Space and Science news
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on February 18, 2003 at 4:00:19 AM
Late days this weekend, and no school tomorrow!
Rules of the road, for space!
Facial expressions on robots. We're doomed.
China goes into manned space flight.
BBS turns 25. Nice!
Last Ariane-4 ESA rocket successful.
And let me just say this, if the USA doesn't persue manned space travel, other countries will. It is undeniable that we must reach into the stars, and I hope that day will come in my lifetime.
Rules of the road, for space!
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After decades of relatively ungoverned exploration and exploitation, rules of the road may be coming to the final frontier. They resemble some of the norms already long established for travelers on Earth: don't litter and stay in your lane. On Monday in Vienna, a panel of scientists from space agencies around the world will submit to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs recommendations for designing and flying space vehicles to reduce the amount of debris they produce and cut their chances of colliding with one another.
Facial expressions on robots. We're doomed.
Quote
Doctoral student David Hanson of the University of Texas at Dallas displayed K-bot, an artificial human face equipped with "infinite possible expressions," which he said can mimic the human face and respond to sociably to people. Yet K-bot cost only about $400 to build, Hanson told United Press International, although its software sometimes fails to perform. Indeed, one of his attempts to display the device -- at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science -- fell apart when K-bot refused to respond to control. Nonetheless, Hanson said, a human-like face is going to be vital for many robots of the future.
China goes into manned space flight.
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The first three Chinese to enter into orbit will be selected from a group of 12 currently receiving training, the paper said, contradicting previous reports describing a pool of 14 candidates.
BBS turns 25. Nice!
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Everything about the CBBS was 1970s state of the hobbyist's art: a single 173-kilobyte 8-inch floppy disk to store everything, 300-baud modem, 8-bit processor running at a megahertz or so, and -- blimey -- 64kb of memory. Christensen wrote the BIOS and all the drivers (as well as the small matter of the bulletin board code itself), while Suess took care of five million solder joints and the odd unforeseen problem. Little things were important: the motor in the floppy disk drive ran from mains electricity instead of the cute little five volts of today -- things burned out quickly if left on. So the floppy had to be modified to turn itself on when the phone rang, keep going for a few seconds after the caller had finished to let the rest of the computer saved its data, and then quietly go back to sleep. Tell the kids of today that...
Last Ariane-4 ESA rocket successful.
Quote
The satellite belonging to international telecoms satellite consortium Intelsat is to provide telephone, television and Internet services for the Americas, Europe and Africa for the next 13 years.
And let me just say this, if the USA doesn't persue manned space travel, other countries will. It is undeniable that we must reach into the stars, and I hope that day will come in my lifetime.