US Navy Stealth Ship christened

The USS Zumwalt  186 meters long and 15,000 tonnes has been official christened. The most advanced ship to be built for the US Navy has a low radar signature making it appear the size of a Trawler. The ship is electric powered from two Rolls Royce RR4500 gas turbines.
      She has been built has been built at Hugh cost  for future need including the possibility of fitting a rail gun which is under development and the laser weapon that is continuing to be tested by the US Navy See
Extremetech  for details

Power by Sea Water

When we think of vehicles running on water we think of  hydrogen engines, well there is another way.
The Navy researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have another way.

They have come up with a way to convert sea water into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel. The proof of concept has taken place by flying a replica of a World War II P-51 Mustang with the fuel.

The  hydrocarbon fuel can be extracted with a 92% efficiency rate bring the cost of fuel the fleet down to a predicted $3-$6 per us Gallon. If ships could be fitted with a convert to do this on board then no refuelling would be required giving greater sea time at reduced cost.

Read more @  America*s Navy

Has the gel pack arrived

Charge your phone in 30 Seconds Israeli start-up StoreDot has developed a organic based battery and say that it could be in production within 3 years. The nano crystals where first found about ten years ago when  Aviv University  was doing research into Alzheimer's.

More on this at the BBC  and Techcrunch

NASA Images of Moons Polar Region

Over the last four years NASA have assembled 10,581 images of the northern polar region of the moon. This amounts to about 680 gigapixels of valid image data
They have now stitched them together to provide a google earth type map of the polar region

The images can be viewed like google maps  at http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/gigapan/

Project Morpheus The Planetary Lander

Morpheus the prototype lander has flown again and gone high than before at 580 feet and travelling 827 feet and landed on target. The next  step is to install the ALHAT Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology sensor
More can be read about this project on the NASA project Morpheus web site

Scoot Across the Crossings.

London is to trail a new Intelligent pedestrian crossing Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique (SCOOT).

(Image Tfl)

The new system counts the number of people inside a virtual box on the crossing using a CCTV camera. The time of the light change is then altered with the number of people crossing the road. If the push to cross button is activated and the person then walks off or cross before the lights turn, the wait signal is then cancelled.

More on this story at  GIZMAG

Australian National University (ANU) has been given a £10.8 million grant to look at infra red lasers to burn space debris Reports the Independant. Scientists say that  work on destroying some of the pieces could be in progress by in the next 10 Years. The university that is made up of a number of  universities and space agencies was given the grant by NASA who has long warned about the amount of junk in low orbit.