https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/An engineer's day isn't filled with just working. This is an engineering site dedicated to art, culture, and all aspects of the life we lead. "Engineer at the Movies" give's an engineering voice and opinion on one of the arts witen-USTelligent Community 12https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/b/blog/posts/project-hyperion-recently-announced-the-winners-of-the-generational-ship-competitionThu, 21 Aug 2025 19:35:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:848fe6e1-9b6a-4a60-a86c-51f5e1aa2bb3CatwellThe Project Hyperion competition had hundreds of entrants, with three chosen recently. (Image Credit: i4is ) Project Hyperion and the UK-based Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) launched a $10,000 competition to design Generational ships using modern and near-future technology. The contest had hundreds of global entrants, and the top three winners were announced on July 23rd, 2025. All three winners are recognized for detailed, interdisciplinary concepts that demonstrate how human societies could survive and grow while traveling to cosmic worlds. The spacecraft stretches 36 miles and uses a Direct Fusion Drive for propulsion. (Image Credit: The Chrysalis) The Chrysalis received first place. This spaceship features a cylindrical structure to prevent micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD) from slamming into the frontal section. It also keeps structural stresses down while it accelerates and decelerates. Spanning approximately 36 miles in length with a 4-mile diameter, the craft has a mass of 2.4 billion metric tons. It relies on a Direct Fusion Drive for propulsion, which burns deuterium and Helium-3, producing a steady acceleration at 0.1g. The team predicts it will accelerate during the first year of interstellar travel, spend four hundred years coasting through space, and decelerate for one year while approaching Proxima b. The forward section features the habitat with layers of concentric rotating rings. Moving inward, these layers are for food production and ecosystems, communal spaces, dwellings and gardens, operational facilities, storage decks, and the axial core. With continuous rotation, the shells generate artificial gravity similar to Earth's, making the structure stable for housing, utilities, and resources required to sustain a population of 600. The ship has a Cosmo Dome, a panoramic chamber for passengers to enjoy cosmic views as they engage in low-gravity recreational activities. It's also designed with a secondary rotation system that offsets unwanted motion by using adjacent rings that rotate in opposite directions. In this case, odd layers rotate clockwise while uneven layers rotate counterclockwise to balance rotational forces. The WFP Extreme spaceship simulates the Earth's gravity by using two large rings spanning 500 meters across. (Image Credit: WFP Extreme) WFP Extreme won second place. This craft has a central core flanked by two enormous rings rotating in opposite directions to simulate gravity and reduce Coriolis effects. Both rings span 500 meters across, featuring workspaces, living quarters, and social areas divided into three districts per ring, split into six neighborhoods. All the hydroponic farms, energy systems, and control stations are set within the ship's core. These connect to the rings through reinforced arms with elevators. A running track and a pedestrian walkway connect all six of the neighborhoods. Elevators enable access to the core, ensuring social and cultural interaction between various communities on the ship. The team behind the Systema Stellare Proximum found inspiration in Jellyfish to design the spaceship's structure. (Image Credit: Systema Stellare Proximum) Systema Stellare Proximum placed in third. The team called their ship Systema Stellare Proximum, a starship built inside a hollow asteroid encasing two counterrotating Stanford Torii habitats. A quantum AI system navigates the ship, while propulsion starts with a nuclear pulse before switching to ion engines in the secondary stage. The starship's design is influenced by biomimicry, modeled after a jellyfish. Its asteroid shell has a bell-like shape that blocks radiation and impacts. Meanwhile, the leading edge is made of layered materials that disperse energy from impacts. Additionally, the shield features self-repairing robots and technologies that fix damaged areas. The spacecraft's pulsed plasma ion propulsion system also uses biomimicry, modeled after the jellyfish's rhythmic motion. A swarm of tethered drones uses electrostatic propulsion for maneuverability or stabilization. The ship has a sensor network across the hull to monitor resources, environmental hazards, and radiation levels. Adaptive navigation systems then use this data to adjust the spacecraft's path. The internal modular habitat can be reconfigured and expanded, similar to jellyfish structures. Waste is transformed into oxygen and food using algae and other microorganisms via closed-loop bioregenerative life support. Hydroponic and aquaponic systems provide clean water, fish, and crops. Finally, the ship has a laser array that targets and vaporizes micrometeoroids too small for the asteroid shell to block. Have a story tip? Message me at: http://twitter.com/Cabe_Atwellcontestgenerational shipcabeatwellengineering_lifeProject Hyperionconcepthttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/b/blog/posts/heat-exposure-can-affect-students-ability-to-learn-and-the-rest-of-usWed, 06 Aug 2025 11:00:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:8f91696c-4bea-4a33-a43b-8218ce0b5543Catwell(Image credit: Pixabay ) It all makes sense now! Engineering, designing on hot summer days never working out as planned. The summer slowdowns. That feeling of wading through molasses. A new study published by Konstantina Vasilakopoulou (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and Matthaios Santamouris (University of New South Wales) explains how prolonged exposure to high urban temperatures, driven by climate change, negatively impacts students' cognitive performance, especially in tasks requiring complex processing like mathematics. While the short-term effects of heat on learning are well known, the study focuses on the long-term impact, which is less well understood. The pair analyzed data from seven studies covering 14.5 million students across 61 countries. Six of the seven studies found a clear link between extended heat exposure and diminished academic performance. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students were hit hardest, due to several factors, including limited access to air conditioning, hotter urban environments, and fewer academic support resources. The findings throw a spotlight on how climate change worsens educational learning abilities, which the authors found threatening to future human achievements and national academic progress. While most of us have experienced how excessive heat can affect our ability to concentrate and focus on the tasks at hand, prolonged exposure can be detrimental when it comes to learning and retaining new information. To help mitigate the prolonged urban heat problem, the authors recommend instituting adaptive strategies, such as better classroom ventilation, cooling systems, and equitable access to learning resources, which can help reduce these effects. They also stress the urgent need for targeted policy changes and technology interventions to protect vulnerable students and lessen the social and economic consequences of global warming. Have a story tip? Message me at: http://twitter.com/Cabe_Atwellworkercareerhumanon_campuscabeatwellengineering_lifelearninguniversityhttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227438Fri, 14 Mar 2025 16:19:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:e99e719b-daf2-48ca-a6ec-387e3c6e990dcstantonThey're dangerous (joking). They're definitely in the region of sweets around "honeycomb" type. 'Crunchies' are similar, but a bit tougher to chew, almost like a toffee after a few bites. The type of centre was very popular in the victorian era where you used to be able to buy literal slabs of it as "cinder toffee" and you still can in some places.https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/m/managed-videos/150166Fri, 14 Mar 2025 14:23:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:f6d0fd4e-4ea3-497e-b54e-9b2c5aa083d1CatwellThe Video Game History Foundation Library is open in early access. For everybody. For free. Wherever you are. Right now. Access thousands of video game history materials, from development documents to magazines to press kits and more. The future o...https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/b/blog/posts/the-history-of-video-games-is-now-available-through-a-digital-libraryFri, 14 Mar 2025 14:21:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:965202c6-ee0d-42ff-9c03-013c8256ca6fCatwellThe Video Game History Foundation built a video game digital library for the public to access and study. (Image Credit: Video Game History Foundation ) There are tens of thousands of video game industry ephemera files that video game enthusiasts can’t wait to look at for free! Now, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has made them available in a digital library ---made from VGHF’s physical collection. The early access library launch features never-before-seen game development assets, over 1,500 full-text searchable out-of-print video game magazines, promotional materials, artwork, and gaming relics. VGHF mentioned documents from Mark Flitman , a retired video game producer, production materials from Myst developers Cyan , press assets in digitized CDs from GamePro, and a collection of FromSoftware promotional materials. Members of the gaming community helped with this project by scanning video game magazines over the years and donating or digitizing the items for the digital library. Groups like Retromags and Out-of-Print Archive provided hundreds of magazine scans. Meanwhile, private collectors loaned an early electronic game commercial and a rare educational game catalog to the VGHF. With the digital video game library, the gaming community can study the video game production process with access to its raw materials. The nonprofit organization collects and preserves historical source code and assets, like development tools, raw art, and documentation. They have even used those collections to restore lost games. VGHF also invested in new infrastructure to perform high-quality magazine scans in-house if they receive an extra copy. They unbind and feed each page through an extremely powerful scanner that scans close to 50 pages per minute at archival quality. Additionally, VGHF wanted to make this a good resource for researchers by making the magazines fully tech-searchable. This is more difficult than it sounds. The software that searches through a magazine scan works on plain documents. That means high-contrast text and dark fonts on light backgrounds. In some cases, scans may look like the mess we see on backgrounds from ’90s magazines. So the director of technology developed a next-gen text recognition tool that can handle the toughest pages---a big leap in quality. The organization also developed a digital archive portal with powerful search and navigation features. According to Phil Salvador, the library director, this is the “first wave of open access content” being made available to the public. VGHF expects to build and add more material to the library “over the next coming years.” They have a storage room full of material they plan to keep processing. “We've been building those for a long time and think this will change how people study video game history.” youtu.be/6Tysm_Wf60Q Have a story tip? Message me at: http://twitter.com/Cabe_Atwellcabeatwellhistorygamesvideo gamesinnovationhttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227428Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:33:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:d9f770a8-43ff-45dc-8d8e-048a34e2274fDABI have never seen those before, but they do sound enticing.https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227427Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:32:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:e88a941c-d569-4ba5-be4c-9d96f1a565e3DABI buy them to go and I get five desert servings out of each, so I can indulge over time.https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227426Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:32:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:03a96098-154c-4365-8d44-3ba23d84172ebeacon_daveThe second one perhaps could be enhanced into a marble run / chain reaction type machine.https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/m/managed-videos/150165Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:31:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:f205da13-e89f-4bef-99f4-6df8d6b7f6e7Fred27Eating Maltesers from a 16ft tape measure #getinhttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/m/managed-videos/150164Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:31:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:9563283a-aa47-4b9a-9805-66aba54da93dFred27How long can you hold a Malteser in the air? Take the challenge - Malteser blowing! SUBMIT YOUR CHALLENGE HERE ► http://challengers.guinnessworldrecords.com/challenges/80-longest-duration-malteser-blowing SUBSCRIBE for more challenges ► http://bit...bingWeltrekordworld recordsGuinness Book Of World Recordsoliwhitetvrecord holderKSIMarcus ButlerOli Whitealfie deyesmaltesersslomozovo bingGuinness World RecordKSIolajidebtksi armycandyrecord breakerWeltrecordGuiness World Recordbreak the recordalfieomgmalteser blowingGuinnes World Recordsthepointlessblogslomozovoblowing maltesersthe pointless blogmarcusbutlertvGWROMGDo Try This At Homemaltesers sweetshttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227423Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:30:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:9cb141b0-ed16-470b-8578-8d3e700166ebFred27Maltesers are awesome. Not only do they taset great, but there are some cool things you can do with them 1. Lie on your back, put a malteser to you lips and blow gently. It will hover above your mouth and you just open your mouth when you want to eat it. 2. Get a long springy metal tape measure. put one end by your mouth and get a friend to hold the other end higher. Roll the malteser along the tape and into your mouth. See how far you can manage. I think we may need some videos to add to my explanation.. https://youtu.be/bpxHPJIuBv0?si=vozp3H8LF1mrFmtu&t=64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEtXYX8Jy-ohttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227417Thu, 13 Mar 2025 15:44:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:c380d9c7-1ec2-4c2e-be2e-d126bb93d5e6wolfgangfriedrichI have never tried them. My calories counting goal just got a re-calibration ;)https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227415Thu, 13 Mar 2025 15:14:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:e914fa62-6ab4-4cf9-b2af-ec8aaf93c767dougwI find Maltesers to be highly addictive...https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227412Thu, 13 Mar 2025 13:02:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:e2686ca7-2eac-4cf1-91c8-cddea286a801kmikemoodougw The Coffee Crisp arrived today and I have tried one. I like them. They are good sized and crunchy. They're a bit more subtle in taste than I expected - but that's not a bad thing. I did say to myself that Kit Kats should be that size. I'm undecided where in the spectrum of "Favorite Candy Bar" they fall. Fortunately, I have three more to help me make my decision.https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227405Wed, 12 Mar 2025 18:49:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:74ebeba5-3004-4b34-b448-4444871ad558beacon_daveI suspect that you can put on weight just by looking at one of those on-line... Looks like around 2400-2500 calories per portion. "Second helpings anyone ?"https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227402Wed, 12 Mar 2025 18:01:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:0ef798e4-e7dd-4114-92cb-d748e51545e1wolfgangfriedrichMy favourite revision of them is: After a few of them, you stop counting and just keep going...https://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227390Wed, 12 Mar 2025 14:21:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:8b87df90-4a59-4dac-90c6-c8f7f7984befcstantonI have mixed feelings. 1. I'm disappointed that these are, in fact, not 'crisps' as I know them as these: 2. Despite that, I've never seen these in England - send some overhttps://community.element14.com/members-area/engineering-life/f/forum/55613/why-do-engineers-like-coffee-crisps/227386Tue, 11 Mar 2025 22:34:00 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:8bf37a27-3d86-4a1d-ab92-ec4e153b990adougwWe don't even have a Longhorn here, but it sounds decadent.