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Caltech’s SSPD-1 Is a New Idea for Space-Based Solar

Cars That Think

That’s when SSPD-1, a solar space-power demonstrator satellite carrying a bevy of new technologies designed at the California Institute of Technology, blasted into low Earth orbit for a year-long mission. That’s one of the reasons we’ve pulled away from that approach and moved toward a flat design. And yet the dream lives on.

IDEA 101
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Two Companies Working Towards Full-Scale Liberty Lifter X-Plane

Cars That Think

DARPA is of course well known for having lots of crazy ideas, only some of which ever come to fruition. But excitingly, two major aerospace companies have now signed on with their own designs for Liberty Lifter , meaning that a new full-scale X-Plane may actually happen in the near future.

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IoT-ize Your Old Gadgets With a Mechanical Hijacking Device

Cars That Think

It's not hard to turn them on and off with a connected socket adapter of some sort, but as you start to go back more than a few years, things become increasingly designed for direct human interaction rather than for the Internet, with buttons and switches and dials and whatnot. Or, that was the idea, anyway.

DIY 141
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Miniscule Sensing Suite is a Big Step Towards Robotic Gnats

Cars That Think

In the late 1980s, Rod Brooks and Anita Flynn published a paper in The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society with the amazing title of Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: A Robotic Invasion of the Solar System. It’s designed primarily to explore your insides, which is why the entire camera is only 0.65

Cheap 117
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Tesla is working on NACS extension cable to fix Supercharging issues with different port locations

Baua Electric

The Supercharger stalls were designed for that. The idea of a Supercharger extension cable has been suggested as a potential solution. Electrek’s Take It sounds like a great idea. Tesla is rapidly deploying our latest V4 Supercharger post which reaches all EVs in the same Supercharger stall.

Tesla 52
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Ham Radio Inspired This Scranton University Student to Pursue Engineering

Cars That Think

He’s been involved with the two-way radio communication, which uses designated frequencies, since his uncle introduced him to it when he was a youngster. The contest was a great opportunity for me,” Piccini says, “to learn how to apply the skills I’ve been learning from classes into a project that I designed myself.”

Universal 111
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Heating Buildings With Solar Energy Stored in Sand

Cars That Think

A Battery for Heat Made from Sand Noted chemical engineer Donald Sadoway is quoted as saying: “If you want to make a dirt-cheap battery, you have to make it out of dirt.” Sand is efficient, nontoxic, portable, and cheap!”. “We As soon as we decided to pursue this idea, we were trying to figure out how the finances looked,” says Eronen.

Store 97