All posts by Tom James

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Chinese to launch military space station

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china_stationThe Chinese government has announced its intention to launch two space stations over the next two years, one for civil use and one for military activities:

The design, revealed to the Chinese during a nationally televised Chinese New Year broadcast, includes a large module with docking system making up the forward half of the vehicle and a service module section with solar arrays and propellant tanks making up the aft.

The concept is similar to manned concepts for Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle.

While used as a target to build Chinese docking and habitation experience, the vehicle’s military mission has some apparent parallels with the U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program cancelled in 1969 before it flew any manned missions. MOL’s objectives were primarily reconnaissance and technology development.

This is all due to happen in the same year that NASA is phasing out the space shuttle: how will Chinese progress in space affect US space policy?

[from SPACE.com via Slashdot][image from SPACE.com]

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Wolfram Alpha: Answering the questions that matter…

whyPolymath Stephen Wolfram (famed for AOT Mathematica and his book entitled A New Kind of Science) has been developing a knowledge engine that uses a natural language interface. It’s a bit like Google except:

Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know.

It’s the next step in the distribution of knowledge and intelligence around the world — a new leap in the intelligence of our collective “Global Brain.” And like any big next-step, Wolfram Alpha works in a new way — it computes answers instead of just looking them up.

So basically you type in a question in normal language and it should provide an answer, rather than links to webpages that might contain the answer.

Anyway Wolfram Alpha will be launching in May.

[via Charles Stross, ComputerWorld, Physorg etc][image from e-magic on flickr]

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DARPA to fund really tiny UAVs

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navLike something out of an early Neal Stephenson novel: DARPA have agreed to fund a coin-sized one-bladed nanocopter[1], from the Defense Sciences Office design brief:

The Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) Program will develop and demonstrate an extremely small (less than 7.5 cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10 grams) air vehicle system with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor military missions.

The program will explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations.

The nanocopter, called the Katana and designed by Lockheed Martin, is in addition to DARPA’s other micro-ornithopter robot concept (pictured here). Read here for more in depth background to the Katana’s progenitor, the Samurai.

[1] Although there doesn’t seem to be anything especially “nano” about it apart from being, y’know, really small.

[image and article from The Register]

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Rockets not jets: the future of orbital launch

rocketA fascinating article on the pros and cons of air-breathing spacecraft vs. rockets for orbital launch at Short Sharp Science:

Trying to build a spaceship by making airplanes fly faster and higher is like trying to build an airplane by making locomotives faster and lighter – with a lot of effort, perhaps you could get something that more or less works, but it really isn’t the right way to proceed. The problems are fundamentally different, and so are the best solutions.

[image from jurvetson on flickr]

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Bionic eye breakthrough

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eye_closeUS company Second Sight have developed a bionic eye system that allows a man who has been blind for 30 years to see flashes of light:

He says he can now follow white lines on the road, and even sort socks, using the bionic eye, known as Argus II. It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye.

The Argus II is designed to help sufferers of retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition.

[article form the BBC][image from Mazintosh – Fotogranada on flickr]