ToughSF

@ToughSf • 35,348 subscribers

Matterbeam. Author of the ToughSF blog. Original SuperNerd. Ex-Kurzgesagt Duck. Freelance writer. Discord https://t.co/Q4cBKnMMoS

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ToughSF

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The F-22's Jet Fuel Starter first spins up its small APU turbine, which gradually turns the much larger F119 engines via connecting gearboxes:

Intercepting KKVs in low Earth obit with a laser: It's got all the right elements: radiators heat up as power increases, the laser itself is invisible but focusing optics do scatter it, targets are conical and gradually vaporize under fire...

The bacterial flagellar motor can spin at 100,000 RPM in one direction, then switch gears and flip to spinning in the other direction. How does this work? Cryo-electron microscopy reveals some of the nanoscale mechanics involved:

Sierra Space's LIFE inflatable space station module undergroing a full-scale pressure test: It burst at 427% of its operating pressure, well above NASA's requirements.

Slow motion firing of the 50mm XM913 chaingun, a scaled-up and modernized version of Bushmaster's 35mm and 25mm cannons: It's 300 kg, fires at 200 RPM and uses large (1.5 kg) XM1203 APFSDS and XM1204 airburst rounds.

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Is this the largest rocket explosion on US soil ever?

The Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS) that lets ships ride on a low-friction 'air carpet': It was already demonstrated to reduce fuel consumption by 13% in its first trials.

The largest non-nuclear artificial explosion in history is the Minor Scale test: 4744 tons of ANFO packed into a dome simulated the blast for an 8 kT yield airburst nuke.

The Shuttle Training Aircraft was a Grumman Gulfstream II modified to simulate a gliding Shuttle orbiter: It still needed to drop gear and reverse thrust to match the terrible L/D of the orbiter on descent.

You'll find an excellent example of hard-SF space combat in SAD:Frontier. Here, the PFS-028 Bellerophon fends off a wave of missiles in orbit around Callisto.

Orion nuclear pulse drives are powerful *despite* their design. The energy efficiency of the 10m diameter USAF design was just 0.78%, as the 1 kT pulse yield converted into 2 MN thrust at 3350s Isp. Animation Brian Mac Mághnais :

Watching bullets impact glass at 10 million frames per second, fast enough to follow the 2.5 km/s shockwave it creates, or even detect a surprising 13.7 km/s ripple speeding ahead: Ballistic High-Speed

On the dark side of the moon, a radio telescope could be suspended over a 5km diameter crater. it'd bypass the ionosphere and be shielded from Earth's electromagnetic noise, achieving substantially greater sensitivity. Real Engineering (Brian Mac Mághnais):

A cubic millimeter of mouse brain with 75,000 neurons, vizualized by Tyler Sloan : Watching the way the signals propagate through the layers, with pyramidal cells integrating and processing 11,061 inputs at a time is mindbending.

The original 4000t Orion design dropped a nuclear shaped charge every second, averaging 100 TW of thrust power. A single launch of this vehicle would deliver more payload to LEO than the entire Apollo program. Brian Mac Mághnais:

The Star Forge Class Armed Star Frame, a space warship with massive phased array lasers, spinal UREB cannons and beautiful dusty plasma radiator arcs. By Staladus 🐁:

We might live in the narrow slice of time between drone warfare surprising the armed forces of the world, and cheap+effective countermeasures becoming standard. Here's Northrop Grumman's C-UAS solution based on Bushmasters in light trucks:

More people are becoming aware of the realistic scifi scene; it's exciting, innovative and combines real science with near-future speculation for original results. So here's more Hard SF space combat!

'Asia One', the massive rotating colony sitting in Jupiter's shadow from Death's End, the third book of the Three Body Oroblem. #space #art by Rui Huang

The old classic DrRhysy animation of Orion-drive battleships engaging each other near Callisto:

Mars Express is an excellent animated movie that has not received the attention it deserves. Bravo to Jérémie Périn (Mars Express). Here's a space launch scene from Earth to Mars during the opening credits, with a smart title reveal:

"Spacefleet: HEAT DEATH", a realistic space RPG inspired by The Expanse and Children of a Dead Earth, is in development by Spacezero Interactive. It's got radiators, invisible lasers and PDCs raining down on missile waves:

HyperSoar, a DoE project for a Mach 10 plane using rocket-based combined cycle propulsion to boost-skip between 35 and 60 km altitude, crossing Tokyo to Chicago in 72 minutes or launch an orbital payload at the peak of its trajectory:

A 1200m Stanford Torus for 13,000 people, with its 6 megaton shield ring included:

Velocity Minimum Unstick testing of Airbus airliners: These involve pitching up as early as possible on the runway and dragging the tail against the ground in a shower of sparks until the wheels leave the ground.

Orion nuclear pulse drives are powerful despite their design. The energy efficiency of the 10m diameter USAF design was just 0.78%, as the 1 kT pulse yield converted into 2 MN thrust at 3350s Isp. Animation Brian Mac Mághnais :