All posts by Stephen Years

Raytheon demonstrates “directed energy” weapon

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“Sonic Pop Ray Gun” by Clayton Bailey

The future of non-lethal weapons has been developed by the U.S. company Ratheon. The “Silent Guardian” is a device which emits radiation tuned to the exact frequency that causes pain in a persons nerve receptors:

Here’s how it works in the field. A square transmitter as big as a plasma TV screen is mounted on the back of a Jeep. When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation – similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker – that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury. But anyone in the beam’s path will feel, over their entire body, the agonising sensation… The prospect doesn’t bear thinking about.

Boeing proposes faster, cheaper route to the moon

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Photo Credit: NASA/John Frassanito and Associates

Boeing is proposing a radical redesign for NASA’s planned return to the moon. Their proposal is both faster and cheaper than the current plan of record:

NASA’s current mission plan calls for the Ares V to send the new lunar lander and its payload into Earth orbit. Once there, Ares V would not only have to dock with the Orion crew vehicle (launched separately on the Ares I rocket) but also restart and provide the initial burn to send the assembled system into a trajectory toward the moon.

Boeing’s alternative would combine the Orion rendezvous with a pitstop for gas, allowing the Ares V to lift off from Earth with a much larger payload—and an empty lander. Boeing says this would allow NASA to deliver about three times as much mass to the lunar surface, and over fifteen times as much payload. What’s more, Ares V could then send the lander-Orion package all the way to lunar orbit with full tanks, rather than NASA’s current plan to use extra propellant in slowing down before soft landing.

I think that NASA as it exists today is an anachronism. When it comes to doing things fast and cheap, entrepreneurs will always beat out government bureaucracies.

Mysterious Peruvian meteor illness solved

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Photograph by Miguel Carrasco/La Razon/Reuters

Exactly one week ago I wrote a post about the meteor strike in Peru that made the local residents near the impact crater sick. Being the science fiction fan that I am, I immediately began coming up with worst case scenarios: galactic plague; interstellar biological first strike; zombie inducing spores; etc. Well, it turns out that there is a perfectly benign explanation:

The illness was the result of inhaling arsenic fumes, according to Luisa Macedo, a researcher for Peru’s Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology Institute (INGEMMET), who visited the crash site. The meteorite created the gases when the object’s hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said. Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru, explained Modesto Montoya, a nuclear physicist who collaborated with the team.

SteamPunk Magazine #3 is released!

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SteamPunk Magazine is a publication that is dedicated to promoting steampunk as a culture, as more than a sub-category of fiction. It is a journal of fashion, music, misapplied technology and chaos. And fiction.

In this issue there are interviews with Alan Moore and Doctor Steel, two excellent and unique sewing projects, excerpts from the upcoming SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse, and fiction from Olga Izakson, Will Strop and Rachel E. Pollock.

And it is free.

UC-Santa Cruz to put novelist Robert Heinlein’s archive online

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According to the San Jose Mercury News, the entire contents of the Robert Heinlein archive will be placed online thanks to an partnership between the University of California-Santa Cruz and the Heinlein Prize Trust. The archive, which has been housed in the UC-Santa Cruz Library’s Special Collections, was recently scanned to preserve them digitally. Eventually all of Heinlein’s work, including manuscripts and notes, will be put online. More information can be found at the Heinlein Prize Trust.