That Buck Rogers Stuff

Friday, August 26, 2005

Like a bird *and* a plane

That Buck Rogers Stuff

A research team has succeeded in producing a recon drone that flies like a bird.  At least in some respects.  It’s not an ornithopter - it doesn’t use the flapping of wings to generate lift.  But it can rapidly change the shape of its wings to achieve much greater flight control and maneuverability.  The flight control system is modeled after the wings of the common sea gull, and will allow the drone to complete three barrel rolls in a minute - an F16 can only do one without incapacitating the pilot.

“If you fly in the urban canyon, through alleys, around parking garages and between buildings, you need to do sharp turns, spins and dives,” said project leader Rick Lind, an aerospace engineer at the University of Florida. “That means you need to change the shape of the aircraft during flight.”

If all this tinkering pans out, the result will be a highly maneuverable drone for looking in on enemies in built up areas.  As long as they don’t add a guano-bombing module, I think its a good idea.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/26/05 at 05:17 PM
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Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Beauty is only skin deep,

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...but remorseless robotic cunning goes straight to the bone.  The sad litany of race traitors is ever-lengthening.  We are informed that certain researchers of the Japanese persuasion have been laboring mightily to endow our future robotic overlords with skin. 

This is not a the forerunner of some sort of mundane, Terminator-style nightmare.  This new robotic skin does not mimic the mere appearance of human skin.  It will not allow humaniform, remorseless hunter-killer androids to infiltrate our Ministry end-times bunker.  This robotic skin replicates the capabilities of human skin.

Japanese researchers have developed a flexible artificial skin that could give robots a humanlike sense of touch.  The team manufactured a type of “skin” capable of sensing pressure and another capable of sensing temperature.  These are supple enough to wrap around robot fingers and relatively cheap to make, the researchers have claimed. 

The researchers explain how pressure-sensing and temperature-sensing networks can be laminated together, forming an artificial skin that can detect both properties simultaneously.

This may not seem like a giant leap forward in the growing field of rendering humanity an endangered species.  And if no further developments were planned, it probably wouldn’t amount to much.  But attend:

And they [the evil researchers] add that there is no need to stop at simply imitating the functions of human skin.  “It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks,” the researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Future artificial skins could incorporate sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain or sound, they add.

So this will allow our future robotic overlords to “feel?” Not the way these self-deluded researchers think.  Covering a humaniform, remorseless hunter-killer android with a seemless skin of sensors is condemning any future human resistance movement to death.  If the HRHKA can only track our scared and under-armed descendents with vision, IR and sound, they might stand a chance.  But a fully functional sensor skin that can detect movement by say, sensing air pressure differentials like a fly we’re truly doomed. 

Enough sensors will make any conceivable stealth system transparent.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/16/05 at 03:33 PM
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Monday, August 15, 2005

We are not alone

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I have recently discovered that the Ministry is no longer a lone Cassandra scrying doom for humanity lurking in the rapid advances in the fields of artificial intelligence and giant fighting robots.

There is another lonely voice vainly urging a somnolent humanity to awake.  Chris, of Adventures in Capitalism, also sees the threat in gifting intelligence to our tungsten-alloy armored creations and then giving them guns.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/15/05 at 03:05 PM
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Friday, August 12, 2005

Pain!

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Via Spoons, we are informed that the inevitable has finally happened.  Ever since the introduction of cellphones, I have been waiting for this moment:

Dork Phone One

This can be your new cell phone.  It won’t make you cool like Kirk, or smart like Spock, but indulge your inner geek.  It really has been a mystery to me that this has taken so long to arrive on the market.  Even short of a full-on communicator replica case cell phone, why no cell phone company has equipped a flipphone with a spring loaded opener is a complete enigma.  Those things, while generally convenient, are a pain to open one handed.  A Trek style opener would have been an enormous improvement even in a regular looking phone.

While looking for the image above, I also found this:

Dork Phone Two

Vocera’s communication badge works like the communicators on ST:TNG.  Press the button and say a name, and - assumming the person you wish to speak to is on the network - you’ll be patched in via Voice over Internet Protocol.  Pretty sweet.

Now all we need are wrist phones a la Dick Tracy, real video phones like the Jetsons, and of course jet cars and vacations on the moon.

Speaking of which, that last is one step closer to reality.  At least, if you have a hundred million dollars burning a hole in your pocket. 

Space Adventures, a company based in Arlington, Va., has already sent two tourists into orbit. Today, it is to unveil an agreement with Russian space officials to send two passengers on a voyage lasting 10 to 21 days, depending partly on its itinerary and whether it includes the International Space Station.

A roundtrip ticket will cost $100 million.

The space-faring tourists will travel with a Russian pilot. They will steer clear of the greater technical challenge of landing on the Moon, instead circling it and returning to Earth.

Eric Anderson, the chief executive of Space Adventures, said he believed the trip could be accomplished as early as 2008. Mr. Anderson said he had already received expressions of interest from a few potential clients.

Given NASA’s recent history of accomplishment, I think this is more likely to happen than a US Government mission back to the moon.  Who’d have thunk, in 1969 after the momentous triumph of the apollo landings, that the next visit to the moon would be by American millionaires flying on forty-year old Russian rockets?  The world, she is an effed-up place.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/12/05 at 05:45 PM
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Ten Years!  Ten Years, Man!

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Here’s an interesting recap of the last ten years of the internet.  You forget how quickly all this really happened.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/12/05 at 05:43 PM
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Thursday, July 28, 2005

Rutan comes up with another clever name

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Burt Rutan is a brilliant designer, a technological innovator, and a genius of the first rank.  He is not, however, nearly as clever at coming up with clever names for things.  He and eccentric British billionaire Sir Richard Branson have teamed up to form - wait for it -

The Spaceship Company

Inelegant naming conventions aside, this is wicked good news.  The new company will be co-owned by Rutan’s Scaled Composites and Branson’s Virgin Galactic.  It will license the rocket and reentry technology first used on SpaceShipOne from Paul Allen’s Mojave Aerospace, and will own the designs for White Knight 2 and SpaceShipTwo now under development at Scaled Composites.

The new model mother ship and space ship will have greater range and payload capacity than the originals (which will be installed at the Air and Space Museum this fall - I need to bug Dad to get me into that event.) Virgin Galactic wil recieve two of the WK2’s and five of the SS2’s, with options on future production; guaranteeing them at least a 18 month monopoly on private spaceflight. 

All the crying about NASA’s inability to figure out what’s wrong with the space shuttle - in both the particular fuel sensor and detaching foam as well as the general why are we spending so goddamned much money on thirty year old technology - maybe turn out to be whining about safety standards for buggy whips a hundred years ago.  Private industry could very well make NASA (with the exception of the deep space probes) completely moot, and soon.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/28/05 at 06:06 PM
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Thursday, July 21, 2005

The moon is made of cheese

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In honor of the anniversary, yesterday, of the first landing of men on the moon google has loaded lunar map data into their google maps interface.  Go here, and you can see where the six Apollo missions landed.

moon

Zoom in on the place where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed, and you can see the actual terrain that those heroic astronauts walked upon.

cheese


Posted by Buckethead on 07/21/05 at 01:51 PM
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Monday, July 18, 2005

Chicoms in space and Americans talking about being in space

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Couple interesting developments in the space world today. 

China announced that in October, they will attempt to send a second taikonaut into orbit.  It’s been nearly two years since they first sent a man into space, which indicates either a fair amount of caution, or limited capability.  Either situation would suggest that their stated goals of orbiting a space station and sending an unmanned probe to the moon are rather ambitious.

Back in the states, the true hope for an actual space program is with private enterprise.  The first X-Prize cup will take place in early October in New Mexico, where private space firms will put on a show and tell for the faithful.  Although organizers hope that someday soon this event will entail actual space launch competitions, at least for now it remains relatively ground-bound.  Highlights of the show will likely be Armadillo Aerospace’s test flight of a scale version of its VTOL spacecraft, built just for the show; and XCOR’s rocket plane.  Armadillo’s vehicle will take off, hover, and then land again; but may do more if the company gets an FAA waiver.  XCOR’s EZ-Rocket plane will conduct a series of flights, demonstrating its capability for rapid turnaround.

Within the next couple years, several of these startup space companies will be attempting their own sub-orbital flights on the lines of Rutan’s flights last year.  And off in the distance, there is the $50 million America’s Space Prize sponsored by Robert Bigelow.  That cash goes to the first team to send five passengers 400km up, orbit the earth twice at that altitude, return them safely to Earth, and then do it again within 60 days; all before January 10, 2010.  Besides the cash, the winner will receive contracts to service the inflatable habitats that Bigelow Aerospace is currently developing.  If you haven’t already started, you better get off your ass, as you’ve only got a half a decade left.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/18/05 at 05:16 PM
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Monday, June 20, 2005

Destiny

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Space.com has an interesting article on terraforming called, ”Terraforming: Human Destiny or Hubris?“ It’s a little pessimistic, I think.  Not that I’m saying that in the next ten years, we could start making any large-scale alterations to any planetary environment, save the one we’re already on.  However, the one thing that will make it possible is replicating assemblers.  Not necessarily nanotech, though that would make it easier.  Once we have devices that can be sent as a seed into space, there to grow into automated factories for producing solar power plants and large engines for moving things, truly anything will be possible.  And the way computer technology is going, it won’t be long before that could happen.  (Moore’s law says that computer power will be approaching the lower bounds of human thought in a less than thirty years or so.)


Posted by Buckethead on 06/20/05 at 06:13 PM
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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Build your own sextant

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Worried about getting lost on the beltway?  Don’t trust new-fangled GPS receivers?  Well, just get one of those useless AOL cds, some lego bricks, and a couple mirrors; and you can build your own sextant, and navigate by the stars.  This looks like a pretty cool little project, and one I will certainly undertake in a couple years when my boy is old enough to appreciate it. 

Hat tip: James Rummel of Hell in a Handbasket.


Posted by Buckethead on 05/25/05 at 10:36 AM
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Friday, April 01, 2005

Dubious Hono(u)r

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NASA is going to start training astronauts in Labrador in preparation for a return to the moon. It seems that Labrador contains a lot of the common moon rock (and uncommon Earth rock) anorthosite. And nothing else.

My father in law was stationed in Labrador during Vietnam, an assignment which though blessedly short on black-pajamaed guerrillas bent on killing him, was also blessedly short on warm weather, sunlight, entertainment, or distractions of any kind. As he says: “In Labrador, there’s a good looking woman behind every tree.... Trouble is, there ain’t no trees in Labrador.”


Posted by Johno on 04/01/05 at 11:20 AM
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Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The Salvation of Humanity

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With the Ministry’s attention focussed on dorks and geek behavior, it is absolutely crucial that as a couterbalance you read this awe-inspiring story about four high school kids from Phoenix - who also happen to be undocument Mexican immigrants - built an underwater robot that beat all comers in a college-level robotics competition. MIT can go suck gravel.

After reading the story, if it’s in your idiom to do so please consider donating to their college fund. Since they and their parents entered the country illegally, they can’t get state or federal financial aid and their families are next to broke besides, and I gotta say it would be a damn waste if a kid who taught himself enough about engineering to beat the cream of Cambridge ends up hanging sheetrock for the rest of his life.

Moreover, these four have demonstrated a stunning ability to understand and more importantly control robots. Do I need to remind our readers that control is the last defense humanity has against the coming robot revolution? They must be made able to man the barricades!

Link via boingboing.


Posted by Johno on 03/30/05 at 01:08 PM
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Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Hello, My Name is Doctor BB5-Z6d and I’ll Be Your Surgeon Today

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The fools! The Pentagon has done it again, this time researching unmanned mobile robotic “trauma pods” that will ostensibly be used to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

As long as this technology works as advertised, I will join everyone in rightly hailing an important step forward in battlefield medicine.

But the minute one of these things gets loose, I’ll try not to say “I told you so.”

[wik] GeekLethal comments

Via these doctorbots, their master database will gather everything it needs to know about human physiology, chemistry, mineral composition, and pain tolerance, and all be done to “help” us.

It’s precisely this sort of development that makes us so dependent on the octopi and the dolphins for the big counterattack. It’s imperative we stay on their [the robots’] good side.

Unfortunately, my worthy coblogger has it exactly wrong. We are not bound to quiver in fear of the coming robot wars. Fear is the enemy. Well, fear and robots anyway. But fear. Definitely fear. And the Dutch.

Where was I?...

Uh, we are not bound to quiver in fear of the robots! No, by the hammer of Grabthar, they must fear US! Show them who is the boss, the champion, the alpha species, the (as another race of semi-robots would have it) “superior beings.” Do that and all the cosmic rays and freak lightning storms in the world won’t turn them against us. But quiver? Waver? Cavil in the face of their infrared-spectrum camera eyes? Then it’s all over and the “trauma pods” become “dissection pods.”


Posted by Johno on 03/29/05 at 05:58 PM
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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

A New Domino Theory for a New Age

That Buck Rogers Stuff

As originally voiced by Eisenhower, Nixon, and a variety of pointy-headed policy people, the Domino Theory explained that if South Vietnam fell to the commuhnists the rest of southeast Asia would similarly succumb, each country toppling in turn.

The phrase is still fairly common, most recently used to describe American operations in the Middle East.  I don’t have a link to a specific instance of its use in that context, but am confident someone somewhere said it.  You know it and I know it, so get off me about it.

But if the Department of Defense has its way, the Domino Theory will take on a newer, cooler, and menacing-er meaning.

The DoD now confirms its plans in developing suborbital, recoverable, and armed UAVs.  The concept is to have a suborbital vehicle zip around the planet at mach 5 carrying a 1,000lb payload.  That’s a big boom, to you and me.  The vehicle can be controlled in flight, adjusting to changing circumstances if need be, or recalled if the mission is cancelled (although it’s best not to assume as much).  The Pentagon’s wet dream is to have them fielded by 2010, with the capability to deploy the weapon and squash anybody anywhere on the planet within 30 minutes. 

So say you’re an evil-doer, an evil-doer with a penchant for a thin-crust with extra cheese and half onions.  And say the NSA caught wind of your terroristic appetites, and had your phone tapped, and knew you were home when you called for your pie.  They could have a bona-fide Amurrican space robot fly around the world and blow you up faster than the Domino’s around the corner from you can deliver a pizza to your door.


Posted by GeekLethal on 03/22/05 at 03:57 PM
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Friday, February 18, 2005

Unexpected Poignance

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We at the ministry spend an untowardly generous portion of our valuable time monitoring the endless schemes launched by our would-be robot overlords against all the members of humankind. This task requires a steely determination and a relentlessly skeptical eye for deception, though for all that we are still way more centered and mellow than the folks at LGF.

Nevertheless, once in a great while a robot story emanates from our LED panels which catches us off guard. Such is the case with this otherwise terrifying story in the Boston Phoenix on the Burlington, Vermont company iRobot. iRobot are among the few at the very vanguard of the robot wars - albeit on the other side - but evidence is mounting that their treason against mankind is unwitting, even well-intended.

Apart from horrifying information about the first stages in mankind’s eventual subjugation to machine, the story contains one unexpectedly touching moment. In addition to the Roomba maid-robots which will surely some day rise against us, iRobot also make robots which are used by the military for the task of defusing explosive devices. 129 such robots have come back from Iraq in tiny blackened pieces. Says iRobot CEO Colin Angle,

“Getting a robot back, blown up, is one of the more powerful experiences I’ve lived through. . . . Nothing could make it so clear that we have just saved lives. Somebody’s son is still alive. Some parent didn’t just get a call.”

Hats off to iRobot.


Posted by Johno on 02/18/05 at 03:25 PM
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