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Well, it is finally official. Astronaut Charles Bolden is the new NASA Administrator. If that were the only news then I would not be writing about it. What does interest me is that a woman who has worked towards this nearly her entire life has snatched the Deputy Director slot and I wish to publicly congratulate Lori Garver, a very old and dear friend on her success.
Ad Astra Lori!
PS: Now I have to find out what jobs George Whitesides and Alan Ladwig are getting. I have worked with George for the last 5 years and know Alan from back to the early eighties. I should be seeing them at the ISDC in Orlando in a couple days.
A US stealth aircraft, photographed while breaking the sound barrier. I don’t know why, given that Man has achieved the feat of breaking Mach 1 for more than half a century since the great Chuck Yeager officially did it first, but stuff like this still gives me a buzz.
Long time readers know I am part of the senior leadership team of the National Space Society and specifically the person charged with oversight of the conference which happens around this time each year.
We are going south to Orlando, Florida this year; the hotel is marvelous and the program likewise. Our Orlando conference management team and our HQ have brought together an excellent group of speakers. Most of the powers that be within the new commercial space industry and from NASA will be there. (Notice one dour visage within the photo gallery belongs to our own occasional writer, Taylor Dinerman. )
If you happen to be in that part of the country, or can arrange to do so, I highly recommend dropping in. You can register here.
I do not have time to be a speaker myself and will be racing from task to task, but if you spend some time in the hallways and corridors you are likely to see me transacting society and commercial space business in between board and committee meetings.
Be there, or be a groundlubber!
I would never have considered that the energy output of a TypeI Civilization could fit into my flat:
It is difficult, even for someone who has been working with these ideas and numbers for the past couple of decades, to get one’s head around the utter raw power potential of real nanotechnology. What Drexler is saying in this dry passage is that the amount of nanomotors needed to power a Kardasheff type I civilization, using all the sunlight that hits the Earth, would fit in a 500 square foot apartment (with 8-foot ceiling).
I might need a bit of air conditioning though…
I just picked this up form a Jane’s newsletter:
US announces successful tests of Airborne Laser
The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) successfully fired multiple long-duration blasts of the Northrop Grumman high-energy Airborne Laser (ABL) during ground tests, the company announced on 19 February. The tests for the Boeing 747-400F-based ballistic missile defence system lasted up to three seconds each and were concluded on 12 February
This is good progress, but I am still waiting for the real test: shooting down an ICBM in flight.
Way back in 1994 or thereabouts I wrote in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society about future applications of nanotechnology on spacecraft to get sensing in depth across all wavelengths in all directions at once. Well, it looks like we are getting there:
THE NEXT GENERATION.
Beyond the realm of CMOS and CCD image sensors, SiOnyx Inc. is developing a new material called “black silicon.” The company believes the material will lead to a new class of image sensors that are 100 times more sensitive than conventional silicon, detect energy from the ultraviolet to the short-wave infrared bands, operate at very low voltage levels, and can be made in extremely thin 0.5-µm forms (Fig. 5). Most importantly, the material is compatible with existing CMOS processing methods.
“This is a brand new material that is compatible with the largest manufacturing infrastructure of the world,” says Stephen Saylor, SiOnyx’s president and CEO.
I am guessing that ‘black silicon’ might be carbon nanotube technology or it might simply be an array that is so good at sucking up light that it appears black due to lack of wasted reflected photons. Whatever the case, I believe this is just the start of the sort of sensors I would like to see on spacecraft.
Taylor Dinerman attended a funeral of a respected soldier and space advocate and sent us this small remembrance of the man. I expect a couple of you in the commercial space business knew Mil Roberts from his days in High Frontier.
Taylor is a freelance professional journalist who from time to time graces our pages both on ‘page one’ and as a respected member of the commentariat.
“The flag that he honored with his life, now honors him.” These words spoken by the Army chaplain at the graveside ceremony for General Mil Roberts at Arlington on March 12th, explained why it is so symbolically important that the flag cover the coffins of our fallen heroes. The idea of reciprocal shared honor is one that binds any good military organization together, the past, the present and the future are all embodied in that symbol and with the deep meaning that we Americans give it.
The ceremony, with the honor guard, the riderless horse, a fifteen gun salute, the US Army Band playing Ruffles and Flourishes and America The Beautiful, the firing of the traditional three volleys, all done with precision and strict discipline but without the boot stomping and barked orders that one associates with some military ceremonies. The whole event was simple, elegant and dignified.
Mil was sent off to what he, as a Christian, believed was a better place by his friends, comrades and family in a style and manner that he had earned in combat and in years of service to America. He landed on Omaha Beach on June 6th 1944 and fought his way across Europe ending up in Czechoslovakia. Later he served in the Army reserves while pursuing a normal civilian life. In 1970 he was called up for active duty as head of the Army Reserve in the Pentagon.
As President of the High Frontier Missile Defense advocacy group, he helped get the DC-X program off the ground. That Rocket proved many things, including the fact that worthwhile space launch development programs could be done for far less than the billions of dollars that the government normally requires. This helped jump start the suborbital space tourism industry and may someday lead to a revolutionary low cost way to get into orbit.
Mil always had a great sense of humor and both he and his wife Priscilla had a wonderful gift for friendship.
He lived his life according to the old Jewish rule “Be a Mensch!”
– Taylor Dinerman
While doing some research for other purposes I ran across this excellent video of a B-2 stalling and crashing on takeoff. If you have the vaguest interest in aviation I am sure you will find this as fascinating as I did.
All escaped unscathed except the USAF budget.
I am beginning to wonder whether the enemy outside or the enemy within is the more dangerous to our liberty. The al Qaeda can kill me… but DHS can enslave me. Here is the latest loathsome attack on private property and our rights as free citizens, courtesy of Downsize DC:
The same one-size-fits-all regulations will apply to both passenger airliners and non-commercial, business-owned jets that are used to move cargo and personnel. For instance, the “no-fly” list and Air Marshall provisions will apply to business planes even though the pilots usually know everyone on board personally. The definition of “large aircraft” is arbitrary, applying both to planes as small as 12,500 pounds and to 747’s ten times that weight. Items that are prohibited in passenger jets will also be banned to employees in these smaller business planes, even if they are needed for their work. (Just think of what that will do to business
efficiency in this time of recession.) Airplane owners will be forced to pay, at their own expense, for audits of their safety compliance. The audits won’t even be done by government inspectors, but by private consultants. These rules can potentially expand to all aircraft and all airports.
There is more here.
Crazed Islamic fundamentalists cannot destroy our country. No one in the world, nor any alliance of enemies or ‘friends’ can destroy the United States.
Only we can do that… and ‘we’ are racing to see how quickly we can snuff the light of Liberty.
Virginia Postrel has a nice item about WW2 aviator style and the Tuskegee airmen who broke racial barriers of their time in WW2. I must say that there is something deliciously satisfying at the thought that these guys helped shoot down the airforce of a racist German empire. And that they flew such glorious birds like the P-51 Mustang as they did so.
I am sure many of you have by now heard the coverage about the airplane crash into waters off of La Guardia airport in New York.
What I have not heard yet are comments on the fine piloting it took to grease a rather good size metal bird into the water. The pilot could not have had many minutes to think about his options, and yet as far as I can see, he did everything flawlessly.
I just want you all to ponder what it takes to bring a commercial transport of that size down on the water, in one piece, floating and with all your passengers alive.
The pilot and co-pilot of this flight deserve all of the applause we can give them and a heart felt thank you from all the passengers and their families.
The carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo took off for its first test flight. This is the first step of what will probably be a year long test program culminating in drop tests and flights of the world’s first tourist spaceship.
It is late over here. I am sure there will be a lot of information up about it. If not, talk to me tomorrow!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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