ACEIZE

Sun Tornado

Greg Kontos — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:12:21 +0000

Cleaning Space Junk

Greg Kontos — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:49:51 +0000

The Swiss are building a satellite dedicated to collecting junk orbiting the earth. The satellite will push junk, and itself, into the atmosphere for disposal. Currently it is expected to launch between 2015 and 2017.

Space Industry Market Index

Greg Kontos — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:42:21 +0000

A quote from the NewSpace Global home page,

"NewSpace Global is an information services provider that brings timely, accurate and critical information regarding the commercial space sector (i.e., "NewSpace") to the financial industry so that our clients can make more informed business decisions. "

I imagine that there are other such indexes, however, I have not heard of them.

Today the NSG Index lists UP Aerospace and Masten Space Systems as the biggest gainers in their index.

Refueling Satellites

Greg Kontos — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:31:08 +0000

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. is a Canadian company that is trying to get involved with the business of re-fueling satellites. According to the article, they have not quite shored together their business case. They say that there is enough private interest, but not enough government commitment.

Back in 2007 feasibility of this technology was tested by DARPA and Orbital Express. While the mission had some issues, they were able to refuel a satellite successfully.

List of Space Conferences

Greg Kontos — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:36:42 +0000

A gentleman named Chuck Black has gone through impressive effort to catalog the upcoming space conferences. It's a list worth remembering.

Moon Express : Mining the Moon

Greg Kontos — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:15:59 +0000

Naveen Jain's startup, Moon Express, is a contestant in Google's Lunar X-Prize competition. They made the news recently with a little writeup in Fortune. It's a short little, 'imagine the possibilities piece' which some may find interesting. In the article Jain talks briefly about his aspirations for Moon Express. The chief points of interest for me are mining the moon for Helium-3 or precious metals such as platinum. There is also a little bit about storing your DNA on the moon for $50, which is a neat, albeit cheeky, idea.

Depending on how the Helium-3 is deposited on the moon, mining this material may be a much bigger challenge than Jain wants to undertake. If the deposits are uniform across the surface, they are likely to be very low density deposits. This means that lots and lots of lunar soil would need to be mined to generate small supplies of Helium-3. I don't remember the exact numbers and estimations for these deposits.

Mining precious metals seems like a better bet. The article specifically mentions platinum. If I were mining the moon I would be checking the market prices and lunar distribution of rare-earth minerals, too.

A Nation of Places Worth Caring About

Greg Kontos — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:46:39 +0000

In this delightful TED talk, James Kunstler lays out a strong argument against the urban and suburban planning of post World War II America. He goes on to make a few recommendations for improving the use of urban space in America. Improvements which, he says, are necessary in the face of current global uncertainties.

This is a great presentation, a must watch.

Visible Light Cloaking with Carbon-Nanotube Sheets

Greg Kontos — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:14:22 +0000

A sheet of carbon nanotubes is heated to produce the mirage like effect seen in the video. This work is being done by Ali Aliev of the University of Texas. I wonder what, exactly, is meant by 'sheets of carbon nanotubes'. Is it 'strands', or actual sheets. Incidentally someone has made 3ft by 6ft (~1m x 3m) sheets from carbon nanotubes.

Quantum Trapping and Levitation

Greg Kontos — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:16:51 +0000

Eyes turn to Fermi Lab

Greg Kontos — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:36:50 +0000

Following the announcement of apparently faster than light neutrinos from CERN, eyes have turned towards one of the two labs in the world which can recreate the neutrino experiment, Fermi Lab outside of Chicago. It turns out that they are about to shut down the resident atom smasher, the Tevatron.