SpaceshipTwo Cool: Virgin Galactic's Offplanet Tourism On Track For 2015

A mere quarter million dollars and you too can join the ranks of the few brave adventurers who have slipped the surly bonds of Earth.  If the missions prove successful, rocket planes may become the hot new transport technology.

That's what Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space initiative claims.  As CNN reports, the company and their flagship transport vehicle, SpaceshipTwo, are poised to reach for the stars starting at the end of this year.  SpaceshipTwo, which is currently being assembled at a secure desert facility in California, comfortably seats six passengers (all with a personal window on the bulkhead and ceiling.)

The ship hitches a ride up to the edge of the atmosphere on a powerful plane called WhiteKnight Two.  Then, the craft separates from the plane, the rockets are fired up, and SpaceshipTwo reaches an altitude of 60 miles high, travelling at over three times the speed of sound (2,500 m.p.h.)

Passengers will then experience an estimated six minutes of micro-gravity heaven.  As Virgin Galactic states, "Life will never quite be the same again."

Drone Sweet Drone: FAA Approves First Commercial Drone In US

It looks like oil security, once again, will be used as the main excuse to make a strong and questionable societal statement...except this one is over civilian privacy, and on (well, above) American soil.

As reported by Gizmodo, drone manufacturing company AeroVironment was given the go-ahead this week for a commercial drone to patrol skies over Alaska as a means to guard BP oil pipelines. The drone will also supposedly participate in "some 3D-mapping, wildlife monitoring, and the occasional search-and-rescue mission."

While it is noteworthy that the first commercial drone has been licensed as a way to do a job that is both difficult and dangerous for humans, there is no telling where the FAA will stop regarding the industries allowed to fly these aircraft, or what they are allowed to do while airborne. Armed with cameras, sensors, and sturdy craftmanship (the military-type AeroVironment Puma AE used in Alaska is nearly five feet long with a nine-foot wingspan), it will be intriguing to see how drones at home will aid or aggravate American lives.

Aerodynamics: From Spaceships To Soccer, NASA Examines Airflow

With even the astronauts on the International Space Station spending some time playing micro-gravity soccer in honor of the World Cup, NASA has joined the fun. Though they did not aid in the design of the current World Cup soccer ball, scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in California turned some of its technology to sports in an aerodynamically-analyzing effort to see what makes a soccer ball superior.

As reported by NASA, Rabi Mehta, their chief of the Experimental Aero-Physics Branch at Ames, claims, “Sports provide a great opportunity to introduce the next generation of researchers to our field of aerodynamics by showing them something they can relate to." Using a wind tunnel, a 17-inch water channel, fluorescent dye and blacklights, the air-flow patterns were assessed at different speeds regarding their interactions with the soccer ball.

The Brazuca, aka the latest soccer ball to feature at the World Cup, has been specially crafted to allow smoother air-flow than the previous spherical target, the Jabulani. Complaints from goaltenders about the Jabulani "knuckling" and creating an unpredictable flight path led to a re-assessment of the ball's design. The improved six-panel Brazuca design should allow for more precise flight patterns.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Steve Swanson take on German astronaut Alexander Gerst in the Above-The-World Cup

Ad Astra Per Asparagus? Meteorite-Based Farming Techniques May Feed The Future

We may have the spacecraft power to get to Mars and beyond, but what will our pioneering astronauts eat when they've exhausted all the freeze-dried fruit and packaged proteins they've brought there? With long-duration space travel becoming a possibility, one "astroecologist" is assessing the means to create space-sustainable sustenance...in meteorite dust.

Michael Mautner, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher, told Vice magazine that even barren extraterrestrial environments could feasibly harbor enough nutrients to grow bacteria, fungi, asparagus or potato plants. The phosphates, nitrates and water present in asteroids or meteorites attest to this, and Mautner has experimented by growing asparagus plants in ground-up meteorite dust, similar to soil, with some success.

However, his plans have one major issue to surmount: "The conditions outside Earth are presumably anaerobic {sans oxygen}—that's an order of magnitude harder to do," Mautner said. "But, if we can find things that can grow in extraterrestrial materials under Earth conditions, you can start to talk about it. We can maybe start to use those materials in artificial, oxygen-containing environments."

Eventually, a "ranking system" of the different types of space "soil" could be tested on, and the preferable mixtures of adaptable microorganisms and extremophilic elements could be sent out via rocket in attempts to terraform new worlds.

Bots Making Shots: World Cup To Be Kicked Off By Mind-Controlled Exoskeletal Robot Suit

Thursday's World Cup action in Sao Paulo, Brazil, will capture the world's attention with its athletic spectacle, but will also feature a fascinating technological innovation. The kickoff for the storied soccer tournament, which is expected to be viewed by billions worldwide, is slated to be made by one of eight paralyzed young adults who have been training for the event in a specially-designed robotic exoskeleton.

New Scientist reports that there is "a phenomenal amount of technology within the exoskeleton, including sensors that feed information about pressure and temperature back to the arms of the user, which still have sensation."

Lead robotic engineer Gordon Cheng, working with a team from the University of Munich, Germany, has developed the means for a skullcap of electrodes to transmit signals from the wearer's brain to a computer interface which then instructs the exoskeleton to kick the ball.

No word on if the machine makes vuvuzela noises upon goal completion.

Simulating Space Undersea: NASA Braves The Waves

NASA announced yesterday the launching of two new missions designed to train astronauts for work on the International Space Station and other spaceflight initiatives. However, instead of the flying, the crew will first be floating.

The "aquanauts", as described by a NASA press release, will live and work 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, 5.4 nautical miles off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, as part of an initiative called NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.) According to NEEMO project manager Bill Todd, “It is critical that we perform science applicable to NASA’s exploration goals in a high-fidelity space operational context. The extreme environment of life undersea is as close to being in space as possible.”

The crew will include astronauts from NASA, the ESA (European Space Agency), the CSA (Canadian Space Agency), and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.) They plan to experiment on habitability, a variety of health issues, tele-mentoring skills (used for learning via imagery when an expert cannot be physically present) and extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) that use the oceanic environment to simulate different types of low gravity.

NEEMO aquanauts rollin' in the deep.

Dropping The Ball On Watching Us All: NSA's "Complex" Software Mysteriously Deletes Info Before Lawsuit

The National Security Agency, who have been arguing accusations of massive breaches of privacy due to their supposed care about protecting the very national security their name entails, have turned out to be rather insecure after all...thanks to the apparent complexity their own software.

The Washington Post reports that the NSA was told to retain information for a lawsuit from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), intended to assess the depths of the NSA's invasive espionage efforts, but that the information was difficult to retain due to the need to shut down certain software elements where the data would be contained. Deputy director Richard Ledgett claimed that trying to safely retain all of the information required for the lawsuit would be deleterious to the agency, and would create "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."

The EFF maintains that some of the information required for their lawsuit, which deals with the unlawful and downright creepy Big Brothering of American citizens, has already been destroyed. The NSA, meanwhile, maintains massive operational facilities' worth of workers and computer systems in which any of their valuable peeping-tom discoveries could have been "lost."