Thursday 30 August 2012

US Army debuts first test flight of LEMV Airship



otherwise known as the Airlander 200 LEMV or Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, and according to its maker Northrop Grumman, has an envelope longer than football field and taller than a seven-story building, filled with 1.3 million cubic feet of Helium..

Northrop Grumman refers to its vehicle as the "worlds largest most persistent lighter than air, surveillance and reconnaissance platform."


The LEMV airship can fly with or without a pilot flown from a standard ground station or operate autonomously. The vehicle is designed to cruise above 20,000 feet for up to three weeks, powered by V8 engines or by a 16kW electrical system and cruise at up to 80 knots per hour. 

The jubilation's of the rejoicing camera person in the video following are annoying, but almost at the same discerning level is the more entertaining mild humming of the bird as it seamlessly ascends.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

Howcast, Video tutorial data base


Before the internet arrived and became commonplace if there was something we needed or wanted to know how to do, we relied largely on libraries. Much time was spent not only getting to the library but hunting down particular information through one's research skills, or persistence with others to help locate it. With the arrival of the internet all this wasted time and energy has become reduced to the typing of words and the click of a button in your favoured display device. Much of how we resource our why or how needs, likely comes about by using a search engine like google, yahoo, bing or any number of others.


But now we can reduce our search time a heap more by using  howcast which is a resource depository of a huge number of how to video's covering an enormous number of topics, that can help aid our education and learning

Maybe you've always wanted to know How to make Japanese food rolls, or maybe learn how to do hip hop dancing or myriads of many other types of dances ?




Thursday 9 August 2012

Visionary habitation of a human colony on Mars



The historical occasion of the Mars rover Curiosity flawlessly landing inspires humanity with buckets of hope for eventually making ways, perhaps for humans to one day set foot on the red planet.

Since Mars is 250 million miles from earth a round trip to and from it would take more than 12 months, and would be astronomically costly. Needless to say, a somewhat ambitious plan has recently been forwarded which proposes establishing a living colony of permanently based human inhabitants.

Bas Lansdorp via his Dutch company Mars One is aiming to send ten humans to the red planet by 2023 by creating a one way trip to willing frontier inhabitants. Lansdorp will next year be holding a worldwide lottery in order to select 40 trainee astronauts. And after a yet to be declared period these lucky winners will whittle down to ten for the actual mission itself, by turning the selection and training programme into a "media event" similar to a reality show.


Watch the video animation after the jump to learn how Lansdorp proposes his plan to work.


Saturday 4 August 2012

Nail-biting Mars Curiosity robotic rover mission touch-down



A momentous occasion is almost upon us for the intrepid space explorer mission to Mars in the name of NASA's Curiosity. A motor car sized robotic mobility science lab is about to set down on the infamous red planet to, among many things, shed light on whether life has ever existed there.

Curiosity is the most complex and most expensive probe ever sent to a planet mission as can be seen quite literally in the detailed image here.


Added to this complexity is the acutely risque landing procedure that NASA engineers developed. To get to its intended touch down zone, at the foot of a 3 mile high mountain, the descending probe on Monday (GMT) must enter the Martian atmosphere at a precise point. 

The the most dramatic and nail-biting part of the whole shebang begins two hours before it reaches Mars. At that point mission control will stop talking to the probe and the probe's onboard computers are programmed to execute its precise landing manoeuvres. 

Here bellow is a short sixty second animation from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustrating the thirteen minutes it takes, to successfully touch down.


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