LRP - Futurist Foresight

Following SpaceX’s announcement that their Falcon 9 launch date will be slipping from its April 30 target, evaluations are taking place – in cooperation with NASA – to ascertain when the Dragon spacecraft can make its debut attempt to berth with the International Space Station (ISS). With an unofficial NET date of May 7, Dragon may yet have to dodge an upcoming Soyuz mission.

Being ready to launch is always a challenge, regardless if one is launching sounding rockets out of Wallops or Space Shuttles out of KSC. As such, any slip prior to launch should not be seen as a negative, but as a necessity of ensuring no stone is left unturned ahead of a launch and its subsequent mission.

MSNBC Cosmislog - Lewicki hopes the personal space telescope will do for astronomy what the personal computer did for information technology. Planetary Resources plans to put the instrument into Earth orbit to survey the sky for potential targets — asteroids that come close enough to Earth often enough to make them reachable, and have a spectral signal that would make them good candidates for mining. The main target is C-type or carbonaceous asteroids, which are dark and not so easy to detect with existing instruments.

The Arkyd-101 telescope is designed to be launched on any of a variety of rockets, including the Russian Dnepr, the European Ariane, the Indian PSLV or the SpaceX Falcon. It would have arcsecond resolution for astronomical observations, and if the camera were turned earthward, Lewicki said the resolution would be a “couple of meters per pixel,” which comes close to the standard for commercial Earth imaging. The key factor is the cost: Lewicki noted that an imaging instrument like NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer would typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “We’re looking to go one to two orders of magnitude below that,” Lewicki said.

Planetary Resources has developed the Arkyd-101 space telescope with remote sensing capability, as shown in this artist’s conception. Data gathered from near-Earth asteroids will assist in analyzing the composition of the body to determine a commercial value.Read more »

ABC News - Mining asteroids may sound like one of those ideas guaranteed not to get off the ground anytime soon, but Anderson and his comrades say they have detailed plans, and deep pockets as well.

“Everything we hold of value on Earth — metals, minerals, energy, water, real estate — are literally in near-infinite quantities in space,” said Diamandis. Eventually, Anderson said he could picture fleets of robotic “droids” closing in on asteroids, scouring their surfaces for minerals and either bringing them back to Earth or to supply depots in space. The company says there are more than 1,500 asteroids that pass close to Earth, and, since they don’t have much gravitational pull, it would take less fuel to land on them than on the moon. Anderson said the idea is to start small, with a telescope in Earth orbit to look for asteroids that pass close to us and have the right mix of minerals. He claimed the launch could happen soon — in as little as 18 months to two years. To keep the cost down, it might share a booster rocket with another satellite. Who might make the booster? The Russians, or a private American company, he said — anyone who can do it for an affordable price.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player Read more »

Dr. Peter Diamandis has announced a live webcast of the company’s announcement at 10:30 a.m. PDT Tuesday April 24 of a “new space venture with the mission to help ensure humanity’s prosperity.”

Broadcasting live with Ustream

Looks almost LEGO®ish, doesn’t it?

Interorbital Systems (IOS), a rocket and spacecraft construction company founded in 1996, has announced the age of the Personal Satellite. For US$8,000, IOS provides the TubeSat Personal Satellite (PS) Kit, complete with launch to low Earth orbit (LEO). A TubeSat is a (very) low-cost alternative to the CubeSat - for comparison, by the time you have assembled a CubeSat and had it placed in orbit, your cost will be well north of US$100K. .. Continue Reading Launch your own satellite for US$8000Section: Aero GizmoTags: CubeSat, Launch vehicle, Lunar X PRIZE, Picosatellite, Space, Spacecraft, TubeSat Related Articles:

• Boeing wins construction bid for Ares I
• Atea-01 Rocket: New Zealand to enter space in 2008
• Gatech’s five-speed rocket engine
• SpaceX sets launch date for world’s most powerful rocket
• SpaceX conducts first mult-engine firing of Falcon 9 rocket
• SpaceX successfully launches Falcon 1 into orbit

A new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. for recording data before, during, or after a crash.

As stated in Section 31406 of the bill, the government would have the power to access it in a number of circumstances, reports Infowars.com. It may also require an “interoperable data access port” to facilitate “universal accessibility and analysis” — by EMTs in case on an accident, for example (think: hacker-accessible).

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer [D-CA] and promoted by Sen. Harry Reed [D-NV], would also empower the IRS to revoke passports of citizens merely accused of owing over $50,000 in back taxes. Could the black box or a similar technology be used in the future for the same purpose?

Biometric face-recognition and transdermal sensor technology that prevents an inebriated person from driving a car by disabling the automobile has already been developed in the U.K., in addition to systems that refuse to allow the vehicle to start if the driver is deemed to be overtired.

The ultimate Big Brother scenario would be a system whereby every driver had to get permission from the government to drive each time they get behind the wheel, once it had been determined from an iris scan that they were good citizens who have paid all their taxes and not misbehaved, suggests Infowars.com.

Or perhaps the massive computer systems running future “smart cities” could sense driver emotional state (say, road rage, or even intentions), and disable the vehicle, or else access the phone’s GPS and have law enforcement pull you over? Or feed

On the plus side, the legislation would prohibit “electronic screens from displaying broadcast television, movies, video games, and other forms of similar visual entertainment that is visible to the driver while driving.” (Nothing said about displaying tweets, text messages, emails, etc., or about augmented reality displays on windshields.)

A modified platform resembling these robots is expected to be used as government-funded equipment (GFE) for performers in Tracks B and C of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/04/10.aspx).

There’s no doubting that the cause of renewable energy is a noble one. But, ethics aside, it also gives birth to the occasional technical marvel. Altaeros Energies, a company from Massachusetts (with MIT and Harvard blood in its veins) has created one such curiosity. The prototype is a wind-turbine that doesn’t just languish on a hill-top, cutting a line in the horizon. No, this one has a helium-filled outer-section which allows it to deploy itself to 1,000 feet, where it can benefit from stronger, more consistent winds and gives nearly twice the power yields of its land bound brethren. That’s all very nice, but we just thought it looked dang cool in action.

Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Yahoo  |  Altaeros Energies  | Email this | Comments

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has announced the near-term availability of a trio of field retrofits for the Predator B (MQ-9 Reaper) Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). Taken together, these enhancements increase the endurance of the Reaper from 27 to 42 hours, or, without the extended wings, from 27 to 37 hours. The upgrades consist of stronger landing gear, underwing fuel pods, and longer wings that take the wingspan to 88 feet. (via Danger Room)

by Derek muy zorras Singleton

The next manufacturing revolution has begun–and it’s being led by individuals, not multinational corporations.The Industrial Revolution brought us mass manufacturing. Manufacturing 2.0 delivered high-tech automation that dramatically increased our productivity and enabled mass customization. Today [individuals] can bring the capabilities that mass manufacturing allowed to a very small lot size. – John Rogers, Founder and CEO of Local Motors The next manufacturing revolution is about empowering individuals with the same types of manufacturing capabilities that were once only available to large corporations. The plummeting costs of manufacturing-related technologies (e.g., CAD software and 3D printers) has reached the point where this field is now accessible to the average person. It’s easier than ever to become a manufacturer.

Nature Mill Rises from Humble Beginnings
In the past, innovators and enthusiasts had to settle for assembling a kit. Today, they can be involved in everything from design to final assembly.Take Russ Cohen, the CEO of Nature Mill. In true startup fashion, Cohen launched Nature Mill in his garage to make an automatic compost bin. In the beginning, Cohen built prototypes by hand using a metal bender and a jig. These prototypes offered his contract manufacturers a general idea of what to build, but were imprecise and resulted in re-engineering before production. Fortunately, computer-aided design (CAD) software has become affordable and fairly easy to use. Cohen purchased the CAD program SolidWorks and taught himself to use it. According to Cohen, CAD has become a lot like Microsoft Excel in that “nearly anyone can use the basic functionality right away and learn the complex stuff as you go.” Cohen is now able to share exact engineering specs with his contract manufacturers, which eliminates guesswork and accelerates time-to-market. To find contract manufacturers, Cohen uses the site Alibaba. In this forum, anyone can post CAD schematics for what they want built. Contract manufacturers willing to make it happen respond with a bid to take it from concept to product. As it turns out, tapping into a broader community to manufacture things is gaining in popularity.

Local Motors Creates a Manufacturing Community
Another instance of individuals taking manufacturing into their own hands is Local Motors, which produces crowdsourced cars. The Local Motors model is simple: people submit design prototypes and Local Motors helps build the best ones in a microfactory over a couple of weekends. What’s fascinating is that anyone can submit their idea and get feedback from a community of engineers, car enthusiasts, industrial designers and fabricators. It could potentially transform automotive manufacturing from an industry that once required a multi-million (or billion) dollar investment to one that anyone with a passion for cars can tap into. John Rogers, Founder and CEO of Local Motors, says that he started the company “to speed up the pace of technological innovation in the automotive industry.” But he also wanted to prove a point: everyday people can be manufacturers. When I look at the technologies available today, I tend to agree.

Manufacturing Technologies at Our Fingertips

I’ve already highlighted several technologies that are giving people a shot at making their ideas a reality, but here’s a more comprehensive list:

• Crowdsourcing – Crowdsourcing is an approach to idea generation and product development, not a technology. However, there’s a variety of tech resources available that enable crowdsourcing for any kind of project; check out Open Innovation for a great list.
• CAD Software – 2D and 3D designs created with CAD software can be saved in a sharable file format before production. You can accessprofessional-grade CAD software on a subscription basis for $19.95/month from Local Motors.
• 3D Printing – 3D printers are rapidly decreasing in price, making it affordable to create a prototype model of a CAD design. Some 3D printers, such as Objet, are already powerful enough to make small numbers of finished items. As this technology advances, the hope is that individuals will be able to produce larger batches of finished products.
• Manufacturing-as-a-Service – Manufacturing is following software’s lead and becoming an on-demand service. Online manufacturing directories like Alibaba and ThomasNet can connect you with a manufacturer that will build for you so you don’t have to invest in any equipment.
• Cloud Computing – The Cloud isn’t a manufacturing-specific technology but it deserves a mention because of how cost-effective it makes running a product business. Cloud solutions like NetSuite and Plexprovide affordable solutions for managing orders, inventory, accounting and other business functions.
• E-commerce – Of course, the Internet is a critical enabler for any business these days. Sites like eBay, Amazon, or your own e-commerce website, make it easy for customers to find and buy from you. If you’re interested in running your own e-commerce site, you should check out Volusion and BigCommerce.

Collectively, these technologies make it easier than ever to go from idea to product to market. We’ve already seen technological advances democratize music, film, publishing and other industries. Why not manufacturing?

Source: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/manufacturing/anyone-can-be-a-manufacturer-1031312

Read more: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/derek-singleton/