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The USA Hits the Oil Boom Times
Image credit – AEI, Mark Perry’s Carpe Diem Blog Not widely known is that in the US there is an oil production boom going on. In states like North Dakota and Texas it is the wild west of the oil boom...
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A Cold Fusion Powered USS Enterprise?
Hot ECAT During Testing I have written often about how Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) devices may create an energy revolution on Earth. But what can LENR do for the Gen1 Enterprise? I wrote about...
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Creating Hydrogen and Oxygen on Mars
When a spacecraft lands on Mars, it needs to be re-fueled. This slide set by John Strickland of the National Space Society tells how propellant can be manufactured on Mars. (Slide 64 is shown above.)...
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First Ever Photograph of the Inside of a Hydrogen Atom
photo of hydrogen atom In the news recently: “Scientists have captured the first ever photo of an electron’s whizzing orbit within a hydrogen atom, thanks to a unique new microscopy technique.” Inside...
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Ad Astra Rocket Company VASIMR Scientist Comments
10 days left and just $5495 more is needed on the Kickstarter project about the VASIMR engine made by the Ad Astra Rocket Company. It’s looking good! The VASIMR is the most advanced and most powerful...
View ArticleThermoelectric Generators for the Gen1 Enterprise
For the Gen1 Enterprise spaceship, one key question is: What do you connect to the nuclear reactors (the heat source) to generate electricity? Various heat engines similar to steam turbines could be...
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EmDrive vs. Skylon for Launchers to Space
The table above is from a poster made by EmDrive inventor Roger Shawyer for the recent IAC13 conference in Beijing . It compares three very different spacecraft for launching payloads from Earth to...
View ArticleA Steam Turbine-Powered Enterprise, Yep Maybe
If you are going to build nuclear reactors in space to generate heat, for them to be useful you have to convert the heat energy into electrical energy to power the spaceship’s electric propulsion...
View ArticleProject Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship
The book is from 2002, but it tells what could have been: Like cheap, shiny space suits and bug-eyed rubber monsters, nuclear-powered spaceships today seem like little more than laughably naïve 1950s...
View ArticleZubrin’s Hoax of a Debate
Robert Zubrin says he wants a debate: “Thursday, Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin issued a challenge to a debate to Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, former astronaut and president and CEO of Ad Astra.”...
View ArticleThe Gen1 Enterprise: The Harder Stuff
Here is what is more straightforward for developing for the Gen1 Enterprise, given the time and money: Gravity wheel Gravity wheel elevators Hull structures Nuclear reactors & electric generators...
View ArticleUSS Enterprise (the Navy ship) Retires
The USS Enterprise aircraft carrier (CVN-65) was inactivated yesterday. An AP article from November 4 summarized what was coming: NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier...
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Nuclear Power Plant in Operation … and Cooling It
Nuclear Power Plant Operation Above is a slick animation made by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to show the basic operation of a nuclear power plant. Click on it to watch the animation. Now notice...
View ArticleHeat Baby, Heat
Heat engines run on heat. A steam turbine in a power plant, a type of heat engine, runs on heat. The Enterprise’s electric generators are driven by a heat engine which runs on heat (from the on board...
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Enterprise Technologies Dream Team: LENR+EmDrive
Gen1 Enterprise Technologies Dream Team Yep, if the technologies work as their inventors promise, we have a match made in heaven for The Really Big E: a LENR power system plus EmDrive engines....
View ArticleOne Gigawatt LENR Power Source for the Enterprise?
On Andrea Rossi’s website there was recently this exchange: “Dear Eng Rossi: Is something reasonable to think in the future to a bigger size e-cat able to produce a gigawatthour/h of energy, or your...
View ArticleGraphene SuperCaps for Enterprise Backup Power
One technology seldom discussed on the BTE site, since the site was launched, is back up power. I did address this on one of the main pages where I wrote: “In case of an emergency any one or all of the...
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Carbon-Carbon Radiators for the Enterprise
carbon-carbon panel So what are the large radiators on the Gen1 Enterprise to be made of? Likely answer: Carbon-Carbon: “Carbon-Carbon is a special composite material that uses pure carbon for both the...
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Harvesting the Enterprise’s Waste Heat: Power Chips™ to the Rescue
Power Chip for Energy Harvesting As often mentioned on the BTE site, one of the greatest challenges with the ship is getting rid of waste heat from the nuclear power system. The most desired way do...
View ArticleHot Fusion Reactor for the Enterprise?
One of the blog posts I lost in April when the BTE site crashed was about the Hot Fusion reactor being investigated at Lockheed Skunkworks. In the video below Charles Chase talks about it. If this...
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