The true measure of engineering success — or, at least, one of them — is how long something remains in use. A TV set someone designed in 1980 is probably, at best, relegated to a dusty guest room today if not the landfill. But the B-52 — America’s iconic bomber — has been around for more than 70 years and will likely keep flying for another 30 years or more. Think about that. A plane that first flew in 1952 is still in active use. What’s more, according to a love letter to the plane by [Alex Hollings], it was designed over a weekend in a hotel room by a small group of people.
A Successful Design
One of the keys to the plane’s longevity is its flexibility. Just as musicians have to reinvent themselves if they want to have a career spanning decades, what you wanted a bomber to do in the 1960s is different than what you want it to do today. Oddly enough, other newer bombers like the B-1B and B-2 have already been retired while the B-52 keeps on flying.
After decades of delays and false starts, NASA is finally returning to the Moon. The world is eagerly awaiting the launch of Artemis I, the first demonstration flight of both the Space Launch System and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which combined will send humans out of low Earth orbit for the first time since 1972. But it’s delayed.
While the first official Artemis mission is naturally getting all the attention, the space agency plans to do more than put a new set of boots on the surface — their long-term goals include the “Lunar Gateway” space station that will be the rallying point for the sustained exploration of our nearest celestial neighbor.
Launched aboard an Electron rocket in June, the large CubeSat will hopefully become the first spacecraft to ever enter into a NRHO. By positioning itself in such a way that the gravity from Earth and the Moon influence it equally, maintaining its orbit should require only periodic position corrections. This would not only lower the maintenance burden of adjusting the Lunar Gateway’s orbit, but reduce the station’s propellant requirement.
CAPSTONE is also set to test out an experimental navigation system that uses the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as a reference point instead of ground-based stations. In a future where spacecraft are regularly buzzing around the Moon, it will be important to establish a navigation system that doesn’t rely on Earthly input to operate.
So despite costing a relatively meager $30 million and only being about as large as a microwave oven, CAPSTONE is a very important mission for NASA’s grand lunar aspirations. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone quite to plan so far. Trouble started just days after liftoff, and as of this writing, the outcome of the mission is still very much in jeopardy.
We love big projects here at Hackaday, and one of the biggest underway is the decarbonization of the electric grid. The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently published a report (PDF) on how placing nuclear reactors on coal plant sites in the US could help us get closer to the zero carbon grid of our dreams.
After evaluating both operating and recently retired coal-fired plants in the US, the researchers determined that around 80% of medium and large coal plants would be good candidates for coal to nuclear (C2N). Up to 263 GWe could be installed at over 315 different sites around the country which would be more than the 145 GWe expected to go offline as the remaining coal plants in the country shut down. Siting nuclear reactors at these existing sites could reduce installation costs 15-35% while also providing jobs for workers in the area who might otherwise be displaced when the coal plants shut down. Local greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) could drop up to 86% along with a significant drop in other air pollutants which would be another win for the fenceline communities living and working around these coal plants.
Nuclear power is certainly not without its drawbacks, but new reactor designs like TerraPower’s Natrium promise lower costs than current light water reactor designs while also being able to reuse the spent fuel from our current nuclear fleet. TerraPower is developing the first C2N project in the US at the Naughton Power Plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
One of the peripherals of most desire for a microcomputer-obsessed youth in the 1980s was a printer, probably a dot-matrix device. In the decades since, printers have passed into being almost a piece of discardable junk as cheap inkjets can be found in any garage sale. That’s not to say that there’s not plenty of fun to be had hacking older types though, and there are plenty of small thermal printers out there to play with. [Tanmoydutta] has provided a platform that may help, in the form of an ESP32-C3-based serial printer controller.
On board is a level shifter for the 5 volt printer electronics and all the appropriate connectors for the printer, as well as the ESP and onboard USB interface. It’s a networked print server, but one which is entirely and completely hackable. We think the printer in question is this one sold by Adafruit.
So this board makes easier a whole host of printer-related projects, and should you try it you will no doubt finding yourself ankle-deep in little curly pieces of paper. This printer’s not the only one in town though, don’t forget the cheap Bluetooth printers!
If you grew up before high gas prices and strict emission control regulations, you probably had — or wanted — a car with a V8 engine. An engineering masterpiece created in France, it would define automotive power for the best part of a century. Of course, you can still get them, but the realities of our day make them a luxury. [Vlad] shows us his latest Christmas list addition: a fully-functioning but tiny V8 — the Toyan FS-V800 that has a displacement of two centiliters.
It runs on R/C nitro fuel and is claimed to be the world’s smallest production V8. You can buy the thing built or as a kit and we suggest to protect your street cred, you claim you bought the kit even if you go for the assembled version. The cylinder bores are 17 mm and 16 tiny valves regulate the flow. There are even tiny mufflers for the manifold exhaust. [Dennis] has a video of his operating that you can see below, and his YouTube channel has a lot of information on building the kit and some modifications, too.
Cooling? Water-cooled, of course. The manufacturer claims the engine can rev to 12,500 RPM and can produce over four horsepower. The total size would allow it to fit easily in a five inch cubical volume. You could build it into something, or just display it as a conversation piece. Be prepared for sticker shock, though. We hear the going price for these is about $1,500.
If you’re a bit short on cash or would rather just play with some pretend ponies, this impressive open source engine simulator might be just what you’re looking for.
In our occasional series charting audio and Hi-Fi technology we have passed at a technical level the main components of a home audio set-up. In our last outing when we looked at cabling we left you with a promise of covering instrumentation, but now it’s time instead for a short digression into another topic: stereo. It’s a word so tied-in with Hi-Fi that “a stereo” is an alternative word for almost any music system, but what does it really mean? What makes a stereo recording, and how does it arrive at your ears?
As most of you will know, a mono recording uses a single microphone and a single channel while a stereo one uses two microphones recording simultaneously a left and right channel. These are then played back through a pair of speakers, and the result is a sense of spatial field for the listener. Instruments appear to come from their relative positions when recorded, and the sense of being in the performance is enhanced.
Stereo recording as we know it was first perfected as one of the many inventions credited to Alan Blumlein, then working for EMI in London. We have one of his stereo demonstration films in “Trains at Hayes“, filmed from the EMI laboratories overlooking the Great Western Railway, and featuring a series of steam-hauled trains crossing the field of view with a corresponding stereo sound field. His work laid down the fundamentals of stereo recording, including microphone configurations and what would become the standard for stereo audio recording on disk with the channels on the opposite sides of a 45 degree groove. Continue reading “Know Audio: Stereo”→
Hobbyist-grade laser cutters can be a little restrictive as to the types and thicknesses of materials that they can cut. We’re usually talking about CO2 and diode-based machines here, and if you want to cut non-plastic sheets, you’re usually going to be looking towards natural materials such as leather, fabrics, and thin wood.
But what about metals? It’s a common beginner’s question, often asked with a resigned look, that they already know the answer is going to be a hard “no. ” However, YouTuber [Chad] decided to respond to some comments about the possibility of cutting metal sheets using a high-power diode laser, with a simple experiment to actually determine what the limits actually are.
Using an XTool D1 Pro 20W as a testbed, [Chad] tried a variety of materials including mild steel, stainless, aluminium, and brass sheets at a variety of thicknesses. Steel shim sheets in thicknesses from one to eight-thousandths of an inch appeared to be perfectly cuttable, with an appropriate air assist and speed settings, with thicker sheets needing a good few passes. You can definitely see the effect of excess heat in the workpiece, resulting in some discoloration and noticeable warping, but those issues can be mitigated. Copper and aluminium weren’t touched by the beam at all, likely due to the extra reflectivity, but we do have to wonder if appropriate surface treatments could improve matters.
