Today I found these great articles on PopMech. First one (
http://pburl.com/0ef708) deals with robots. It is this month's cover page issue for their magazine. It's brilliantly written, full of interesting information. There is also this idea which keeps bugging me for some time. Why do all of our robots have small motors in them? Why couldn't we instead make their movements happen because of different fibers stretched the same way muscles are? The material would need the property to contract when current is sent through it and TA DAA: more human robots. I know that some scientists in the US are working on these kind of fibers made of carbon nano tubes., but is there any other material or even gizmo that does the same thing so that we could play with it for a while? If it is and if it is relatively cheap, please tell me about it in the comments, as I am very interested buying it, for a miniature robot working on the principle above.
2nd article:
http://pburl.com/074d1f. Mr Richard Branson comes up with another great idea. The type that is described best by *face slap*-why-didn't-I-think-of-that? He reached the space, and now he is planning on getting a line of submarines, so people could go deep under the oceans whenever they want to, or on chartered dives through Virgin Seaways.
3rd article deals with Nasa's future.
http://pburl.com/050c29. It seems that uber-cool president Obama, did not include any money for the hardware for Nasa's human space flight program in the budget. This raises the following question answered by the article:
- 1) Who are the beneficiaries of this budget shift?
- 2) Is the military the heir to NASA?
- 3) Will the U.S. lose the new Space Race? Do people care?
- 4) What will the next big launch vehicle look like? And when will it be ready?
- 5) Are NASA astronauts going extinct?
-- G-raph Out --
