toughsf.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

94 GHz power beaming using gyrotrons to generate the beams and 4 kW/kg rectennas to receive it, massively speeding up GTO to GEO transfers with electric thrusters: ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20...

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

"Lifeline: Aerospace Logistics Tomorrow", a restored 1962 USAF documentary, all hand-painted and animated, imagining the space future they expected was near: youtu.be/onoibcAedmY

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

The Phoenix, a conversion of the Polaris space station into an interplanetary spaceship, from For All Mankind: Season 4. By Sean Hargreaves. www.artstation.com/artwork/6NGowr

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

A 1976 paper strongly arguing that the best way to extract energy from fission fuel is in the form of a reactor-laser, calling the prevalent Carnot steam cycle as a great missed opportunity: ia800508.us.archive.org/1/items/NASA... More: toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/04/nucl...

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

Are there mantle rocks exposed on the lunar surface? www.nature.com/articles/s41... Finding them would fill in many gaps in our knowledge of how the Moon's initial magma ocean crystallized, and its interior's structure and composition.

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

XA100 is a next-generation Adaptive Cycle jet engine in development at General Electric. It's a "three stream" 200 kN-class turbofan with CMC turbines that can adjust its bypass ratio for better cooling, thrust or efficiency. It promises +35% range over the current F-35 with F135.

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

"Beyond the rings": space scenes by Carlos Javier Martínez. www.artstation.com/artwork/vbyA1O

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

A critical part of any fusion drive cycle is the ability to extract electrical power from the plasma exiting the nozzle to ignite the next pulse of fuel. Here's a high-efficiency lightweight method to do just that, using inductive power conversion: doi.org/10.2514/6.20...

submitted 12 hours ago • 1 comment

The Energy Multiplier Module is a fast-neutron waste-burning version of General Atomic's Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor, with silicon carbide fuel cladding. It operates at 850°C to produce 500 MWth without refuelling for 30 years, turning it into 240-296 MWe of electricity.

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

Onboard footage from US Navy Full Ship Shock Trials involving DDG-81 Winston S. Churchill: youtu.be/vxPTyJfTihk

submitted 13 hours ago • 1 comment

Crossing an orbital ring, positioned far above a planet. This is a tribute to Larry Liven. By AdrianMarkGillespie. www.deviantart.com/adrianmarkgi...

submitted 13 hours ago • 4 comments

Doodles of Martian vehicles

submitted 1 day ago • 8 comments

SPHEREx is going to assemble a 3D map of half a billion galaxies to probe theories of the beginning of the universe. Not all that modest!

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

How thick is the ice atop the enormous oceans of moons like Europa and Ganymede? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... An end-of-life probe or spent rocket stage could serve as a seismic impactor to find out. It could be an add-on experiment to existing or future mission.

submitted 18 hours ago • 1 comment

Homo Sapiens exists since 300,000 years ago. But our modern brain shape and organization is only 35,000 years old! www.mpg.de/11883269/hom... It may mean our 'behaviorally modern' ancestors had functionally different brains from all previous hominins.

submitted 20 hours ago • 0 comments

The Delta Clipper eXperimental (DC-X) prototype for a reusable SSTO: flic.kr/p/bEhzrW flic.kr/p/fws6yX

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

The ultimate expression of the Apollo Program: developing winged SSTOs, launching rotating space stations and piecing together nuclear propulsion modules to explore the gas giants. These are all real designs! By Thomas-Peters. www.deviantart.com/thomas-peter...

submitted 21 hours ago • 3 comments

The crew of Apollo 14 found it difficult to sleep - partly due to the angle at which they landed. They felt they were slipping down into a crater, and Ed Mitchell would regularly lift the blinds to check they were not. Wonderful clarity in this small section of the full panorama.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

A short paper presenting a very obvious idea: to combine gas-core nuclear rockets with the LANTR thrust-augmenting concept. www.ripublication.com/aasa/aasav3n... Sadly, the authors do no work to develop the idea, describe its potential or estimate its performance.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

The 'Fusion Candles' from @artofsoulburn.bsky.social's Megastructure series. These are enormous double-ended engines that could move entire planets, using the surrounding gases as fuel. www.artstation.com/artwork/q9rPWa

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

If you want a maneuvering reentry warhead to evade ballistic missile defenses, then there's a weirdly simple solution: give it a bent nose and rotate the whole vehicle. On the left, the Mk 500 Evader from the US, on the right, a similar Russian attempt.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Picosecond resolution exploration of pre-compressed hydrogen shocked with a laser pulse, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: youtu.be/3fHgMO9HLiU

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Solar System infographic pages by Vadim Sadovski. www.artstation.com/marketplace/...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

The U.S. Air Force's F-16 Viper Demonstration Team's special 50th-anniversary colour scheme:

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Cryovolcanism has erased Pluto's craters and reshaped most of its surface: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Evidence from New Horizons shows that at least 10,000 km^3 of ice erupted and flowed onto the surface, far past the point we believe the planet had frozen solid.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Evaluation of a tiny 141 kg solar-thermal thruster that collects 104 kW of thermal power, focuses it onto a hafnium-carbide heat exchanger and uses it to produce 8.9 N of thrust at 927s Isp, meant as an upper stage to a smallsat launcher: arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

A ring-world positioned around a black hole, with the its accretion disk turned into a propulsive jet. Great use of gravitational distortion to create fantastic visual effects! By @alexjaybrady.bsky.social www.artstation.com/artwork/WXXGRD

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Quipu, 1.3 billion lightyears long, is the largest known structure in the Universe. It, alongside other superstructures Shapely, Serpens, Hercules and Sculptor-Pegasus, represent 25% of all matter and 13% of the volume of everything known. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

The DST 22E-01 "Most Serene and Dreadful", a large interplanetary spaceship with huge rows of radiators and multiple rotating habitation rings. By OblateOne. www.tumblr.com/oblateone/72...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Expansion vs time charts for the Universe: www.scirp.org/pdf/jhepgc_2... When the Earth formed, the Universe was 37% of its current size.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Some neat scifi architecture by Nick Stath www.artstation.com/artwork/xJPG4X www.artstation.com/artwork/9NgOQO www.artstation.com/artwork/dK1nVK www.artstation.com/artwork/8by54E

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Science torch ship! Measurement instruments and other sensitive systems are moved far to the front, away from the main body of the ship, while the engines section itself has further added shielding

submitted 9 days ago • 5 comments

The Handley Page HP 117 concept for a flying-wing airliner with 300 passengers, for rapid transatlantic travel. www.flickr.com/photos/apoll...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

The Bloodhound LSR car achieved 1010 km/h using solid Al-Zn wheels and an EJ200 turbojet engine delivering 90 kN of thrust. It still hasn't used its Nammo rocket engine, which it hopes will boost it to 1600 km/h, far beyond the current land speed record of 1228 km/h

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

A 'near future space combat' scene that is HEAVILY inspired by @thelunarwar.bsky.social Still, it's great that these designs and aesthetics with realistic considerations are gaining in popularity: youtu.be/zwdXmu-e5w4

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

An atomic landship for the Moon! The design is extremely detailed, featuring a 5.2 MW Brayton nuclear-electric power system, Inconel radiators, charge neutraliser spikes and a hexapodal telepresence robot for maintenance. By Melanovis. www.artstation.com/artwork/Gvg444

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

The DSV Limiting Factor is a privately designed and built submersible that holds the record for deepest crewed dives in a all five oceans. It's based on a 9cm thick titanium sphere with acrylic viewports that can handle the pressure of -11,000m.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Week-long space tourism missions to the Moon using nuclear-propelled spacecraft that carry an inflatable habitat module and a spaceplane like the HL-20: ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20... The trip is 3 days to LLO, 1 day stay, then 3 days return to LEO.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

guide to the planetary system of Proxima Centauri, 2598 revision

submitted 10 days ago • 7 comments

Jupiter up by the North Temperate Belt and Folded Filamentary Region. Juno’s Perijove 65. flic.kr/p/2qLgoTz

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

2000K looks orange. 3000K looks yellow. 6000K looks white. 8000K looks blue. 10,000K looks blue. 100,000K looks blue. 1,000,000K looks blue. 1,000,000,000K looks blue.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment