharp and ready.
#SLOC
#SafeAndSecureSeas
#FreeAndOpenIndoPacific
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