Blue Origin Rocket Flight – Credit: Blue Origin
You might have heard about a secretive space flight effort in the wilds of Texas that sustained an unfortunate crash recently. That was the “Blue Origin” project. (http://www.blueorigin.com/)
The flight was aborted by “a flight instability” as the team called it. That, in my opinion, is a Texas sized understatement.
I’m not going to call the crash an accident, because such a crash was completely predictable just from taking a quick glance at its design. And of course they didn’t intend for it to crash, its probably just that they didn’t quite understand some fundamental rocket flight dynamics.
This morning I was astounded and then annoyed to read a leading manufacturer and designer of competitive oars – get the fundamental reason, the fluid dynamic reason, oars work – entirely wrong — to the detriment of the field.
A ten-fold leap in stored energy density has been realized in a University of Illinois lab.
