Tag: fabby

I watched a video today about donning a hard-shell spacesuit and realised that there are some upgrades that might be possible.

Today’s invention is the first of these.

Since an astronaut has to move his or her whole torso to look to the side, why not equip the helmet seal with the ability to rotate?

This turns the helmet into a kind of tank cupola which would be driven by a small motor to the left or right.

An arrangement like this might best be effected by having an optical sensor detect and respond to movements of dye spots applied to the wearer’s face.

Icebreakers tend to be pretty large vessels.

Today’s invention would allow smaller ships to pass through icier waters than at present.

Imagine a large, slow-revving marine engine which can adjust its crankshaft so that all of its cylinders fire at the same time and with the crank in the same rotational position.

The effect of this mode of operation is to cause the ship to oscillate vertically in the water as it powers forwards.

In so doing, a set of large teeth on the bow saws into the surrounding ice, causing it to crack and allow the ship to move ahead.

Today’s invention is another way to make use of the Brazil-nut effect (a vessel, containing two sizes of particle, when shaken causes the largest particles to rise to the surface).

In this case, the idea is to show a consumer of tablets when they had exceeded their use-by date.

A container of medicine in the form of (white) pills would also have a population of larger, colour contrasting (red) spheres added to it.

On purchase, the container would be shaken for a specified period and then placed beneath an electric toothbrush charger on a bathroom shelf (these vibrate regularly, all the time).

This would cause the pills and spheres gradually to separate (at a rate determined by their relative sizes).

After some weeks, the user would look in the jar, see only red spheres and realise that his or her pills were too old to be clinically effective.

Space travel for years to eg Mars would cause all sorts of physical damage to astronauts.

Today’s invention is a spaceship which is both small and therefore easy to launch and yet which can accommodate simulated gravity to help defend against organ wastage and muscle weakness.

A spacecraft is shown in cross section, consisting of six segmented rooms.

When in space, two opposite segments would be unlocked and the whole section of the craft spun about its centre as shown, using tangential, solar-powered ion thrusters.

Diametrically-opposed segments would move outwards until the cables restraining them became taught.

In this configuration, occupants of the craft could traverse the cables and then walk about on the interior, curved surface of each segment.

They could thus be made to experience their Earth bodyweight by spinning the craft at a lower angular velocity than would be required for the narrow-bodied craft.

The tiger has whiskers which make contact with the skin of any prey it catches.

These can sense when the pulse of animal which has been caught stops.

Today’s invention is an adaptation of this idea, applied to Taser electric stun guns.

In order to make them less dangerous, one taser dart would have an extra wire attached which would monitor the pulse of someone who had been shocked.

If the pulse began to stop, the current would be automatically cut and an alert issued to the user to get them medical help at once.

Rather than have fleets of noisy grass cutting machines patrolling golf courses, why not build golf carts with integral mowers?

These could be electrically motorised and thus operate quite quietly.

Every round played would save some money and pollution and the resulting cuttings could be dumped automatically in a pile on the way to the 19th hole.

If a golf club had a wide variety of abilities among its players, then the fairways would be adequately mown over time and the rough too would be greatly improved.

(The greens keeper would still be kept busy, though, with his or her specialist grass cutters).

It seems that when children are drowning, they don’t thrash about, but instead they first go silent.

Today’s invention is a life-saving technology which takes advantage of this scary information.

Each child entering a body of water would put on a waterproof collar with a throatmike and a small transmitter embedded.

Each child’s signal would be monitored by a system on dry land.

In the event that a given youngster was substantially less noisy than its own average for say 20 seconds, a light on the collar would illuminate, alerting adults in the vicinity.