It was both feared and admired by it enemies but when the design for a fast unarmed bomber was proposed to the British air ministry it was met with scepticism and the project was very nearly scrapped before it had started in favour of the existing aircraft of the time. …
The Robots Return, How Have Atlas, ASIMO, Cheetah, Spot and Pepper fared 4+ Years On?
Just over four and half years ago, in what was my 8th video I looked at five of the most advanced robots at the time namely Asimo, Atlas, spot, cheetah and Pepper but just as a week is a long time in politics, four and a half years in the …
The Scale of Everything – The Big, the Small and the Planck
There is something both calming and therapeutic about looking up at the night sky and even though the milky way makes for a stunning view of the heavens its easy to forget that what we can see with the naked eye is an incredibly tiny, tiny fraction of the Universe …
NASA’s Mega Hubble – The Roman Space Telescope
Space telescopes are expensive things to develop and build and can take years to finish, just look at the James Web Space Telescope, that started development in 1996 for a launch in 2007 on a $500 million budget, its now looking at a launch in 2021 and the budget has …
Could the Crew of Columbia Have Been Rescued?
The Columbia disaster of January 2003 was not only the second total loss of a space shuttle and crew, it also sounded the death knell for the whole space shuttle program. The reason being was that the shuttle had always been a work in progress and that after 31 years …
How do you Escape from an Exploding rocket? – Launch Escape Systems
Strapping your self into a tiny capsule on top of what essentially controlled a large controlled explosion is one of the hazards of being an astronaut but if things go really wrong then is nice to know there is an escape system of some sort to get you out of …
How Long Can the B-52 Continue in Service?
Imagine a Sopwith camel biplane which first saw service in 1917 during the first world war and then using the same aircraft in combat missions right up until the last days of the Vietnam war in 1975. That’s a service life of 58 years which also spans a massive change …
C-5 Galaxy – The USAF’s Heavyweight Champion of the Air
It’s been the heavyweight workhorse of the United States airforce since 1970, moving everything from emergency food relief to main battle tanks and even other aircraft and pretty much everything else in between. It’s also the only ever plane to carry and launch a full-sized intercontinental ballistic missile in the …
How Safe is Nuclear Transportation?
Every day tens of thousands of shipments of radiative materials are made by road, rail, air and sea around the world with everything from the smoke detectors that contain americium-241 to the refurbishment of nuclear warheads but how safe is the transporting of these materials either from accidental damage or …
Why Can’t We Find MH370?
It’s been six and a half years since Malaysian Airlines MH370 disappeared on route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China with the presumed loss of all 239 onboard. And yet despite the most expensive air and sea search in aviation history and launching a whole raft of conspiracy theories, only …