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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Pat Sheen
Tiny copper structures with pores at both the nanometer and micron size scales could play a key role in the next generation of detonators used to improve the reliability, reduce the size and lower the cost of certain military munitions.
Developed by a team of scientists from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and the Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, the highly-uniform copper structures will be incorporated into integrated circuits – then chemically converted to millimeter-diameter explosives. Because they can be integrated into standard microelectronics fabrication processes, the copper materials will enable micro-electromechanical (MEMS) fuzes for military munitions to be mass-produced like computer chips.
....click the link to read more
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Saturday 5 January, 2008 02:19 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by George Tan
About $US10 billion in US funding has been given to Pakistan since 2001 because Washington views Pakistan as a key ally in President George W Bush's campaign against terrorism. AS part of this funding, Lockheed will sell 12 F-16C plus 6 F-16D planes to Pakistan the Pentagon said in its daily list of defense contract awards. The F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American multirole jet fighter aircraft developed by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin for the United States Air Force. Designed as a lightweight fighter, it evolved into a successful multirole aircraft
Pakistani officials are currently considering whether to go ahead with a January 8 election after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
...click the link to read more
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Friday 4 January, 2008 02:07 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Yan Chu
In 2003, China became only the third country to put a man into space using its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It then sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI rocket in October 2005.
Now after claiming success with the latest Lunar Satellite, China is planning to launch its third manned rocket, Shenzhou VII, into space in October 2008 and may also send an astronaut on a space walk.
...click the link to read more
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Monday 31 December, 2007 10:04 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by jackson Browne
A lawsuit brought by the family of a Navy pilot killed in action by friendly fire from a Raytheon built Patriot missile has far reaching potential to impact conventional military decision making. Where does this type of issue start and end. The fundamental question is can a defense contractor can be sued over the way soldiers use its products in the heat of combat.
Traditionally, defense contractors have been shielded from many claims by the "political questions doctrine," which bars courts from second-guessing some decisions by troops or other government representatives.
It is claimed that officials were aware that the Raytheon-built Patriot air-defense system had difficulty distinguishing between friendly and enemy aircraft but made the decision to deploy the missiles in Iraq
....Click the link to read more
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Monday 31 December, 2007 02:03 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by John William
Top secret files are due to be released by the UK government detailing UFO sightings
Reports suggest the MoD is releasing the documents because there are more UFO Freedom of Information requests on UFO's than on any other subject.
The Oxford Mail (UK)reports that Defence chiefs remain "open-minded" about life on other planets after revealing they logged more than a dozen UFO sightings above Oxfordshire in eight years.
Since the late 1940s in the UK an increasing number of people claimed that they had seen UFO's in Britain’s skies. At the suggestion of Sir Henry Tizard the aptly named "Flying Saucer Working Party” was formed in 1950, however at that time this Working Party concluded that there was no basis to the reports
In the 1970's British researcher Julian J. A. Hennessey wrote a summary of the state of British Ufology. In it, he sought to outline ome significant events in British UFO history and record his own involvement in UFO research which had started in the 1960s. This report was not picked up by any significant body and became buried in the general morass of research papers at the time.
The US also has it's own extensive files on UFO's and a group of former pilots and government officials has called on the US government to re-open an investigation into claims of UFO sightings. Project Blue Book , run by the US Air Force, was stopped in the late 1960s.
...click the links to read more
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Friday 28 December, 2007 10:06 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by jackson Browne
China, India, Europe, Japan, Russia the list goes on - At no time over the five decades of sending robot craft into the heavens have so many spacecraft been on duty at such a variety of far-flung destinations or en route to their targets.
There is a constant stream of new and existing projects shooting up to the stars and this is before space tourism takes off in a big way.
However for New Orleans this is the best news since sliced bread as three contracts associated with NASA's Constellation program have landed at Michoud. James Bray, director of Lockheed Martin's Orion project at Michoud, called the facility "a sleeping giant" for the New Orleans economy.
With 2,400 workers, Michoud is a major economic force in a section of the city which was hit hard by Katrina and has been slow to recover.
...click the links to read more
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Friday 28 December, 2007 06:08 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Tony Elmasri
The decision to name the Thales-Boeing team as the preferred bidder for the key role of System of Systems Integrator (SOSI) is a blow to British defence engineering rivals BAE, QinetiQ and Ultra Electronics.
The Future Rapid Effect System (FRES) will supply the UK's MoD with a new fleet of more than 3,000 highly mobile, medium-weight armoured vehicles. The project will include maintenance deals spanning up to 40 years that could increase the value of the deal to £60 billion.
....click the link to read more
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Tuesday 25 December, 2007 10:08 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by George Tan
NASA has outlined a mission that will probe known magnetic reconnection sites , which might prove to be an important source of energy regeneration in the universe.
Magnetic fields are continuously being generated and annihilated throughout the universe. The generation takes place by the motions of conductive fluids in the interiors of planets, the Sun and stars. Simultaneously, annihilation takes place, often violently, in these and other regions including solar and stellar atmospheres, the boundaries between solar and stellar winds, planetary magnetospheres around strong magnetic stars such as pulsars, and in exploding supernovas.
....click the link to read more.
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Friday 21 December, 2007 06:02 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Adam Crighton
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A Japanese navy destroyer shot down a ballistic missile on Monday in a test about 100 miles over the Pacific Monday, a first for a US ally, US and Japanese forces said. In December 2003, Japan decided to upgrade its 4 existing Kongo Class AEGIS Destroyers and their SPY-1D radars to full AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense capability. Installations where scheduled for 2007 through 2010, and each installation would be followed by a flight test to demonstrate proper operation. They will fire the naval SM-3 Standard missile, which is under co-development as part of cooperation with the USA on missile defense. These ships are intended to form the outer layer of Japan's anti ballistic missile shield, with the land-based Patriot PAC-3 forming the point defense component. The US55 million test was a "major milestone" in growing US-Japanese cooperation, said Rear Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and Lt. General Henry Obering, head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. The Japanese have a rich navel tradition and have been keen to strengthen ties with the US in a variety of areas ....click the links to read more
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Thursday 20 December, 2007 06:05 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by jackson Browne
The army has a new vision to fight a different type of war. A $200 billion plan to change the way the troops are used. Future Combat Systems (FCS) is the name the army has given to this vision, the war of the future is increasingly combat by mouse clicks. It's as networked as the Internet, as mobile as a cellphone, as intuitive as a video game.
....click the link to read more
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Monday 10 December, 2007 10:04 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ali Hamoud
WASHINGTON - U.S. engineers are pursuing a new multibillion-dollar program to develop the next generation of spy satellites, the first major effort of its kind after the Defense Department canceled an ambitious and costly effort known as the Future Imagery Architecture two years ago, The Associated Press has learned.
....click the link to read more
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Saturday 1 December, 2007 08:08 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Adam Crighton
The European Commission has put forward a new tendering process for the stalled Galileo satellite-navigation project.
No one company will be allowed to win more than two of the six segments of work offered to build the system.
The commission hopes the arrangement will pacify countries such as Germany which wants assurances about the distribution of engineering and industrial contracts.
....click the link to read more
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Thursday 29 November, 2007 04:03 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Peter Wu
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NASA's sharpest-eyed orbiter at Mars has spotted the Spirit rover far below, sitting on an enigmatic rock formation nicknamed "Home Plate."
Such imagery could provide new clues about the plateau's geological history — and serve as a guide for Spirit's future sojourns around Home Plate, Ken Herkenhoff of the U.S. Geological Survey told msnbc.com on Monday. ...click the link to read more
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Wednesday 28 November, 2007 02:05 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ryan
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Exoskeleton's have been seen in many a sci-fi movie including The Matrix. Now the American Army is close to having a functional exoskeleton suit for themselves. It looks to be quite polished and rather useful.
One has to wonder though if these wouldn't be much more useful outside the army. There have to be many applications where one of these woud make life easier. Applications such as rescue operations and construction for instance. ....click the links to read more
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Wednesday 28 November, 2007 08:01 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ali Hamoud
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Astronomers at the Steward Observatory in the University of Arizona have discovered white dwarf stars with pure carbon atmospheres. The stars were discovered among 10,000 new white dwarf stars found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The survey, known as the SDSS, found about four times as many white dwarf stars previously known. ....click the links to read more
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Tuesday 27 November, 2007 06:01 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Dave Ellery
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British engineers have been asked to build the payload for what will become one of the biggest commercial telecoms satellites ever launched.
London-based Inmarsat has signed a contract with industrialists to construct the Alphasat I-XL mission. ....click the link to read more
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Monday 26 November, 2007 08:06 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by John William
Giant-sized telescopes such as Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra offer unprecedented views of the cosmos, but astronomers are eager to put more powerful tools into orbit around the Earth.
Without the extra help, said Rachel Somerville, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, it may be impossible to resolve some of the universe's greatest mysteries.
....click the link to read more
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Saturday 24 November, 2007 10:08 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
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A flotilla of U.S. warships carrying as many as 8,000 American sailors heading for a four-day Thanksgiving holiday visit to China's port of Hong Kong has been refused entry, the U.S. Navy said Thursday.
It was not immediately clear why the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and its support vessels were barred Wednesday. Port officials said they had not been notified of the previously scheduled visit. But the incident added an unusual twist to China-U.S. relations, strained in recent months by disputes over trade and Iran's nuclear program.
In the past, China has banned all U.S. ships from the former British colony during times of tense relations. But current relations are not too bad, said David Zweig, a professor of China relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said. ....click the link to read more
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Friday 23 November, 2007 06:05 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Barot Casha
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SEOUL (AFP) — South Korea on Tuesday announced an ambitious plan to join Asia's space race by launching a lunar orbiter by 2020 and sending a probe to the moon five years after that.
The science ministry unveiled the project one month after China launched its first lunar orbiter and two months after Japan did.
Its "road map" requires the nation to complete developing its own 300-tonne rocket at a cost of 3.6 trillion won (3.9 billion dollars) within 10 years. South Korea is a member of the International Astronautical Federation and is investing heavily in engineering and Space Technology ....click the links to read more
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Thursday 22 November, 2007 06:09 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ryan
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A prototype heatshield for the upcoming Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) being developed by Boeing for NASA has been completed. It looks quite swish.
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Tuesday 20 November, 2007 08:05 PM |
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