Space

Another Slip

SpaceX’ next launch attempt has apparently been slipped to mid-February, due to a thrust-vector control issue. The static test firing will still occur this weekend, though.

Space

Space Law Bleg

Did the Chinese violate any treaties about not making messes in space when they destroyed their own weather satelllite? My dim understanding is that this issue remains unsettled in the Liability Convention, due to an inability to agree on a definition of the word “debris.” Any space lawyers out there more up to date?

I’d think that, at a minimum, if any of the bits strike someone’s satellite, or ISS, that the Chinese could be held liable under the OST. If it could be proven that it resulted from this event, that is (probably a difficult thing to do).

Humor

Order Now

Frank J. has a new book out. He calls it the dumbest book ever written about the Bush administration. Hard to believe, for anyone who’s ever read Ivins.

It’s a compilation of many of his blog posts for the past few years. I guess I should finish mine.

Technology and Society

Molecular Machinery

Behold: molecules that can walk and deliver payloads in a straight line. This could lead to some interesting breakthroughs.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here are some interesting pictures of semi-conductor junctions and charge carriers, at the nano-scale:

“There’s no major surprises here,” says Andreas Heinrich of IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. “But the fact that they are actually imaging the electric properties is a big step forward.” Surprises may show up when de-vices shrink below around 50 nanometers, Heinrich says, because dopant atoms will be so scarce that their individual positions may affect the de-vice’s function. Tomihiro Hashizume of Hitachi’s Advanced Research Laboratory in Hatoyama, Japan, says the ability to see precisely how charge carriers move “will be indispensable for the further progress of de-vice miniaturization.”

[Update a little after 11 Eastern]

A surgical microbot.

The scientists are designing the 250-micron de-vice to transmit images and deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body outside the reach of existing catheter technology.

It will also perform minimally invasive microsurgeries, said James Friend of the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia’s Monash University, who leads the team. The researchers hope the de-vice will reduce the risks normally associated with delicate surgical procedures.

The piezoelectric approach seems promising.

How much further behind will be nanobots?

Space

Continuing Obfuscation

Brian Dempsey persists in his folly, in comments.

OK, Brian. You claim that SS1 cost five to ten million dollars per flight. So riddle me this: if Burt had decided to fly SS1 one more time, do you claim that he therefore would have had to come up with five to ten million dollars more to do so?

If so, why?

If not, then how much do you think that he would have had to come up with, and in that case, what was your original point, which was comparing SS1 cost to other suborbital vehicle costs (i.e., apples and kumquats). Wasn’t the intent of your mistaken posting to attempt to wrongly persuade people that SS1 is not a substantially cheaper vehicle to operate?

You may think that the difference between marginal and average costs is meaningless, but people who actual understand launch economics (and economics in general) do not.

Space

Give It Up, Folks

This guy says we’re not going to colonize space.

Suffice it to say I find his “arguments” uncompelling, even if I were Catholic.

For one thing, he conflates advocates of space colonization with advocates of people looking for ET, as though the two things had anything to do with each other. He also deploys the foolish Antarctica analogy. He should stick to theology.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!