Let us do the driving: Volvo road tests a system on Spanish highways where one driver in a lead truck controls a train of cars following behind him.
The competition heats up: The privately-built Stratolaunch system has entered system design review.
The key quote from this article is this:
Scaled Composites, which is building the aircraft, has purchased two ex-United Boeing 747-400s, and is in the process of dismantling them. Stratolaunch will use the engines, hydraulics system and several other major components to build its own aircraft. The remaining fuselage and wing shells will be scrapped. SpaceX is building the rocket, which will launch approximately 13,000lb into orbit. “This is really going after the Delta II market,” says Steve Cook, Dynetics chief technologist. The group eventually hopes to qualify the system for human spaceflight and begin launched manned spacecraft. [emphasis mine]
Stratolaunch is not being built for NASA. It is aimed at the commercial market instead, with the intention of providing a cheaper alternative for getting large payloads into orbit.
The competition heats up: Excalibur Almaz announced plans on Sunday to use its refurbished Soviet-era space station modules and capsules for commercial flights to the lunar orbit.
The truth revealed in pictures: A side-by-side comparison of the mission controls of NASA and SpaceX during Dragon’s arrival at ISS.
The differences tell us a lot. I ask an additional question: Why was there a need for two full mission controls?
A graveyard of ships — in the desert.
This environmental disaster in the Soviet Union was caused more by that failed country’s centralized state-run command society than the technological society they were trying to create. Though technology in any kind of society can certainly do harm to the environment, when all decisions are controlled by a single entity — in this case the communist Soviet government — it is practically impossible to adapt and adjust when things start going wrong.
In a free democracy, however, you have many safety valves. No project is ever so big that it effects everything, and if things start to go wrong the chaos of freedom will allow people to choose differently, correcting the problem more quickly.
It appears that the floating debris from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last year is reaching North America sooner than expected.
I got a laugh from the last two sentences of this story. The early arrival of “more than 200 bottles, cans, buoys and floats” from Japan was immediately turned into a crisis that required government intervention.
With debris making landfall sooner than predicted, U.S. lawmakers have started to question whether the government is truly prepared. “Many people said we wouldn’t see any of this impact until 2013 or 2014, and now ships and motorcycles and this various debris is showing up and people want answers,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said.
And if the debris was taking longer to get here? Cantwell would then argue we need to spend more money to track it more precisely. By her standards, no matter what happens, government has got to get bigger.
It just kept going and going: Renovations at a Los Angeles restaurant in February uncovered a neon light, hidden inside a wall, that had been was switched on in 1935 and left burning for 77 years.
The walls of the restaurant featured numerous hand-tinted transparencies of mountain and forest landscapes, each of which was backlit by a rectangular neon light. One such light was installed in a window-like nook in a basement restroom, where it softly illuminated a woodland scene.
In 1949, the nook was covered over with plastic and plywood when part of the restroom was partitioned off as a storage area. But for some reason, workmen never got around to disconnecting the electricity. For the next 62 years the illuminated tubing was hidden within the wall. Meieran estimates that the neon tube has racked up more than $17,000 in electrical bills.
The entrepreneur man who squatted at AOL headquarters for two months while he created his startup.
Europe ponders the design choices for the next generation of their Ariane rocket.
Though the article above makes no mention of Falcon 9 and its very low launch costs, I have no doubt that Falcon 9 hovers like a ghost over the negotiations on what ESA will do with Ariane 5, a rocket that despite an excellent launch record has never really been able to make a profit due to high costs.
Two Democrats joined Republicans yesterday on a Senate committee to block the U.S. military from increasing its use of alternatives fossil fuels.
What stood out to me in this article was the following quote:
As part of this support, in December the Navy agreed to spend $12 million for 450,000 gallons of “advanced biofuels,” which can be blended with petroleum in a 50:50 mixture and burned in conventional engines. The Navy and Air Force have both set a goal of using advanced biofuels for 50% of their fuel use by the end of this decade. But the current $26-a-gallon price tag angered congressional Republicans, who accuse the Obama Administration of using the military to support its green agenda. [emphasis mine]
$26 per gallon for biofuels? I find it astonishing that anyone voted for this program.
Of course the military wants options. And of course we want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, if only to reduce the money pouring into the hands of the radical Islamists of the Middle East. But at that price, these alternative fuels are simply not competitive or affordable.
The berthing of the privately-built Dragon capsule with the International Space Station on May 25 requires a bit of perspective to make clear the importance of this achievement.
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Success: Dragon has been captured and is now docked with ISS.
The television as envisioned by dreamers — before it existed.
Reboot: The Lunar Orbiter image of Copernicus Crater, taken forty-six years ago, has been re-released after significant refurbishing.
By adding modern computer interfaces and data handling techniques, the LOIRP was able to scan and record the data in ways that simply could not have been accomplished in the 1960s. As a result the images that were obtained had a much higher resolution and dynamic range than had been seen to date. Indeed, in many cases, these images often rival or exceed images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is currently surveying the Moon.
You should definitely check it out, as it is a breathtaking image. Historic too, as it was the first image from the Moon that truly made the place understandable.
Dragon’s dress rehearsal rendezvou last night was a success, and the spacecraft has been cleared to proceed with berthing tomorrow morning.
Dragon’s test rendezvous with ISS tonight has begun.
The rendezvous won’t be completed until 6:30 am (Eastern), with two orbital engine burns scheduled for 3 and 4 am. For further updates you can go here. Or you can watch everything on NASA TV.
No more banging that ketchup bottle: Engineers at MIT have developed a coating for the insides of food containers that will allow all the food to flow out.
Dragon has been approved to approach within 1.5 miles of ISS tonight in its first rendezvous test. More information here.
If this goes well tonight, Dragon will next attempt to approach the station close enough for its robot arm to grab it.
The new colonial movement: At a conference in Washington DC yesterday both Russia and Japan announced the Moon as their next primary space exploration goal.
If the U.S. gets a competitive private aerospace industry going — which seems increasingly likely — I’m willing to bet those companies will get to the Moon before either of these governments.
R.I.P. Eugene Polley, inventor of the television remote control.
Several key elected officials who have generally been hostile to commercial space have commented positively to the successful launch of the Dragon capsule last night.
First, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) released this short statement:
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The world’s tallest tower opened to tourists today in Tokyo.
Not surprisingly, last night’s successful launch of Falcon 9 has produced a large number of news articles. Rather than list them all, go to spacetoday.net for the links.
However, I think Clark Lindsey, in describing Elon Musk’s reaction to the successful launch, captured the most important aspect of last night’s success:
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Tonight’s Falcon 9 launch: The countdown has begun, and the weather conditions have improved.
SpaceX will begin its own webcast at 3 am (Eastern), which is midnight here in Arizona.
An aside: The ashes of actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on the 1960s television show Star Trek, will be among 308 other cremated remains launched into space by Falcon 9 tonight. As one commenter for the above article noted quite appropriately,
You haven’t really covered any of the important questions here.
i.e. Are there enough dilithium crystals in the engine room to get Scotty up there? And are they using photon torpedoes to blast him out into space? And when they launch, will someone say, “Take her out, Mr. Sulu. Warp factor one.”?
Godspeed, Scotty old bean.
The Falcon 9 launch tonight is a go, with weather 80 percent favorable.
The competition heats up: Boeing has unveiled a design to put small satellites into orbit for as little as $300,000 per launch.
SpaceX is set to begin the countdown tonight for a 3:44 am (Eastern) May 22nd launch of Falcon 9/Dragon.
An evening pause: Bridge Day 2011: An 800+ foot rappel from the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia. The event is held each fall, when they close the bridge to vehicles so pedestrians, base jumpers, and rappellers can enjoy it. I’ve done this rappel four times, twice as part of the safety team.
On the clip below, the rappel itself begins at 3:40. As this was this guy’s first rappel on the bridge, he takes it very slow, which is okay as it gives him time to enjoy the view.
An evening pause: A different kind of bridge, located in Russia and one that I wouldn’t speed across. Built originally as a railroad bridge to cross the Vitim River, it is 1870 feet long and about 50 feet above the water. Note how many of the cross planks are not attached.
In an email update, SpaceX reports that they have found the cause of the Falcon 9 launch abort this morning.
During rigorous inspections of the engine, SpaceX engineers discovered a faulty check valve on the Merlin engine. We are now in the process of replacing the failed valve. Those repairs should be complete tonight. We will continue to review data on Sunday. If things look good, we will be ready to attempt to launch on Tuesday, May 22nd at 3:44 AM Eastern.
If this is true, than this entire exercise is an unqualified success and illustrates a certain robustness to SpaceX’s engineering on Falcon 9. Their control computer during the launch process spotted the problem before it caused a complete loss of the vehicle and payload. They can now locate the problem, fix it, and proceed with launch.
