Thu, Jan 7, 2021
With the demand for rare metals rising and the remaining supplies dwindling does it make sense to start mining asteroids. Supprisingly it's fairly economical to retrieve an asteroid but dropping the metals from orbit to Earth appears to be prohibitively expensive. More mundane resources like water are a better bet because it can be used to make rocket fuel.
Mon, Jul 12, 2021
The 'green' energy sources solar and wind suffer from the shortcoming of being intermittent. This challenge can be resolved with an energy storage system, e.g. battery. The current leading technology, lithium ion battery, is not quite up to the task of large scale energy storage and delivery. Liquid metal batteries are a promising alternative.
Mon, Jul 19, 2021
Fuel tanks in airliners are in the wings. That makes a lot of sense because the space can't be used for anything else, that's where the lift is and, here's the thing, the tanks add structure and strength to the wing. So why not do the same thing with electric cars and have the batteries provide structure to reduce the weight of the car. It's coming. Many laboratories are working on structural batteries and Tesla's next models will start using the concept.
Mon, Aug 23, 2021
Airships, e.g. zeppelins, are obsolete and unreliable (think Hinddenberg) technology, right? Several companies disagree and have production models now in service to prove it. Since they can land and travel just about anywhere and are more fuel efficient that other forms of transportation there are host of tasks were airships are simply the best option.
Mon, Sep 6, 2021
Scientists have demonstrated that an electric current can be produced using the high speed electrons from beta decay of radioactive elements. So why why not create a nuclear "battery" that would never need recharging? And why not use nuclear waste as the radiation source? A couple companies are working on it.
Mon, Nov 8, 2021
Hydrogren is a clean fuel that has a couple major drawbacks. First it is normally made by electrolysis of water which, in the near term, requires fossil fuels. Second, it is challenging to store in the vehicles that run on it. A company called Plama Kinetics has developed technology to work around these difficulties by extracting hydrogen directly from the air and storing it as a metal hydride.
Mon, Dec 20, 2021
Several companies have developed three dimensional printing technology to produce lithium ion batteries that use less raw materials and, as a result, have a lower cost and higher energy density. Prototype batteries are now (2021) available and pilot productions lines are being built.