There's a Google Tech-Talk that got posted a few days ago, which is not specifically about this patent, but may shed some light on what they have in mind: The Distributed Camera: Modeling the World from Online Photos

With a period of just 7 days, you have to wonder how fast the little bugger is moving. Could be a significant fraction of C...?

Speaking of farmland, there's a farmer in Virginia who claims his permaculture techniques could sequester all the CO2 emitted by humans since the industrial revolution in less than 10 years. His name is Joel Salatin and the technique he invented is called mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization. In the 50 years the Salatins have been farming this way, they've added 8 inches of topsoil to their land (this is how the carbon is sequestered). Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollan gives a brief introduction to the farm in this video among others.

Similar to Prof. Albert Bartlett's lecture on exponential growth (above), Chris Martenson's Crash Course is an expansion on the same theme which ties it all together with the debt-money system, peak oil, etc.. Well worth the time.

It is a solved problem. Masten Space Systems is just one of several companies that seem to be doing better than the Morpheus project.

While that would indeed be better than the current fleet of water-cooled reactors, I'm skeptical of sodium-cooled IFRs, given their less-than-stellar track record over the years. IMHO, molten salt is the best way forward. LFTRs have gotten some attention lately, and I'm all in favor. But there's another MSR variant being developed now that is specifically designed to use our existing waste stockpile as its fuel, called WAMSR (waste annihilating molten-salt reactor).

Um, didn't NASA have a "'dragon' style vehicle concept" about 45 years ago? I mean SpaceX is hardly shy about their gratitude for "standing on the shoulders" of NASA's previous achievements. And the basic "teardrop" form-factor is hardly original or unique among re-entry vehicles. But now that I think about it... what are you talking about? What "dragon-style" vehicle have they got? Are you talking about Cygnus? That's not like Dragon, it's just for cargo.

I look forward to Orbital's successful launch to ISS this fall, but to claim they're ahead of SpaceX in manned spaceflight is just wrong.

Posting here more for visibility than relevance... Here's NASA-TV's video of the announcement. There's actually a bit of interesting Q&A at the end. (Total run-time ~20min.)

You've got a point there, it was a nice surprise that ATK missed out while SNC stayed in, despite ATK's lobbying throw-weight on Capitol Hill. Then again, like OSC they didn't really have much to go on, just a plan for stacking an Ares top stage on a modified SRB. I guess they went with Boeing because their vehicle is still sorta connected with SLS development. (I have my doubts whether SLS will ever actually fly, but that's another matter.) All in all, I'm happy with the way this turned out.

Uh, well... $3.2B dollars that we know about anyway.

LOL!!

Godspeed, Godwin!

I saw this on reddit today. Sorta takes your thought to its logical conclusion.

The three lucky "winners" were widely expected to make the cut, so this isn't such big news. I wish they could have continued supporting some of the other contenders a while longer, but if they have to pick three, these are the obvious ones. Even so, I'd rather they had let Boeing pull its own weight on developing the CST-100/Orion. They've got deep pockets, after all, and don't really need the help from Uncle Sam. I'd have preferred they give a boost to Blue Origin or Orbital Sciences instead, but hey, this is better than nothing.

Not sure how much of an "edge" we've had for the last 30 years anyway, unless you think spending $1bil per shuttle flight with only 20-ton payload capacity was a good idea.