Today's Engineering Newswire looks at redefining fusion with a 100-megawatt concept reactor, riding above the water on a flying yacht, and solving the housing crisis by printing mud huts.
Step Inside My New Mud Hut: The Italy-based World's Advanced Saving Project or WASP is going to solve the world's housing crisis by turning impoverished communities into massive colonies of mud wasps.
WASP has created the Delta 3D printer, which abandons that earth-hating plastic material and prints in materials native to the area. In this particular example, the WASP team used Moroccan clay to build little mud huts.
The Flying Yacht: Swiss company Hydros SA is on a mission: to create the Hybrid 'Fly & Float' hydrofoil motorboat. The HY-X the prototype uses a retractable hydrofoil system developed in cooperation with French firm JMKoncept. With a simple push of a button, two side foils are deployed into the water, lifting the boat over 3 feet above the surface, reducing drag, increasing speeds, and improving efficiency.
The prototype also features a pair of 35-hp engines, and can achieve speeds up to 30 knots or 34.4 mph. According to Hydros,' the prototype yacht also offers a 30 percent reduction in fuel consumption by way of its hydrofoils and downsized engines.
The New Atomic Age: Lockheed Martin has made a technological breakthrough, and the teams thinks they could have a reactor ready for use in just a decade. The small team at Lockheed’s Skunk Works, has been working on fusion for about four years, and their 100-megawatt concept reactor should end up being about 10 times smaller than current reactors.
It’s expected that the small size will allow the team to design, build, and test the compact fusion reactor in less than a year, with an expected prototype in just five years.
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