Catching up on my feeds just now I was saddened to see that Arthur C. Clarke, physicist, author, innovator, futurist, and ardent believer in the potential of humanity, has died. He was 90, so the man had a very decent run. Perhaps his most recognized work was 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie for which just celebrated its 40th anniversary. He leaves behind an enormous legacy of invention, creativity, art, and inspiration having written over 100 books. Enormous. Few have been so profoundly influential to so many, and managed to do it with such consistent style, usually sporting a satin Nehru jacket and tanned from the beaches of his home in Sri Lanka. For me, Arthur C. Clarke is the Yin to Philip K. Dick’s Yang. A couple great quotes from Clarke in honor of his passing…
Reflecting on his life:
“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered. I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”
A terrific quote on the value of the space program, from 1970:
“The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars… A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.”
That’s a line from a really excellent slide presentation by David Armano and via FutureLab that succinctly summarizes some of the best opportunities for companies today as they contemplate their interactive marketing strategy, and how best to connect with their audience(s).
Three of his points here that are especially meaningful to me:
Leverage the WordPress Content Management System - Huge value here, especially when combined with a thoughtful content strategy, analytics, and the focus to continuously improve and help audiences get the information that they seek. You’re only as good as your content is fresh. I am an enormous proponent of Wordpress as not only is schneiderism built with it, but two sites I am currently involved with are also taking advantage of what Wordpress offers. It has become a powerful technology for efficiently building effective websites and is very customizable from an interface design standpoint.
Combine technologies for a stronger strategy - Like using Twitter to promote new content or priority links to people that choose to follow you. Effectively combining micro-marketing technologies can create an incredibly macro effect by making it incredibly easy for people to find you, your company, or your perspective and to help you communicate to a much broader audience very quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.
Orchestrate infinite touchpoints - This is perhaps the most powerful slide in Armano’s presentation, and it relates very directly to the effective combination of technologies. Your messages can and should manifest themselves in a number of ways, and in a number of places. Starting with an effective website, also think about a mobile strategy, how you should use online social networks, and sites like Slideshare, YouTube, and Twitter. Effectively combining these into a range of audience touchpoints is powerful, and ultimately worth spreading your investment. In terms of platforms, it would seem shortsighted to invest in only one (like a website) when a little additional effort can position you with a range of effective communications technologies, and the technologies that your audiences are using to get information. This would be the embodiment of the whole “meet them on their turf” strategy.
Another great line from the presentation is “make the participant the star.” Armano presents a total of ten points related to investigating your interactive marketing strategy, and they are all pretty tight so I suggest taking a moment to view the entire presentation.
Absolutely stunning imagery of the recent fly-by of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini presented in a photo animation. You will find little mention of this in the news, and that is mostly because the news does not care. Lost opportunity for the news. We’ve investigated the robotic Cassini probe here before, and it continues to be very, very busy. On March 12th Cassini flew within 30 miles of Enceladus, approaching from above Enceladus’ north pole and thus seeing the moon as a crescent. Some facts on this beautiful moon:
Enceladus is very bright, reflecting nearly 100% of the light that strikes it
This is because we believe it is almost entirely covered in water ice
It’s surface is considered to be geologically young at less than 100 million years old
There is evidence indicating that the interior of the moon may still be liquid
It is about 500 km wide, or roughly the width of the state of Arizona
Enceladus is known as the “geyser moon” because of enormous eruptions
These are created by the release of energy caused by frictional geothermal heating
More on Enceladus and Cassini’s observations here, here, and here.
From MIT’s Technology Review (an excellent online tech resource) comes this interesting list of technologies to watch for over the coming months… the “emerging technologies” of this year. You’ve no doubt heard of some of these, and others can’t be too surprising, but taken together this list should give at least a little techno-infused optimism for the balance of 2008 (I’m feeling better already):
The practical neatnik in me is perhaps the most enthused about the potentiality of my environment without the tangle of power cords everywhere. The futurist in me is getting pretty excited about the potential of graphene transistors. There is concern in Silicon Valley about the probable termination of Moore’s Law as we approach the performance envelop of silicon based chips. Having something that is so theoretically expansive in contrast, and from PENCIL LEAD, is quite comforting.
From the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre and the Nokia Research Center comes this exploration of the future application of nanoscale electonics technology. Very cool, and probably not that far from reality, given the momentum in nanotech. This longish video takes you through several of the nanoscale innovations:
This motivates me to complete a series of posts I have been working on related to nanotechnology. They are taking me awhile because I continue to find more to read. We live in very interesting times.
This is an absolutely gorgeous rendering of the Federal Building in San Francisco designed by Thom Mayne and his team at Morphosis. Mayne is now navigating the LEED certification process for this project. Originally, the building was on track to obtain a minimum of LEED Silver certification. The interesting thing is that it seems LEED certification, the US Green Building Council, and Thom Mayne are not on the same page as some of the technologies employed for this project are, as Mayne asserts, so absolutely cutting edge they are not actually yet part of the LEED certification process. Upwards of 70% of the building is temperature moderated through natural ventilation, and this was achieved through incredibly complex modeling of the interior environments and how air should naturally move through them, and controlled though a custom window wall that regulates internal air temperature, thermal mass storage, and passive and active sunshading. While LEED addresses items like bicycle racks and construction materials recycling, the thermal comfort and air quality regulated by Mayne’s system do not impact certification in a substantive way.
Like any high profile project, it is not without some controversy. To my mind, this project highlights some of the drawbacks of the USGBC’s point based LEED certification program. It would seem that sometimes designing sustainably and designing “LEED” are not the same thing.
It would seem that reality does map nicely to the various themes of science fiction:
“I’ve made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029.”
That is both fascinating and definitely something to ponder. I had imagined it taking us longer to reach human level AI as 2029 is only just over twenty years away. In the article Kurzweil goes on to say that humans and machines will eventually merge and become indistinguishable from one another. He does not say whether or not this will be by choice.
I have posted about telepresence and the workplace a few times before, but this is a military application that is incredibly interesting. The interface between robots and operators has proved to be a bottleneck in effectiveness. This is partly because robotic technology has advanced at a rate faster then our interface and control technologies, and partly because the performance demands being put on robotics have scaled significantly in a very short period of time. This is beginning to change, and DARPA is again at the forefront of driving that change. The video above is of the telepresence “Head Aimed Remote Viewer” (HARV), and it offers tremendous improvements in speed, navigation, and effectiveness. The Pentagon has very quickly become a driver of innovation in robotics.Story via DangerRoom
One of the researchers investigating the possibilities of building a space elevator said that. It was an incredibly futuristic idea a decade ago. Not so much today. Getting to space with rockets is incredibly dangerous and increasingly expensive. Each Space Shuttle mission costs NASA (and by extension the American taxpayers) about $500 million, and in these constrained budgetary times that is verging on cost prohibitive. This lends credence to the space elevator concept, which is not by any means a new idea (Arthur C. Clark put forth the idea in his 1978 novel “The Fountains of Paradise” - though he was not the first). Developments in materials technologies, like carbon nanotubes, are giving the space elevator new momentum and urging NASA to perhaps consider it seriously as a future alternative to orbital access.
The concept is exceedingly simple:
- Send up a satellite that maintains a geosynchronous orbit
- Satellite deploys a ribbon or cable back to Earth
- Cable is attached to an offshore station
- Elevator rides the cable from the offshore station up to the orbiting satellite
The elevator could be powered by Earth based lasers or by powerful solar reflectors. Panels on the elevator would receive the light energy from the emitters on the ground and produce the electricity that would power the motors on the elevator. It’s sustainable.
Previously, we had been held back by the material realities of trying to build a several thousand mile (as long as 22,000 miles) elevator cable. The advent of carbon nanotube technology, still in its infancy, could be the lightweight but incredibly strong materials breakthrough that makes this possible. If completed, the space elevator would be the largest structure ever built.
More on space elevators in an excellent entry at Wikipedia, at NASA, and a short video from PBS’s NOVA.
NASA is trying to move quickly to finish the International Space Station before they decommission the Space Shuttle in 2010. This is primarily because the program currently in development to replace the shuttle, the Orion orbital vehicle and Constellation launch system, will most likely not be operational until 2015. This leaves a four to five year period where NASA will not be able to access space without the help of others, whether they be companies or nations. The good news is that at that time there will be several options as Russia, Japan (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and possibly even China will have operational orbital programs, not to mention the private ventures like SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler (two very cool companies, definitely check them out) that are currently contracted by NASA to develop supplementary ISS transport and support programs. The program from SpaceX, the Falcon9 rocket and Dragon space vehicle, is planned to be operational by 2010. I imagine that Sir Richard Branson would be willing to help, if needed.
As recently as last week NASA alluded to talking with the Russian space program regarding negotiating the purchase of use of their Soyuz and Progress orbital programs, in the event that contracting with private space companies does not provide the necessary capacity. Given that it is now 2008, and that the shuttle goes defunct in 2010, it is in NASA’s best interest to have these plans solidified as soon as possible. Otherwise, our astronauts and researchers face a space access bottleneck at exactly the time that the International Space Station becomes fully operational.
The Cold War was the catalyst for the development of a diversity of interesting vehicles, platforms and technologies, but few have been of more interesting to me than the Soviet “Lun” ekranoplan pictured above and below. The Soviet Union began developing the wing-in-ground (WIG) ground effect technology in the 1930’s, but the craft reached a pinnacle of sorts in the 1980’s with the Lun (one of which can be seen at Google Earth), though WIG craft have yet to reach any broad application, whether military or commercial. Ekranoplans benefit from WIG in two important ways, the first being the ability to achieve incredibly high speeds and the second that flying at 10 to 50 feet above the surface makes them largely undetectable by radar.
WIG works as a high pressure region develops beneath the wing’s lower surface and above the water surface, which enhances its lift compared to a conventional wing in free air. The close proximity of the water also disrupts the formation of wing-tip vortices, which are a major cause of induced drag on conventional wings in free air. To benefit from WIG, the airfoil must have a relatively flat lower surface in order to increase lift. WIG craft have an advantage over water-bourne craft in that a huge amount of power is needed to overcome the drag of the water. By flying just above the water that power can be used for speed and carrying capacity.
Ekranoplans were developed in a range of sizes and applications, but they could reach enormous proportions and cargo carrying capacity. The Lun, among the largest to be developed, spanned 240 feet long with a wingspan of 144 feet. Its size would be comparable to a Boeing 747. It had a maximum takeoff weight of 882,000 pounds and a range of over 1,800 miles. This behemoth could cruise at 341 mph, leaving traditional naval vessels quickly in its wake.
Several nations, including Russia and the United States, continue to explore the potential of WIG (like the Boeing Pelican), and China appears to have an active WIG program, but to date none have pushed this technology to the limit as Soviet designers and engineers did towards the end of the Cold War.
A Soviet Lun Ekranoplan transport at rest with crew on the exterior giving an idea of the size of the craft.
That graphic above looks like it could have been from 1969. I posted about the Constellation and Orion programs earlier, but just spent way to much time on HowStuffWorks and found an excellent and concise summary of the details around the Orion CEV. It is interesting how much from the Apollo program we are leveraging for Orion and Constellation. NASA has gone back to the future, so to speak. It makes perfect sense, in the vein of continuous improvement, as the Apollo program worked very well nearly forty years ago. With today’s advancements in electronics, computers, materials, and propulsion (not to mention everything we have learned from the shuttle and the ISS), Orion should benefit from a very long list of innovations and improvements. Earlier I had read that this program would not be coming online until 2015, five years after the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle leaving quite a gap in our ability to reach space without the help of others. Now I am seeing estimates of 2011 for Orion to be operational, keeping us in what is building up to be an incredibly competitive space race with China, India, Japan, Russia, and the ESA.
We’re in heavy speculative mode. Not thinking conspiracy or act of sabotage, at least not yet, but wondering what exactly is going on in the ocean off the coast of Egypt, Dubai and the UAE. On Wednesday of last week it was revealed that first one, then two undersea cables had been “damaged” in the waters off the coast of the Alexandria, Egypt, effectively causing an internet “blackout” in parts of the Middle East. Then, on Friday, India’s Reliance Communications announced that a third cable had been rendered inoperable off the coast of the UAE. Today, news of a fourth cable being damaged off the coast of Dubai. The cables are thought to be fixable, but ships are being delayed by bad weather and an on-site situation analysis is still days away. So, what is happening? There has been media speculation about ship anchors severing the cables (seems unlikely), acts of terrorism (highly unlikely), submarines (hmmm…), seismic activity (likely), and power system failures (seems likely). I am sure we will know in the next few days what exactly has happened, but realizing how fragile our communications infrastructure is as it relates to the internet is disconcerting to say the least. Fortunately, the inherently decentralized nature of the internet has allowed for efficient workarounds to the damaged cables, but losing four cables in less than a week in geographically distant but related areas is cause for concern.
Suffice it to say that the ability to sever communications cables, like the ability to knock out satellites, would be something coveted by many, many nations.
Update 1: Just read at the New Scientist that the ship anchor cause for the damaged submarine cables may actually be the answer to this mystery. It seems that the bad weather stopped shipping traffic, and ships anchored in a “no parking zone” directly over the area the cables are in. Ships move while anchored, anchors drag and snag cables, cables get damaged.
Now, what about the other two cables?
Update 2: Found this excellent analysis of the effects of the damaged cables in the Mediterranean on data throughput. More detail as to where the cables were damaged, with one off the coast of Marseilles, France, and the other near Alexandria, Egypt. This report does not mention the other two cables off Dubai and UAE.
Update 3: I just read that yesterday, February 5th, a fifth cable in the Mediterranean has been cut. Very interesting how this story is developing.
Update 4: Turns out it was only the original four cables that were disrupted and that three of those cables are expected to be back on line within the next couple of days. I listened to a telecom/telephony expert on NPR yesterday and he made a sound argument that these events actually happen all of the time and that submarine cables are subject to a great number of potential interruptions. This is precisely why the network is distributed, diffuse and decentralized.
The International Space Station has been underway for so long that I think it is often just forgotten about. Work commenced in 1998, so its been under construction for nearly a full decade. But it’s up there and manned 24/7/365. We should collectively pay more attention to the development of the ISS as that is where the future of humanity is slowly (very, very slowly) being shaped. That, and we’re freaking building this thing in space. Most are at least familiar with the station if only because of the problems that have plagued its construction, including the problems with the NASA space shuttle that have caused major construction delays. There have been some close calls for the astronauts and scientists manning the ISS, and some difficult learning experiences for the international team tasked with building Earth’s first large scale “permanent” space platform. But that is the whole point, really, to learn along the way. Building this station is an incredible undertaking.
Some quick ISS facts:
- It is the largest and most complex international science project in history
- 27 nations are actively involved in its construction, most not having a space program
- When completed it will weigh over 1 million pounds
- It will ultimately be 356 feet across and 290 feet long
- The solar panels on the ISS would cover an acre
- It is in orbit approximately 250 statute miles from Earth
- It completes 15.77 orbits of the Earth each day
- The station has been continuously inhabited since November, 2002
- It will eventually have 15,000 cubic feet of living space
- The costs to create the ISS will exceed $130 billion, far beyond the original budget
- Five space tourists have visited, paying $25 million each for the opportunity
- The microgravity environment on the station is 88% of Earth’s gravity
- As of today it has been in orbit 3,362 days, and has been inhabited for 2,651 days
- For this pinnacle of human technological achievement, it looks rickety
There is a tremendous amount of valuable research already underway on the station, including experiments in biology, medicine, physics, biotechnology, materials research, cosmology and meteorology. Obviously, much more is planned and as more research modules come online the opportunities will increase. 2010 is tentatively planned to be the year of completion. But that will certainly be subject to change. Oddly, the year that the station is completed is the year that NASA decommissions the space shuttle with its replacement, the Orion/Constellation program, not coming online until 2015.
Some images I grabbed of the ISS for review:
This image, from 2001/2002, shows the initial operational solar arrays.
This is the station configuration as of November, 2007.
Very cool image of an astronaut capturing a reflection of the ISS and the Earth below in his face mask.
A detail shot of the connection between one of the solar arrays and a module. Note the astronaut working on the station in the upper center of the image.
Another detail. The exterior is incredibly complex. There is an astronaut in the image towards the center middle providing the scale of this module. The arm in the image was manufactured by Canada.
A space shuttle preparing to dock with the station. The shuttle has been the primary large payload delivery vehicle for the ISS. The Russians provide supplies and take away refuse via manned and unmanned Soyuz capsules.
A chart showing the breakdown of components and with nation’s of origin.
More from NASA. Check out the interactive informational tour.
Set aside your disdain for sticky web monikers for a moment. I have been following the “The Workplace of The Future” for a while now, and have been writing about it since last July. The Innovation Tours that I organize for my team are focused on surveying where boundaries are being pushed and how businesses are responding to changes in the ways people want to work and the resulting impact on meaningful workplace design. No doubt, the demands on the physical workplace environment are changing right before our eyes, being driven by rapid changes in technology, notions of work, telepresence, and shifts in workforce demographics. Intersecting these drivers is the concept of Office 2.0, which encompasses the increasing number of web-based collaborative work applications, such as the smart suite of web applications from 37 Signals. They are a fast, efficient way for users and teams to organize, manage, disseminate and develop information using a simple, intuitive interface. The value of these applications are that they let you work remotely with people in ways that make us less dependent on desktop workstations and organized offices. At their heart, they functionally support collaborative idea and project development and the efficient sharing of documents and files, but the potential for how they will potentially change the ways in which we work go far beyond the functional benefits and they will ultimately influence what work actually constitutes.
Google is in this space with the web-based offerings Google Apps, and Microsoft is throwing its weight behind a rekindled web-based initiative. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller start-up applications also struggling for attention. Start using these tools now. Familiarize yourself. Encourage your teams to do the same. In the imminent future more and more of our work will take place on the web, leveraging web-based applications, and less and less of it will happen within the confines of an office. Smart companies are already there, and are redefining their models based on their own understanding of how Office 2.0 benefits them. In the short term, the biggest benefit for companies is the liberation from legacy notions of space and real estate, in the long term a benefit will be a workforce distributed globally, not locally. Physical offices will become less about the housing of workers during working hours and more about space that supports in-person meetings and collaboration. Think about how you were working ten years ago, think about how you accomplished your tasks and contrast that to how you work now. Now recall ten years before that, and if you’re old enough, ten years before that. I think it is safe to say that we would be hard pressed to not acknowledge the dramatic change that continues to occur, only with increased speed.
There is an annual conference, aptly named the Office 2.0 Conference, focused on exploring developments around Office 2.0 which I am planning on attending this year.
2007 was a terrifically important year in the field of robotics. It was a year of new accomplishments in mobility, application, and the continuation of exponential increases in functional robotic populations. Take note, we are riding a technological wave that will dramatically impact our collective futures for the better, and in some ways for the worse, I surmise. The forces behind the continuous improvement and innovation within robotics are gaining tremendous momentum, and the associated tremendous budgets. This is not just about the military, either. Advances in robotics are happening globally and are sponsored by both public and private enterprise. It will be interesting to see what 2008 brings.
There was an excellent article late last month at Scientific American that summarizes well some of the incredible accomplishments and developments in robotics from the past year.
Granted, that image above is from a certain 1970’s science fiction moment burned in the minds of those of us old enough to remember, and actually has nothing to do with this post. But this does. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working to eventually create microscopic robots that can swarm together allowing them to change shape into almost any form by clinging together. They are testing these strategies on groups of larger, pocket-sized robots that allow rapid prototyping of the simulations and control approach enabling the researchers to quickly refine and evolve the swarming abilities of the robots. One set of robots uses electromagnetic forces to move and connect themselves in patterns, to communicate, and to share power. Check out this video of the test robots in action:
Fascinating, and given our propensity for making science fiction become reality I imagine that this is a robotics technology we will see at some time in the next couple of decades.
This story, via Danger Room, immediately made me think of this:
Those that know me well will be shocked by this post. Yes, I have been a Dell hater. My personal experiences with their products over the years have left me both very frustrated and disappointed. Then I went to Adaptive Path’s MX Conference in San Francisco in February of 2007, just about a year ago. It was a dense, terrific conference loosely themed around managing for the user experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing all of the speakers. One in particular, though, really caught my attention. It was Brooks Protzmann, the manager of the then recently launched Experience Design Group at Dell. I would be nice saying that he had his work cut out for him in front of this obviously predominantly Apple loving crowd. I think he did a great job presenting. He owned Dell’s past mistakes regarding the user, and made a point to own why those mistakes had happened (despite these realities being inherited challenges). That alone was refreshing. He then outlined how Dell’s approach to product design and the user experience was in the process of being radically transformed. He was incredibly honest and open, and provided us a window into the course he and his team were setting for Dell.
The results of that direction are now evident. Though I have yet to interact with any of these products, it includes a range of desktops, laptops and the above monitor (a refreshingly complete, if somewhat overwrought, departure from Dell’s design language) the photos for which made it to all the various gadget blogs late last fall. This is certainly a step in the right direction for design and user experience over at Dell, and these changes are beginning to surface not just within Dell’s product line, but with Dell’s entire customer engagement strategy and is evidence that Protzmann delivered on his promise to improve experience and interaction design for Dell customers. This is an exciting transformation to see, and it has been enough of a change for me, and many others, to take notice. What is even more impressive, and demands attention and acknowledgment, is how quickly Protzmann and his team were able to redirect Dell’s approach to interaction and product design, and ultimately redirect Dell’s culture and approach to their customers. It’s been less than a year since MX. That’s impressive. The big question, though, if it will be enough to truly transform Dell and market perception in the long term.
Update: Just saw another new product design leaked over at Engadget, a laptop, that definitely looks nice.
In November of 1959 US Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger, fitted with a pressurized suit and a parachute, rode a high-altitude helium balloon to a height of 76,400 feet above the Earth’s surface. He then proceeded to jump. This had never been done before, and why would it have been? Kittinger entered a free-fall during which he lost consciousness after entering a 120rpm spin the g-forces of which were calculated to be 22 times the force of gravity at his extremities. Fortunately, his parachute was set to automatically open, which it did, saving his life. Three weeks later he rode another balloon high into the atmosphere and jumped from 76,700 feet. This was Project Excelsior. It was research.
That was nothing, though. On August 16, 1960 Captain Kittinger took a balloon up to 102,800 feet. He could see the curvature of the Earth. He could see entire continents. He was effectively the first human being in space. Again, he jumped. He fell for 4 minutes 36 seconds reaching a speed of 614mph. He thought he had broken the sound barrier. At 18,000 feet he opened his parachute and calmly returned to Earth. He set records for the highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, and fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere. He also earned a whole series of medals and would eventually be promoted to Colonel. Recognition and rank aside, why would anybody do this?
Because they wanted to understand, to learn, and the only way to do this effectively was to do it yourself. As we entered an age after the conclusion of World War II defined by new and incredible breakthroughs in technology we needed to understand limits, capacities, and thresholds. In the days before super computers and sophisticated software modeling, this was how it was done. There was a need to understand the affects of high altitude bailout on the pilots and astronauts who would be flying at those altitudes. There was a need to test the effectiveness of the equipment we were designing. That meant someone needed to ride a balloon up that high and jump out. Captain Kittinger volunteered for the opportunity. He showed scientists that astronauts could survive the harshness of space with just a pressure suit and that man could eject from aircraft at extreme altitudes and survive.
More about Joe Kittinger and Project Excelsior here, here and here.
There is also this incredible footage of his jump in 1960 with some narrative from Joe Kittinger:
I have been following this story like the wide-eyed ten year old that I am when it comes to anything related to even the remote possibility that I might someday be able to experience the weightlessness of space. Earlier this week Sir Richard Branson unveiled the design of Virgin Galactic’s new orbitalspace launch system, the carrier vehicle WhiteKnightTwo and the suborbital craft SpaceShipTwo (pictured above). This would be phase two of Virgin Galactic’s plan to “improve” humanity’s access to space. At $200,000 per seat that would be wealthy humanity, at least initially until the operation scales and ticket prices come down dramatically. Back in 2005 Branson’s Virgin Group and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites announced an agreement to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. The new company, The Spaceship Company owns the designs of the SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two launch systems. See my previous post on Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipTwo will hold six passengers and two pilots and will fly higher than SpaceShipOne, the craft created by Scaled Composites that became the first private venture to enter Earth’s orbit, winning the Ansari X-prize in the process. Virgin Galactic hopes to launch its first public flight before 2009 and is now taking seat reservations. 200 people have already purchased tickets.
The commercial flights will be about 2.5 hours in duration with only a few minutes of that actually being spent in orbit experiencing weightlessness. At $200,000 per flight, that is $1,333 per minute.
We live in a world of technology fetishism, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of consumer electronics, and few have had as significant an impact on design in this category as Dieter Rams. Renowned for his work at Braun and for creating the “Braun style”, his work in interaction and interface design not only shaped an entire generation of consumer electronics, and industrial designers, but set a standard for clean, excellent design that we see manifested today in seminal products like those from Apple. Back in 2004 Metropolis did a feature on him in which he provided his design philosophy in ten points, which I recently came across again and thought important to highlight:
“These points cannot be set in stone because just as technology and culture are constantly developing, so are ideas about good design.”
- Dieter Rams
1. Good design is innovative.
Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology and can never be an end in itself.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of the product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.
5. Good design is honest.
It does not make a product more innovative, powerful, or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
6. Good design is unobtrusive.
Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are
neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
It avoids being fashionable, and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years–even in today’s throwaway society.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Nothing must be arbitrary. Care and accuracy in the design process shows respect toward the consumer.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the life cycle of the product.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.
Less but better–because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with inessentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity!
More on Rams and an interview with him at designboom.
I don’t love this car. I love what this car represents, which is a significant departure from the mainstream in racing car design. Motorsports, and automobile design as a whole, seem dominated by incremental, and sometimes imperceptible, changes. This concept, the Furai from Mazda that debuted at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, is going its own way. It furthers the Mazda design team’s expression of its Nagare, or “flow,” design language that was unveiled earlier at the L.A. autoshow. The body of the car applies Mazda’s design language to achieve incredibly complex geometries that in some areas appear grotesque, while in others refined and beautiful. I especially enjoy the roof as presented in the image above. I want more building architecture that can achieve this elegantly complex folding and crossing.
The overall feel of the car is very organic… or alien. Your choice. After following automobile design and motorsports for just about my entire life it is exciting to see a manufacturer make a bold, radical move. It has been a while.
Solar power generation offers amazing potential, but is hampered by the impracticality of being used effectively in urban settings. This is because the scale of solar power generation required for urban areas requires appropriately large solar power generators, and these require huge amounts of open and unfettered access to the sun. In many urban areas there just is no empty space left, and acquiring contiguous space to create large-scale urban solar power generation is cost prohibitive.
Not to be hampered by this, Sanyo, has offered up an innovative and beautiful solution that allows a large, effective solar power facility to coexist with the Japanese need for esthetic harmony, and fit into many urban and sub-urban situations. They call it the Solar Ark, for visually obvious reasons, and it is located in the Gifu prefecture in central Japan. It can be appreciated from the JR Tokaido bullet train as it jets past at 300 km/hr on an adjacent railway track. It is visually unique, impressive and memorable, and beyond being a highly effective solar photovoltaic power generation facility (collecting over 630 kW from over 5,000 solar panels generating upwards of 500,000 kWh of energy per year) it also serves as an ambassador to increasing awareness around the value of solar energy serving as a center for activities related to solar energy, ecology and science. Interestingly, the majority of the monocrystalline modules used were production rejects headed to the scrap pile. More images:
I orginanally came across the Solar Ark at Inhabitat.
Another Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld passes and the consumer electronics world breaths a collective sigh of relief. This close to CES, I think everyone is just about exhausted. Though Steve announced a range of smart, cool new gear… those following his keynote presentation seemed a little let down. I believe that this mood was also reflected in Apple’s stock price, which oddly closed lower for the day by 5.45%. Is this the dreaded “iPhone affect”? Was the anticipation and hype around the release of the iPhone too much for Apple to match? Who cares. The fact is that what Apple presented to us today represents the future direction of both personal computing and media.
In the event that you live under a rock, the star of the day was the elegant and minimalist MacBook Air, Apple’s appropriately reductionist take on the laptop computer, stripped down to the important essentials and built for speed. It presents a much more transportable (and beautiful) form factor and clearly shows the influence of the successful experiments with multi-touch from the iPod Touch and iPhone. Apple also offers the opportunity to upgrade to solid state memory, further eliminating moving parts. Interestingly, and not surprisingly given the speculation, the MacBook Air is also a definitive statement by Apple that optical drives are not long for this world, as it does not have one. To my mind, all very cool and a welcomed departure from the now classic Powerbook/MacBook ubiquity. Yeah, I want one. But my MacBook Pro is doing just fine and the reality is that I don’t NEED the MacBook Air. At least, not yet. Though I definitely appreciate what it represents for portable computing, which is to actually be portable.
Back to the pervasive post keynote mood, people are let down today because just about everything released was anticipated by the speculative technology press in detail, relentlessly, over the last few weeks. That, and Apple has set the product launch bar very high - and consumers and market analysts have, perhaps, unreasonable expectations which apparently Steve Jobs did not meet today, given the drop in stock price. Give it a week, the stock market is a terrible indicator of Apple’s Macworld performance.
Incidentally, Steve Jobs also announced today that Apple has moved 4 million iPhones since the launch 200 days ago (do the math). This has garnered Apple a 19% stake in the smartphone market. In 200 days.
See also my post on the iPhone launch from last September.
I have posted previously about the planet Mercury, so I was excited to learn that the robotic Mercury research spacecraft Messenger had sent back it’s first image of the planet, the first since Mariner 10 visited Mercury 30 years ago. Messenger stands for the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemsitry, and Ranging mission.The image above was was taken on January 11 as Messenger approached Mercury (at just over 1 million miles from the planet). Scheduled for Monday is a pass at about 125 miles over Mercury’s surface. The plan is for Messenger to make two more close passes (in October 2008 and September 2009) before settling into orbit in March of 2011 and initiating its mission of mapping the surface of Mercury in detail. And in color.
Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system, and the maneuvering that Messenger will have to do (see graphic below from the Messenger website) to comfortably settle into an observational orbit is complex. It involves the three flybys mentioned to help the craft build up enough speed to match Mercury as it settles into orbit, called “Mercury Orbit Insertion,” or MOI. Messenger will also use a series of trajectory corrections and deep space maneuvers achieved by the controlled firing of its thrusters.
Quick post, but I absolutely had to share this (via A Scanner Darkly), and you have absolutely got to watch it. Very impressive to see this scene come together, and how they did it. The video is the making of the D-Day attack at Omaha Beach is for the BBC television show Timewatch.
The speculation around next week’s MacWorld 2008 was kicked into overdrive over the last 24 hours. Funny, the feelings I get before MacWorld are like the feelings I USED to get before xmas when I was a child. Giddy with anticipation. I guess that makes me a fanboy.
Anyway, the Apple store went down yesterday morning which is what happens when Cupertino adds new and enhanced products. When it came back online, Apple announces new Xserve and Mac Pro 8-core computers capable of supporting eight 30 inch flat panel monitors. That’s cool. But why do that now? See the image above, or at least that is the speculation of the respected gadget and tech blogs around the internet. This could be a great start to 2008, if that’s how you roll.
And to add incredible fuel to the speculative fire, suddenly this was being passed around. Watch it, just for fun.
I feel eight years old again.
Update2 - Now the video is back. Enjoy. What do you think?
Update1 - Adding to the excitement, the video has been taken down. Trust me, it was very, very cool.
Like many things in the latter days of the Soviet Union, the Buran (Russian for blizzard or snowstorm) program was a response. It was a reaction to NASA’s space shuttle and an effort to give the Soviet’s an edge in getting to orbit, though the concept of reusable space vehicles in the Soviet Union predates the American space program. Buran was the most expensive and complicated space program in Soviet history, and one that contributed to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union as its economy fell apart and the political stability of the once proud nation fragmented. The Soviets sunk everything they had into both their response to the Strategic Defense Initiative and into the rekindled space race, and this broke their already fragile economy. It was a gamble that they lost as the walls, both literally and figuratively, began to come down.
Buran was an endeavor that mobilized the best and the brightest in Soviet aerospace, and these were very, very bright individuals. The innovations, accomplishments and firsts of Soviet aerospace are many. This made the Buran progam’s end all the more frustrating as this huge effort was finally canceled in 1993 because of the crumbling Soviet state and the resulting loss of all funding. Sad that Buran only made one flight in 1988, unmanned, as a test. The program never had a chance to prove its value.
Pictured below is the Buran shuttle mounted piggy back on its transport aircraft, an Antonov An-225 which was designed specifically to carry the Buran program shuttles between landing and launch sites, much like the NASA shuttles and their custom 747 transport. The An-225 is still the largest powered aircraft in the world.
The Buran program is often criticized as essentially being a copy of the United States space shuttle, the result of espionage by the Soviets. The similarities are undeniable, and at the project’s inception in 1976 Soviet leaders pushed for the program to copy the American shuttle to maintain parity with the United States, though Soviet aerospace engineers argued for the utility of a smaller reusable shuttle. Superficially, there are incredible similarities between the two craft, as seen below:
In reality, there were many significant differences between the two craft:
- Buran utilized manned & robotic flight, the US shuttle was retrofitted for robotic flight.
- Unlike the shuttle, Buran had no main rocket engines freeing tremendous weight & space.
- Buran’s launcher, Energia, was designed to carry up to 80 metric tons into orbit on its own.
- Energa was also being designed to carry payloads to the moon without Buran.
- Buran could lift 30 metric tons of payload into orbit, vs. the shuttle’s 25 metric tons.
- The thermodynamic tiles of Buran were very different than the shuttle, and thought superior.
On May 12, 2002, a hangar housing the only remaining Buran shuttle, and quite possibly the actual shuttle that flew in 1988, collapsed due to inadequate maintenance and upkeep. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the shuttle.
I recently read through the Defense Department’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap: 2007-2032 and found it absolutely fascinating. We are watching our military evolve right before our eyes in ways that are quite paradigmatic, and will most likely determine the nature of the next century of war fighting. I have frequently posted on interesting developments with respect to robotics on this blog, and have pointed out before the significance of the Defense Department having a cohesive and longterm strategy as it relates to robotics, that the innovation pendulum has already begun to swing from research institutions and private industrial ventures to the military industrial complex. This would not be the first time this has happened, as in the last century, for a time, innovations in aircraft, communications, GPS, and even materials technology was largely driven by military determination, budgetary abundance, and need. The graphic above lays out the unmanned systems capabilities by status and military branch deployment, and it is comprehensive. A similar graphic from five or six years ago would have had about 20% of this graphic’s population. In great detail the report catalogs current capabilities contrasted against specific needs that require further research and development as the investment in unmanned systems technology continues to grow. In effect, it is indeed a detailed roadmap that lays out the developmental action plan to meet the Pentagon’s growing needs for robotic systems of all types. These needs are:
I. Reconnaissance and Surveillance
Expressed as the number one priority, being able to accurately monitor areas of interest in detail while maintaining covertness is highly desirable. Systems in use are already successful, but require standardization and interoperability to better support the increasing diversity of Defense Department users.
II. Target Identification and Designation
Lacking as a current substantial capability, the ability to quickly and positively identify military targets in real-time is a definite need. Combined with reduced latency and improved precision munitions, this capability would further the effort to minimize the risk assumed by “manned systems” while offering better operational effectiveness.
III. Counter-Mine Warfare
Sea mines continue to be a significant threat, and since WWII have caused more damage to US vessels than all other weapons combined. Combine this with the constantly changing IED threat facing soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is a real need for improved and superior mine countering technology. Further development of unmanned systems to identify, mark, remove and or destroy both land and sea mines is a significant need.
IV. Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosive (CBRNE) Reconnaissance
The report expresses two substantial needs related to CBRNE, both the ability to efficiently find weapons and to accurately survey affected areas that have been compromised by them.
The roadmap is the result of more than 18 months of work between the Department of Defense, the services and other military and government agencies. While past reports focused primarily on unmanned aircraft systems, there have been significant successes with test deployments of other supporting unmanned systems and the new document subsequently addresses land-and maritime-operated unmanned systems, as well. It is the DoD’s determination that the integration of all the robotic systems are the future of DoD integrated operations from both a systems perspective and also from a joint-service perspective. Integration and interoperability are keys to maximizing the utility and effectiveness of the various systems discussed. The report goes on to elaborate on a series of goals as it relates to unmanned systems:
- Improve effectiveness of unmanned systems through improved integration & collaboration
- Achieve greater commonality and interoperability of systems, controls & communications
- Develop standards that support safe operations & integration with manned systems
- Implement standardized protective & safety controls for unmanned systems deploying arms
- Utilize rapid prototyping, rapid deployment & real world testing to fast track development
The report is extensive, at nearly 200 pages, but the chart below lays out robotics/unmanned systems capabilities timeline for the next 25 years. As I stated previously, by 2030 the military as we know it will cease to exist and we will have a very, very different operational force.
In the very near future, possibly as close as 2015, oil and gas drilling platforms at sea may be run by robots controlled and monitored remotely by humans safely ensconced somewhere on land. In a laboratory financed by Norsk Hydro, a simulated robotic drilling platform already exists to test systems and to prototype operations. Offshore oil and gas drilling is dangerous not only due to the confined space in which the heavy drilling equipment must operate, but also due to the variable weather conditions that can make human operation of these platforms problematic. And costly. Employing robotics to run the platforms will eliminate the risk to humans of running the platform, and also greatly reduce the cost associated with human operation. The insurance alone will be a tremendous savings. Additionally, robots will be much less susceptible to the extremes of weather and encounter fewer interruptions in operation. Though we’re still drilling for fossil fuels, this seems to be a much smarter and safer way to go about it. The utilization of robotics in an application such as this seems a logical extension of the technology, and a smart combination of automated robotic manufacturing with the use of remotely controlled robotics in high-danger scenarios such as urban warfare.
Clearly, we are very much at the beginning of the application of robotics technology in a diversity of industries, and this is partly because robotics technology is still in its infancy. But the technology advances exponentially, and we will begin to see robotics used in ways analogous to the automated oil platforms like mining, agriculture, firefighting and construction.
