After too many delays the first prototype (ZA001) of the new Boeing 787 made its first test flight today at Everett's Paine Field airport in Washington. The flight lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes, a little less than planned because of the weather. The aircraft reached to almost 15.000ft of altitude, it cycled the landing gear and tested various aerodynamic configurations. Boeing stated the flight a major success and as said as a figure of speech, in the first 10min of flight they learned more things than the previous 100 days. Now there is a 9 month schedule of test flights if no delays are to occur.

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As Michael Czysz stated in his blog, his company is seriously consider entering the 2012 MotoGP championship. MotoCzysz was introduced to the public about 5 years ago with the C1 prototype. As its engine size of 990cc indicates it was designed with respect to MotoGP regulations of the time. However being a very small company with limited resources and with an almost entirely in house designed bike, MotoCzysz wasn't able to follow the 800cc limit of 2007 and later on it focused on developing electric bikes, while keeping the technology developed for C1.

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NASA chosed Dennis R. Jenkins book "X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Flight" to launch its series of pdf e-books especially formatted for dedicated e-book reading devices like Amazon's Kindle.

X-15 in itself is one of the most amazing aerospace programs. It was extremely ambitious and technically challenging. It established the foundation of high speed and high altitude controlled flight through the flights of 3 X-15 aircrafts in a program that lasted about 11 years and it is still highly valuable even today.

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The new Hermes 900 UAV by Elbit made today its maiden flight. The 900 is a medium size UAV, similar in role and size to teh MQ-1 Predator. It has a modular design where payloads can be reconfigured easily for different missions and a 300kg maximum payload. Its wingspan is 15m and MTOW is 970kg. The 900 is powered by a gasoline 115hp Rotax 914 engine (like the Predator A) and has an expected endurance of 40h.

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After 3 years limited to 800cc the MotoGP class will return in 2012 at the maximum capacity of 1000cc. This was agreed 3 days ago between FIM, Dorna and MSMA. This move hopes to differentiate the premium class from the new Moto2 category and bring the bikes closer to the previous 990cc riding style where bikes were more powerful but could not carry their speed mid corner as well.

The 800cc rule was introduced in order to increase lap times but in reality had quite the opposite effect while forcing the companies to invest huge amount of money in R&D.

This time there will be a limit to 4 cylinders, which eliminates the advantage that Honda RCV211V had previously. Between 2002-7 the rules dictated the same minimum weight for 4 and 5 cylinder bikes (lighter with 3 and heavier with 6 - that none eventually used).

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Dome is one of the most established motorsport related companies in Japan with a long heritage in Japanese and international motorsport. However this post is not competition related but it is a project about improving the fuel efficiency of an already efficient car (Honda Insight) by using advanced aerodynamics and composite materials.

Dome used prepreg CFRP to replace the steel door skins, fenders and roof and also the bumpers. One of the key areas of the project are the CFRP wheels which save about half the weight of the original aluminum ones.

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Genetic Algorithms are very useful in resolving abstract problems without any obvious (or any at all) analytical solutions. This replica of the infamous Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is made from a quite simple evolution code wrote by Roger Alsing which with only a population of two replicates an image using only 50 reconfigurable semi transparent polygons.

The code follows this simple procedure as indicated on Roger Alsing's link:

0) Setup a random DNA string (application start)

1) Copy the current DNA sequence and mutate it slightly
2) Use the new DNA to render polygons onto a canvas
3) Compare the canvas to the source image
4) If the new painting looks more like the source image than the previous painting did, then overwrite the current DNA with the new DNA
5) repeat from 1

The restriction is the use of only 50 semi transparent polygons.

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In 1975 Martin Newell, a researcher in the University of Utah used a Melitta teapot as a model for the most recognizable generic 3D model, the famous Utah teapot. It was one of the first realistic computer graphic models of an object with simple but not simplistic geometry.

Some 35 years later the designers of the Russian ArtLebedev studio followed the inverse route in order to put in production a teapot based on a low polygon Utah teapot model, the Martinus.

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