Personal Jetpack for only $100,000

Thunderbolt Aerosystems announced last week the availability of their Thunderpack TP-R2G2 for “a price under $100,000.” For that $100K you will get about 75 seconds of flight time at up to 75mph on a hydrogen peroxide dual fuel mixture. The company hopes that they will be unveiling a jet propelled variant, dubbed Thunderjet, before the end of the year that will offer up to 35 minutes of flight for around the same price. It seems to me like they’re making real progress in this field, they still have a long way to go. While it’s an impressive technical accomplishment, 75 seconds of flight for 100k is pretty absurd. Even at 35 minutes of flight time the price tag will have to come down significantly for it to be adopted for widespread use in “a host of defense, commercial and personal purposes, including support of military missions, disaster relief efforts, border patrol assignments, and even overcoming those snail-paced commutes.”

Silicon Nanowires could offer a 10x improvement in battery life

Researchers at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University have successfully incorporated silicon nanowires into lithium ion batteries effectively offering a tenfold increase in the amount of charge they can store. Lithium-ion batteries currently use graphite as the anode, silicon however has a significantly greater charge capacity than graphite. According to Professor Yu Cui who led the research silicon “has the highest known theoretical charge capacity” and “is more than ten times higher than existing graphite anodes.” A performance increase of this magnitude would be incredible to say the least. Laptop batteries could potentially last 40+ hours instead of just 4 hours. For an electric car that uses lithium-ion batteries like the Tesla Roadster, the range could potentially be increased from 200 or so miles to over 2000 miles on a single charge! You can read more about this here:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

Or if you’re feeling really ambitious you can try reading the Journal article published in Nature and Nanotechnology here:

High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires

WildCharge could change the way we recharge our phones

Or it could be just another interesting tech novelty. It’s a little too soon to tell, but the technology is certainly intriguing. You can charge your phone (and soon other mobile devices like iPods) by simply placing it on the WildCharger pad. The pad can also charge as many devices as you can fit on the pad simultaneously. To use the WildCharger pad you need to install an adapter on your phone that replaces the battery cover and plugs in to the mini-USB port. As of now the only phone they have an adapter for the Motorola RAZR V3 but are promising more very soon. Personally I kind of like the idea of just dropping my cell and iPod on my desk at the end of the day and knowing they’ll have a full charge in the morning. You can check out cNet’s review of the WildCharger and the company’s website below.

http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phone-and-smart/wildcharger-bundle-at-t/4505-6448_7-32821393.html

https://www.wildcharge.com/