Friday, July 30, 2004

The more things change....

The last story remined me of something. If you drive through Moutain View on the 101 you will pass Moffit Field a formor Naval Air Station. From The freeway you can see the massive Hanger One, former home of the USS Macon, a 785 ft. long ridgid airship capable of launching and recovering its own fighter aircraft. The tragic history of the Macon is here http://moffetthistoric.arc.nasa.gov/history/history5.html. If we ever do build the Walrus it would be unwise to defer maintenance.

I am the Walrus.. coo-coo-ca choo!

Darpa is currently taking proposals for project Walrus, a megaairship roughly the size of an aircraft carrier capable of transporting 1,600 troops and between 500-1000 tons of equipment. This beast would be able to reach any trouble spot in the world in 4 days (Eat your heart out Phineas Fogg!). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.08/start.html?pg=3

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Open the pod bay door Hal.

Way back at the turn of the milliniuem, the Tech Museum had an exhibit comparing contemporary technology with that featured in the movie "2001: A Space Oddessy".
The exhibit itself is long gone but the online version is still up. http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/2001ds/

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

New Way to space or a bunch of hot air?

While X prize contenders like Spaceship One and the Davinci Project have grabbed the headlines
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/07/27/x.prize/index.html
They're not the only ones reaching for the stars. At JP Aeorospace there's a plan to achieve Earth orbit with-- get this, a really big hellium balloon and an ion engine! Well, it has the virture of never having been tried before. The downside? It would take about 5 days to reach Earth orbit (By comparision the Apollo 11 roundtrip took 6 day!). Well check it out, it's definately a novel approach. http://jpaerospace.com/

Monday, July 26, 2004

The blogging craze is offically over!!

I've finally jumped on the bandwagon which of course means the parade is over!
Lately I've been pondering how visions of the future are rarely fully realized. From Tomorrowland and World's Fairs of ages past the future just isn't what it used to be. For an example check out this link. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/news_events/exhibits/futuristics/index.html