Orion-NASA

Friday, 17 August 2012


                                   LAND VEHICLES




Category Speed Speed Vehicle Operator Date
(km/h) (mph)
Land speed record 1,228 763 ThrustSSC United Kingdom
 Andy Green
15-Oct-97
Wheel-driven land speed record 737.794 458.444 Vesco Turbinator United States
 Don Vesco
18-Oct-01
Motorcycle land speed record 605.697 376.363 Top Oil-Ack Attack United States
      Rocky Robinson
25-Sep-10
Diesel-powered land speed record 563.995 350.452 JCB DieselMax United Kingdom
 Andy Green
23-Aug-06
Electric-powered land speed record 495.14 307.666 Buckeye Bullet 2.5 United States
 Roger Schroer
24-Aug-10
Solar-powered land speed record 88.8 55.18 Sunswift IV Australia
 Barton Mawer
07-Jan-11
Wind-powered land speed record 202.9 126.1 Ecotricity Greenbird United Kingdom
Richard Jenkins
26-Mar-09
Human powered land speed record 133.28 82.819 Varna Tempest Canada
 Sam Wittingham
18-Sep-09
Tracked vehicle land speed record 82.23 51.1 CVR(T) Scorpion Tank   2002
















                                         RAIL VEHICLES


Category Speed Speed Vehicle Operator Date
(km/h) (mph)
 Unmanned (rocket sled) 10,400 6,462   (unmanned) 30-Apr-03
Manned (rocket sled) 1,017 635 Sonic Wind No. 1 United States
 John Stapp
10-Dec-54
Maglev train 581 361 JR-Maglev MLX01
Japan
02-Dec-03
Wheeled train 574.8 357 LGV Est
France
03-Apr-07




















                                               AIR CRAFT



Category Speed Speed Vehicle Pilot Date  
(km/h) (mph)
Rocket-powered aircraft 7,258 4,510 North American X-15 United States
 William J. Knight
03-Oct-67
Unmanned air-breathing craft 12,144 7,546 NASA X-43 (unmanned) 16-Nov-04
Manned air-breathing craft 3,530 2,194 Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird United States
 Eldon W. Joersz
28-Jul-76
Propeller-driven aircraft 870 541 Tupolev Tu-114 Soviet Union
 Ivan Soukhomline
1960  
Piston-engined propeller-driven aircraft 850.1 528.33 Grumman F8F BearcatRare Bear (N777L) United States
 Lyle Shelton
21-Aug-89
Helicopter 401 249.1 Westland Lynx 800 G-LYNX United Kingdom
 John Egginton
11-Aug-86
Glider (sailplane) 306.8 190.6 Schempp-Hirth Nimbus-4DM Germany
 Klaus Ohlmann and
22-Dec-06  
Argentina
 Matias Garcia Mazzaro
Human-powered aircraft 32 19.8 MIT Monarch B United States
 Frank Scarabino
01-May-84


















                                        WATER CRAFT


Category Speed Speed Speed Vehicle Operator Date
(knots) (km/h) (mph)
Water speed record 275.98 511.13 317.596 Spirit of Australia Australia
 Ken Warby
08-Oct-78
Propeller-driven water speed record 229.92 425.815 264.589 Problem Child Dale Ishimaru 21-Apr-06
Human-powered watercraft 18.5 34.3 21.3 Decavitator United States
 Mark Drela
27-Oct-91
Human-powered submarine 8.035 14.9 9.2 Omer 5 Canada
 É.T.S.
2007
Wind-powered watercraft 55.65 103.06 64.04 Kitesurfer United States
 Rob Douglas
28-Oct-10
Underwater speed record There is no official speed record for underwater craft, due to the secretive nature of military vessels. In 1968, a Russian November class submarine reportedly tracked an American carrier group traveling at 31 knots (57 km/h or 36 mph). Unmanned torpedo speed claims range from 70 to 200knots (80 mph to 230 mph).



















                                         SPACE CRAFT


Category Speed Speed Vehicle Crew Date
(km/h) (mph)
Manned spacecraft 39,896 24,790 Apollo 10 United States
 Thomas Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene Cernan
26-May-69
Earth-reentering spacecraft 46,440 28,856 Stardust probe (unmanned) 15-Jan-06
Earth-escaping spacecraft 58,536 36,373 New Horizons probe (unmanned) 19-Jan-06





















Thursday, 2 August 2012

MAGNETIC LEVITATION

             MAGNETIC LEVITATION

                 


Magnetic levitation, maglev, or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields. Magnetic pressure is used to counteract the effects of the gravitational and any other accelerations.


Magnetic levitation is used for maglev trains, magnetic bearings and for product display purposes.
Earnshaw's theorem proves that using only ferromagnetic or paramagnetic materials it is impossible to stably levitate against gravity, but servomechanisms, the use of diamagnetic materials, superconduction, or systems involving eddy currents permit this to occur.


In some cases the lifting force is provided by magnetic levitation, but there is a mechanical support bearing little load that provides stability. This is termed pseudo-levitation.


  


TIME LINE
1839
Earnshaw's theorem showed electrostatic levitation was impossible,   later theorem was extended to magnetostatic levitation by others


1912
 Emile Bachelet awarded a patent in March 1912 for his “levitating
 transmitting apparatus” (patent no. 1,020,942) for electromagnetic
 suspension system


1933
Superdiamagnetism Walter Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld (the Meissner effect)


1934
Hermann Kemper “monorail vehicle with no wheels attached.” Reich Patent number 643316


1939
Braunbeck’s extension showed that magnetic levitation is possible with diamagnetic materials


1939
Bedford, Peer, and Tonks aluminum plate placed on two concentric cylindrical coils shows 6-axis stable levitation.


1961
James R. Powell and BNL colleague Gordon Danby electrodynamic levitation using superconducting magnets


1970s
Spin stabilized magnetic levitation Roy M. Harrigan


1974
Magnetic river Eric Laithwaite and others

1979 
transrapid train carried passengers


1984
Low speed maglev shuttle in Birmingham Eric Laithwaite and others


1997
Diamagnetically levitated live frog Andre Geim


1999
Inductrack permanent magnet electrodynamic levitation (General Atomics)


2005
homopolar electrodynamic bearing





USES 


MAGLEV TRANSPORTATION

Maglev, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using magnetic levitation from a very large number of magnets for lift and propulsion. This method has the potential to be faster, quieter and smoother than wheeled mass transitsystems. The technology has the potential to exceed 6,400 km/h (4,000 mi/h) if deployed in an evacuated tunnel. If not deployed in an evacuated tube the power needed for levitation is usually not a particularly large percentage and most of the power needed is used to overcome air drag, as with any other high speed train.

The highest recorded speed of a maglev train is 581 kilometers per hour (361 mph), achieved in Japan in 2003, 6 km/h faster than the conventional TGV speed record.

                                     A magnetic levitation passenger train on the test track

MAGNETIC BEARINGS


  • Magnetic bearings
                   







  • Flywheels
                     





  • Centrifuges

                   
                        Small bench centrifuges




  • Magnetic ring spinning
             







Magnetic levitation, a spinning magnet over a stationary ring magnet.



















Friday, 23 March 2012

KNOWLEDGE


Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, which can include facts, information,descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); and it can be more or less formal or systematic. In philosophy, the study of knowledge is called epistemology, and the philosopher Plato famously defined knowledge as "justified true belief." However no single agreed upon definition of knowledge exists, and there are numerous theories to explain it. The following quote from Bertrand Russell's "Theory of Knowledge" illustrates the difficulty in defining knowledge. "The question how knowledge should be defined is perhaps the most important and difficult of the three with which we shall deal. This may seem surprising: at first sight it might be thought that knowledge might be defined as belief which is in agreement with the facts. The trouble is that no one knows what a belief is, no one knows what a fact is, and no one knows what sort of agreement between them would make a belief true. Let us begin with belief."
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, communication, association and reasoning; while knowledge is also said to be related to the capacity of acknowledgment in human beings.