Monthly Archives: July 2008

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New ESA/Russian manned spacecraft pictures!

Check out the Soyuz capsule replacement and conceptual artwork here.

One of the most unusual features about the capsule appear to be the thrusters and landing gear on its underside. Mr Zak said it would use these engines to soften its landing on Earth after the fiery re-entry through our atmosphere.

It’s interesting how the national space agencies seem to see the future in rockets, rather than space planes, for space exploration.

What with the Space Shuttle being retired in 2010, and with a possible alternative European plan for a manned version of the ATV called Jules Verne, as well as the American Ares V rockets planned for use in Project Constellation, it seems it’s no longer de rigueur to build spaceplanes unless you’re a private space tourism company.

[story from BBC News]

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Shira’s spontaneous free fiction blogathon for charity

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A message arrived in the Futurismic inbox from Shira Lipkin, a regular contributor in our Friday roundups. Says Shira:

I’m doing a blogathon this Saturday, July 26 – posting to my LiveJournal every half hour for 24 hours to raise money for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. This is my sixth year blogathonning, and I write spontaneous short fiction every year. It usually tends to have an urban fantasy bent (as in fantasy in a city, not paranormal romance), but this year, I’m taking a distinctly SF angle on it. For 24 hours, I’ll be in character as a xenoarchaeologist, trying to make sense of precollapse Earth… with the help of over 50 artists who donated “artifacts” to this project, including a few SF/F authors themselves. All artifacts are being auctioned, with a story card.

It all goes down on Shira’s Livejournal, and the auctions are findable on eBay.

And there’s a lot more info on my LJ about why I do this, and why BARCC.

Sounds like a super project for a great cause; I hope some of Futurismic‘s readership will lend their support! We hope it goes well, Shira.

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Floating cities on Venus?

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Combining two of the most compelling tropes from science fiction: floating cities and colonising other planets, Geoffrey Landis, a scientist at the NASA Glenn Research Center (who also writes science fiction, apparently) suggest the idea that humans could live in aerostatic cities in the upper atmosphere of Venus:

50 km above the surface, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0

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Geolocational tags for soldiers

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soldiers disembark from a vehicleGood old DARPA comes up with some comparatively solid practical ideas in between the really bat-shit crazy stuff. Take the “Individual Force Protection System”, for example, which is essentially a way of tagging troops with traceable devices so they can be found if things get hairy on the battlefield. [via grinding.be]

The Land Warrior hardware can be used to locate its wearer too, but that might understandably get ditched by troops in a rout due to its bulk. By contrast, the IFPS is a little plastic cylinder that could be strung next to a soldiers dogtags, and allegedly allows him or her to be detected from up to 150km away without the use of GPS technology. [image by SoldiersMediaCenter]

Soldiers as spimes, anyone?