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Tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of shrieking moonbats will be converging around the country today. C-SPAN reports that the list of heavyweights include several notorious for sympathizing with terrorists and/or hating on Israel, the only true democracy in existence...

More talk in the blogosphere about Daschle and a presidential run. Possumblog: A Prophet Amongst Us Oval Office 2008: Tom Daschle...

Last night, when Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus said he'd vote to confirm Judge Roberts, the people at Daily Kos attacked him as a traitor. Now Senator Johnson has announced he's voting for Roberts:Johnson Announces Position on Judge Roberts Washington,...

I just saw this on Powerline, and its way too good to pass up. Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, President Bush told this joke. Rabbi Stanton Zamek of the Temple Beth Shalom Synagogue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,...

From Andrew Sullivan:A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush?s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher?s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people?s money, then President...

SDP points out the Mitchell Daily Republic's report on the Grassroots Democrats billboard. Here is my letter to the editor: The billboard that you put up on your 9/21 front-page from the Grassroots Democrats is an example of false...

From the Associated Press: WASHINGTON - Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D, is returning to political life with a new political action committee and an upcoming appearance in Iowa. Daschle has quietly eschewed most publicity since his defeat to...

Going Up?...all the way to Geosychronous Orbit

A couple of articles on a concept found in science fiction from Arthur C. Clarke and others: a tethered orbital elevator system! At first glance if one is unfamiliar with the concept it sounds like something from a hallucination - but the physics works, and with recent new developments in materials technology, the means are also now available.

The big advantage: CHEAP cost to orbit, especially compared to rocketry. Check these articles out: one from this weeks Sunday (London) Telegraph, and the other from none other than the big gorilla of the blogosphere hisself: Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds writing on Tech Central Station.

Click on image to enlarge. (Image from liftport.com)

Stairway to heaven

The race is on to build the first "space elevator' - long dismissed as science fiction - to carry people and materials into orbit along a cable thousands of miles long.

In a significant step, American aviation regulators have just given permission for the opening trials of a prototype, while a competition to be launched next month follows in the wake of the $10 million (£5.6 million) "X Prize'', which led to the first privately developed craft leaving the Earth's atmosphere, briefly, last year.

Folks, this isn't pie in the sky conceptualizing - it's going into the engineering phase - that's about as concrete as it gets!

Space Program: Looking Up

I've written here in the past about NASA's work on space elevators, and on the new leaner, meaner, prize-oriented approach favored by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. Now there are some signs of real progress on a number of fronts. As I noted earlier, NASA was offering prizes for space elevator research. That's still going on, but there are some new studies suggesting that space elevators may be closer to practicality than previously thought.

Indeed!

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