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Wireless charging - the future for electric cars

It's electric, and like all battery-operated automobiles needs regular charging. "The charging is done wirelessly, you park up, turn off the key and voila... charging starts automatically," says Anthony Thomson, CEO of HaloIPT, a UK company that has installed the technology. The process uses electromagnetic induction to transfer power from a pad built into the ground to another installed in the bottom of the car. The system could be installed in a supermarket parking place, garage floor or the ground at a special charging station. When a driver parks the vehicle, the two pads line up and with a flick of a switch, the charging starts.

Katy Perry leads MTV nominations

US pop star Katy Perry leads the way at this year's MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) with nine nominations. The singer's nods include video of the year for Firework, best pop video and best special effects. British singer Adele and Kanye West picked up seven nominations apiece. Other multiple nominees included Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Bruno Mars. The VMAs are scheduled to take place on 28 August in Los Angeles and will be broadcast live in the US. Perry, who married comedian Russell Brand last year, was also nominated for best female video, best collaboration, best art direction and best cinematography.

Texas executes 9/11 'revenge' killer

A man who embarked on a shooting spree in what he claimed was retaliation for 9/11 has been executed at a prison in Texas. The lone survivor of Mark Stroman's attack on convenience store workers in late 2001, Rais Bhuiyan, originally from Bangladesh, unsuccessfully sued to stop the execution, saying his religious beliefs as a Muslim required him to forgive the man. Stroman claimed the shooting spree that killed two men and injured a third targeted people from the Middle East, though all three victims were from south Asia. It was the death of 49-year-old Vasudev Patel, from India, that put Stroman on death row. Stroman's execution was the eighth this year in Texas.

Mac OS X Lion pounces

As promised, Apple let Mac OS X Lion out of its cage this morning. Version 10.7 of the operating system has more than 250 new features, Apple said, but an installation disc isn't one of them: it's available today for $29.99 as a 3.49GB download only. Apple enjoys pushing the computing industry into the future by dropping technology it deems to be from the past-for example floppy drives missing from the first iMac-and those who want a real-world copy of the OS will have to wait until Apple releases it on a USB thumb drive next month for $69. The Mac OS X download, available through the Mac App Store, dovetails with Apple's new MacBook Air and Mac Mini Lion-based computers. These new models are updated with Intel's modern Sandy Bridge processors and a high-speed Thunderbolt data transfer port-and none has a DVD drive for the next OS upgrade.

Google+ For iPhone Now The Top Free App In iTunes

Google+ for iPhone hit Apple's App Store a mere 24 hours ago but it's being downloaded like wildfire as it currently sitting atop the heap as the most popular free app available from iTunes. This is big news considering Google+ is still invitation-only and only has 18 million users so far, compared to Facebook's 750 million. That said, Google+ users can now upload contacts from Outlook and Mac address books (not Facebook, though), which may result in even bigger Google+ adoption numbers.

Steve Jobs dismisses rumors of his successor

Apple CEO and cancer survivor Steve Jobs is not keen on discussing speculation about who will replace him when the inevitable happens. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company's board of directors have been discussing plans about who will take over the position that has been held by Jobs since the late 1990s, and perhaps the title that some will always bestow upon Jobs and Jobs alone, once the man is no longer able to hold the position himself. The Journal said it had credible information that the board has already been meeting with headhunters and "at least one head of a high-profile technology company."

Showing posts with label spacecraft. Show all posts

Twenty years to build the Enterprise?

In a web portal presented project plans that detail very specifically how the ship could be built with existing technology.

The flagship of Starfleet United Federation of Planets known as the USS Enterprise in Star Trek universe could be built in 20 years as an engineer with over 30 years experience BTE called Dan.

This individual, who is working in one of the 500 largest U.S. companies by Fortune found that only two decades sufficient to achieve this milestone.

His idea is embodied in a website called Build the Enterprise where are project plans that detail very specifically how the ship could be built with existing technology and will arrive soon.

According to him, the USS Enterprise take an ion propulsion engine that is powered by a nuclear reactor power of 1.5 GW. This would add three more reactors to feed the rest of the spacecraft system.

This powerful team is allowed to travel from Earth to Mars in 90 days and the moon in just three.

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The Dragon spacecraft, set to become the first private flight to reach the ISS

In less than two weeks for the company to launch the SpaceX Dragon private spacecraft and docking with the ISS. A milestone marking the start of a new space age to which NASA has given the nod.

Dragon is a capsule developed by the company SpaceX. Its mission is to resupply cargo to the station with the "particularity" that is a commercial operator which will take place. Therefore, and successfully accomplish the mission, Dragon is the first private spacecraft to dock with the ISS.

The flight of the capsule will be a demonstration marking the future of a new era in space travel. The same NASA (which funds part of the project) is very interested in this type of space transportation actually confirmed in a private sector in both the cargo and crew on the next step

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If Dragon is developed by a private company and manages the cargo safely, the next level is intended to assess the voyage with astronauts and crew.

With this "shipment" would end the trial initiated by SpaceX in December 2010, when it launched a capsule that remained near the ISS and then came down to Earth safely.

The flight of the capsule will be the April 30 (16:22 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, and will be marked first by a low-flying 2 km below the ISS. That will be the time to approve or validate your flight system for the subsequent coupling. There will even be a flight simulation possible abortion of the mission in anticipation of avoiding a serious accident collision.

Once this test, the capsule will dock making history before returning to Earth and dropped into the ocean.