Check out my PopSci.com report of a Space Adventures press briefing in New York City this morning. CEO Eric Anderson announced new charter flights to the International Space Station.

Labels: Eric Anderson, International Space Station, Popular Science, Soyuz, Space Adventures, Spaceflight

I'm blogging for PopSci.com from the first annual BioMass conference in Minneapolis. Latest post here.

Labels: Bio Fuels, Popular Science

Yesterday I visited a research facility in North Dakota creating jet fuel out of vegetable oil, and I've posted a report on popsci.com.

Labels: Bio Fuels, Popular Science, University of North Dakota

I've just posted my reporting on last night's 50th anniversary celebration for the Defense Advanced Research Projects agency on the Popular Science website at PopSci.com.

Labels: DARPA, Popular Science

Yep, it's a suborbital spaceship. Check out my story on the unveiling of XCOR's new Lynx spacecraft, along with embedded video, on popsci.com.

Labels: Lynx, Popular Science, Spaceflight, XCOR

The folks at XCOR Aerospace tell me that the company is planning a press event on March 26 in Los Angeles. These guys are not prone to frivolous or gratuitous PR, so I'm most definitely intrigued.

Come to think of it, I don't think XCOR has ever held a press conference in the time I've been following them, since 2004. The engineers, technicians, and managers at XCOR prefer to keep their heads down, do their work, and let their deeds speak for themselves.

They've already built and flown a rocket powered airplane, a 7,500-pound-thrust methane rocket engine for NASA (through prime contractor ATK), novel piston fuel pumps designed to replace million-dollar turbo pumps in high-powered rocket engines at a tiny fraction of the cost, and built countless rocket engines to show again and again that liquid fueled rocket engines can be safe, reliable, and affordable enough to become part of our everyday lives.

But the company was founded to get people into space, and the founders have never lost sight of that prize, wrangling contracts from the Department of Defense, NASA, and private companies to build components of their planned suborbital spaceship as well as fund components of the ship for which they don't have customers.

A mysterious project has been underway on the XCOR shop floor behind a black curtain for some time now, and the company has been incredibly successful lately, with contracts and money rolling in faster than ever before. In fact, XCOR made Inc. magazine's list of 500 fastest growing companies in America last year.

Are we about to witness a new private spaceship unveiled?

I'm going to blog the XCOR press event for the Popular Science website at www.popsci.com. Look for a link from here on March 26.

Labels: Lynx, Popular Science, Spaceflight, XCOR

Check out the February Popular Science for my cover story on a European concept for a hypersonic (that is, faster than five times the speed of sound) airliner.

If you're like me and live in a town that doesn't carry PopSci in any of its stores (gripe, grumble), you can also click over to the website and read the full story there.

Interestingly, even though the editors specifically wanted me to pitch the airline as the ultimate in environmentally friendly transport, the A2's designers don't see it that way at all.

Yes, the jet runs on hydrogen, giving it an environmentally benign water-vapor exhaust, but the A2's chief designer, Richard Varvill of UK-based Reaction Engines, is quick to point out that there is presently no economically viable means of producing that hydrogen without releasing greenhouse gases.

This tendency toward optimism is something I really like about Popular Science. To be sure, many of our problems here on Earth are of our own creation, but, says the magazine each month, we're also smart enough to develop the means of our own salvation.

Labels: Popular Science, Reaction Engines