MAIN ARTICLE: Air Force to Launch Space Plane Next Year.
Poll Results: The poll yesterday had the lowest turnout since Feb. Scroll down for the latest results, click subscribe for more space news.
Star Trek: In the News. Researchers Invent Eye-Tracking Eyeglass Display, Star Trek-Style.
Yesterday's Comments: "I knew thirty four and one-half years of reading hard science fiction would come in handy someday." - Moody Loner
Today's Poll: Should the U.S, Air Force have orbital capability?
TAKING THE HIGH GROUND:
U.S. Air Force Aims to Launch Space Plane Next Year
"It has been a long haul to the launch pad, but the U.S. Air Force and Boeing are gearing up to loft the X-37B – an unpiloted military space plane, SPACE.com has learned.
Tucked inside the shroud of an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), the winged craft will be boosted out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, orbit the Earth and then make an auto-pilot landing in California.
The X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) is currently on the launch manifest for January 2010, explained U.S. Air Force Captain Elizabeth Aptekar, who works in media operations for the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.
"The vehicle is ready for the shipping process, which includes minor close-out activities," Aptekar told SPACE.com. "The vehicle will ship at the conclusion of the pre-ship activities ... which should be approximately 60 days before its launch date."
Years ago, the X-37B was originally slated to be deployed from the payload bay of a space shuttle. But following the tragic Columbia accident, the craft was transferred to a Delta rocket, and then later geared to be sent aloft via the Atlas V EELV."
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SUGGESTED READINGS:
Boeing X-37
Boeing X-37 / X-40
POLL RESULTS:
Researchers Invent Eye-Tracking Eyeglass Display, Star Trek-Style
"It may not be quite up to the spec of Geordi La Forge's visor on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but researchers in Germany have come up with an eyeglass-mounted display that's so freakily high-tech you may need only to move your eyes to control a PC.
Of course, head-mounted displays (HMDs) aren't particularly new--Star Trek, any number of other sci-fi films and the designers of the new helmet for F35 pilots (pictured) have pursued the idea to various extremes, and you can already buy versions for iPod movie viewing. But one issue that seems to often get overlooked is how to control a computer while you're wearing an HMD.
That's where the new interactive data glasses from the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems come in. The German scientists have been working to make HMDs interactive, rather than passive display systems--the innovation has been to build a set of glasses that tracks the wearer's eye movements. By combining an eye tracking sensor and an OLED-based projection system onto a single CMOS chip, the 19-millimeter-by-17-millimeter product is now small enough to perch on the hinge of a set of modified glasses. From there it projects the display image directly onto the wearer's retina and monitors the position of the user's eyeball."
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YESTERDAY'S COMMENTS:
"Leroy Chiao who is on the Augustine Panel is taking comments on the future of NASA if any of you would like to comment here is the link: Augustine Human Spaceflight Review" - NellaSelim
"The Centauri system is nearly 26 trillion miles
That's a lot of Jupiters
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...
String theorists have determined a "warp drive" like propulsion system would be possible but would require you to convert the entire mass of Jupiter to energy in order to reach the speed of
light" - JML9999
"The most literal "kick-ass" drive would be the Orion concept (the original one) of having a succession of thermonuclear bombs explode immediately behind a "pusher plate" on the space craft. The variation on this that I liked the most was anti-matter-initiated fusion using a little antimatter and a large stock of deuterium pellets.
Wacky, but in principle doable." - Joffan
TODAY'S POLL:
Controling the high ground:
A poll was conducted (see "Semper Fly: Marines in Space.", 'Americans in Space', Mar 03, 2009) on the U.S. Marines having suborbital capability. This poll will be about the U.S. Airforce having orbital capability. This program is unmanned but I would imagine it could/would be upgraded for human spaceflight.
Read other NASA and Space diaries on DKOS.
