A pulse jet UAV by any other name would still be a cruise missile

This is absolutely AWESOME

Imagine our surprise when we learned [Bruce Simpson], who made headlines in 2003 with his $5000 DIY cruise missile, is still alive, not illegally interned in a black ops prison, and still doing what he does best: building really awesome remote-control airplanes.

The first successful mass-produced pulse jet aircraft was the German V-1 flying bomb. The V-1 had a very primitive guidance system, but the unmanned pulse jet aircraft quickly evolved into a few target drones used by the US Air Force. There was never any significant advancement towards improving the fuel consumption, noise level, or heat signature of pulse jets, so they were superseded by the superior turbojet. Despite their failings, pulse jets are remarkably easy to build and amazingly fast.

Read more about it HERE . You can also find a YouTube video of it there.

This week in space

 

NASA launching twin moon probes to measure gravity

Four decades after landing men on the moon, NASA is returning to Earth's orbiting companion, this time with a set of robotic twins that will measure lunar gravity while chasing one another in circles.

Read more about it HERE

 

NASA's smaller programs could be at risk

The cost of NASA's two flagship programs - a new space telescope and its next rocket - is poised to devour much of the agency's shrinking budget in coming years, putting at risk everything from efforts to develop futuristic spacecraft to returning rocks from Mars, scientists and congressional insiders warn.

Read more about it HERE

 

Cosmic coincidence

Cosmologists tend not to get all that excited about the universe being 74% dark energy and 26% conventional energy and matter (albeit most of the matter is dark and mysterious as well). Instead they get excited about the fact that the density of dark energy is of the same order of magnitude as that more conventional remainder.

Read more about it HERE

 

Dwarf planet mysteries beckon to New Horizons

At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched -- NASA's New Horizons -- is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer than some missions last, and still has four more years of travel to go.

Read more about it HERE

 

Czech-ing out the view from 31 kilometers

The team at czANZO, the Czech Amateur Near-Space Object group, sent up one of the best high-altitude balloons we’ve ever seen last weekend and the resulting video is remarkable.

The team’s build blog (Google Translate link for everyone without Chrome) goes through the design and construction of their payload. Like every other balloon build we’ve seen, a styrofoam cooler is used for the enclosure, but there’s a lot of really neat additions that make this build special.

Read more about it HERE

This week in space

Chandra finds nearest pair of supermassive black holes

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. At a distance of 160 million light years, it is also the nearest known pair of supermassive black holes.

See the article HERE

 

The star that should not exist

A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible. They discovered that this star is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only remarkably small amounts of other chemical elements in it. This intriguing composition places it in the "forbidden zone" of a widely accepted theory of star formation, meaning that it should never have come into existence in the first place. The results will appear in the 1 September 2011 issue of the journal Nature.

See the article HERE

Audio Hostem Episode 1 is live

 

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Show notes:

Host introductions...


120 petabytes: IBM building largest data storage array ever
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-petabytes-ibm-largest-storage-array.html



NASA: Space station may be evacuated by late Nov.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-nasa-space-station-evacuated-late.html


Michael Showers found dead in Mississippi river.
http://www.nola.com/treme-hbo/index.ssf/2011/08/treme_actor_was_last_seen_drin.html


Apple discontinues 99-cent rentals of TV shows
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-apple-discontinues-cent-rentals-tv.html


ABC Buys Western From Ron Moore
http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/abc-buys-western-from-ron-moore/


We discuss Haven


A cat elevator, for the discerning lazy feline in your life
http://hackaday.com/2011/08/29/a-cat-elevator-for-the-discerning-lazy-feline-in-your-life/





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