The Art Neuro Weblog

Show Down For The Ansari X Prize
And it comes to this. The frontrunner, SpaceShipOne launched another test-flight yesterday , loading up with the mass of 3 passengers. On the way up, it did run into some trouble:

The target was 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) altitude – a sky-high goal required
by the X Prize Foundation of St. Louis, Missouri in order to vie for the cash prize. The altitude is generally considered to be the threshold of space.

The unofficial altitude reached was 358,000 feet. That's 67.8 miles (109.1 kilometers). An earlier report put the altitude at 330,000 feet.

On the way up, paceShipOne went into an unexpected roll, twirling at a pace of several times per minute. Melvill shut down its main engine sooner than expected. The spinning "does not appear to be scripted maneuver," according to the official narration of the flight released after the SpaceShipOne had landed. The craft started spinning a minute after burn started, officials said.

"Uh oh, uh oh, he is in the roll it appears at this point," the transcript reads. It is not yet clear what the problem was, however Melvill did indeed turn the spaceship into an airplane, as planned, and then glided down. SpaceShipOne returned later in the morning and landed on the same runway.

Meanwhile, the Canadians with the Da Vinci Project and their Wild Fire VI craft are vowing to continue to the finish line even if they are behind Scalar's SpaceShipOne.

The Wild Fire spacecraft would be launched from a balloon from an altitude of about 80,000 feet before firing the rocket into space. Feeney himself will pilot its maiden space shot.

"Our time frame is still October," Feeney said. "We will still fly and do so as
soon as safely can be done."

Feeney's online comments were in response to a project follower hoping to glean more specifics about the da Vinci effort and clarify rumors swirling around the team's ambitious Oct. 2 launch date and subsequent flight delay.

"Some people have suggested our throwing our hat in was a Golden Palace media ploy," Feeney wrote in his response. GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, is the title sponsor for the da Vinci Project, whose official name is the GoldenPalace.com Space Program, powered by the da Vinci Project. "This is a serious effort with a lot of people working long days, seven days a week."

So as Cricket commentators like to say, "It's all happening here today".

It's Life Jim, But Exactly As We Know It
Up in Norway, the boffins have been doing some field testing of equipment designed to detect life. Apprenetly, it works.

The Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) is a collaboration of
geologists, biologists, engineers and even artists, who recently lugged their instruments into the Bockfjorden region on Svalbard, an archipelago about 900
miles above the Arctic Circle. The team chose the site for its geological similarities to Mars.

"This is a reasonable analogue of Mars," said Pamela Conrad of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and one of the AMASE members. Although technically an Arctic desert, Conrad thinks that this area of Svalbard may more closely resemble the conditions on the red planet when it had more water.

The long-range goal is to send some version of the AMASE instruments to Mars to look for signs of past or present life. If there are Martian organisms similar to those on Earth, then the AMASE team is confident they could detect them."If we had one microbial cell, we would find it," Amundsen said.

'Amundsen' was the name of the guy who beat Scott to the South Pole, was he not? :)

- Art Neuro