SpaceX announced that Falcon 1, the first privately-developed liquid-fueled rocket designed to reach orbit, will launch this Friday. If successful, it will mean a new era of safe, low-cost access to space; Falcon has both the lowest cost ($7 million) and highest reliability rating of any American launch vehicle. Go Falcon!
UPDATE: The November 26 launch was scrubbed due to technical problems. The next launch attempt is scheduled for December 17th.
I, for one, welcome our new “robot dance overlords”:http://beck.com/media/video.php?id=00019. (Warning: your choice of crappy Windows Media or crappy Real Media.) Seriously, who knew that one day robots would be dancing like 80s pop stars dancing like robots?
We just launched a complete redesign at work. The site is now called “Eventful”:http://eventful.com, and it’s geared toward making event sharing as engaging as possible. (The company is still called EVDB, but I won’t mind if you call it Eventful too. It’s easier to pronounce.) As I posted in a “comment this morning”:http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/001788.html:
bq. We worked like crazed beavers to get the new site out. Please do check out the new search features, the all-new social networking, and the brand-new levels of privacy on everything from calendars to venues. And the spiffy new sticker for adding events to your blog.
Once you have, please please please “let us know”:http://eventful.com/feedback what you like (and especially what you don’t). We’re still working like crazed beavers on that next rev…
Deana sent this article about a power-generating backpack that turns the up-and-down motion of walking into electricity. According to the article, “The energy you exert could be offset by carrying an extra snack, which is nothing compared to weight of extra batteries.” Nice.
It looks like the field of nanotubes in the 21st century is looking as fertile as that of plastics in the 20th. The latest breakthrough is “nanotube sheets”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8976160/, super-strong super-thin sheets with a whole list of promising applications. (Think “space elevator”:http://www.spaceelevator.com/, but that’s just one of them.)