The Kikkas Are Japan's Secret Jet Fighters Of WWII

Little more than a year after its destruction of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, Japan experienced a devastating setback in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which began in August of 1942 and lasted until February of 1943. The combined land and naval fighting ended with the U.S. consolidating its power in the area, and Japan on the back foot for the remainder of its time in the war.

Japan's heavy losses of invaluable assets like aircraft carriers weren't sustainable, and the United States would steadily overturn earlier Japanese gains one by one.

But Emperor Hirohito would not surrender until years later, in August 1945. There remained the — albeit unlikely — possibility of shifting momentum back, as there often is in warfare. What Japan needed was a formidable weapon, and engineers were working on just that: the Nakajima Kikka (Orange Blossom) jet.

Though this secret aerial weapon wouldn't save the war for the Japanese, there's no doubt that it was an intimidating prospect (and the Axis Powers certainly had some iconic aircraft in their ranks). If the timing of its development had been different, it could well have been influential. Here's what the Nakajima Kikka could do, how it fared, and the ultimate impact it had on Japan's war effort.

Germany's Me 262 served as the inspiration for the Nakajima Kikka's exterior design. The most important trait it would have in common with the famous Messerschmitt, however, was one that was unique at the time. The Me 262 was the world's first combat jet fighter, and, after Japan's air attaché in Germany watched impressive test flights, it was determined that this was the sort of power source Japan wanted for its secretive new plane.

The project faced some huge hurdles when it began in September of 1944. The first was that, being essentially brand new, jet engines were still a novel prospect that engineers had only recently begun exploring. Japan tried to circumvent this issue with the aid of its German allies, who had shared their expertise by dispatching a package of engines, documents, and other materials dedicated to the emerging science of the turbojet, but the U.S. sank the submarine charged with delivering it across the world.

This left the Japanese with very little guidance to work from beyond a single document that made it to Japan safely. Nonetheless, Japan's Naval Air Technical Arsenal ultimately developed the Ne-20 turbojet. The engine, though experimental, was a bold and creative effort, and would become the driving force of a rather small yet — theoretically, at least — potentially impressive aircraft.

Because the Nakajima Kikka arrived late in World War II, it's impossible to say how it may have performed if it had been given more flight time and a period of learning and refinement from its creators. Even so, it's still clear from its specifications that the Orange Blossom had a lot of potential.

Two Ne-20 engines would be mounted in the aircraft, which was just short of 27 feet long and had a wingspan just shy of 32 feet, 10 inches. It weighed in at 8,995 pounds. All of this made it rather smaller than the famous Me 262, which measured just short of 40 feet long, boasted a wingspan of almost 41 feet and had a gross weight of 13,250 pounds in its Schwalbe, or Swallow, version.

The Nakajima Kikka would prove to have similar downsides to those that held the Messerschmitt back. The German aircraft suffered from the nation's material shortages and the German command's unwillingness to fully trust the turbojet, ultimately meaning that just 300 of them were used in battle during the war.

Despite its technical superiority, the Me 262 was ultimately tamed by the Allies, who used its exposure when taking off and while on the ground to target it before it could make the best of its big speed advantage. Not only did the slower Nakajima Kikka lack such a major edge, but it also didn't make it past its troubled early trial phase. A prototype model took to the air on 7 August 1945, the aircraft's only successful flight before misaligned takeoff assist rockets caused a repeat flight to be canceled abruptly.

Japan surendered on 15 August. As U.S. forces advanced across the defeated nation, they entered a Nakajima factory and observed abandoned half-built Kikkas.

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Why Not Use Satellite Phones Instead Of Smart Phones?

Smartphones are downright essential for modern life, but they weren't the first mobile phones on the market. Satellite phones (i.e., phones that send calls by communicating with Low Earth Orbit satellites) beat the first cell phones to the punch.

However, satellite phones have all but died out, and it's not just because you can use apps such as Apple TV and Nintendo Music on Android phones.

On paper, satellite phones sound more efficient. Normal smartphones route communications through entire networks of cables and cell towers, whereas satellite phones only need to bounce conversations off satellites.

However, while satellite phones indeed cut out the middleman, any call through them is prone to lag since even the closest satellites they use are thousands of miles away. Furthermore, each call is expensive. Sure, US$ 50 for an unlimited phone plan sounds like a lot, but that's US$ 50 for all your phone calls, messaging, and web browsing for a whole month. By comparison, a call on a satellite phone costs US$ 2 per minute on average, which is too expensive for most users.

The disadvantages don't stop there. While smartphones have become so small and thin that you can fit them into your pocket, satellite phones need to be large and bulky. Otherwise, their antennae (yes, they still use antennae) would be too weak to communicate with satellites.

And the icing on the cake? Satellite phones are actually illegal in some places. You can use a smartphone to call people while on vacation in, say, Cuba, but satellite phones are prohibited there.

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There's A Reason Behind Why Night Vision Googles Are Green

Most of us have witnessed the scene before. A war movie hero is stepping into dangerous territory when everything suddenly goes dark, and the next thing you see is their view through a pair of glowing green night vision goggles. When the lights make that switch, you know it's about to go down... but why does it always happen in green?

Night vision would seemingly be more effective if it boasted the full spectrum of color. However, if they did that, they wouldn't be night vision goggles. The technology works because it amplifies the part of the visual light spectrum that human eyes are most sensitive to, and that just so happens to be the color green.

If you paid attention in school, you may remember the rainbow acronym ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), which represents the color spectrum of visible light. It's no coincidence that G is in the middle there; green is where our vision peaks.

In fact, humans can perceive more shades of green than any other color, which some scientists attribute to the abundance of green on our planet. However, that doesn't explain why most non-primate mammals, like dogs and cats, can't see green.

Whatever the case, understanding green's special position in the spectrum of visual light is essential to understanding how night vision goggles work. They target the human eye's natural strength by displaying in green, but now the question is, how do those goggles do that?

On a basic level, night vision goggles work by amplifying available light. Some systems can also detect near-infrared light, but they do not convert infrared light into visible light. Infrared is right next to visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum, close enough that scientists have even been able to give mice infrared vision (which they also perceive as green). The procedure could make it to humans one day, but until then, we have to rely on night vision goggles and cameras, most of which are based on a technology called image enhancement.

Image enhancement devices are equipped with a high voltage, battery-powered tube called an image-intensifier, which collects all of the available light—including visible light and some near-infrared wavelengths—captured by the device's lens. The light hits a photocathode, which emits electrons in response.

The electrons then pass through a perforated glass plate called a microchannel plate, where they are hit with thousands of volts of electricity. The process multiplies the electrons thousands of times before they reach the end of the image-intensifier.

At the end of the tube, there is a screen coated with phosphors, which release photons when the mass of electrons collide with it. These phosphors are what you ultimately see glowing green through night vision goggles because green is easier for the human eye to distinguish in low-light conditions.

That's an awfully complex process, so here's the simple gist: a small amount of visible light gets collected, converted into electrons, multiplied thousands of times, and finally converted back into visible light. The fact that night vision lenses keep getting thinner while doing all that is a stunning technological achievement.

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Company Wants To Slingshot Satellites Into Space

Can you use a giant slingshot to hurl projectiles into space? One California company is trying to turn that simple idea into a new way to send satellites skyward, replacing fire and fuel with electric power and motion.

SpinLaunch, founded in 2014, has built a launch system that skips the dramatic blastoff people usually associate with rockets. Instead of burning propellant on the ground, the company uses a rotating arm inside a vacuum chamber to hurl payloads at extreme speed. The goal is to reach low Earth orbit with small satellites while cutting both launch costs and pollution.

"This is not a rocket," said Jonathan Yaney, SpinLaunch's founder and CEO. "And clearly our ability to perform in just 11 months this many tests and have them all function as planned really is a testament to the nature of our technology."

He made that remark after the company's 10th successful test flight, part of a steady push to prove that the concept can work outside theory and animation.

The underlying physics are not new. Long before modern spaceflight, siege weapons used stored energy to launch heavy objects over walls. Trebuchets and other machines turned force into motion with brutal efficiency. SpinLaunch is working from that same basic principle, though with materials, electronics, and engineering that belong to the 21st century.

That link to the past is part of what makes the company's approach so striking. The method has even drawn comparisons to pumpkin-launching contests, where hobbyists use giant machines to send gourds flying for sport. The difference here is that the payload is not a pumpkin, and the target is not a field. It is orbit.

To make that leap possible, the company depends on high-strength carbon fiber and increasingly compact satellite hardware. Smaller electronics give payloads a better chance of surviving the violent trip. SpinLaunch says, "Modern electronics, materials, and simulation tools allow for satellites to be adapted to the kinetic launch environment with relative ease."

That does not make the challenge gentle. Any satellite riding this system must survive crushing acceleration and then keep working in space.

At its New Mexico test site, the company has carried out a series of launch demonstrations that look more like controlled shock experiments than traditional liftoffs. In one video, a sleek capsule disappears from the chamber almost instantly, moving so fast that it is hard to follow with the naked eye.

The forces involved are enormous. SpinLaunch says its system has already handled loads of 10,000 Gs, or 10,000 times Earth's gravity. That is enough to expose weak points in almost any design. So far, the company says, the hardware has held together.

That performance has helped attract backing and cooperation from major names, including NASA, Airbus, and Cornell University. Their equipment has played a role in testing, giving the effort outside validation as SpinLaunch tries to move from experimental launches to a working orbital system.

The company's stated target is ambitious: launching satellites into orbits below 600 miles by 2026. A coastal orbital launch site is already in development, a sign that SpinLaunch sees this as more than a string of eye-catching tests.

"It has proven that it's a system that is repeatedly reliable," Yaney said.

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Greenpeace Blocks Rice That Could Have Saved 100k Children

Greenpeace and its activists allies have blocked for more than two decades the adoption of Golden Rice, which is genetically enhanced to produce the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene.

The result, according to new calculations by DC Abundance founder and research director at the Golden Gate Institute for AI Abi Olvera, is that "delay has killed about 106,000 children and left another 210,000 to 425,000 blind."

Her conservative calculations of the deaths and disabilities caused by Greenpeace's scientifically ridiculous opposition to Golden Rice are focused on 11 countries in which the consumption of rice makes up a significant proportion of their people's diets.

As Olvera reports, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that "250 000–500 000 children who are vitamin A-deficient become blind every year, and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight." Vitamin A deficiency contributes to increased morbidity and mortality from common childhood infections.

As the WHO notes, "Even mild, subclinical deficiency can be a problem, because it may increase children's risk for respiratory and diarrhoeal infections, decrease growth rates, slow bone development and decrease the likelihood of survival from serious illness." And it is the world's leading preventable cause of childhood blindness.

I have been debunking Greenpeace's unscientific opposition to Golden Rice since 2000 when the activist group claimed: "Greenpeace opposes golden rice because it has all the risks of any [genetically modified] crop." In my 2013 article, "Scientists Call Out Greenpeace for Killing and Blinding Kids," I hailed the blistering editorial in Science that asserted, "If ever there was a clear-cut cause for outrage, it is the concerted campaign by Greenpeace and other nongovernmental organizations, as well as by individuals, against Golden Rice."

In 2016, I reported the open letter by 100 Nobel Prize laureates calling on "Greenpeace to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general." The laureates suggested that Greenpeace was committing a "crime against humanity." And as recently as 2024, I warned that Greenpeace's crusade against Golden Rice will continue to blind and kill children when reporting that the anti-technology activist group had persuaded a Philippine court to block local farmers from planting the grain.

For over 25 years, Greenpeace and its anti-technology allies have blocked this lifesaving crop. Although it is way past time, Greenpeace's blockade may be coming to an end. As it has become more normal for poorer countries to engineer their own genetically enhanced crops, Olvera optimistically concludes, "the harder it gets to keep blocking the one that should have come first."

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