Rebecca Geier: Marketing 101 for Engineers
It’s a major challenge for any technologist: attracting capital and customers. It all boils down to marketing. The best ideas and the best products just won’t move unless investors and customers know about them. Marketing presents special challenges to technical offerings; not only do you have to get the word out, but you also have to explain complex ideas to folks who may not have...
Read MoreOur Space Future at the American Museum of Natural History
Suborbital flight, moon bases, inflatable space stations, a lunar elevator, liquid telescopes, planet-shaping engineering, and ocean-going space probes: they’re all part of the newest exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I tagged along on a press preview of Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration this week, and liked what I saw, a lot. It’s...
Read More100YSS: extremely long-range R&D
One of the things government can do more effectively than private enterprise is foster development of technologies that may not be profitable in the short term, if at all. Projects like the Internet and the Moon landing couldn’t have gotten off the ground with private investment alone. But what’s the best way to fund really long-range technology development, say, something that will...
Read More100 Year Starship project lifting off
It’s perhaps DARPA’s most out-there project ever: spend the next century figuring out how to build a starship. Science fiction makes it seem easy: just engage the warp drive, do a little hand waving about Johnson rods or somesuch, and make a hyperspace jump. The reality will be vastly more difficult. Later this month, DARPA will convene scientists, engineers, big thinkers, and even...
Read MoreWhittinghill Aerospace’s family rocket business
George Whittinghill’s wife likes to joke that he and their son Ian share a defective gene, one that makes them both crazy for rockets. Together they comprise a good percentage of the 7-member Whittinghill Aerospace team. Their ambitious goal: send small payloads into orbit. Their plan calls for ganging together seven 32-foot-long, 2-foot-diameter rockets, each fueled by a hybrid nitrous...
Read MoreVideo: Michael Belfiore talks DARPA on Bloomberg TV
Yesterday I Skyped in to Bloomberg West, Bloomberg TV’s show on innovation. The show originates from San Francisco, but I didn’t have to go any farther than my office. Anchor Emily Chang asked me about Thursday’s failure of the DARPA Hypersonic Test Vehicle, how DARPA ideas take root in the mainstream, and what recent DARPA innovations I’m most excited...
Read MoreA lithium economy?
Beyond a doubt, the success of the new sources of energy we need to replace dwindling, polluting, conflict-causing fossil fuels depends on storage. Batteries, in other words. What really killed the electric car? Crappy batteries. Those lead acid batteries in your gas guzzler can’t do much more than crank the starter because they’re too heavy relative to the amount of energy they can...
Read MoreAn anti-NewSpace conspiracy?
“Inner space is useful. Outer space is history.” Thus reads the subhead of the cover editorial in the current issue of The Economist. It’s just another major media outlet taking the opportunity of the Space Shuttle’s retirement to declare the end of human space exploration. At least this magazine mentions Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson, two of the entrepreneurs...
Read MoreShuttle’s end signals space renaissance
The Space Shuttle will roar into retirement on Friday, leaving NASA with no vehicle of its own to replace it. The situation has some, including moonwalker Neil Armstrong and US Senator Richard Shelby, declaring the end of US competitiveness in space. Yet, I would argue that recent events and the boldest new space policy since Kennedy launched us to the moon are in fact rocketing America once...
Read MoreAstrobotic & Next Giant Leap advance in moon race
The race is on for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE for the first privately funded team to land a robot on the moon, have it traverse 500 meters, and send back high-def video (and email and Facebook and Twitter posts). Next Giant Leap, led by entrepreneur Michael Joyce, has partnered with the organization that developed the guidance, navigation & control (GN&C) software that put...
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