De Doc’s Institute

The rest of you might as well not enter, because I am going to win this contest…

I hope I hope I hope.

This is… wondrous. I have lived to see the day when such a contest is even plausible.

Many thanks to Rod Schaffter for telling Jerry Pournelle about this… and to Jerry, for sharing!

Here’s a thing of beauty… deep in space:

And no, I wasn’t having a NPR moment when I chose the title; it’s not only evocative, it’s accurate.

The Hubble Space Telescope’s latest image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002.

Beautiful.

Spacers’ thanks to NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, about whom more at the link above; and to Paul, over at Wizbang!, for this unexpected delight on my blogroll feeds.

Oh OOK, Professor!

(Trufen will understand.)

(If none of the above makes any sense at all, just humor the poor sci-fi geek who grew up in the 60s; he’ll get better presently.)

The Second Spacefaring Age starts today.

YES!

Would that Heinlein could have lived to see this.

In a few short hours, if all goes well, the X prize will be won by Bert Rutan’s Scaled Composites team.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Da Vinci project vows to launch in October as well, keeping faith with the hundreds of volunteers who have given of their time. And good on them, says I.

But once this marvelous Rocket Summer finishes, what happens?

There’s already talk of a new prize… 50 million dollars to the first group to build a private ship capable of making the jump to orbit and back, with a competition similar to the Ansari X prize. Meanwhile, the X prize foundation is poised to start a series of competitions and exhibitions, for an “X Prize Cup”.

And Sir Richard Branson …

One to go.

Flight X1 has landed at the Mojave Spaceport. The flight was marked by a severe roll some seconds after ignition; however, after engine cutoff, the spacecraft stabilized, and the rest of the flight appears to have been nominal.

IF the roll problem is easily correctable, flight X2 is scheduled next week… and the Rutan team will have won the X-prize.

More to follow…