Private spaceflight with SpaceShipOne

I have been following this pretty closely, being a pilot, and being interested in space. Also I am interested in Burt Rutan and his whole history with aviation. Interestingly enough, Paul Allen (Microsoft) and Richard Branson (crazy rich successful business dude, Virgin Atlantic) are also involved.

Having seen their prototype or whatever you want to call it, a Rutan Long-EZ with a rocket engine attached to it, at an airshow a while back, and now seeing an actual spacecraft designed and built, is pretty fantastic. I can't wait to see what happens in like 5 years.

It turns out this is the first of two flights in 14 days required to meet the requirements of the X-Prize, I think (I need to read the articles more closely.) Pretty amazing that this is happening already.

LINK for news about the latest flight.

New Parker/Stone flick! Awesome!

Yes, finally a new movie from the great guys over there. They have again done something completely unexpected. From the commercials this looks just plain awesome. The story in the link below does a good job of explaining.

LINK

205 mph RC51? Nah

Yeah there's this guy who got clocked on his Honda doing 205 mph. Anyways it is kind of obvious to anyone who knows anything about motorcycles that this is not possible on a production motorcycle. He has posted in different places and the only modification to his bike was a slip-on exhaust system. The thing everyone seems to miss though, is that this number should not be taken as exact.

The error involved in timing someone over such a short interval while moving in an aircraft (I am a pilot, and I don't think this would cause too much error but could contribute) would account for an erroneous measurement.

Just a wild guess I am saying up to 15%, or around 30 mph. 15% of 4.29 seconds is like a half to three quarters of a second, hence easily a lot of error. If the guy was going like 50 mph, this error would only be like 5-10 mph.

Taking the 205 mph figure as exact is wrong, I think, and if the police/judge/whoever did so, that's just wrong.

In any case, as a lot of people seem not to notice, the guy was still going way too fast on a public road. Who knows the exact number but it's gotta be something for a cop to even begin to think he was going 200. I think got what he deserved. Motorcyclists get a bad rep from the 5% of riders like this guy.

Anyways...
LINK

Lack of internet harmful to your health

Hey, looks like I got a clinical reason to be around computers all the time. It has been proven scientifically that it is possible to show withdrawal symptoms when deprived of the internet. Check out the article below:

LINK

On blogging, etc.

Well I guess I better say why I started this up and all.

I haven't really looked into blogging until very recently, always hearing about it and being on the outside. I thought it was kind of a useless and trendy kind of thing to do that was not worth my time.

Well after really looking into it, and realizing it was basically the kind of thing I have always intended to do anyways, AND realizing that much of my web-surfing involved reading blogs in whatever form, AND FINALLY coming accross blogger.com, I decided it was worth my time to at least start one up to check it out.

Basically, unless people actually start reading it, and I am not sure if my friends are the type that actually will (which is ok, I understand) then this is for my own self-indulgence. Which is fine with me. Anyways, if you are reading this, thanks a bunch man! Even better, make a comment or a post.

Obviously I have made a ton of posts in the past few days, I assume this will slow down in the future.

Mail-to-Blogger

Alrighty now I am going to make this interactive...I'll be giving out the email address to send your own robLog posts to. For anti-spam reasons I'm only giving this to people I know; if you really want it post a comment to this post and maybe I'll get back to you.

A note though:

"Sometimes email programs append text to the bottom of each sent message; to make sure this cruft doesn't get posted to your blog, put #end at the end of your post."

Feel free to post comments, news, whatever.

Google ads

Yeah, there's some ads on the robLog. And no, I didn't have to put them on the robLog. Google Adsense is the most sensible ad program I have seen, and while I don't like ads usually, these are pretty discrete and convenient. Just ignore them if you aren't interested, but I do stand to make a little cash if people click through. Not that I'll be getting tons of hits or anything...but heck I thought it was worth a try.

If you want to check it out for your website, check out the quick tour.

Also feel free to use the Google search bar I got there.

Also note that there will now be Audioblogger posts, so you can follow more closely with the Great robLog!

Thanks for reading...if anyone actually is.

Audioblogger test

This is a pretty cruddy test, but it is just a test.

Space exploration continues

NASA has chosen a contractor for the next Jupiter probe, which is good news. As a space exploration advocate, I just wanted to share this and make the point that it is more important than the public seems to think.

Also, it is cool that Northop Grumman got the contract, as it is a good company that generally could do with some more contracts.

LINK (Google News listing of articles)

Inside Jack

This is pretty funny. My favorite part is about the Sun Java coffee shop...and selling Opteron servers rather than muffins...

Think about a world where Microsoft basically owned Java. Wow.

LINK (flash animation)

Holy ray guns, Batman!

So the Army has microwave riot dispersion "ray guns." The best part is they are also mounting them to vehicles. These will apparently be called "sheriffs" and rove the streets of say, Bagdhad, burninating all those that rise against them. Quite a vision that puts in my head, anyway.

Of course, it does "no permanent harm" to those who are "shot" with it, but it does inflict "intolerable pain."

Article:
telegraph.co.uk LINK
theinquirer.net SOURCE LINK (where I actually saw this)

Some initial info