Ha! Okay, maybe not like that. But cereal, the Daily Mail reports that: “Phase one of the world’s first commercial spaceport, which will be the hub for Virgin’s consumer spaceflights, is now 90 per cent complete.” As part of the new wave of private space ventures, Virgin Galactic hopes to get tourists up into low-earth orbit by 2013. Say what you will about Richard Branson’s crazy hair, but he’s getting it done. [VIA DAILY MAIL]
Those rocks up top there, yeah – 1.76 million years old, yo. We have found the oldest examples yet of pre-human Homo erectus tool use. That’s some vintage tech. Doing This: As my 6 loyal readers know well, the purpose of www.anthrobotic.com is to share the idea that literally absolutely totally completely everything around us is a representation of our technology. It is primal, it is innate, and it is a singular trait of our species. Our technology precedes all else defined as “human.” Love, organized religion, high school, gay pride parades, NASCAR, and coffee – none of it is possible without [read full post]
The Sunday robot roundup! (it’s Sunday here – anthrobotic.com broadcasts from southern Japan) Okay, well actually I’m only rounding up two projects. First is the serious: Making Robots Safer – adding sensing technology and intuitive dexterity to working robots such as Nasa’s Robonaut 2 – which is nice. And then the playful: Virginia Tech’s Robot Soccer Team – entrants into the worldwide RoboCup soccer game [chose your own lame verb-pun: terminated, disassembled, reprogramed, hacked, etc.] the rest of the world’s teams in robo-soccer. These robots and the women’s meatspace world cup team have revealed that, though we realize the enjoyment [read full post]
The final flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis (not pictured above). And yeah, that whole complexity thing is debatable – you decide: STS or LHC? Here the Sagan Series celebrates the last flight of the American Space Shuttle Atlantis – a technologically and culturally unprecedented human achievement. While terribly expensive and producing very little concrete advancement, it captured human imagination – it looked like a spaceship – our spaceship. Continue for Sagan Series 6 video, STS-135 image gallery, and private space venture stuff…
Without question, NASA, JAXA, ROSCOSMOS, and the ESA (with their Russian friends) are still making cool things to send into space. Getting up into the various orbit levels, however, looks to become the specialty of nimble, well-funded private companies developing and operating cutting edge going-to-space technology – often at much lower costs, and with superior technology. Which could be, you know, cool. Read more… (Also noteworthy to point out that the U.S. Air Force is developing semi-autonomous space place robots that do stuff they won’t really tell us about, so government transportation to/from space is not exactly going away, just maybe… [read full post]
Strongly. Mr. Saenz makes a decent point that Robonaut is far from the first complex robot we’ve sent to space. However, referring to this accomplishment as merely “hype,” that it’s only special because of it’s shape kind of… well, misses the point. Because it, you know, is the point… [VIA SINGULARITY HUB]