Private Plan to Send Humans to Mars in 2018 Might Not Be So Crazy

  

An ambitious private manned mission to Mars aims to launch a two-person crew to fly around the Red Planet and return to Earth in 501 days, starting in January 2018.

This bold undertaking is planned by the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a non-profit company founded by millionaire and space tourist Dennis Tito that was officially unveiled on Feb. 27 after early details leaked. Though the spacecraft would not land humans on Mars or even put them in orbit, it would bring people within a few hundred kilometers of the Martian surface — roughly the same distance between the International Space Station and Earth — and represent a major milestone in human spaceflight. If successful, the mission would go down in history as the first time a private company accomplished something government agencies were unable to do in space.

For the rest of the story: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/inspiration-mars-foundation/

Scenes From When Flying Was Still Civilized

 

There once was a Golden Age Of Flying. You didn't have to queue up, strip down, and surrender your beverage to the Goon Squad. Meals were served on real plates instead of sad, soggy cardboard boxes. The act of traveling itself was a pleasant part of the journey—instead of a necessary act of mass-transit. These conveniences still exist for the very rich, but there was a time when all of us had access to a fantastic world in the sky. That world is never coming back, but it's still nice to look back and fondly remember.

For the rest of the story: http://gizmodo.com/5987350/scenes-from-when-flying-was-still-civilized

The Evolution Of Human Faces

 

As part of the Safari zum Urmenschen exhibition (translated as Safari to Early Humans) at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, researchers used forensic technology to reproduce the evolution of the human head, spanning over millions of years. The controversial series of models, highlighting 27 molds of human ancestral faces, were carefully constructed based on discovered skulls, teeth, and tiny bone fragments that date back to about 7 million years ago.

The meticulously sculpted heads are the anthropological products of years of excavation in Africa, Asia, and Europe; thoroughly researched by scientists at Senckenberg Research Institute. Each face tells its own story about the lives of humans in their respective era, including: "where they lived, what they ate, [and] their likely cause of death." The ancestral gallery presents a look at mankind's physical evolution that has been turned into a video depicting the gradual shift in facial features, which can be viewed below.

For the rest of the story: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/safari-to-early-humans

Take A Time-Lapse Look Inside A Solar-Powered Plane

The Solar Impulse is about to fly across America powered by just the sun. But first it had to be taken apart and shipped from Europe.

Solar Impulse is a solar-powered plane that is going to make an attempt at circumnavigating the globe sometime in 2015. In the meantime, its pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Broschberg are going to fly across America in May to garner some publicity for their longer trip. But first, they had to get the plane here from its home in Switzerland.

The video above is a fun time-lapse of them taking the plane apart and loading into a larger plane (a plane in a plane!). You get to see the interior of the super-lightweight aircraft as it’s disassembled over seven days and then sent from Switzerland to San Francisco.

For the rest of the story: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681477/take-a-time-lapse-look-inside-a-solar-powered-plane

Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

  

The Romans were undoubtedly master engineers. They were experts at civil engineering, building roads, improving sanitation, inventing Roman concrete, and constructing aqueducts that adhere to tolerances impressive even by today’s standards. Perhaps the best evidence of their aptitude is the fact that many of those structures still stand today, almost 2000 years later. They even began dabbling in technology vastly ahead of their time. Hero of Alexandria drew up plans for a rudimentary steam engine in his Spiritalia seu Pneumatica. He called it the aeolipile.

For the rest of the story: http://www.hscott.net/could-the-ancient-romans-have-built-a-digital-computer/

The Sequester, Explained

 

Today is Sequestration Day! To celebrate, all of your most burning sequestration questions are answered right here. Enjoy.

Where did the whole idea of sequestration originate? It goes back to 1985. The tax cuts of Ronald's Reagan early years, combined with his aggressive defense buildup, produced a growing budget deficit that eventually prompted passage of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. GRH set out a series of ambitious deficit reduction targets, and to put teeth into them it specified that if the targets weren't met, money would automatically be "sequestered," or held back, by the Treasury Department from the agencies to which it was originally appropriated. The act was declared unconstitutional in 1986, and a new version was passed in 1987.

Sequestration never really worked, though, and it was repealed in 1990 and replaced by a new budget deal. After that, it disappeared down the Washington, DC, memory hole for the next 20 years.

For the rest of the story: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/03/the-sequester-explained

Mars Rover Curiosity Has First Big Malfunction

One of rover's two onboard computers became corrupted, delaying scientific operations for at least a week.

  

The Mars rover Curiosity experienced its first significant malfunction on Wednesday, when one of its two onboard computers became corrupted and failed to turn off and enter "sleep mode" as planned.

The Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent up commands to switch all operations from the corrupted A computer to the twin B computer early Thursday morning, according to a Thursday NASA statement.

Most spacecraft have a backup computer to step in if the primary computer fails. (Related: Meet One of Curiosity's Earthbound Twins.)

Richard Cook, project manager for the Curiosity project, said the problem was the most serious experienced by the rover so far in its nearly 7 months on the red planet.

For the rest of the story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130301-mars-rover-curiosity-malfunction-science-space-nasa-jpl/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ng%2FNews%2FNews_Main+%28National+Geographic+News+-+Main%29