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This image of the Martian north polar ice cap shows layers of water ice and dust for the first time in perspective view. Here we see cliffs which are almost 2 kilometres high, and the dark material in the caldera-like structures and dune fields could be volcanic ash.
This is just one of the incredible new pictures released by the European Space Agency late last week.
That water may become a very valuable resource some day.
This is the text of a speech I gave last night. It took first place in the local competition for best inspirational speech. I’ll be presenting it at the area competition on March 8. Stay tuned.
Let me tell you about my favorite episode of the Twilight Zone.
A couple wakes up one morning and discovers that their home is overrun by faceless workmen dressed all in blue. Terrified, they run out of their house to discover that their neighborhood has been completely abandoned, except for these strange workmen who are busy tearing everything down.
Eventually, the couple manages to find the foreman of the work crew and he explains what’s happened. Somehow, they’ve slipped through the cracks of time. According to the foreman, time doesn’t work the way we would expect. Every second we pass through is a unique and complete world unto itself. For each second of time, these workmen have to build an entire world. And then once we pass through that second, the workmen have to tear that world down to make room for more time to come.
So, in this story, time is kind of like the frames in a movie. We all know that when we watch a movie, we aren’t really seeing moving pictures. We’re seeing individual still pictures arranged to create the illusion of motion. And of time.
New Scientist reports today that NASA has developed a new operating mode that could extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope until 2008.
The telescope presently has four working gyros and needs three. With the new procedure the telescope could remain operational with two gyros. Tests of this new procedure have gone well and engineers are hopeful that Hubble will not be significantly limited in this new operational mode.
How much additional life this would give Hubble is really a matter of luck. These gyros fail regularly, which is part of the reason the telescope required regular shuttle service missions. But the shuttle fleet has been grounded since 2003.
In the middle of this news, we are reminded:
…departing NASA chief Sean O’Keefe recently called off efforts to service the telescope with robots on the grounds that such a mission seemed too ambitious to succeed.
A robotic mission to save Hubble might fail, so we shouldn’t try? This is both cowardly and illogical. Hubble WILL fail on reentry. If Hubble remains a valuable tool, why not expend some effort to save it? Human lives aren’t even being risked with a robotic mission.
The risk calculation must have been: which is more likely to put NASA in the position of answering difficult questions – not acting, or acting and possibly failing?
Well, inaction IS easy.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
- John F. Kennedy
Still, when it comes to grand ambition, the impresarios of the Strip are mere pikers next to Budget Suites owner Robert Bigelow. For his next hotel enterprise, Bigelow is looking beyond the bright lights of Las Vegas—beyond Earth’s atmosphere, in fact. He is actively engaged in an effort to build the planet’s first orbiting space hotel. Bargain-basement room rate: $1 million a night. For its water show, this hotel will have all of Earth’s blue oceans flying past its windows at 17,500 miles an hour. Guests on board the 330-cubic-meter station (about the size of a three-bedroom house) will learn weightless acrobatics, marvel at the ever-changing face of the home planet, and, for half of every 90-minute orbit, gaze deep into a galaxy ablaze with stars.
Well, it sounds great, but I stand by my position that the first hotel in space should be sub-orbital. Stationary, in fact. Okay, the tourists won’t “get” to experience zero-G, but they will have the same great view.
Oh, and I think they could get a night in a sub-orbital airship hotel for about $10,000 per night. Or less. Ironically, unlike Bigelow’s proposal, the airship hotel would be the Budget Suites of space.
via GeekPress
UPDATE FROM STEPHEN:
Here’s the suborbital view that Phil was talking about. This picture was made by JP Aerospace during an April 2004 mission.
JP Aerospace is working toward the creation of a “Dark Sky” Station that would serve as a way station for an “Airship to Orbit” space program (pdf link). Such a way station is necessary because a sturdy airship is needed to navigate in the lower atmosphere and an entirely different kind of airship is needed to complete the journey into orbit.
And it would be an obvious tourist attraction.
My friend Paul has been one for years. As has Stephen’s father-in-law. And over the weekend, the Blogfather announced that his wife would be joining the ranks of the early-stage human/machine hybrids.
Glenn comments on the cyborgization of America:
Soon, probably within a decade or two, we’ll see such devices becoming common, and multipurpose, and — most importantly — aimed at people who don’t have anything in particular wrong with them. Perhaps a ‘body computer?’ It could measure heart rate, blood chemistry, diet and exercise levels, etc., and export its data to outside devices so that the owner, or a physician, could monitor the owner’s health. Perhaps it could take preemptive action, releasing clotbusting drugs at the onset of a heart attack or stroke, or steroids in the event of an allergy attack, providing on-the-spot first aid for many serious problems. Still more advanced versions could fine-tune things in a variety of ways, until we gradually reach the stage in which our bodies are pervaded with nanodevices that maintain health and repair damage without our even thinking about them.
I’d like one of those now, especially if it could also treat migraine headaches. They’re working on it! They’re already working on vagus-nerve stimulation for epilepsy and depression, and even neural stimulation implants that promote female orgasms. (What, nothing for us guys?*) Since these devices are based on two things — electronics and biological knowledge — that are improving by leaps and bounds, we’re likely to see a lot more of them, and we’re likely to see them become cheap enough, and capable enough, and reliable enough that they’ll attain widespread use. Which I favor, though not everyone will agree.
As we noted yesterday, developments on the biotech/nanotech front promise to make our integration of machine components as unobtrusive as possible. But yesterday’s development raises an interesting question: what do you call a cybernetic organism whose cybernetic components are organic?
Orgcyborgs comes to mind, but maybe its a little clumsy. Perhaps we should reserve the term “cyborg” just for the organic cyborgs, and use the word borg to refer to the old-school mechanical cyborgs.
I’m just free-forming, here. Just kind of opening it up for discussion.
*Well, right, since guys wouldn’t benefit from that at all. What guys need is something really useful — maybe something to make us, I don’t know, more regular. No, not punctual, I mean — criminy, just forget it.
Scientists from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have created the first reproducible single molecule negative differential resistor and in the process have developed a groundbreaking experimental technique that provides a “roadmap” for designing single-molecule devices based on biochemistry.
Based on biotechnology? Very interesting. Those single-molecule devices will no doubt be used both to treat disease and monitor health.
Among lots of other potential applications, of course.
Glenn Reynolds reports this afternoon (here and here) that his wife Helen needs an implantable pacemaker/cardioverter. A pacemaker regulates a heart that is beating too slowly. I believe a cardioverter regulates a heart that beats too quickly.
Glenn remarks that it’s bad news she needs the device, but good news that it’s available. Absolutely. A similar device has literally kept my father-in-law alive for four years now, but he wasn’t excited about needing it.
It’s remarkable how routine this procedure has become.
Most often, defibrillators are implanted in a surgical procedure, with an incision made in the upper part of the chest. Local anesthesia is frequently used and the surgery is often an outpatient procedure.
Helen has our prayers and well wishes. Get well soon!
More information here.
Here are pictures of my dogs as playing cards that I made for a speech I gave
last night. Aren’t they cute?
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An interesting breakthrough, robots that expend about the sae amount of energy
getting themselves around as human beings do:
A
trio of androids that amble along with exceptional power efficiency and "instinctive"
co-ordination were unveiled for the first time on Thursday.The three mechanical bipeds, built by researchers from Cornell University,
the University of Michigan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the
US and Delft University in the Netherlands, respectively, walked along in
an amiable, if somewhat awkward fashion."Our robots demonstrate that utilising the natural dynamics of the body
can make robots much more efficient," says Steve Collins, a member of
the team from the University of Michigan. "For any autonomous robots
to be practical, they must be energetically efficient."
Contrast these energy-efficient droids with Honda’s Asimo they’re about 10
times more efficient. That’s huge. But I imgaine they’re still quite expensive
to build. Still, it won’t be long before somebody finds something useful to
do with these kinds of robots. Then two things will happen:
1. The cost will go way down.
2. They will become much more energy efficient than human beings.
For better or for worse, those developments will mark the beginning of the
end of (what’s left) of the manual labor market. After that, we’re only a few
steps away from a world that Dr.
A. himself would have found strangely familiar.
via Kurzweil AI
Note: Stephen suggested that my comments
on his follow-up
to my entry about
Human Savants would make for a good posting in their own right. What the
hey, who am I to disagree with Stephen?
I like the idea of being able to switch back and forth. There’s a scene in
Star
Trek: First Contact where Data and Picard are about to face down the Borg
for the first time. Data begins to observe his emotions and realizes that he’s
terrified. So he announces that he’s going to "turn off his emotion chip."
Picard tells Data that he envies him sometimes.
The good side of being able to switch back and forth between normal social
interaction and enhanced — or maybe it’s better to say modified — modes of
mental operation is that we would be more functional in some areas and we woldn’t
be distracted by things that normally get in the way.
I wrote a while back that being able to get "in the zone" like that
could prove helpful to sales people. A sales rep who can bump up her ability
to speak and to think on her feet, and tone down her fear of rejection, is going
to have a substantial advantage over the competition. The downside, of course,
is that it could also prove quite helpful to criminals and/or government officials.
How much easier it would be to commit appalling acts of violence if you can
just switch off your capacity to be appalled. Or maybe closer to the lives of
everyday people — think how much easier it would be to dump somebody.
Yikes.
