Key technologies include a compact pre-cooler heat-exchanger that can take an incoming airstream of over 1,000C and cool it to -150C in less than 1/100th of a second. This would permit Sabre to use oxygen direct from the atmosphere for combustion instead of carrying it in a tank with the weight penalty that implies.
Source: co.uk
Thethrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft just did what we thought was impossible. After 37 years of inactivity,NASA just received response from spacecraft 13 billion miles away, NASA said in a statement on its website. Voyager 1 is NASA’s farthest and fastest spacecraft.
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Two recent papers anticipate how nukes could be employed to either deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, or blow it into smaller, less hazardous chunks. One, published in Acta Astronautica, proposes a vehicle called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), which could be deployed to nudge asteroids away from Earth, or in a worst case scenario, as a delivery mechanism for a nuclear device.
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