Links for 19-07-2007
Landing on Mars and planting trees there, Iapetus – weird moon of Saturn becomes slightly less weird, odds and the Fermi Paradox, military HUDs, cyborg prosthesis, anti-terror planespotters …
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1 – The Mars Landing Approach: Getting Large Payloads to the Surface of the Red Planet
“Rob Manning of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory discusses the intricacies of entry, descent and landing and what needs to be done to make humans on Mars a reality.”
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“Iapetus is weird. It’s a moon of Saturn, and it’s always been known to be weird. One of Iapetus’s hemispheres is much brighter than the other, for one thing (probably due to collecting material as it orbits the planet).”
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3 – Scientists To See If Martian Trees Are Possible
“Scientists are currently looking at trees living [on] Mexico’s tallest mountain [... they] seem to display a unique ability to survive in the thinner air, which make make them preferable to algae and moss in the long run.”
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“… bringing odds into the discussion of the Fermi Paradox can be an interesting exercise, and Princeton astrophysicist Richard Gott has already given the matter some thought.”
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5 – New head mounted display for use in military training
“… provides pilots with a 360° field-of-regard of out-the-window imagery and systems symbology. It offers better visual resolution than its predecessor, as well as more enhanced image quality and greater transmissivity.” OK.
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6 – Cyborg-style ‘iLimb’ hand a big hit with Iraq veterans
“The iLimb also boasts a range of different grips and configurations, and can rotate about the wrist axis. This allows a user to turn a key in a lock, pick up or manipulate objects between thumb and index or middle finger…”
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7 – UK planespotters to battle al-Qaeda
“Police have formulated a cunning plan to protect Durham Tees Valley Airport from al-Qaeda kamikaze attack – crack teams of vigilante planespotting anoraks …” Good grief.
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8 – RAND Reports: Habitable Planets for Man
“An attempt to make an estimate of the probabilities of finding planets habitable to man, where they might be found, and the number there may be in our own galaxy.” The classic 1964 report as a free PDF file.
