Category Archives: Science/Engineering

Space elevator games

Posted on December 28, 2006 | Comments Off on Space elevator games

The Jack-and-the-beanstalk technology–it ain’t rocket science–looks to advance by the so-far-unscheduled-but-planned games next fall, according to email from the Spaceward Foundation:

"In 2007, we expect to have real racing going on, with multiple teams achieving the minimum required speed and competing on the amount of payload [Jack] they carry. We’re also considering, if we can raise the funds for it, a two ribbon, no payload, head-to-head race.  This will not carry the $500,000 prize purse (since speed alone is not the ultimate requirement) but will provide another opportunity for bragging rights and photo-ops.

"In tether [Beanstalk] land, we don’t have grand announcements or plans, except for that oh-so-good feeling that we will probably give away the prize money this year.  While the tether competition is not quite as spectacular as the power beaming competition, we all know what awarding the prize money here means – we have placed the bar so that it will take a new tether material technology to claim the prize."

As always, worth a look.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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The inseminated child

Posted on December 18, 2006 | Comments Off on The inseminated child

I’ve never had any problem with responsible gay men adopting, or lesbians using sperm donors to conceive, as Vice President Cheney’s daughter Mary apparently has done. But Akaky at The Passing Parade is surely correct when he notes that any child is sure to question any notion that her mother’s lesbian partner might have of being "the father":

"This, of course, is nonsense on stilts. If Ms. Poe thinks that she is something other than a stepparent, Ms. Cheney’s progeny will rudely disabuse her of this delusion sometime in 2022, especially if said progeny is female and she’s been out all night and put a ding in the new car’s fender in the process."

Meanwhile, comes this poignant piece by an 18-year-old conceived by insemination to underscore that it is a rare person who does not wish to know (or at least know of) their real parents, plural. Hopefully Ms. Cheney and her partner have prepared for the probability that the child will want to know who the father is, or was. It would be the wise, indeed the humane, thing to do.

Via No Left Turns

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Aurora over Missou

Posted on December 16, 2006 | Comments Off on Aurora over Missou

Winter1.jpg

 A geomagetic storm triggered Northern Lights as unusually far south as Arizona last night. The cause: a mass ejection from the sun which hit Earth squarely on Thursday. Our planet’s magnetic field reverberated for more than 24 hours after the impact. A second one is due today, but is only expected to be a glancing hit, so it probably won’t cause auroras so far south/ photo by Vic Winters.

Via Spaceweather.com 

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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Robot race in traffic

Posted on December 15, 2006 | Comments Off on Robot race in traffic

It took only a year for a university team to build a robot car that could complete a DARPA cross-country race without a major failure. Next year’s 60-mile race could be a lot harder, and some of the participants could be unwitting. The robots, at least, will have to be law-abiding.

"They will have to stop at stop signs, look for other vehicles, obey the rules of precedence at intersections, obey traffic laws (don’t cross double yellow center lines), pass other stationary and slow moving cars,  back up, park, make a U-turn and plan a new course when the main road is blocked, and take evasive action if a collision with another vehicle is imminent."

Don’t look now, but that ‘dummy’ in the car ahead of you really might be one.

Read it all at Doc In The Machine

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Trauma Pod

Posted on December 9, 2006 | Comments Off on Trauma Pod

It’s like something out of Starship Troopers, the 1957 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein, i.e. "pre-hospital or far forward battlefield casualty care…in which a self contained casualty ‘cocoon’ was sent automatically from the spaceship directly to the wounded soldier on the battlefield."

Doc In The Machine has three videos explaining the concept, which looks more doable in the first one, a video game-like presentation whose audio reminds me of the old Mech Warrior video game, than in the other two, or in this generalized explanation of some of the DARPA-funded work on it at the University of Texas-Austin. But definitely worth a look, including the news that its funding may be about to be eliminated.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, The War, Troops

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Get your isotopes here

Posted on November 29, 2006 | Comments Off on Get your isotopes here

That old Russian spy, and new British citizen, Alexander Litvinenko, was alleged to have been a victim of Putin’s revenge gang at the KGB. Because where, after all, could one get one’s hands on the exotic material, Polonium 210, that killed him? Ah, well now, it turns out you can buy it on the Web, at $69 a pop. Safety-sealed (for transport protection) but with a half-life of 138 days. Easy as pie.

Via SlashDot 

UPDATE  Snoop, at SimplyJews, says the quantity of these samples isn’t enough to kill anyone. Ah, but what if you bought a few hundred of them?

UPDATE2  Well, the seller, United Nuclear, finally has weighed in on the topic and scotched my notion with this notation on their website: "You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium-210 needle sources at a total cost of about $1 million – to have a toxic amount." Plus, they couldn’t sell you such a large amount, since they don’t stock the stuff but buy it from government reactors which will only sell small amounts.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles, The War

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Congratulations, Folks

Posted on November 21, 2006 | Comments Off on Congratulations, Folks

Robert L. and Marjorie Folk recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Folk, a University of Texas emeritus professor of geology is a controversial and engaging scientist of some note.

"Through dumb luck (and a new SEM) I made the initial discovery of mineralized nannobacteria (dwarf bacterial forms) in the carbonate hot springs of Viterbo, near Rome, Italy.  This evidence was later used by NASA to propose nannobacterial fossils in the Martian meteorite.  The topic still enrages biologists who do not like to be beaten at their own game.  For more info, look up the word ‘nannobacteria’ on any computer search engine."

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