Dispatches from the Final Frontier

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-148334262010-02-03T07:12:18.827-05:00Dispatches from the Final FrontierNews and first-hand observations from a freelance space and technology reporter (Popular Science, Wired News, others) on commercial spaceflight, thinking machines, hypersonic jets, bionic limbs, and other world-changing projects.Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-66410463266490461012010-02-03T06:44:00.003-05:002010-02-03T07:12:18.930-05:00SpaceX loaded for bear

While the space world contemplates the ramifications of NASA's radical new direction, Space Exploration Technologies is gearing up for the first commercial cargo flights to the International Space Station.This photo just in from SpaceX shows technicians loading the company's Dragon space capsule with a standard ISS cargo rack as NASA personnel, including astronauts Marsha Ivins and Megan McArthur

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-2018696801072832992010-01-27T20:21:00.005-05:002010-01-27T21:41:45.548-05:00End of a manned space flight era

The writing's been on the wall for some time. Now it looks as though it's finally going to be official.The Orlando Sentinel quoted some unnamed sources today as saying that the White House is going to fight to axe the multi-billion-dollar Constellation program that was to replace the Space Shuttle as America's next manned spaceship.The program's been behind schedule and over budget (now up to $8

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-9251916574322252652009-12-08T07:21:00.003-05:002009-12-08T08:24:19.950-05:00SpaceShipTwo Unveiled

Congrats to Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites for last night's dramatic rollout of SpaceShipTwo in Mojave.California governor Schwarzenegger was on hand to help christen the ship the VSS Enterprise, and then some 800 spectators partied on—at least until high winds forced them to evacuate. MSNBC's Alan Boyle described the scene:Tonight's main event was a Virgin classic: Within minutes after

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-5518536572421915792009-11-23T10:13:00.003-05:002009-11-23T11:44:24.459-05:00DARPA, GPS, and the wax cylinder

One of the listeners of my recent NPR interview has taken me to task for suggesting that DARPA (the subject of my new book) was crucial to the development of the Global Positioning System.Roger Easton, Jr., professor at the Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, points out that the early DARPA-funded system on which I based my contention, TRANSIT, used an entirely

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-40328933588684579522009-11-17T08:21:00.002-05:002009-11-17T08:30:20.121-05:00NPR interview and Department of Mad Scientists excerpt

You can now hear me on demand, talking about my new book on DARPA, The Department of Mad Scientists, on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.http://bit.ly/4EVBr9Also on that page is the opening of the first chapter, which is about DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.The program is the most ambitious artificial limb project in history, devoting some $100 million to building an arm

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-16778279873275466502009-11-09T19:46:00.005-05:002009-11-09T20:01:59.750-05:00I'm not texting, I'm driving!

Check out this video from a group of National Instruments engineers who rigged up a remote controlled car with an iPhone as the controller.NI press rep Trisha McDonell tells me there are practical uses for this project: "these applications can help in autonomous vehicle research which are used in rescue missions."Looks to me like these guys are just having a ball taking texting and driving to a

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-22272233012874232792009-10-29T13:55:00.003-04:002009-10-29T14:07:48.416-04:00Happy 40th birthday, Internet!

Seed magazine has posted an excerpt from my new book about DARPA in honor of today's anniversary of the first connection on the Internet.No, no, it wasn't Al Gore who created the Internet. It was the Advanced Research Projects Agency, today known as DARPA. Way back in 1969, a couple of researchers at UCLA sent the first message between networked computers of disparate types. It was part of a

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-71900192257080267682009-10-24T13:07:00.005-04:002009-10-24T13:26:13.530-04:00DARPA book now available

My book on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now available in print, electronic, and audio form.The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Shaping Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs is the first mass market book on the Department of Defense Agency that gave the world the Internet, GPS, stealth technology, and lots more.Listen to me read in this excerpt

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-20919060352240249602009-10-15T07:17:00.003-04:002009-10-15T07:45:53.818-04:00Quantum to Cosmos Festival

The Quantum to Cosmos Festival starts today in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It's ten days of presentations, panel discussions, movies, demos, and a whole lot more sponsored by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.You can catch most of the events live online at the festival website at http://q2cfestival.com/. For instance, tonight at 7 Eastern, 10 physicists talk about the future of their

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-16181566734508572112009-10-09T09:33:00.004-04:002009-10-09T10:38:35.675-04:002009 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards

Last night at the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards, Dean Kamen delivered the most eloquent appeal for getting kids interested in science and technology I've yet seen.His remarks took the form of his acceptance speech for the Leadership Award. He was speaking off the cuff, but this is something he's been thinking about and actively working on for the last twenty years."This biggest problem

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-23409811932254839752009-10-04T05:08:00.003-04:002009-10-04T05:47:55.730-04:00X PRIZE five year anniversary

On this day five years ago, Brian Binnie won the Ansari X PRIZE by hurtling out of the atmosphere faster than a rifle bullet. It was the second time in less than a week that SpaceShipOne made the trip from Mojave Airport, fulfilling the prize requirement for a back-to-back flight by a commercial spaceship.Even as Brian was circling to his high altitude launch point attached to the belly of White

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-40521488002847564142009-10-03T08:41:00.007-04:002009-10-03T19:39:40.718-04:00Transhumans in Woodstock

I love this town. Last night, just down the road from my office on Tinker Street, in the same studio where I recorded this video, a group of world-class thinkers in applied science fiction came together to talk about what it means to be human.Ray Kurzwell, James J. Hughes, and Martine Rothblatt concluded that we are little more than the processing power of our neurons--a function that will soon (

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-62762873919977379292009-09-30T09:14:00.004-04:002009-09-30T10:00:25.669-04:00First poet in space

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté blasted off for the International Space Station this morning aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule.He'll spend a week and a half in orbit on what he's calling the first poetic social mission from space. The event will culminate in a 2-hour performance from space and around the world called Moving Stars and Earth for Water, to be webcast live on October 9 at

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-77113463217310100482009-09-24T12:01:00.004-04:002009-09-24T12:20:01.894-04:00SpaceX preps for Falcon 9 launch

SpaceX has been busy since my visit to company HQ for my recent Popular Mechanics article.I've just received a progress report from the company, including some gorgeous photos of vehicle assembly and testing in progress.The Falcon 9 launch vehicle is getting ready for its maiden flight from Cape Canaveral some time in the next few months. On board will be a test version of the Dragon capsule that

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-26419319891807308282009-09-23T13:02:00.001-04:002009-09-23T13:12:32.252-04:00It's a wrap for DARPA audio book

I've just finished reading the audio version of my book on DARPA, The Department of Mad Scientists, for Random House Audio.My director, David Rapkin, seemed particularly taken with the chapter on the Urban Challenge, DARPA's autonomous vehicle race.David hung on my every word, having me retake every sentence or phrase in which I hesitated, mispronounced a word, or otherwise stumbled.The result

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-71293440805977823362009-09-22T09:36:00.003-04:002009-09-22T11:27:00.376-04:00DARPA/EERC green jet fuel wins Popular Science Best of What's New

This summer, Flometrics launched a sounding rocket from the Mojave Desert powered by a 100% vegetable oil fuel. Flometrics president Steve Harrington tells me the rocket performed better than expected; the supersonic flight tore the tail fins off the sucker.The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency commissioned the fuel from the Energy and Environmental Research Center in North Dakota as part

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-16609965653122489672009-09-16T20:24:00.005-04:002009-09-16T20:39:45.320-04:00DARPA audio book

I'm commuting to New York City this week to record the audio version of my book about DARPA, The Department of Mad Scientists, for Random House Audio.It will be available as an iTunes download when the print version releases, October 20.My director is Grammy Award winner David Rapkin, a twenty-plus-year veteran of the business who's not only taken the trouble to read the book before our sessions,

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-27576531285814211512009-09-09T09:12:00.003-04:002009-09-09T10:04:36.744-04:00Ghost

One of the great joys of my work is that I get to meet some truly extraordinary people. Fred Burton got wind of my upcoming book on DARPA and sent me a copy of his Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent.Ghost is one of the best books I've read in some time, a brilliant work of riveting you-are-there reporting, full of heart, humor, and unflinching telling details of our country's war on

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-12452867652304188962009-08-25T15:42:00.004-04:002009-08-25T16:20:40.645-04:00SpaceX propulsion chief explains Merlin

Tom Mueller Describes Merlin Enginebrought to you by LivescribeThis month's issue of Popular Mechanics has a feature by me about Space Exploration Technologies, the startup that might just end up building America's next orbital spaceship--and provide charter flights to NASA.I told the SpaceX story in my book Rocketeers, but I've been angling for years to land a magazine story to cover it. In

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-3718101542961552982009-08-22T15:56:00.003-04:002009-08-22T16:37:15.251-04:00Kepler Space Telescope on Nat Geo Channel

NASA's Kepler space telescope, launched in March and returning data since June, gets star billing on "Alien Earths" premiering on the National Geographic Channel tomorrow night at 9 PM Eastern and Pacific time.Launch footage, animation of the probe in operation as it trails the Earth in a solar orbit, and speculation from researchers about what it will discover bracket an engaging program on the

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-78462153501804245442009-07-17T09:27:00.004-04:002009-07-17T10:31:30.014-04:00Naked Science: Living on the Moon

The National Geographic Channel is showing a not-to-be-missed program on returning to the moon, this time to stay.Naked Science: Living on the Moon airs on Sunday, July 19 at 9:00 p.m. Pacific and Eastern time, the day before the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing by Apollo 11.I got a review copy of the show, which is a well balanced treatment of what's required for going back to

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-59901591553665391132009-07-15T07:25:00.002-04:002009-07-15T07:56:19.723-04:00SpaceX first operational satellite launch

Last night Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) launched its first operational satellite from its pad in Marshall Islands. This is the first time that a privately funded liquid fuel rocket has achieved this milestone.This was the fifth launch of the Falcon 1 rocket and the second time it succeeded in reaching orbit (the last payload was of a dummy satellite).It's another vindication of SpaceX

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-30955327255133285642009-07-03T13:26:00.003-04:002009-07-03T13:53:22.880-04:00Len Kleinrock describes the birth of the Internet

Leonard Kleinrock, who published the first paper on packet switching in 1962, and who led the ARPA-funded team at UCLA that made the first connection on the Internet, described the scene to me on the phone to me a few minutes ago.Sitting at a computer terminal at UCLA on October 29, 1969, one of Kleinrock's team members typed two letters that were received via the infant Internet by a computer up

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-75342828511500326012009-06-02T11:33:00.003-04:002009-06-02T12:37:16.261-04:00SpaceShipTwo Engine Tests

Virgin Galactic put out a press release last week along with this video about the successful conclusion of the first round of rocket motor tests for its SpaceShipTwo passenger ship, being built by Scaled Composites.Not too many technical details here, so I did some digging to find out more. Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn referred my queries to Mark Sirangelo, manager at engine

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14833426.post-86894136326944258622009-04-22T09:44:00.005-04:002009-04-22T10:17:05.426-04:00DARPA book's new table of contents

My book about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, now not only has a cover, but a finalized table of contents as well.Full title: The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial LimbsPublisher: Smithsonian Books/HarperCollinsPublication date: October 20, 2009Table of Contents:IntroductionHow I came to write the book and why

Michael Belfiorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08310369260652845748noreply@blogger.com0