1.
Planet Labs! They’ve already got 28 satellites in orbit and they’re making available Earth imagery for… anything. Developers will be able to get access to the pictures and do stuff with it. Do crops about to become ready change in the infra-red? Probably. Valuable.
They have a gallery of recent pics. Something a bit incredible about the images being so fresh. “2 days ago.”
They’ve raised $65MM so far. A fleet of satellites in orbit for only that. Space eh.
Thanks @ukglo for the pointer over brunch.
2.
Spacelog! Original transcripts of early space exploration, online.
Houston, Tranquility Base here.
Later:
And the–the surface is fine and powdery. I can–
3.
As part of the Google Lunar XPRIZE there are four private companies going to the Moon in 2015. To get the prize they have to land a robot and make it go 500m.
SpaceX isn’t going to the Moon, but they are a private company doing launches and whatnot, gearing up for taking crew too. They’re hiring a farmer.
This is probably because they incidentally own a farm.
But I prefer to imagine it’s because the future is farmers in space, like in The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss, in which Quakers travel in a world-ship called the Dusty Miller to a planet called Reiradi on a journey thats last several generations. The book is mainly about farming and the nature of silence in which the voice of God may be heard. It’s beautiful.
In my notes, I have a list of names of generation ships in science fiction I’ve read. Here is the list:
- Discovery
- Dusty Miller
- Magellan
- New York
- Peerless
- America
- Leonora Christine
4.
In Transformers: The Movie (1986) - which I understand was the final movie role for Orson Welles - there’s a Universal Greeting which expresses Hello even when you don’t share a language.
This is it:
Ba weep gra na weep ninny bong.
Here’s a video. Try it out, let me know how it goes.
1.
Planet Labs! They’ve already got 28 satellites in orbit and they’re making available Earth imagery for… anything. Developers will be able to get access to the pictures and do stuff with it. Do crops about to become ready change in the infra-red? Probably. Valuable.
They have a gallery of recent pics. Something a bit incredible about the images being so fresh. “2 days ago.”
They’ve raised $65MM so far. A fleet of satellites in orbit for only that. Space eh.
Thanks @ukglo for the pointer over brunch.
2.
Spacelog! Original transcripts of early space exploration, online.
Houston, Tranquility Base here.
Later:
And the–the surface is fine and powdery. I can–
3.
As part of the Google Lunar XPRIZE there are four private companies going to the Moon in 2015. To get the prize they have to land a robot and make it go 500m.
SpaceX isn’t going to the Moon, but they are a private company doing launches and whatnot, gearing up for taking crew too. They’re hiring a farmer.
This is probably because they incidentally own a farm.
But I prefer to imagine it’s because the future is farmers in space, like in The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss, in which Quakers travel in a world-ship called the Dusty Miller to a planet called Reiradi on a journey thats last several generations. The book is mainly about farming and the nature of silence in which the voice of God may be heard. It’s beautiful.
In my notes, I have a list of names of generation ships in science fiction I’ve read. Here is the list:
4.
In Transformers: The Movie (1986) - which I understand was the final movie role for Orson Welles - there’s a Universal Greeting which expresses Hello even when you don’t share a language.
This is it:
Ba weep gra na weep ninny bong.
Here’s a video. Try it out, let me know how it goes.