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The left is critcizing Karl Rove for his visit in the burgeoning political hotbed of North Dakota:A senator from New Jersey is criticizing White House adviser Karl Rove for planning to attend a North Dakota fundraiser the same day Hurricane...

Check out John Hinderacker's post about our neighbors to the west. Excerpt:Judging from most news reports, you would think that the Republicans are everywhere in retreat, and the increasing radicalism of the Democratic Party is free of any consequences. Every...

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!

Today was a milestone day and I almost didn't realize it. This post you're reading is the 3,000th post since I moved to Typepad full-time in December of 2003; sometime today or last night long-time, valued commenter mike left the...

The Utah State Fair website has some flipping sweet ads staring Napoleon Dynamote and his friend Pedro. Do you see any sasquatches? Hat Tip to Lone Prairie....

I'll be out all day tomorrow, as I'm headed to Gering for some sort of a state Republican Party "strategy session." I personally wasn't invited, but am attending with someone who was. If there's anything of note blog wise, I...

HT to Powerline. This article by David Shoenbrod, from the Wall Street Journal suggests who was really responsible for the disaster in New Orleans.After Hurricane Betsy swamped New Orleans in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stroked its citizens (this nation grieves...

I can't say as though I've ever watched Bill Maher's show on HBO, but couldn't resist tuning in tonight to see George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens. It was about what you'd expect, and nothing worth noting. Galloway truly is treacherous...

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