This should make Mark Whittington happy, seeing as how he likes space races (real or not). The Swedes have plans to colonize space.
At least that’s what the headline says. Makes as much sense as saying that the Chinese have a program to be on the moon before us just because one of their bureaucrats say they have the technology.
<VOICE=Homer Simpson>Ummmmm…Velveeta…
Ggghhhaaarrrgghhhhggg.</VOICE>
Dwayne Day doesn’t believe in “Blackstar”:
it turns out that the atomic-powered bomber never existed, and the plane was never
NASA has invented the tricorder.
Why, when one is looking for this site on Google, does one get the following message?
Sorry, no information is available for the URL thepeoplescube.com
They’d like to know, too.
Ireland has finally gotten around to repealing laws against the Irish imposed by the English from the era of the Norman invasion.
Another good argument for sunset clauses…
Want to watch a rocket blow up on the pad, at night (warning: about a hundred-megabyte wmv file)? I’ve never heard so much cursing in such colorful European accents. It happened three and a half years ago at Plesetsk, in Russia. Here’s the story.
[Via Jim Oberg]
A test flight of the X-37 was postponed for snow. There are some beautiful, and rare shots of the phenomenon in the high desert and the Tehachapis over at the Mojave weblog.
I wonder how good the poppies will be this year? So far, it doesn’t look good.
[Via Clark Lindsey]
I’ve got a lot of work to do today, and then I’m heading home on a red eye tonight. In the meantime, lots of interesting stuff over at Clark Lindsey’s place.
That’s what fusion has always been called. The old joke is that it’s the energy source of the future, and it always will be. Back in the seventies, we used to talk about the fusion constant–forty years–as the time it would take until fusion became commercially viable. That glorious day continues to recede off into the future. Now we learn that a leading researcher in the field threw in the towel shortly before he died.
I’m not as pessimistic, but I can see how someone could get discouraged after devoting one’s life to the goal and seeing so little progress. I think that we probably will still need better materials, but I wouldn’t give up hope yet. On the other hand, I wouldn’t bet on it, either–we need to be working on a number of fronts (including space power).
[Update a few minutes later]
I’d still like to hold out hope for fusion propulsion, even if it won’t be practical for electric power generation. How much harder/easier is that problem? It’s one that hasn’t gotten as much effort, but it’s not clear whether or not if you get one, you get the other.