Pall Agamemnides - Slashdot User

Submission + - Blue Origin building DC-X lookalike

Submitted by

rrohbeck

on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:37AM

rrohbeck writes: "The New York Times has a story on what Blue Origin, [Amazon.com founder] Jeff Bezos' space company is up to after his Texas land grab. A couple of Flash videos show a short successful test hop of the "Goddard" test vehicle.

The Goddard has a science-fiction sleekness. Videos show the craft taking off and landing again with a loud whooshing sound. In one view, one of the nine rocket nozzles jitters as it maintains the ship's attitude. Goddard resembles the DC-X, another vertical-takeoff-and-landing craft under development in the 1990s by McDonnell Douglas for the Defense Department and NASA until the government pulled the plug.
And in case you're an aerospace engineer, they're hiring."

What Does Your Dead Man's Switch Do? 310

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:30AM from the in-the-event-of-doom dept.

LqdEngineer asks: "How many of you use or have used a Dead Man's Switch designed to perform some action if you don't check in for a certain amount of time? Recently, I decided to put one together using MySQL and some cron jobs, but I wanted to see what others have their switches set up to do in the event you fail to check in. E-mails to loved ones? Send encryption keys to friends/family? Hate mail to your boss? Has anyone ever been on the receiving end of the results of such a system?"

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