Entering the Fall with Some Military Gusto
It’s September, which means back to school, arrivederci to beach weather, and Halloween is right around the corner!
At Power Systems Design, it means we’ve entered the conference season – including and especially the Battery Show & EV Tech Expo in Detroit and the grandaddy of them all, electronica in Munich Germany.
We’re also turning our attention towards the Mil/Aero & Hi-Rel vertical, with September focusing on this pivotal – and highly lucrative – topic. Along with September 18 marking the 79th anniversary of the U.S. Air Force as a separate branch, we’ve also seen a slew of activity in this space.
I just wrote about a Federal Communications Commission proposal that could ban specific Chinese drones from Shenzen-based DJI – after they’d already been approved. The reasoning focuses more on their alleged capabilities than their country of origin, but I’m sure the latter wasn’t coincidental.
And I’m sure that China recently adding 46 U.S. aerospace and defense firms to its “procurement list” and 10 military-linked companies to its “export control list” didn’t help DJI’s case.
On a lighter note (no pun intended), California-based Reflect Orbital is tinkering with the idea of deploying a fleet of space mirrors to capture the sun’s light and reflect it back to Earth, providing solar energy on-demand to companies and municipalities via “solar farms.”
While a promising idea, the space mirrors face a slew of hurdles, including an excessively bright one. According to astronomy.com, the satellite would appear as bright as Venus to observers outside the beam, and to those inside, it would be 4x brighter than a full moon. And that’s just a single satellite, with plans in place for up to 50,000.
Meanwhile, our September issue has a selection of Mil/Aero features from our esteemed contributors, including a piece from Vicor that discusses how “Power Architectures Boost the Next Generation of AI-Enabled New Space Missions.”
We’ve certainly covered artificial intelligence rather extensively, and for good reason – AI is set to dominate the 21st century, and it’ll be an indispensable component of most next-gen tech, arguably all of it (especially if the IoT takes off), and the Mil/Aero space is no different.
According to Vicor’s Dave Berry, Spacechips “develop an AI-enabled satellite transponder capable of performing advanced signal processing and machine-learning tasks directly in orbit,” and to do that, they partnered with Vicor on creating a modern power architecture based on a Factorized Power Architecture.
To enable these next-gen “New Space” missions, the companies focused on improving conversion loss, power density, physical size and a transient response “compatible with the switching speeds of the latest deep-submicron devices.”
Enjoy the September issue!
Best Regards,
Jason Lomberg
North American Editor, PSD
