Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

First floor: mens wear, ladies undergarments, and zero-g toilets

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I mentioned this briefly last March, but with the Columbia disaster, the idea of space elevators is starting to float around the ‘net again.

Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62,000-mile (100,000-kilometer) ride up a long cable. Payloads can shimmy up the Earth-to-space cable, experiencing no large launch forces, slowly climbing from one atmosphere to a vacuum.

For a space elevator to function, a cable with one end attached to the Earth’s surface stretches upwards, reaching beyond geosynchronous orbit, at 21,700 miles (35,000-kilometer altitude). After that, simple physics takes charge.

The competing forces of gravity at the lower end and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end keep the cable under tension. The cable remains stationary over a single position on Earth. This cable, once in position, can be scaled from Earth by mechanical means, right into Earth orbit. An object released at the cable’s far end would have sufficient energy to escape from the gravity tug of our home planet and travel to neighboring the moon or to more distant interplanetary targets.

Fascinating stuff to envision, and according to that article, it could conceivably be a reality in ten to fifteen years.

Part of the fun for me, though, was just tracking the thread across the web. I picked up on this from Doc Searls pointing to Dana Blankenhorn’s series of five blog posts about the idea. Dana’s posts led me to John Stryker pointing out some possible problems. The ensuing conversation in the comments to John’s post included some encouraging words from Michael Laine, the president of HighLift Systems, a company actively working on attempting to collect the necessary technology and funding to put this project into reality.

While this will probably come as no great surprise to those who know me, I’m solidly in the camp of people who would love to see this vision become a reality. If I had the pocket change, I’d write the check myself — unfortunately that’s a wee bit out of my range at the moment. Still, though, I’ll keep hoping.

What Al said, in tiny bits.

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I’ve seen this all over the ‘net, but had yet to make a link to it. As it’s far past time I did so, here it is: Why Al says that ‘E’ is the same as ‘MC^2^’, as told so that each word has four jots or less.

So, have a seat. Put your feet up. This may take some time. Can I get you some tea? Earl Grey? You got it.

Okay. How do I want to do this? He did so much. It’s hard to just dive in. You know? You pick a spot to go from, but soon you have to back up and and go over this or that item, and you get done with that only to see that you have to back up some more. So if you feel like I’m off to the side of the tale half the time, well, this is why. Just bear with me, and we’ll get to the end in good time. Okay?

Okay. Let’s see….

On a side note, do you have any idea how hard it is to type like this? Lots of hits to this site for help, I tell you! I stand even more in awe of the man who was able to set this down this way — and do it well — than ere I sat down to dash off this post!

(Via MeFi)

Oh, and if any of you fine folk who read my site want to talk back on this post, I urge you to do your best to use this vein also. It will sure put that grey mass in your head to the test!

Networking sex

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When network engineers start discussing sex…

…the average amount of information per ejaculation is 1.56010^9^ 2 bits * 2.0010^8^, which comes out to be 6.2410^17^ bits. That’s about 78,000 terabytes of data! As a basis of comparison, were the entire text content of the Library of Congress to be scanned and stored, it would only take up about 20 terabytes. If you figure that a male orgasm lasts five seconds, you get a transmission rate of 15,600 tb/s. In comparison, an OC-96 line (like the ones that make up much of the backbone of the internet) can move .005 tb/s. Cable modems generally transmit somewhere around 1/5000^th^ of that.

(Via MeFi)

WTC finalists chosen

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The two finalists for the WTC replacement

The two finalists for the project to rebuild on the site of the World Trade Center have been announced.

Of the two, I’m partial to the Think proposals, especially the World Cultural Center. I wasn’t entirely sold on it until I watched the flyover animation of the entire structure, but I have to admit, that’s a very impressive concept. I also liked the effect of the lit ‘towers’ at night (seen at the end of the animation) — in my mind, they tie in very nicely to the Towers of Light spotlights that took the place of the towers for a time.

Daniel Libeskind’s proposal, on the other hand, just doesn’t grab me as much. It doesn’t have quite the same striking visual aspect to it — aside from the spire reaching skyward, for the most part it just comes across to me as one more big building in the middle of New York. Maybe it would work better once realized, but from the pictures shown here, I’d go for the Think towers, myself.

So — which is your choice?

Photographic glitches? Lightning? Alien death rays?

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Well, it shouldn’t take long for all the various conspiracy theory buffs to start jumping all over this one —

A San Francisco amateur astronomer who photographs the space shuttles whenever their orbits carry them over the Bay Area has captured five strange and provocative images of the shuttle Columbia just as it was re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere before dawn Saturday.

The pictures, taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle’s passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about this is that even though NASA has set up a page for people to upload images and video that they may have taken during the shuttle disaster, rather than do that (or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe in addition to that), this guy decided to run to the media and stir up a little controversy. \<grumble>I guess everyone needs their fifteen minutes of fame, deserved or not.\</grumble>

geek*muffin

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Ladies and gentlemen (or, given my readership, mayhaps that should be lady and gentleman?) — please stop by and welcome my good friend Kirsten to the weblogging world.

I give you: [geek*muffin]!

This describes the beginning of geekmuffin. I am the flawed, the utterly imperfect, screwy wannabe-god of this blog, a nearly-clueless fucking idiot trying to make something that at least works, sort of.

bear with me until i graduate from idiot to underling, and this place won’t look so pre-made.

(Now I just have to hope she doesn’t smack me upside my possibly well-deserving head for jumping on this so quickly….)

Desktop images from Columbia

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Columbia moonrise

Columbia sunrise

There are some gorgeous images taken by the crew of the Columbia before it broke up on reentry, courtesy of NASA. I’ve taken two of my favorites and turned them into 1024×768 desktop images, which you can grab here if you like.

On the left: “STS107-E-05697 (26 January 2003) — A quarter moon is visible in this oblique view of Earth’s horizon and airglow, recorded with a digital still camera aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. (NASA caption)” (Original high-resolution version)

On the right: “STS107-E-05070 (18 January 2003) — The bright sun dissects the airglow above Earth’s horizon in this digital still camera’s view photographed from the Space Shuttle Columbia. (NASA caption)” (Original high-resolution version)

(From lies.com via Dave Winer)

Space Shuttle Colombia lost

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My heartfelt condolences to the families of the seven astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which was lost today during reentry.

Seven astronauts were killed today when space shuttle Columbia broke up about 38 miles above Texas on its way to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

President Bush said in a news conference Saturday that the news had brought “great sadness to our country,” but pledged, “Our journey into space will go on.”

CNN: Seven astronauts killed as shuttle shatters

I sincerely hope that Bush is right here. I’ve always felt that one of the most unfortunate repercussions of the 1986 Challenger Shuttle loss was the crippling effect it seemed to have on NASA. In the space of the few seconds of the explosion, we went from a country still intent on pushing the boundaries of our world out into space, into one apparently too scarred by the loss of the Challenger to try for anything beyond what we’d already accomplished.

One hundred years ago, in 1903, the Wright Brothers became the first humans to fly. 66 years later, Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. But then, over the next twenty years, as the cold war ramped up, space exploration became less and less of a priority, and the explosion of the Challenger seemed to take the wind out of what was left of NASA’s sails.

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve felt like our space exploration programs were really starting to get moving again, and I’d hate to see this accident tie us back to earth again.

(On a side note, I also think that Bush needs better speechwriters. The best soundbite I can see in his press conference from this morning is “Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.” Not nearly as good, or as likely to be remembered, as Reagan’s quoting John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s poem “High Flight” when he said that that the Challenger astronauts had “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God” in his address after the Challenger explosion.)

Anyway, enough rambling pontification. My best to the astronauts, their families, and all at NASA working to determine the cause of this accident.

Singing my own song

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BurningBird brings us a parable today: The Mockingbird’s Wish.

The news spread first as a whisper and then as a shout: First Mother was granting to each creature one wish. One wish, only, but whatever was asked, would be granted. Mockingbird heard the news from Hawk who head the news from Sparrow who heard the news from Robin and the forest was atwitter with the sound of the birds as they discussed this extraordinary event.

I’ve always tried to do my best to sing my own song. Some days I do better than others, of course, and it’s easy to get lost in the chorus, but at least I can always keep trying.