not that I expected different...

not that I expected different...

Last night, Canadians saw fit to punish the Liberal party, by voting them back in. Wow, that'll really show them.

Let's see...

Adscam: 1/4 Billion dollars
HRDC: 1 billion dollars
useless gun registry: 2 billion dollars

So... just HOW MUCH money must the Liberal Party steal and waste before Ontario (which elected Liberals in 75 seats out of 100) "gets it"? What will it take to wake them up?

How about this:

Lloyd Robertson or Peter Mansbridge, two years from now, solemnly intoning for the cameras "Today, Albertans had their say, and they overwhelmingly voted to leave Canada".... priceless.

Well not really priceless... that one act is worth 11 billion dollars per year to the citizens of Alberta, in savings on "equalization" (ie provincial welfare) payments.

yep, that about sums it up

yep, that about sums it up

They say one picture is worth a thousand words.

surprise, surprise

surprise, surprise

Iraq is once again a sovereign nation, two days ahead of schedule.

This is a brilliant move. Any terrorist plots planned for the announced handover date of the 30th are now foiled. And Iraq's internal security people operate by a different set of rules than the US Marines must use - look for the violence to increase temporarily, and perhaps for martial law to be declared soon.

oh, one more thing...

oh, one more thing...

I have changed the count on my Site Meter; the counter I had before I got the present one was wildly inaccurate, counting each time I viewed my blog. I used to get ten hits just by editing the template and debugging my changes.

So, I got rid of all the hits from the previous counter. There were probably a couple hundred legitimate hits before April 24 of this year, but oh well. This second year of blogging is getting lots more hits than the first year anyhow.

sparse

sparse

I haven't been posting much over the last week, and won't be posting much for the next few days either. I'm working on a little design project in 3D Canvas, and not getting much time for scanning the news or blogging.

Not that there is much going on... an election in Canada, spacecraft launching hither and yon, an election campaign in the USA...

See y'all soon.

Firsts

Firsts

A few days ago Mojave Airport received its license from the FAA, designating it the first (of many, hopefully) inland commercial spaceports. This is big for everybody in the area, notably Scaled Composites and XCOR. The spaceport designation helps anyone in Mojave by automatically clearing several regulatory hurdles, notably environmental ones.

Scaled put their new launch license to good use, launching SpaceShip One to suborbital space on Monday, as reported by Jeff Foust. This is itself a first: the first time a company has built and flown a vehicle into space without government assistance - and it is a reuseable vehicle.

Even with Monday's successful flight/launch, Scaled is not ready for passengers. They still have lots of exploring to do on the edges of their envelope before they are ready for that. Projects like Canadian Arrow or the da Vinci project or Black Armadillo might still beat Scaled to the prize.

What is known is that the cash prize portion of the Ansari X prize evaporates on December 31 of this year if it is not claimed beforehand.

But the Ansari X-Prize is not enough by itself to drive an industry. What it does do is bring attention to the fact that this is not science fiction, nor the work of fools. These companies, all that are competing for the X Prize and some that are not, are serious about making access to space happen for a profit; in the long-term, a massive profit.

Those jurisdictions that lighten regulatory burdens and tax loads on the fledgling space access industries now will find themselves much better positioned to compete globally in a decade's time. Places like the Isle of Man (which has exempted space industry from taxation), Kindersley, Saskatchewan (which has declared its airport a spaceport), New Mexico, Florida, California, and Texas (which all have or are developing commercial spaceports) are making small moves right now, but these moves will pay off in a big way as space industries enter the exponential growth phase.

If only it were true

If only it were true

Rand Simberg wrote some fake news yesterday; too bad it isn't a real presidential initiative. It would solve many of the problems with professional journalism, and even provide some real competition for the blogosphere.

MSNBC gets one right

MSNBC gets one right

... with their coverage of the coming launch of SpaceShipOne from Mojave. They provide significant attention to the new designation for Mojave airport: it is now licensed as a spaceport.

doubleplusungood

doubleplusungood

MSNBC has a headline boasting "9/11 commission: No link between bin Laden and Saddam".

Only one problem. The 9/11 commission found plenty of links between Iraq and AlQuaeda. They just didn't find a link suggesting direct Iraqi government collaboration in the September 11 hijackings.

Here's the third paragraph of the story:

"Well, that's what our staff has found. Now, it doesn't mean there weren't al Qaeda connections with Iraq over the years. They're somewhat shadowy, but I think they were there. But with 9/11, no, our staff has found no evidence of that."

Did you catch that? The third paragraph directly contradicts the headline. What's wrong with MSNBC? Are they on glue? Or do they have some agenda that involves lying?

They say one thing in the headline and then directly contradict it two paragraphs down, knowing that most people only read the headlines. This is blatantly dishonest. They are saying Black is White, that Truth is False, that Oceania was never our enemy, that Oceania was always our enemy.

When did big media become the Ministry of Truth?

I have an idea...

I have an idea...

On the MURG newsgroup today, Eugene Leitl linked to this article, which prompted this question:

Could the rate of refreshment be considered Time, or give illusion of time-space? Anna

As a perception (rather than "illusion") of the passage of time, absolutely. It is a nonreversible process, which is why the proteins need to be refreshed almost continuously - everything in the brain, in fact, at all levels, each structure at its own rate.

And everything changes over time in this forming and re-forming of brain structure: this explains why we learn at all. Lasting memories are a set of interrelated connections that remain a long time, reforming many many times.

There is thus no real "center" for long-term memories; they are present throughout the brain, as a set of connections. Think about a red ball: every synapse in your mind associated with "red ball" just fired; twice actually, a few seconds apart. Your memory, those neurons and their structure and connections associated with those two words was just triggered, along with all the other neurons that happen to be firing right now. The long-term memory is whatever change which will persist in the structure of your brain as a result of the event of "thinking of a red ball".

"Dreaming" isn't something one does at night - it happens all the time, but is suppressed by our exposure to stimuli from the real world. Only when daydreaming, sleeping, or in an altered state of consciousness does this process take a higher profile; it may be as simple as a synapse that lasts for only one or two refresh cycles before being redirected, a symptom of background noise, an extremely-short-term memory.

And it is that stimuli, and all the associated activity of the routing system and waves of electrical activity throughout the brain as time passes, that allows extremely short term memories to either be repeated in the next cycle and become a short term memory, or change direction.

So then... the development of "ideas" is the process by which extremely short term memories become short- term, and "thought" is the process by which short-term become long-term, and "knowledge" is the collected store of the long-term memories in toto, and "consciousness" is the state in which ideas and thought occur. I guess that makes "language facility" a routing system, and "wisdom" the application of the process of thought to long term memory, a feedback structure within the brain that grows over time as short-term memories trigger long-term memories. The various proteins and hormones being produced by the brain at any one moment, and their relative concentrations, determine one's mood and emotions; they modify and regulate the way in which short term memories and, for strong emotions, long term memories are formed. A sense of identity, of Self, follows naturally from all this structure interacting with the real world through the sensory and motor neurons: it amounts to the sum total of the brain and all its activity. Individuality is supplied by the unique genetic code of every person (which sets up the methods that form the initial structures and that forms future structures) along with the unique perspective of the particular body to which the brain is connected and the unique resulting set of long term memories and feedback structures.

yikes. mind uploading and strong AI just got a whole lot harder or a whole lot easier....

Ed

Rand's analysis

Rand's analysis

Rand Simber gives a review of some of the weaknesses of the Aldridge report. Think I'm going to have to read that thing for myself.

drugs are bad, mmmkay?

drugs are bad, mmmkay?

Nobody can review a
movie like Claire Wolfe, in this case, Trainspotting.

This guy needs a blog

This guy needs a blog


I am referring to Bobbo, who wrote this gem in the Comments section of Andrew Coyne's blog (under the "That Grit-Tory split..." thread)(emphasis mine):

"My apologies for the hackneyed MasterCard ad presentation:

The number of WMD?s found since the start of Gulf War II?
One.

The number of American soldiers killed in this time?
700 plus.

The cost of the war for the American taxpayer?
$100 billion and rising.

The subsequent toppling of one sick dictator and his perverted sons and the exposure of mass graves; the surrender by Libya's Khaddafi and shuttering of his nuclear program; the new found consciousness of Pakistan's Nuclear Khan - the world's greatest plagiarist - into exposing his clientele; the wising-up by the International community of the less-than-forthright Iranian nuclear program; the multi-national dialogue with North Korea's Kim; the new found dialogue between India and Pakistan; and the introduction of democracy to the Middle East.
Just freak'n Priceless. "

Bobbo, if you read this, hie thee to Blogger, yonder left, and get thyself a blog!

Armadillo rolling along

Armadillo rolling along

Armadillo Aerospace has a video on their website of a perfect flight . Their rocket boosted to 131 feet, came back down, and safely landed about a foot away from where it launched.

This is just a small group of people with the financial backing and direct involvement of John Carmack, the creator of Quake and Doom. They might be a little bit behind SpaceShipOne, but might still beat them to the X prize (scaled's flight on Monday is not the first of two required to claim the prize, only a step in that direction). Armadillo is on a roll, and it won't be long before they have their really big engines made and a full scale rocket ready to go.

here it is

here it is

The Aldridge Report. This is a remarkably well-done report, and Sean O'Keefe has already promised full support and compliance.

They really listened

They really listened

Among the recommendations in the Adridge report, is this hopeful news reported by space.com:

"Aldridge said NASA needs to trust the private sector to launch supplies to the space station and then transform the way it does business with launch providers. He said the high level of government oversight on such launches is not necessary.
Aldridge said he also favors getting NASA to agree to buy data from entrepreneurs willing to take the risk of launching their own scientific spacecraft and to adopt more of what is known in the industry as delivery-on-orbit contracts where the government pays only once the contracted spacecraft has been successfully placed in orbit and starts producing data. He said it was one way to reduce the excessive amount of government oversight."

Looks like this Moon-to-Mars commission actually listened to people in the fledgling commercial space industry. If SpaceShip One successfully reaches 100 km on June 21, then that act will be like an exclamation point at the end of the Aldridge report.

Canucks in spaaaaaace

Canucks in spaaaaaace

A Canadian company,
MD Robotics, is being tapped by NASA to work on a possible robotic Hubble service mission. Those guys know what they are doing with space robotics; they built the shuttle Canadarms.

hearty summer fare

hearty summer fare

A movie I will definitely be seeing this summer: Michael Moore Hates America.

1000

1000

Well, my site meter rolled over 1000 last night, and the winner of "1000th hit" is....(drumroll)... some guy at verizon.net! That's all the information that SiteMeter gives me.

In honour of guest #1000, I have removed "Mostly Business" from my blog. That cartoon was entertaining enough, but it made page loading really slow.

the issues... and some solutions

the issues... and some solutions

Adscam: easily the single biggest threat to the Liberal government. Harper could have gone for the jugular here, but didn't; he did get some hits in though. The minor party leaders scored several hits on this one too. The public is at least aware of this issue, as it led off the evening.

This issue should drive the Liberals completely into the ground, as bad as the drubbing the Progressive Conservatives of old took back in the election that first saw Jean Chretien elected Prime Minister.

Canada/US Relations: these have deteriorated considerably over the Liberal reign, which is dangerous to Canada economically and as part of international relations as a whole.

Canada must immediately repair its relations with our largest trading partner, with whom we share the longest undefended border in the world. We must get serious about our passport and immigration system, our intelligence-gathering, and the protection of our ports and airports and other points of entry into the country. We have to assist the US in the war on terrorism by making sure they know that people coming into the States from Canada or who have access to vital American interests within Canada are no threat to them. The only way to be sure is to tighten up the security at our ports and airports and streamline the visiting and immigration process.

International relations: Related to the above, our international voice is only as strong as our military.

Canadian Military: Liberal defense policy can best be summed up by the Sea King helicopters our military currently uses. Most Sea Kings are far older than the troops using them.

The military needs an immediate infusion of cash and a much larger annual budget, to gradually increase its strength over the next decade. The only reason Canada has any security at all right now is because of the Americans, and we are not contirbuting our share - there simply are not enough men or resources in the Canadian military.

Day Care: A Statist day care system is rapidly driving Quebec into bankruptcy, costing Quebec parents $7 a day but the Quebec government $50 per day, per child. This is the model that the Liberals want to emulate across Canada. The idea should be tossed out completely before it starts.

Health Care: A Statist health care system that is rapidly driving Canada into bankruptcy. In need of urgent reform.

Canada absolutely must change course on health care. The solution isn't going to be without its flaws, but those will be self-correcting. That is, offer Canadians the option of buying Federal health insurance, provincial health insurance, or private health insurance. Each hospital, medical clinic, medical lab, optometry or dental office, would become a private entity, and would be paid by the insurance companies or funds involved. That way, each Canadian would still have access to health care, but if they wanted to they could pay more to have potentially life-saving surgery or diagnostics done far sooner.

Provincial and municipal issues: are not federal responsibilities, yet federal politicians seem to dabble in them. Likewise, federal politics are outside of municipal governments' responsibilities, yet we get examples like Red Deer, Alberta declaring themselves a "nuclear free zone". Ridiculous (in the literal sense) and out of order.

Federal/Provincial tax transfers: Hoo boy, where do I start. These should stop completely. The health care solution provided above would go a long way to solve this, as that's the bulk of the transfers are supposed to be for.

In the Maritimes, the oceans used to be teeming with fish, and the average person could make a living in the fishing industry. When the cod stocks fell off, there wasn't enough of a supply of fish to employ everyone anymore. Unemployment rose sharply, and many now live on the fishing industry for only a short time each year, and then live on Employment Insurance the rest of the year.

In Alberta, family farms used to dominate the landscape. With improvements in technology, a single family could farm a much larger area than ever before; more and more moved into the cities. Fewer and fewer farmers are using more land. People make their own jobs, find other occupations; working in the oilpatch (lots of Maritimers came here to do just that, and good on them, we're glad to have them here), getting an education and working in high tech fields. Every man, woman, and child in Alberta contributes on average $3700 every year to the transfer fund, over and above regular taxes.

The transfers simply do not work. They entrench the economic conditions that depress the Maritimes, while punishing those who move to where the jobs are or make their own jobs. They must end altogether.

The very best way to put Canada back on the tracks:

First, implement the health care solution mentioned above. Then, radically downsize the government, cutting total staff by more than 50 percent while increasing the absolute numbers in the military. End most government departments and programs except those that constitute the "core business" of the federal government as defined by the Constitution. End income taxes altogether. Fund all government activites via a single federal sales tax, lotteries and various insurance premiums.

Next, enshrine in law that the first line item in a federal Budget is to be a payment on the principal of the federal debt. The second line should be a "growth fund", from which no money is removed until the federal debt is eliminated. At that time, the interest on the growth fund can be used to fund government activity such as the Canada Pension Plan. (The CPP should also be reformed along the lines of the reform to the health care system outlined above.) The interest on the growth fund could also be used to provide Canadians with dividends, as Alaska does.

Furthermore, outlaw deficit budgets as Alberta did in the early 90s. Make a law that a deficit report for the previous year's budget automatically triggers a general election two months later; this measure is to come into play on a government's second and subsequent budgets.

The solutions provided above would allow Canadians to keep more of their own money, to make their own decisions, and to know that their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren will not still be paying off the debt. Instead, the debt would be completely gone in only a few decades, the health care system will streamline and improve itself with the bureaucracy gone, Canada will be able to defend itself, speak for itself on the world stage, and help our allies as needed.

yammering away

yammering away

A really good roundup of last night's English-language debate among the leaders of the four major political parties in Canada is at andrewcoyne.com under the Donnybrooks link.

From that source and others, this is what I gather the score was:

Paul Martin, Liberals: If he got hit with a question he didn't like, he babbled. Came across as surprisingly unintelligent for a man of his stature in society. Got hit hard early from three sides about Adscam, with multiple other hits later on other issues, particularly from Duceppe and Layton. Used the word "fundamental" a lot.

Stephen Harper, Conservatives: Came across as by far the most intelligent man on the stage, and the most polite. Waited his turn, didn't interrupt, looked cool and collected all night. Never went for the knockout, though he had many opportunities.

Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Quebecois: Had nothing to lose as his party is only fielding candidates in Quebec, and he addressed his power base in the French debates the night before. With fewer than 80 seats available in Quebec and nearly twice that required to form a government, has no chance of becoming Prime Minister, so being in this debate was just bonus face time for him. He used it to score several direct hits on Paul Martin but no knockout blows. Best debater of the four in this format.

Jack Layton, New Democrat Party: Came across as oily, talked incessantly, interrupted constantly. Thinks the impossible can happen somehow.

All other parties not invited to the debate: screwed for the forseeable future from participation in these debates by Layton and Duceppe, poseurs who have no chance of becoming Prime Minister.

Craig Oliver, reporter: ought to be fired for not even attempting to cover up his own bias in his questions. If Paul Martin wins, look for Craig Oliver to be appointed to the senate.

Canadian people: Five million watched - that's the equivalent of fifty million Americans watching the US presidential debates. For them, they will look at Stephen Harper and the "scary" slur will simply not stick anymore. They see Duceppe and Martin and Layton for what they are, too.

Phoebe

Phoebe

The Cassini spacecraft has completed its flyby of the Saturnian moon Phoebe, and returned some stunning high-res photographs. Carolyn Porco, the head of the Cassini imaging team, suspects that Phoebe is a body that originated in the outer solar system. More images of the heavenly body called Phoebe can be found here.

screw the CRTC

screw the CRTC

Andrew Coyne's article I want my HBO has been getting lots of debate in his comment section. The debate goes well beyond whether the CRTC has outlived its usefulness, and on into whether the government should be subsidizing arts at all.

Here's my take on it:

If an artist cannot produce something that people want to have, then he obviously has failed as an artist. After all, art is about communication of ideas - and if nobody is listening/watching/reading/whatever your art, then, in the words of the warden in Cool Hand Luke, "what we have here is a failure to communicate".

Government subsidy of shoddy art that is observed by nobody promotes mediocrity in art, and worse.

Not many people read my blog. That's fine - I'm not getting a government subsidy to blog anything. I'm not using the government to steal by proxy for me. It's a hobby, nothing more.

So how is it that artists can steal from taxpayers, using the government as a proxy? If they are truly professional artists, then people will willingly pay for their work. If people are unwilling to pay for their work, then the "artist" cannot make a living at it, and art is nothing more than a hobby for them, any more than blogging is for me.

tellin' it like it is

tellin' it like it is

Tonecluster has an answer for those who say that Bush=Hitler, that the USA is now a dictatorship etc. In a nutshell, it amounts to "pull your head outa your ass". (btw, considering the number of "expletive deleted" and "really bad expletive deleted"s in this rant, along with the fact that expletives such as "fuckwit" are not deleted, well... tonecluster must have a much larger vocabulary than mine).

champs in our eyes

champs in our eyes

I just got back from Olympic Plaza in downtown Calgary, from the rally to honour the Calgary Flames on their incredible, storybook playoff run. My impressions can be summed up in one word:

wow

Calgary Police (well, at least the two on horseback that I talked to afterwards) estimated the crowd at 30 thousand people. That's 30000 people (about 3% of the population of the city) attending a rally for a team that lost the finals. Of those 30000, maybe ten thousand were close enough to see anything; all the rest saw only the backs of the people in front of them.

Organizers started the rally at noon, but the players didn't arrive until 1pm. Each player on the team was introduced to sustained applause, one by one in order of jersey number. When team announcer Beasly got to number 12, he didn't even finish saying "team captain" before he was completely drowned out by a roar and chants of "Ig-gy Ig-gy Ig-gy". Same thing for Mikka Kiprusoff, and nearly as much so for Flames' tough guy/enforcer Kristof Oliwa.

Memo to all other NHL teams for next season: keep your heads up when you play the Flames, or you're gonna get creamed.

Overture, Curtain, Lights

Overture, Curtain, Lights

So it all comes down to one last game. In about 9 hours (well, maybe a little more if it goes into overtime) either Jarome Iginla or Dave Andreychuk will hoist the Stanley Cup.

I don't know what the reaction would be in Tampa if they win... that's really a football town, and the Bucs are king. But up here, well... let's put it this way: After Calgary won game 5, there were about 55000 people (Calgary Police estimate) partying on an eight-block stretch of 17th avenue south. There were one hundred thousand on the street for game six, most watching big-screen TVs that had been set up outside local bars.

And of course, there is the (highly appreciated) new tradition of drunken girls flashing their breasts to anyone who looked like they might enjoy the show. The website dedicated to showing the goods started on May 20th, and as of yesterday had received more than 2.75 million hits.

Happily, this new tradition appears to be catching on elsewhere (but the girls in Tampa have better tans).

Anyhow, if the Flames win tonight I'll try to get down there for the party before I have to go to work. For those of you who can't make it to the party (or who live too far away from Calgary), one of the bars on the Red Mile has set up a webcam on their roof; it isn't operational right now, but perhaps come game time it will be. Hey, maybe that webcam will catch a few pickled party poppets showing their..ummm... enthusiasm. (Oh, c'mon, like you've never seen any nudity on the web before)

Update: Congratulations to Tampa Bay. Watch out for the Flames next year though - NHL teams across the league had better keep their heads up.

And to the Flames: good job boys, you done us proud.

RIP

RIP

Tim Blair has a collection of tributes from the blogosphere to Ronald Reagan, who died yesterday. My thoughts are with his family.

They must think we're stupid

They must think we're stupid

The Liberal Party of Canada, that is. More specifically Paul Martin, the acting Prime Minister. When Auditor-General Shiela Fraser made her report to Parliament last winter, she uncovered at least $100 million dollars that went unaccounted for in an advertising sponsorship program in Quebec. That number has since been revised upward to $250 million in contracts of a dubious nature (ie paying three times for the same report), money simply disappearing.

Thing is, this money went to Liberal-friendly ad agencies in Quebec; it is widely suspected that a large portion of this money went right back into the coffers of the Liberal Party.

Of course, suspicions are all we have right now, as Paul Martin called the election before the commission investigating could release its report (despite the fact that over a year remained on the Liberal Party's mandate to govern). And now Paul Martin says that election is no time to talk about the sponsorship scandal.

""I think it's the time to talk about our values as a country," Mr. Martin said. "My priority is health care, day care. This is important.""

OK, let's talk about our values as a country. Do we believe in stealing from taxpayers to support the Liberal Party? Do we believe in not taking responsibility for our actions? Do we believe in not holding government accountable?

Do we believe that the man who was finance minister during the time in question (Paul Martin) knew nothing about what was going on in his ministry (in which case he is not competent to lead the country) or that he knew and did nothing about it (in which case he is a criminal and should not lead the country)?

What I find astounding is that the Liberals are still leading in the polls. Paul Martin must be right; Canadians are stupid.

Opportunity and Endurance

Opportunity and Endurance

No, I'm not blogging about the Calgary Flames this time.

Instead, I'm talking about the Mars rover Opportunity, which has been cleared to enter Endurance Crater. This crater is deeper than Eagle crater where Opportunity first landed, and therefore exposes much deeper and older rocks. This will give NASA the chance to find out what came before the salty sea evidenced in Eagle.

My prediction: there will be even more fossils found in Endurance, further bolstering Charles Shults's theory. By the way, Chip will be on Coast to Coast with Art Bell on Sunday night.

just one more

just one more

Tonight the Calgary Flames won 3-2 in overtime, taking a 3-2 lead in the series. They are now only one win away from winning the Stanley Cup.

What a Cinderella story. This city is going completely bananas. The game ended about half an hour ago, and it seems like every car in the city is going by my apartment, honking their horns. The Red Mile is probably a sight to behold right now, but I'm going to give it a miss this time around; I have to head off for work in an hour.

Game 6 goes Saturday night in Calgary. If Calgary should win, this town is going to explode; expect the party to last until noon Sunday.

One big thing in the Flames' favour right now (aside from being ahead in the series) is the way Darryl Sutter has prepared these guys all season long. They treat every game like it is game 7 of the finals. To them, it will be just another game like all the 100+ this season. The fact that the Cup is on the line on Saturday won't change a thing for them. One shift at a time, one hit at a time, one play at a time.

GO FLAMES GO

not that expensive after all

not that expensive after all

SpaceRef reports that the new direction for NASA will be relatively inexpensive.

"...the CRS analysis is the first attempt, outside NASA itself, to frame the budgetary parameters needed to achieve the new space goals. It also provides NASA with a defense against critics who have claimed the effort would require hundreds of billions or even half a trillion dollars."

Bradbury on Moore

Bradbury on Moore

Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, says that Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11 is "a screwed asshole". From what I gather, this is due to Moore's use of Bradbury's title, not only without permission but in defiance of Bradbury's expressed (long before the film was released) desire that Moore not use the name. I hope Bradbury sues.

a special solstice

a special solstice

Jim Oberg reports (via Rand Simberg) that Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne will be making its 100 km attempt on June 21, 2004.

Good luck, boys.

Update: more here

up, up and away in my beautiful balloon

up, up and away in my beautiful balloon

In floating to space, Jeff Foust talks with John Powell of JP Aerospace. JP has one of the most interesting and innovative concepts for getting into orbit to come along in a long time. It is a three stage system: a V shaped balloon that brings payload from the ground to 42km up, a floating way station 3km across at that altitude, and 2km long V shaped balloon equipped with ion engines to make the five day trip to orbital altitude and velocity.

Where using a rocket is like jumping stright up ten feet, the JP concept is like taking the stairs, breaking the trip down into managable, low cost chunks.