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Michael Bloomberg: Hack. Campaigning for re-election in an unquestionably liberal city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has broken with fellow Republicans and opposed President Bush's pick for chief justice of the Supreme Court. Bloomberg said he could not support nominee John Roberts...

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!

It looks like Gerhard is out....

This is something you dog lovers will get a kick out of: LauraW posts the details of washing her dog after he rolled in shee-it, but in Bible speak....

Hurricane Rita certainly left a hell of a mess, but she didn't leave a path of utter devastation in her wake like Katrina did. Rita roared ashore at 2:30 a.m. CDT Saturday near the Texas-Louisiana border as a Category 3...

Last week NRO reported the number of hurricanes hitting each state in the past 104 years: Direct Hits, 1900-2004 Florida 64 Texas 38 North Carolina 29 Louisiana 27 South Carolina 16 Alabama 12 Mississippi 9 New York 9 Connecticut 8...

Here is what the Galveston Texas school buses are doing as a hurricane approaches: Caption: Galveston Independent School District buses carrying evacuees head north on I-45 in Galveston, Texas. Here is what New Orleans did with their school buses: This...

From CNN: Oil prices fell in an unusual trading session Sunday after a weakened Hurricane Rita struck the U.S. Gulf Coast away from a major refining hub in Houston, although at least two big refineries were damaged. November Brent crude...

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