Greetings from New Zealand.
Even places like little ol' Laingholm are helping to push mankind out of the cradle of the Earth into the heavens. My own personal contribution lies in generating artwork for The Artemis Project and TransOrbital Inc.
But people need to know what is going on, and not all of them have the time for heavy-duty aerospace reports. So I created Laingholm On The Launchpad, a slightly irreverent monthly review of what's cooking in the space business. Originally it was published in black & white in a worthy local freesheet called The Roundabout (and still is), though it looked like it needed a bit of colour and a wider readership. So I published it on the web too.
Things progressed, and I started to post news about the rapidly-changing world of nanotechnology which transformed into a news-sheet called Smalltalk. This is a science which is determining how to control matter atom by atom, and the knowledge is changing faster than people's ability to cope with the change. Eventually, we will be able to control matter and create anything in a way that appears to be magic and is essentially free. The social implications are astounding - and more frightening - this will probably happen by 2015.
Things weren't happening fast enough for me, so I became a member of the RepRap Project which is creating a practical replicating fabricator, or fabricating replicator, whichever happens first.
If you want to be notified of new issues, just mail me. Click on one of the links below and let me know what you think:
November 2007 - Chinese moon launch and space dogs<-LATEST
October 2007 - Google and the Race To The Moon 2.0
May 2007 - Delayed shuttle launch, Pink and White Terrace on Mars.
April 2007 - Earthlike planets and space cuisine.
March 2007 - Hail hits the shuttle, hexagons on Saturn.
February 2007 - Slingshot effect and forthcoming launches.
September 2006 - Ansari Lands, first image from Pluto spacecraft
August 2006 - P4 Truss and Japan's near astronaut
July 2006 - Genesis 1 and rain on Titan
April 2006 - The SPHERES, RepRap
March 2006 - Spacex goes splat, Branson with chilli
February 2006 - Space Elevator Special
November 2005 - Kilper special.
October 2005 - Seas on Titan, Japanese asteroid shot.
July 2005 - Icefield on Mars, strange sounds of Saturn.
May 2005 - ISS Oxygen fails, while NASA sails.
April 2005 - Mark Shuttleworth and shuttle delays.
March 2005 - Replicators and nanosputniks
February 2005 - Hubble's lucky escape, nanobacteria, rover heatshield
November 2004 - Closeup on Titan, DART and rover update
October 2004 - Genesis splatted, Branson in space
September 2004 - X-Prize explosions, solar sails
August 2004 - The da Vinci Project, Jules Verne, female taikonaut
July 2004 - SpaceShipOne launches, Cassini-Huygens in orbit.
June 2004 - Phoenix takes flight, Cassini-huygens approach
May 2004 - Robonaut may save Hubble
November 2003 - TransOrbital submission & X-Prize
October 2003 - China launches man into orbit
September 2003 - Brazil caries on
August 2003 - Mars approaches, Brazilian tragedy
May 2003 - SpaceShipOne and Mars landers
April 2003 - Columbia tragedy and nuclear spacecraft
New articles are added monthly, with a break in December and January so our poor little brains can recover. The Launchpad Archives are here.
This I do about every other month, depending on how much cool news
there is around, and how often people have been asking me when the
next edition is coming out.
May 2002 - IBM's tubes, tiny valves and Genetic Engineering <-LATEST
February 2002 - No Bull, HP's chips, DNA Motor
June 2001 - The world notices, transistor wars, laser conveyors
April 2001 - Solar cells, microbivores, microbats and, um, memory
February 2001 - Self-healing plastics,
gold lines, Sandia's baby robot
November
2000 - Tiny diamonds, biomotors, molecule welding
August
2000 - 0.5mm arms, nanotube bearings and tiny tweezers
May
2000 - World's smallest solar cells, Silicon fingers and the
tricorder
March 2000 - Gold And
The Diamond Age - Diamond micromachines, gold, and Zyvex's production
line
February 2000 - Size Does Matter -
Nanotechnology for the layman
Small
Things Are Getting Bigger - Nanotechnology at Y2K
Well, I want to start a community network. Details here. I happen to think that it is about time the Internet was once more about communities and people, rather than vested commercial interests, adverts and unwanted pop-ups. Tto do that we have to reclaim it, and wireless networking is one way to do that.
There are a few other bits and pieces going on chez Olliver, notably the hydroponics and some personal work in nanotechnology. I've got a couple of articles that are still being worked on that show how hydroponics can be done here on Earth, or out there on the moon. I'd suggest the terrestrial version for beginners:
Hydroponics For Lazy Buggers
Lunar
Hydroponics
Transmeta And The
Future Of The Processor
I've also been working on some emergency medical mini-lectures for the Laingholm Fire Brigade, and thought I might make them available to other brigades as an example of how we do things. This is not intended as course material for the general public: I am not an instructor. If you are a member of the public who wants to help, the most useful thing you can do is to learn how to do CPR.
The Laingholm First
Responder's Review Of Oxygen Therapy
The Laingholm First
Responder's Review Of Alcohol And Drugs
The Laingholm First
Responder's Review Of Shock
The
Laingholm First Responder's Review Of Patient Reporting
The
Laingholm First Responder's Review Of Facial Injuries
The Laingholm First
Responder's Review Of Penetrating Trauma
The Laingholm First
Responder's Review Of Burns
Recently I added this list of useful space links to the site after being asked nicely by a teacher.
Did you know that
people have seen Viks website?
`If it come
to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than
truth itself.'
- John Milton