Russia already has a huge fleet of both diesel-powered and even nuclear icebreakers, but it recently penned an order for something the world has never seen before: a massive new 170 meter long, dual-reactor nuclear icebreaker that will be 14 meters longer and at least4 meters wider than any other icebreaker in its fleet. Powered by two 60-megawatt compact pressurized water reactors, it will be the world's largest "universal" nuclear icebreaker.
There's a new arms race brewing, and this one is destined to be very, very fast. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin is calling for the development of a hypersonic long-range bomber to ensure Russia is not "falling behind the Americans." He doesn't want some subsonic or even supersonic analog to the American B-2, he says. Russia's next bomber - slated for delivery by decade's end - will move faster than Mach 5.
Russia just set a speed record for a sprint that took place a long way from London. An unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday and docked with the International Space Station just six hours later, marking the first same-day docking ever performed at the ISS.
Yesterday, the heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada, Russia, India, and Japan met in Washington DC (without NASA, which had all hands on deck for the SpaceX launch in Florida). The most interesting topic of conversation? The moon, which seems to be the destination on everyone's agenda except for NASA. And for Russia, it's less a destination and more a frontier for colonisation.
Researchers in Russia and South Korea are moving forward with a plan to resurrect the Ice Age woolly mammoth. Scientists in both countries inked a deal Tuesday to share technology and research that could lead to the birth of a mammoth clone, gestated in a surrogate Indian elephant mother.
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