It now costs about US $20 000 per kilogram to put objects into orbit. Contrast that rate with the results of a study I recently performed for NASA, which concluded that a single space elevator could reduce the cost of orbiting payloads to a remarkably low $200 a kilogram and that multiple elevators could ultimately push costs down below $10 a kilogram.

This article provides a good summary of the technical challenges involved in building this thing. Its still a bit scifi but its close...

IEEE Spectrum on Space Elevators

The best way for doubters to control a questionable new technology is to embrace it, lest it remain wholly in the hands of enthusiasts who think there is nothing questionable about it.

Stewart Brand on the environmental movement.

Environmental Heresies

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., July. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- Researchers at Purdue University have new evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.

The technology, in theory, could lead to a new source of clean energy and a host of portable detectors and other applications.

The new findings were detailed in a peer-reviewed paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design. The paper was written by Yiban Xu, a post-doctoral research associate in the School of Nuclear Engineering, and Adam Butt, a graduate research assistant in both nuclear engineering and the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A key component of the experiment was a glass test chamber about the size of two coffee mugs filled with a liquid called deuterated acetone, which contains a form of hydrogen known as deuterium, or heavy hydrogen. The researchers exposed the test chamber to subatomic particles called neutrons and then bombarded the liquid with a specific frequency of ultrasound, which caused cavities to form into tiny bubbles. The bubbles then expanded to a much larger size before imploding, apparently with enough force to cause thermonuclear fusion reactions.

Fusion reactions emit neutrons that fall within a specific energy range of 2.5 mega-electron volts, which was the level of energy seen in neutrons produced in the experiment. The experiments also yielded a radioactive material called tritium, which is another product of fusion, Xu and Butt said.

Table Top Nuclear Fisson

Nasa's homepage for the Deep Impact mission.

Deep Impact: Your First Look Inside a Comet!

This was the moment Nasa's Deep Impact projectile blasted into Comet Tempel 1, more than 130 million km from Earth. The picture was taken by the probe's mothership.

BBC News | Comet impact in pictures

"Strong earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone are certain to occur in the future," states a fact sheet from the U.S. Geological Survey. "There is a 9-in-10 chance of a magnitude 6 to 7 temblor occurring in the New Madrid Seismic Zone within the next 50 years."

New Data Confirms Strong Earthquake Risk to Central U.S.

Step outside any evening at sunset and look around. You'll see a giant moon rising in the east. It looks like Earth's moon, round and cratered; the Man in the Moon is in his usual place. But something's wrong. This full moon is strangely inflated. It's huge!

You've just experienced the Moon Illusion.

This week's full moon hangs lower in the sky than any full moon since June 1987, so the Moon Illusion is going to be extra strong.

Summer Moon Illusion

... "Never, ever talk to the federal government."

] Thomas Campbell Butler, at 63 years of age, is completing
] the 1st year of a 2-year sentence in federal prison,
] following an investigation and trial that was initiated
] after he voluntarily reported that he believed vials
] containing _Yersinia pestis_ were missing from his
] laboratory at Texas Tech University. We take this
] opportunity to remind the infectious diseases community
] of the plight of our esteemed colleague, whose career and
] family have, as a result of his efforts to protect us
] from infection by this organism, paid a price from which
] they will never recover.

The FBI sends a strong message to the scientific community...

] In November 2003, the Voyager team announced it was
] seeing events unlike any in the mission's then 26-year
] history. The team believed the unusual events indicated
] Voyager 1 was approaching a strange region of space,
] likely the beginning of this new frontier called the
] termination shock region.

Voyager 1 Heads Into the Zone

In this dawning era of genomic medicine, the concept of private health insurance, which is based on actuarially pooling risk within specified, fragmented groups, will become obsolete.

This is an interesting article, but I think its idealistic. In the United States we have a bunch of people who beleive that a massive cost sharing system that most (but not all) people are allowed to participate in coupled with a 10 year government vetting process for any new innovation is a "free market capitalist" solution to the problem of healthcare but any effort to extend the system to the small group who are currently shut out is "dirty communism." "Better that people die then we sacrifice our ideals about communism! Here's my $10 copay!"

Changes to the U.S. healthcare system will be driven by what suits the vested interests most. While I commend Bush for working to enable employees of small businesses to obtain health insurance the fact is that the Republican party has been calling health insurance for employees of small businesses "communist" for 10 years. Now that they are also calling small businesses the growth engine for the economy they were sitting on a rhetorical contradiction so big the democrats could have driven a truck through it. Of course they are doing something about it.

It is inevitable that genetic profiling will be used to cull people out of the healthcare system. Most people will not be culled out. Just the really expensive ones. Reasonable objections will be cast as "communist." Most people will not be affected. There will be talk of reducing the rising costs of health insurance but, of course, prices will not actually be reduced.

I think prices will continue to rise until the industry restructures. You'll go to walk in clinics and pay for it. Cost sharing will be limited to catastrophic diseases. Most people won't have access to state of the art treatments.

More people with treatable illnesses will die, but warbling about that is a bunch of liberal bullshit. Its possible that one might argue that as technology advances it no longer makes sense for everyone to have access to top notch care, and that the level of care that people receive will not regress. I have some sympathy for that perspective, but I don't beleive it. I think the level of care will regress. Anyone who gets an expensive and suitably rare condition will be shuffled out of the system by any means available because our society really does not care. The system will move from treating sick people via insurance to providing maintainance to people who aren't sick. There is simply a lot more money in it.

Decoding Health Insurance