MarsBlog.net

I don’t really think this means much with regards to any competition between China and the US in space, but it’s an interesting historical event nonetheless: China’s first woman in space arrives home

This is amusing:

China’s space programme is several decades behind that of the US and Russia – which launched manned space stations in 1973 and 1971, respectively – but Beijing’s determination to boost its programme comes as the US is cutting back its investments in space. The US retired its space shuttle fleet last year.

China, by contrast, has invested about $6bn in space programmes since 1992 to catch up with its counterparts, raising eyebrows in military circles in Washington.

So, they’ve spent in the past twenty years about what NASA spends on human spaceflight in a year or so. It would seem they’re getting more for their money.

And note that FT appears to suffer from the premise that the only space program is a government space program – I guess after reading that the US (i.e.: NASA) is cutting space investment and has retired its spacecraft fleet we are supposed to infer that the US is retreating from manned space. Umm…no, not so much.

Posted on June 29th, 2012 under Chinese Space, Space Commerce. Tags: China, Liu Yang, taikonaut, Tiangong. Comments: 2

This time, it’s building a permanent presence on the Moon.

Just add money.

Posted on June 16th, 2012 under Russian Space, Space Policy. Tags: Russia. Comments Off

One of the fictional technologies we imaged for In the Shadow of Ares is the “wallscreen”, a wallpaper-like display of practically unlimited extent which interacts with the characters’ mobile agents and other computing systems. In the scene where this technology is introduced, Amber’s mother is playing an ambience video loop of a tropical beach, which her father observes is probably too realistic for healthy morale. In other scenes, smaller data windows are displayed as needed over whatever is currently used as the background.

So, imagine my surprise this afternoon when I walked past the Microsoft store at the local mall and saw a wallscreen of sorts along all three interior walls of the place, with a tropical beach video wrapped around the whole thing in correct perspective, and with small application windows floating over the video here and there?

I didn’t react quickly enough to get a photograph of it before it switched to headshots of some unkempt programmer on a plain orange and white background, but it was very impressive and almost what we had in mind. One big difference was that the screen was only about three feet high, and at eye-level on the wall, rather than being floor-to-ceiling. It was also segmented (obviously made up of a number of individual display panels about 3′ x 6′, each of which had a tiny bit of vignetting) rather than being visually seamless.

But those are really just quibbles with what is still an emerging technology. This is 2012, and we’re already seeing technology that Carl and I posited for 2051. That’s pretty cool.

Posted on June 16th, 2012 under Entertainment, In the Shadow of Ares, Science Fiction, Useful Technology, Writing. Tags: display, In the Shadow of Ares, life imitates art, Microsoft, technology. Comments Off