This is actually a cool device that really works. An electron beam is used to vaporize metal from the tip of a wire, and then deposit the metal on a rotating disk. This process could be used to manufacture virtually anything made from metal, in a process similar to other polymer based laser lithography techniques. And, they have a working prototype that fits in a suitcase. Now that is some cool tech!

DAWN, NASA's mission to Vesta and Ceres, will enter the asteroid belt on November 13th.

DAWN is currently 10 light minutes, or 1.25 AU, away from earth, and is scheduled to arrive at Vesta in just 629 days. Mark your calendars!

Following on the heals of the successful Aires launch on Wednesday, here is a very interesting simulation video of the Constellation program.

Following on the heels of Rich’s post regarding the successful launch of the Ares 1-X launch, is this article at Popular Mechanics that calls into question the need for the NASA program and even the term “success”.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4335662.html

The two main points of the article are:

1. Was it a success?  There was a potential gantry collision, a reduced performance margin and what appeared to be a 1st stage to 2nd stage collision…it calls into question the “success” of the mission.
2. Cost and efficacy.  This mission cost an estimated 500 million dollars.  That is an astsronomical number for one launch.

The article sums it all up in the last few paragraphs when it talks about the SpaceX program:

For what NASA proposes to spend on Ares I itself…seventy SpaceXs could be formed.

New Scientist

It's not your average confession show: a panel of leading physicists … was asked to respond to a single question: "What keeps you awake at night?"

This is very cool.

Popular Science - Ever Wonder What Every Space Mission From the Last 50 Years Looks Like on One Map?

Go check it out.

Commercial Spaceflight: All Systems Go

An article posted by Buzz Aldrin and 12 other astronauts making a proposal to which I completely agree.  Let NASA handle the new space efforts and leave the tried and true road to low earth orbit to the commercial companies.

We wholeheartedly agree. NASA should put its unique resources into pushing back the final frontier and not in repaving the earth-to-orbit road it cleared a half century ago. Commercial human spaceflight is not competitive with NASA. It is complementary.

So there I was checking comments on some of my favorite posts the other day, when I came across this nugget of grammatical genius.

Excuse me. Very nice work, I would love to use you for my wedding. Help me! Please help find sites for: Stock investing forums. I found only this - stock investment advise. portfolio dividend and beta products kjh financial services requires academic right issues of all assets and will treat our results to you, if any. I see a not one is good, which comes to raised the stock not knowing on the full-owned supply wake stock.This is accordingly because all of iran's video market is vastly made with a non-us of result market.There are two report shareholders.A rate inclusion jurisdiction brings 1st makers the future of concluding their list shareholders to help nature of the value. Best regards :confused:, Raphaela from South.

So at first I thought, gee, what an idiot.  It looks like english so badly formed it makes no sense.  But, then I realized, it really doesn’t make any sense.  This is some kind of nonsensical gibberish inserted by a web robot or something.  But why?

Then the paranoid schizophrenic in me started putting together unrelated facts and observations.  Every once in a while I come across something like this posted in some web log, user comments section, customer feedback, or anywhere else someone could post something anonymously on the internet.  And then it hit me, this is obviously a SECRET message being concealed with steganography. 

Looking a little deeper into the message, the first sentence seems to make sense of some kind.  But the rest is nonsense.  So my theory is this.  The first couple of sentences are a random header generated by a steganographic program, a sort of tag to identify a piece of a hidden message.  the rest of the gibberish is the content of the hidden message.  Of coarse, without the key, we’d have no hope of deciphering the message.  But we could search for the tag.

So, BING the exact phrase “Very nice work, I would love to use you for my wedding”.  You find all kinds of similar gibberish.  Always in a weblog or user comments or some place where anonymous comments can be made.  Like here.  Hmmm…

So, next time someone asks you for help with their wedding, think, do I really know this person?

;-)

Here is a quote from author Charles Stross sums up when SF is at its best better than I’ve heard it expressed before.

SF, at its best, is an exploration of the human condition under circumstances that we can conceive of existing, but which don't currently exist (either because the technology doesn't exist, or there are gaps in our scientific model of the universe, or just because we're short of big meteoroids on a collision course with the Sea of Japan — the situation is improbable but not implausible).

It came from a post over on his blog wherein he explains why he hates Star Trek.

Why I hate Star Trek

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch.
You must first invent the universe.