The Periodic Table of SL Abbreviations and Emoticons - Metaversally Speaking..

Great humorous periodic table of SL abbreviations from Metaversally Speaking blog

***Imported from old blog***

Augustine Commission Summary Report

The Augustine Commission has released its summary report on the future of US manned spaceflight. The key points appear to be:

• Finish Space Shuttle ops as planned in 2011
• Extend IISS to 2020
• Abandon Ares 1 and probably Ares V to develop a new Ares V Lite mid-range booster
• Hand man to LEO operations over to private contractors
• Shift the emphasis from Moon then Mars to "flexibility", which may include both, plus L5, near earth asteroids and even Phobos and Deimos, but no dates

Looking to commercial contractors to do the lift to orbit is a nice step - but:

• The assumption still appears to be that the contractors will use rockets, and not any form of re-usable system (a super Spaceship 1)
• Although there is some talk of in-orbit refueling for lunar/mars injection, it appears to be discounted in favour of the single lift approach
• Although Orion (the new crew capsule - a big Apollo CM) is seen as possibly too big and in need of a trim (everything is "lite" in this report), there still appears to be an acceptance of the "apollo" model rather than going for a spacecraft that only travels orbit to orbit and never has to re-enter

Be interesting to see what extra detail/decisions there are in the final version.

***Imported from old blog***

A 2010 - 2260 Future History Timeline

I've started work on a pet Futurology project called Five by Five - five themes over the next five half-centuries.

As a first element I've just updated my future timeline - mainly focussed on space exploration and AI development. Other issues like poverty. the environment and politics will be added as part of the larger project.

BTW the wiki that the timeline on is one of the reasons there are less posts to the blog - the wiki is a better tool for some of the writing I'm doing at the moment - and easier to use from the iPhone!

***Imported from old blog***