"Looks like John Carmack, through Armadillo
Aerospace, will be battling Burt Rutan and Richard Branson to [0]make
space travel affordable. From the article: 'Space Adventures is going to
use an Armadillo Technologies rocket to launch amateur astronauts 62
miles into the sky. Nothing new, except that they will do it at half the
price of Virgin Galactic's ticket, and in a real rocket!'
The USPTO wants to raise fees so high as to directly reduce 40 percent
of the backlog. That would
mean setting filing and maintenance rates so high as to make it
economically difficult, if not impossible,
for many small companies to adequately protect their innovations,
leaving large corporations even
more in control of technology than they are now."
One of the most memorable lines ever uttered by a network news anchor
was Walter Cronkite's Feb. 27, 1968 editorial on the "CBS Evening
News":
To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face
of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To
suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism.
To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=13894434
NASA video of the historic launch A quote from the mission summary: "Atlantislifted off on its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985, on mission 51-J. Later
missions included the launch of the Magellan probe to Venus on STS-30 in
May 1989, Galileo interplanetary probe to Jupiter on STS-34 in October
1989, the first shuttle docking to the Mir Space Station on STS-71 in
June1995, and the final Hubble servicing mission on STS-125 in May 2009."
More hard times ahead - no more heated towelettes for our nation's
legislators: "International travel will be restricted to instances
where it will be 'necessary to facilitate the work of the Committee'
in question, according to a press release from the Speaker's office.
Spouses of members and staffers will have to pay their own way and
will only be allowed to travel when it is necessary for 'protocol
purposes.' A representative's personal staff will also be barred from
traveling internationally. House members and staffers will have to fly
coach for flights under 14 hours. According to the release, these
restrictions will bring the House in line with regulations established
by the Department of Defense. Most flights will also have to be
commercial -- military transports will be restricted."
O.K., BP. I'll buy it. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is tiny in
comparison to the amount of water there. That's what BP thinks we
should consider. It certainly shows us how the oil industry thinks.
They aren't going to let something as small as an oil spill slow them
down from making money - no way! Well, that 'tiny' comment just
plugged up BP's hole. If that is 'tiny' and it can cause so much
damage, then what kind of damage would an oil spill that is not 'tiny'
cause? The thought is horrific. The thought is enough to tear down all
the platforms and outlaw any oil tanker that has less than a double
hull. It is enough to demand that we move swiftly and aggressively to
replace oil with green technology. But there are tar patches appearing
on beaches on the Gulf, so I recommend we tar and feather the
executives. We'll use the feathers from dead birds.
