A busy weekend, while awesome, didn't leave me much quality blog-post-type-thinking time. However I did discover an delightfully detailed description of Ditch Day at Caltech written up by Ilya Nepomnyashchiy.   I've briefly described Ditch Day in the past, and should probably emulate Ilya and write up a fun and detailed description of my... [Read More]

Saturday Space Stories! *Historian Engineer Hat* Did you know they had Mechanical Semaphore Telegraphs?!?</p> Basically any modern technology can be used as a weapon. While rocks can't be used as WMD's they also can't get you to space. While there are a lot of qualifications, stuff like this just shows... [Read More]

While I agree that Paypal Galactic has me scratching my head a little. My first gut reaction was to dismiss it as just a way-over-the-tinfoil-hat-line publicity stunt. However, I’m keeping my mind and eyes open because honestly I don’t know enough about it to be dismissive – I suspect that... [Read More]

To everybody in the USA – happy Fourth of July! To everybody not in the USA – fourth of July.   Regardless of where you’re from, I hope you enjoy a little compilation of space-related fireworks, both manmade and provided by nature.  “The rocket’s red glare”  “The bombs bursting in air”... [Read More]

In his book, A Many Colored Glass, Freeman Dyson describes his vision of a future in which humanity uses synthetic biology (engineered life forms and the like) to expand across the solar system and eventually the galaxy.  As Arthur C Clarke said: “If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that... [Read More]