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Many, many bloggers have already posted about Friday’s flight of SpaceShipOne — the first privately-funded space ship to reach 40 miles in altitude, or 212,000 feet. It definitely looks like Burt Rutan, creator of the ship, has a good shot at claiming the X Prize, the $10 million award for the first private company that can send three people to 100 kilometers high, return them safely to Earth, then repeat the feat within two weeks.
So you’ve probably heard about this. But you may not have seen the utterly mind-frying video that was taken by a tiny webcam on the corner of the craft’s wing. CNN has it online here (go halfway down the page), and I totally urge you to check it out. You see the ship’s engine blasting away for 30 seconds or so, then shutting off, whereupon the craft spins around in an atmosphere so thin that you can see the blackness of space, and the sun looking more like a huge star than, well, the sun. Far down below you see the Earth, and though I suspect some of this effect is due to the webcam’s fisheye lens, it looks awfully rounded — precisely the sort of view you’re accustomed to seeing from the Shuttle.
All of which is why this video so thoroughly blew me away. I’ve known about the X Prize for years, and expected someone to win it pretty soon. But it was only after seeing this video that I realized just how nutty it was that a private company would — with a budget laughably tinier than NASA’s Shuttle payments — send people into space. This video has something of the emotional effect you get when you see the video from the Saturn V launch that blasted the first humans at the moon. It seemed so crazy and outlandish that, when I first clicked on the CNN footage, I thought I was looking at at CGI animation of the SpaceShipOne flight — not the real thing.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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