Author Archives: Michael S. Sargent

ITF #169

In The Future…

           …scientists
will invent the pitch-correcting shower sprayer for the lead vocalist.

(via /. and the Sydney
(Australia) Morning Herald).

Scientists from Australia’s CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization)
announced recently (Press Release
16 November 2006) the development of a tee shirt allowing the wearer to play
air guitar solos and produce real (sample synthesized) riffs (Project homepage, listen
to the podcast, or watch the video). Garage bands and hopefuls worldwide applauded
the development and breathlessly await commercialization.

The invention also comes in guiro (a
gourd-derived latin
percussion instrument, wikipedia entry here) and tambourine versions.

800px-Guiro_cubano.jpg

Today Is The Tomorrow That We Were Telling You About Yesterday

(Authors, this is a dummy entry I’m using as a placeholder to develop a series of articles reviewing the prognosticatory success of a pair of books “Future Stuff” and “More Future Stuff” published in 1989 and 1991.)

Taking the entries in order of publication, we see the following entry in the chapter “Stuff You Wouldn’t Believe”:

“Levitation Vehicle:

Odds: 100%
ETA: 1991
Price: $100,000

This is the stuff of comic books, sci-fi magazines, and the dreams of generations of little boys who loved machines. It’s called the Moller 400.” … [REALLY! I didn't make it up!]

Another Flying Car Post?

Since we haven’t met our usual quota of “Flying Car” posts in, oh, at least a month, I thought it would be appropriate to point out the latest on the subject detailed in this article over on Gizmag (“The Terrafugia Transition – is this the first viable flying car?” July 26th, 2006).

Terrafugia Transition nine views.jpg

Throwing their hat into the ring alongside the teams profiled in this Popular Science article (“The Daring Visionaries of Fringe Aviation” January 2005*), comes a team of aviation engineers from MIT proposing a 100 hp, $138K, folding-wing, pusher-prop design for delivery somtime in or around 2009.

(* True afficionados of all things Speculist should seek out this issue**, since it features not only personal aviation, but an interview with SENS-guru Aubrey de Grey)

(** Ironically, I ran across a dead-tree copy of this issue in the waiting area of a local car dealership [strictly earthbound models, alas] some 18 months after the cover date.)

Network-Centric Road Warriors

If BMW (among other manufacturers) have their way, the US Department of Defense may not be the only place the mantra “Every Platform a Sensor” is heard.

The automaker’s “Connected Car” concept is being shown at the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (pics at CNET, after images of VW’s hydrogen-powered HyMotion concept) in San Francisco this week and coming on the heels of last month’s DARPA Grand Challenge success, it looks like smart cars, sharing information with each other, their drivers, and possibly the road network may be the ‘tail fins’ of the latter half of this decade.

(h/t Geekpress)

Rebel Rocketeer Reenactors

We at the Speculist wonder whether Discovery Channel will be a prime sponsor for a new Pro-Am unmanned “Tier 0″ division of the recently-announced Rocket Racing League (see our article “Rocketeers, start your engines…”) after last night’s public debut of the Hyneman-Savage Confederate Hybrid Rocket (v1.0) on Mythbusters (episode 40).

The 200 pound rocket, generating an estimated 800 pounds thrust was successfully launched from the M5 company’s test site in the California dry lakes region after a design-and-construction campaign of only 48 hours. Although members of the Speculist team in-the-know on such things observed multiple opportunities for improvement, there has been no announcement as to whether this new “Rebel” class might become the basis of a competition design.

Scary Mathematical Symbols

NOTE: This article was begun on October 25th, 2005, slightly less than one month AFTER Dr. Duncan Watts’ Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (c. 2003, W. W. Norton & Company) came into my posession.

Although I believe the basic concept advanced herein was uniquely conceived by me under no influence from this or other sources, I have since become aware that Dr. Watts’ much earlier publication utilizes a very similar (if less elaborate) categorization scheme in its “Further Reading” section and I must acknowledge such precedence and the possibility that I might have been influenced by, and subsequently forgotten, or unconciously picked up on the basic concept.

Either way, whether this represents a coincident re-invention on my part or an unconscious borrowing, I believe there is much to be gained through the use of such markers to alert readers to the intellectual ‘terrain’ ahead. I also feel that the addition of optional subsets of symbols adding an additional degree of detail to the basic glyphs with minimal added complexity, contributes to the utility of the concept as a whole.

Scary Math - Green Circle.jpg = WARNING Contains Basic Mathematics: Arithmetic

Scary Math - Blue Square Algebra.jpg = WARNING Contains Intermediate Mathematics: Algebra

Scary Math - Blue Square Trig copy.jpg = WARNING Contains Intermediate Mathematics: Trigonometry

Scary Math - Black Diamond Blank.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Unspecified or Various

Scary Math - Black Diamond Stat.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Statistics

Scary Math - Black Diamond Calc copy.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Calculus

Scary Math - Black Diamond Calc II.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Extreme Calculus

Scary Math - Black Diamond DiffEQ copy.jpg = WARNING Contains Advanced Mathematics: Differential Equations

Smaller versions could be used in-line with references:

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Repeated symbols convey increasing levels of difficulty:

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■■

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Rocketeers, Start Your Engines!

One of the side-effects of accelerating change is the increased workload required to keep up. Another event we missed in passing recently was the announcement by X-Prize foundation chariman Dr. Peter Diamandis and Mr. Grainger Whitelaw of the innauguration of the Rocket Racing League. (Press Release)

RRL Logo Merged copy.jpg

While I am sure that this announcement will generate a great many “NASCAR-In-Space” and “What do Rednecks n’Rockets have in common?” jokes, I’d like to remind our readers that air racing was (and still is) one of the most popular passtimes for the young and wealthy and that such races were the driving force behind the technological evoloution of aircraft before and between the World Wars. (See the movies “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, or “The Great Waldo Pepper”, or “The Aviator”, for dramatized examples.)

Initial plans call for two “Tiers” of racing activities:

  • Tier 1 racing, reminiscent of Indy Car, Formula 1 or Las Vegas Air Racing, consists of multiple vehicles (currently, derivitives of the Burt Rutan-designed XCOR EZ-Rocket, see image below) racing around a closed 3D course at distances requiring refueling.

    • RRL EZ Rocket.jpg
    (click to enlarge)

  • Tier 2 racing, similar to last year’s X-Prize competition, would involve teams taking varied designs on suborbital hops, possibly with cross-range, distance, precision landing, or other additional criteria. Presumably these races would be executed against the clock, but head-to-head action is also a possibility.

    • Although not yet officially an option, plans exist to extend the RRL to another level as technology allows:

  • Tier 3 racing would eventually encompass orbital races.

    • This author envisions the latter as RRL’s analog to LeMans, Enduro, or Rally racing in that on-orbit endurance (and therefore distance), as well as higher orbits (speed), and rendezvous (navigation) might become the challenges at this level.

    If this is the kind of business plan that it takes to get commercial space travel underway, I say “Let’s light this candle!”

    (h/t Wired)