Orion nuclear pulse drives are powerful *despite* their design. The energy efficiency of the 10m diameter USAF design was just 0.78%, as the 1 kT pulse yield converted into 2 MN thrust at 3350s Isp. www.projectrho.com/public_html/... Animation @brianmcmanus.bsky.social: youtu.be/EVwlTsa9oMM

DLR's Reusability Flight Experiment is a 400 kg, 2.7 m long flying testbed for hypersonic reentry and autonomous flight, launched to 130 km altitude by a VSB-30 Brazilian sounding rocket: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... No parachute or landing gear, so it aims for crash ending.

The Porsche 917 LH (Long Tail) was a lengthened version of the 917 that aimed for lower drag at high speeds. It would achieve 386 km/h on the 6 km long Mulsanne Straight in 1971, using a 600 horsepower flat-12 engine.

Orion I, a transporter ship inspired by Syd Mead's work, done in Blender 3.6 #space #art by Isaiah. www.artstation.com/artwork/x3nb5R

DART's impactor shifted asteroid Dimorphos' velocity by 2.7 mm/s. Based on an asteroid density of 1500 to 3300 kg/m^3, that means the momentum enhancement factor is 2.2-4.9x thanks to kinetic energy ejecting additional debris upon impact: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

France and the US are working on certifying the Rafale for refueling F/A-18s: theaviationist.com/2025/05/17/r... Testing is being done by the Flight Test Division of the Direction Générale de l’Armement and U.S. Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron VX-23.

Watch the smoke trail from the flares reveal the massive vortices and turbulent wake of the F-22 Raptor as it shows off its post-stall maneuverability: youtu.be/xvQUwmP0eXE

Concept art for a MU/TH/UR computer room, meant for Predator: Badlands. #art by Sean Hargreaves www.artstation.com/artwork/YG92o6

Combining the output of many single fiber lasers into a single large beam is a reliable path towards high efficiency, high-quality easy to cool lasers scaling beyond 100 kW: www.mdpi.com/2304-6732/8/... Pulsed lasers can be combined too, but you also need to get the timing right.

There's a nucleus at the center of atoms then a cloud of electrons all around. But reality isn't so neat. For example, the 'halo nucleus' with protons/neutrons sitting just a few femtometers outside the nucleus. It's usually a neutron halo that lasts for a few milliseconds.

The "botanipunk" worldbuilding and tool concepts make for a very unique aesthetic here! #art by @chromamoma.bsky.social for a personal project. www.artstation.com/artwork/nJ9bZr

Reducing the convergence ratio in hotspot ignition inertial confinement ratio by replacing the solid DT ice layer at the capsule wall with liquid DT: firefusionpower.org/IAEA_2018_Li... Lower ratios decrease intensity and implosion velocity requirements, but comes with complications.

The HC-130P/N "King" extended-range variant of the C-130 Hercules is dedicated to assisting Search And Rescue efforts, seen here refueling HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters. www.af.mil/About-Us/Fac... It even got to serve as space flight support for NASA.

Plasmonic metasurfaces with ~100 nm features for converting light into electricity: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... 99% absorption from IR to UV is possible with multilayered W/SiC/SiO2, boosting traditional PV or building solar-thermoPV with 85% efficiency potential.

The Titanic had hidden mounts for guns so it could be converted into an armed merchant ship, as required by British law. Her sister ship HMS Olympic did get to serve as an armed troopship, got painted in dazzle camo, and sunk German submarine SM U-103 by ramming it.

The 'Nexus Ship' created for Reikon Games. Perhaps that's a debris shield in front. #space #art by Tim Zanconato. www.artstation.com/artwork/mAeL1Z

Out of the 63 countries with positive organic population growth in the world, 42 are in Africa. Many of its cities have seen incredible expansion in the past decades, multiplying 10x, 30x or 90x over their size in 1950.

Returning 100 kB of data from Proxima Centauri, when you have only a 1 gram probe with 10 mW of power, is about a BILLION times more difficult than communicating with New Horizons past Pluto.

Here is how the nuclear rocket engine will work: youtu.be/eDNX65d-FBY A NASA/AEC animation for a regeneratively cooled nuclear-thermal rocket with graphite-uranium core, from 1958.

Under the overpass, in the glow of neon lights. #art by Matvey Radkov. www.artstation.com/artwork/4Nn1nW

According to the For All Mankind official 2004-2012 timeline, 'Iridium' has become the unobtanium that justifies the space economy, Mars habs above ground are protected by magnetic shielding and there's an interplanetary illegal immigration problem with stowaways: youtu.be/sjQmbeoiMOM

Quaia is an all-sky quasar map showing over 1.2 million active supermassive black holes detected by the Gaia mission: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... It's the catalog with the "largest total volume of the universe mapped".

Carbon has a metastable BC8 form that's tougher than diamond. Its compressive strength may be 30% higher! However, it would have to be grown as nanocrystals condensing out of liquid carbon at insane 5000K and >1500 GPa conditions. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Kitbashing industrial equipment together to create spaceships is not a terrible approach. #space #art by Stanislav Verbitsky. www.artstation.com/artwork/yk8qaR

Xcimer Energy is developing a commercial DT fusion reactor that's like a highly modernized NIF: a 10+ MJ Krypton-Fluoride 248 nm excimer laser (>5% efficiency) as driver and capsules shot by EM gun into a HYLIFE III chamber with molten FLiBe in the walls xcimer.energy

Solar sails with a modest lightness ratio of 0.1 can transfer to Venus or Mars and become "quasi-pole-sitters", orbiting indefinitely less than 30° from the planet's poles: www.researchgate.net/publication/... Thinner sails with better lightness ratios can become perfect 0° pole sitters.

A simulation of a neutron star merger by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics that would explain the GW170817 gravitational wave observation by ‪@LIGOVirgo‬, followed by a gamma ray burst: youtu.be/xIthgcx-axs

Cinematics, environment and mood concepts for Battlefield 6. #art by Jakub Kowalczyk. www.artstation.com/artwork/Zl8PwX

Sunlight reflects off the thin spread of gas and dust throughout the Solar System, creating a very fait glow opposite our Sun. It's called Gegenschein.

CSBA report on the "inadequacy of Western munition stocks" and how the "U.S. military has encountered difficulties meeting its PGM demands in nearly every campaign since their adoption". csbaonline.org/uploads/docu... It then goes through multiple scenarios to detail how bad it gets.

A Cold War interceptor with two turbojets and one massive ramjet, inspired by the French Leduc 0.22. The pilot sits inside the intake cone. #art by AST21. www.artstation.com/artwork/JrJ3kZ

"In fact, the art of computer programming was essentially invented for SAGE." MIT Lincoln Lab's page on the US's first air defence system; the 'Semi-Automatic Ground Environment' ADS, built in a panic over nuclear-armed Soviet bombers flying over the Arctic: www.ll.mit.edu/about/histor...

Hotspot impact ignition of fusion fuel: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A spherical capsule of DT has a plastic cone inserted into it. When blasted by a laser pulse, a piece of fuel is flung into the sphere's center where its impact generates ignition conditions for the rest of the fuel.

"Sous-Marin Nucléaire Lanceur d'Engins de Troisieme Génération", the next French nuclear ballistic submarine, expected to operate from 2035 to 2090. #art by Nikausse. www.artstation.com/artwork/JrNXzD

A great basic introduction to how space nuclear reactors work, their challenges and their potential performance at their current level of development: ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20...

"The Expanse: Future Worlds" was a series of behind-the-scene segments that featured crew, cast and creatives interviews plus worldbuilding details for the main show. Here's the first one: youtu.be/mBikjImHxKg

Concept art for Balde Runner 2049, by Kamen Annev. #art www.artstation.com/artwork/80A3q www.artstation.com/artwork/3W9Z2 www.artstation.com/artwork/P0Dk1 www.artstation.com/artwork/L6m2K

Am I reading this right? The Type 091, China's first nuclear submarine, spent its first *15* years without any torpedoes installed? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_09... And those torpedoes, Yu-3s, took 23 years to develop?

Warcraft Wednesday #hibourverse #space #scifi

oh this one is even better

The Harrier from SpaceSolar is a 360° power beaming tech demonstrator, part of their CASSIOPeiA space-based solar power satellite: youtu.be/jGd8x8d2n3M It's 0.5m wide and being tested in on the ground, for a 1.7km wide final design operating at GW scale from GEO.

The Yanera-Class Interstellar Cargo Ship. Debris shield, container stack, glowing radiators... it's got most of the right pieces for a realistic starship! #space #art by aaunaa. www.artstation.com/artwork/x3EVB1

A liquid sheet radiator: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citation... Similar to liquid droplet radiator, and matching power density, but a thin continuous film of liquid is used to radiate heat. The flow was always stable in physical testing up to 11 m/s.

A really good attempt at rendering Werka's Afterburning Fission Fragment rocket design, one of the few nuclear propulsion systems that can achieve 30-50,000s Isp without an electric conversion step or explosive chain reactions: forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?to...

The 1000+ bases of the United States across the world: geoawesome.com/top-14-maps-... About a third of American troops are always stationed overseas.

Radioisotope microbatteries using diamond Schottky barrier diodes to directly convert Beta decay into electricity: www.researchgate.net/publication/... There's some potential of 4-6% conversion efficiency, but only 0.6% has been demonstrated at a paltry 0.000000003 W/cm^2 using Ni63.

The Synod battleship from EVE: Frontier. No regard for realism, but the aesthetics make up for it. #space #art by Long Pham. www.artstation.com/artwork/2BXwWy

The many warheads of the Minuteman missile: minutemanmissile.com/nuclearwarhe... It started with 1 Mt W59s and 1.2 Mt W56s, then evolved into a MIRV launcher with much more accurate but lower yield 170 kT W62s and 300 kT W87s.

NASA got John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Ring's Gimli) to present about their 'Fellowship of the Telescopes': youtu.be/M8FklyI2IEo The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory should soon join them.

One of the concepts for the Discovery from '2001: A Space Odyssey' was an Orion drive spaceship, based on documents handed to Kubrick as soon as the propulsion system was declassified: youtu.be/rDkk_qar5wI By Nick Stevens.