Whilst I was researching for the last video about inertial guidance, I came across the miniaturization of what were basically large spinning flywheels down to parts that could be fabricated on a silicon chip just millimeters in size and yet did the same overall function. But how small can we …
How Inertial Navigation Changed Air, Sea & Space Travel for Ever?
On the 8th Feb 1953, a B-29 took off from Hanscom Airforce base near Boston, Massachusetts to fly to Los Angeles, California, a journey of approximately 2600 miles or 4290 km and 12 hours in flight time. But this would be no ordinary flight, this flight would be the first …
How Two Dive Bombers Altered the Course of WW2
The first bombs of WW2 were dropped by Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers, during the invasion of Poland, and the last Luftwaffe ground-assault mission against Soviet tanks took place on the 5th May 1945 as part of the defence of Berlin was also by Stukas dive bombers. This “little Bomber“ …
Lost for decades, How Sonar is revealing the secrets of the sea, lakes and rivers.
What is the link between the wreck of the Titanic and the solving of missing persons cold cases in the USA? Well, both were found with sonar, a technology that uses sound to locate objects and measure distances in water. We currently know more about the surface of Mars and …
Could NASA 3D Print a New F-1 Rocket Engine?
When NASA was looking to go back to the moon, it did look at resurrecting the Saturn V rocket, after all, it had delivered men to the moon from 1969 to 1972 with no failures of the rocket itself, barring apollo 13 which was a failure of an oxygen tank …
Was the B29-Superfortress a failure?
It was the single most expensive military project of world war two costing 50% more than the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb and is the only aircraft to drop nuclear weapons in combat. The B-29 was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of the world war 2 that …
How is NASA Hearing Stars?
This garden universe vibrates completeSome, we get a sound so sweetVibrations reach on up to become lightAnd then through gamma, out of sightBetween the eyes and ears there lieThe sounds of colour and the light of a sighAnd to hear the sun, what a thing to believeBut it’s all around …
The Device that Won WW2 – The Cavity Magnetron
It was called “the most valuable cargo ever brought to the US shores” and in many ways brought about many technological aspects of the world we live in today and yet this device had a chequered beginning and appears to have been independently invented several times in different countries. A …
If Oppenheimer Didn’t Invent the Atomic Bomb, Who Did?
Did Oppenheimer invent the atomic bomb?. I was listening to the radio the other day to an interview with Cillian Murphy, the actor who plays Robert Oppenheimer in the new film of the same name and the interviewer started by saying, “what’s it like to play the man who invented …
What are the odds of a safe rocket launch?
After watching the SpaceX Starship explode, the space industry could be seen as high risk but which are you more likely to be killed in, a car journey or a rocket going into orbit? Well, if you are in the UK which is ranked 7th in the world for the …