Coming soon to a country near you! In order to control the out-of-control costs of RomneyCare, Massachusetts has just passed a law that places the state in control of every doctor and everything they do in the practice of medicine.
It’s worse than you think:
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The competition heats up: Scaled Composites has posted the results of its latest test firing of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo.
Though the test is dated August 9, more than a week ago, I expect the number of engine tests to go up in the coming months as the company works toward the first powered flights of SpaceShipTwo.
News you can use: A sofa that doubles as a cat tower.
Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a robot hand that costs less than $10,000 and is capable of replacing a flashlight battery.
The researchers were able to scrimp in a number of clever ways. “One was scouring the globe for the least expensive, highest-performing components like motors, gears, etcetera,” says Curt Salisbury, the project’s principal investigator. “Another was to build the entire electronics system from commodity parts, especially those found in cell phones. We also moved from metal structural elements to plastic, being careful to design the structures so plastic would provide adequate strength.”
The article focuses on the potential of using such a robot hand to defuse bombs. I see it as a first step in providing amputees a replacement hand that is fully functional. And that their goal is to bring the cost down to $1,000 is even more exciting.
The man who invented the first programmable computer.
The competition heats up: The Russian owned Sea Launch successfully launched an Intelsat communications satellite today.
Leftwing civility: An elderly leftwing protester spits in the face of at Romney supporter at a campaign event today.
When the left made the accusation that a tea party protester had spat at a Democratic Congressman during the healthcare debate, Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could provide video proving it happened. Three years later that award remains unclaimed, since the only videos of the event show nothing of the sort took place. Today, not only was this disgusting act actually done by a Democratic protester, in mere hours the video is all over the internet.
Tells us something about who are the uncivil ones in this debate.
The Russian Prime Minister has given the Russian launch industry until September to figure out how to improve its quality control.
It also appears from the above article that there is some confusion about whether the head of the company that built the failed upper stage to the Proton rocket has resigned, as reported here and here.
The Russians have pinpointed the cause for the August 6 Proton rocket launch failure to a problem during production of the upper stage.
In related news, the head of the space firm that made the rocket has resigned.
The test of Coperhagen Suborbital’s capsule launch abort system failed spectacularly on Sunday. With pictures.
“We had perfect launch, but quickly the entire configuration began to tumble,” said Kristian von Bengtson, co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals. “The main chutes clearly did not have complete deployment and the capsule hit water in high speed, buckling the bottom shield.”
News you can use: Headphones for cats. With video!
The competition heats up: With its most recent glide test on Saturday it appears SpaceShipTwo has successfully fulfilled its glide engineering goals. Hat tip Clark Lindsay at NewSpace Watch. To quote their flight summary:
With this latest round of six flights we have cleared the full glide-flight envelope for airspeed, angle-of-attack, CG, and structural loads!
