Gary W. Longsine - Slashdot User

Submission + - NASA picks 5 firms for private launch to LEO (space.com) 1

Submitted by Gary W. Longsine on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @07:05PM

Gary W. Longsine writes: Five contracts have been awarded by NASA today, to firms exploring different aspects of the effort to develop a private launch industry for people to low earth orbit. Today's winners include:

Sierra Nevada Corp (aka "SpaceDev") for the Dream Chaser
Boeing in cooperation with Bigelow on a capsule design
United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) to explore safety issues related to upgrading Atlas and Delta rockets to human flight safety standards
Blue Origin to build a launch escape system.
Paragon Space Development Corp for "air vitalization" (aka life support).

Will the forecast $6 Billion allocation over five years be enough to inspire private industry to develop not one, but two human rated launch systems (a capsule, and the lifting body Dream Chaser)? NASA clearly wants competition in the private market, so they seek more than one vendor. Will the losers in this competition be able to survive today's announcement, which makes them "distant third" candidates to provide these services?

Submission + - eMail is bankrupt

Submitted by

Gary W. Longsine

on Friday May 25, 2007 @07:45AM

Gary W. Longsine writes: "The Washington Post writes about a Venture Capitalist and blogger, Fred Wilson, who recently declared e-mail bankruptcy, wiping out his inbox and starting over because he couldn't keep up. Spam is cited as one reason. It seems that too much spam is not the only problem that Mr. Wilson has with email. Another curious tidbit mentioned in the article is that Donald E. Knuth gave up email on January 1, 1990 after using it since 1975. Is eMail dead?"

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