You will be surprised when you see which big screen movie stars started out in soap operas. In fact they are some of biggest stars in Hollywood. They all had to start somewhere.
A safer generation of airships, otherwise known as dirigibles, is trying to usher in a low-carbon future for air cargo
he notion that airships represent the future of air cargo is being revived by a new generation of entrepreneurs some 75 years after a catastrophic fireball brought the industry to a screeching halt.
Far safer than the Hindenburg, whose tragic 1937 docking remains an icon of aerospace gone wrong, these modern airships are a hybrid of lighter-than-air and fixed-wing aircraft. They can loft enormous payloads without requiring the acres of tarmac or miles of roadway necessary for conventional air and truck transport. And they do so at a fraction of the fuel and cost of aircraft.
Airships "give you access and much larger payloads at much lower costs," said Peter DeRobertis, project leader for commercial hybrid air vehicles at Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics and Skunk Works division in Fort Worth, Texas. "It's also a green aircraft; you're not polluting."
Today's airships could conceivably be used to transport everything from ripe pineapples to heavy industrial equipment direct to the customer. Shippers, for example, could roll tractors, backhoes, and road graders onto a 50-ton hybrid vehicle at a factory and roll them off at the job site, easing logistics and cost.
A handful of companies have prototypes under development. Lockheed has an airship in the works dubbed SkyTug that should be commercially available by late 2013 with a range of 1,000 nautical miles and a 20-ton payload. The 50-ton Skyfreighter is expected to follow in late 2014.
The industry's future is initially aimed at leapfrogging the conventional cargo transport infrastructure, freighting goods where highways and airports don't exist – Canada's frozen north; China's western frontier; remote parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. No airships are commercially available for cargo transport there yet. But once established on the frontiers, experts say their versatility, cost and fuel advantages should allow airships to penetrate mature freight markets like the United States.
Optimistic entrepreneurs have made similar predictions before, however. Germany-based Cargolifter AG burned through some $500 million without building so much as a prototype before it went belly-up in 2002.
But today's technology is much improved from earlier, flawed approaches. And the potential market is vast.
In northern Canada, for instance, some 4 million square miles of real estate lie north of rail lines and all-weather highways, and warming winters are making seasonally-constructed ice roads less reliable. Historically, ice roads were open three months during the winter. Today, they barely see 30 days of operation per season.
"The cost of building all-weather gravel roads in northern Manitoba is $1 million per kilometer," said Barry Prentice, a transport economist at the University of Manitoba. As permafrost melts and drains away, the road slumps – an increasing problem in the rapidly warming Arctic and sub-Arctic. "If transport airships were available, then it would be hard to justify any roads."
The world has changed radically since the era of the Hindenburg; today's satellite weather forecasts, GPS-tracking, radar, computer-controlled avionics and in-flight management systems have paved the way for this new wave of hybrid airships.
New aerodynamics and structural design, as well as advanced materials technology and advanced engine design have made for more durable airships capable of longer, more autonomous flights.
"Now you don't need a mooring mast or a ground crew," said Lockheed's DeRobertis. "With the addition of the air-cushioned landing system, you can land anywhere. The onboard computer tells the aircraft what to do and it does it."
The Hindenburg was carrying flammable hydrogen in part because the U.S. government had banned the export of helium to Nazi Germany. Today's airships carry helium.
"And if all the engines quit, it won't come down like an aluminum tube," said Gil Costin, chief executive officer of Millennium Airship in Bremerton, Wash., which hopes to have a fleet of airships in service by 2020. "So the risk of losing cargo in a bad scenario is greatly mitigated by using this aircraft. If it has to ditch, it can land right on the water."
Numerous flaws doomed Cargolifter, added Costin. Like the Hindenburg, guy wires had to steady the ship while cargo was offloaded; though it never landed, the aircraft needed considerable facilities on the ground to deliver goods. "Operationally, Cargolifter went totally against what we in the hybrid airship business are trying to do – that is, alleviate the need for airship infrastructure wherever the cargo is to be offloaded," he said.
While sanguine about airship's ultimate prospects, University of Manitoba's Prentice cautioned that a fair amount of growing lies ahead of the industry. But that growth could rearrange international trade. "Canada is not buying tomatoes from Cuba now, but with an airship, they could fly right over the U.S. directly into Canada," he added.
"We may always carry freight in the bellies of passenger jets," Prentice said. "But in a fully mature hybrid market, airships should replace the rest of the fixed-wing cargo fleet."
Bruce Dorminey is a science journalist and author of "Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets beyond the Solar System." DailyClimate.org is a nonprofit news service that covers climate change.
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
Psi, or the paranormal, denotes anomalous psychological effects that are currently unexplained by normal causes. Historically such phenomena eventually are either accounted for by normal means, or else they disappear under controlled conditions. But now renowned psychologist Daryl J. Bem claims experimental proof of precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) “of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process,” as he wrote recently in “Feeling the Future” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Bem sat subjects in front of a computer screen that displayed two curtains, behind one of which would appear a photograph that was neutral, negative or erotic. Through 36 trials the subjects were to preselect which screen they thought the image would appear behind, after which the computer randomly chose the window to project the image onto. When the images were neutral, the subjects did no better than 50–50. But when the images were erotic, the subjects preselected the correct screen 53.1 percent of the time, which Bem reports as statistically significant.
Bem calls this “retroactive influence”—erotic images ripple back from the future—or as comedian Stephen Colbert called it when he featured Bem on his show The Colbert Report, “extrasensory pornception.”
For many reasons, I am skeptical. First, over the past century dozens of such studies proclaiming statistically significant results have turned out to be methodologically flawed, subject to experimenter bias and nonreproducible. This assessment by University of Amsterdam psychologist Eric-Jan Wagenmakers appeared along with Bem’s study in the same journal.
Second, Bem’s study is an example of negative evidence: if science cannot determine the causes of X through normal means, then X must be the result of paranormal causes. Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and an expert on assessing paranormal research, calls this issue the “patchwork quilt problem” in which “anything can count as psi, but nothing can count against it.” In essence, “if you can show that there is a significant effect and you can’t find any normal means to explain it, then you can claim psi.”
Third, paranormal effects, which are rarely allegedly detected at all, are always so subtle and fleeting as to be useless for anything practical, such as locating missing persons, gambling, investing, and so on. Fourth, a small but consistent effect might be significant (for example, in gambling or investing), but according to Hyman, Bem’s 3 percent above-chance effect in experiment 1 was not consistent across his nine experiments, which measured different effects under varying conditions.
Fifth, experimental inconsistencies plague such research. Hyman notes that in Bem’s first experiment, the first 40 subjects were exposed to equal numbers of erotic, neutral and negative pictures. Then he changed the experiment midstream and, for the remaining subjects, just compared erotic images with an unspecified mix of all types of pictures. Plus, Bem’s fifth experiment was conducted before his first, which raises the possibility that there might be a post hoc bias either in running the experiments or in reporting the results. Moreover, Bem notes that “most of the pictures” were selected from the International Affective Picture System, but he does not tell us which ones were not, why or why not, or what procedure he employed to classify images as erotic, neutral or negative. Hyman’s list of flaws numbers in the dozens. “I’ve been a peer reviewer for more than 50 years,” Hyman told me, “and I can’t think of another reviewer who would have let this paper through peer review. They were irresponsible.”
Perhaps they missed what psychologist James Alcock of York University in Toronto found in Bem’s paper entitled “Writing the Empirical Journal Article” on his Web site, in which Bem instructs students: “Think of your data set as a jewel. Your task is to cut and polish it, to select the facets to highlight, and to craft the best setting for it. Many experienced authors write the results section first.”
OV-105, as Space Shuttle Endeavour is designated by NASA, is due to fly into space for the final time . Here's everything you need to know about this remarkable machine, which was put together from spare parts.
Her Name
Endeavour isn't the American English spelling of the word for a concerted, earnest attempt to reach a lofty goal--because OV-105 isn't named for the word. Instead she's named in honor of HMS Endeavour, the British ship which took James Cook on his first voyage of discovery in 1768. The main objective of the voyage, tasked by the Admiralty and the Royal Society, was to travel to Tahiti to accurately observe a transit of Venus across the Sun--a measurement that gave scientists an incredibly accurate measurement of the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Endeavour was actually named as part of a competition among school kids in the U.S., and her name was popularly suggested, accounting for almost a third of state-level entries.
The Spare Part Space Shuttle
Endeavour, the newest shuttle, wasn't a planned addition to the fleet. Her existence is due to the Challenger tragedy, which changed NASA forever but left a gaping hole in its space launch capabilities--vital for the construction of the International Space Station.
Hence the contract to build Endeavour was awarded in July 1987, and she was put together largely from spare parts that had been constructed as part of the manufacturing process of Discovery and Atlantis, pieces of body that had been built at the same time as these vehicles (to minimize cost exposures) in case of any mishap. It took just five years to construct and test the vehicle, and she flew for the first time on May 7th, 1992.
Her Tech Specs
Endeavour is 122.1 feet long, with a wingspan of 78 feet and empty of fuel and payload she weighs 162,000 pounds (in comparison a 737-400 aircraft, typically used for long-range intracontinental flights, is 119.5 feet long, with a 94.8 feet wingspan and an empty weight of 73,000 pounds).
She's powered with three Rocketdyne Block 2A Space Shuttle Main Engines, each of which weighs over 7,000 pounds and is capable of pushing with 400,000 pounds of thrust (the engine of a 737 typically pushes at around 20,000 pounds at take-off). When lit, the engines burn at over 3,000 Celcius, and if their fuel pumps were used to pump water instead of fuel, each could drain a typical swimming pool in 75 seconds.
Endeavour's cargo bay is 15 feet wide by 59 feet long, and she can lift up to 55,250 pounds of cargo into orbit.
Endeavour's Advanced Tech, Ahead of the Rest
Because she was built last, the companies responsible for constructing Endeavour could include more advanced technology.
This included a 40-foot drag chute for landing, halving the rollout distance, better avionics, better nose wheel steering, better auxiliary power units to drive her hydraulics, an external airlock enabling docking to the ISS, stronger wings and a lighter-weight construction. These advances were later included in re-fits of the rest of the fleet.
The Hubble Space Telescope Mission
Perhaps Endeavour's finest moment was the very first mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope--a vital mission to repair a manufacturing flaw that seriously limited the telescope's usefulness. Launching December 2 1993, the shuttle flew up to the HST's high orbit at 321 nautical miles in what was the most complex, and one of the riskiest shuttle flights undertaken to date, with a 1 in 150 calculated chance of catastrophic failure due to collision with space debris or micrometeorites.
Five spacewalks were needed to repair the telescope's various systems, which was a record at the time. The repairs were a complete success, and transformed Hubble into one of the most remarkable tools for astronomy ever made.
Today's Unique Payloads
Flying in the shuttle today are a couple of unique pieces of hardware.
The first is the AMS2, the second Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, based off a flight of an earlier prototype, which is a billion-dollar experiment to detect such neat things as antimatter, dark matter and strangelets (a physics oddity: particles made entirely of strange quarks). It's all about hard science to solve some big puzzles, and will function on the outside of the ISS for up to 10 years.
The second unique payload is 13 Lego sets, flying as part of the Lego Bricks in Space program--a scientific and educational experiment which will see astronauts building various models and seeing how they react in microgravity. The results will be shared with schools when they begin in September.
Where She'll Rest Up
When she lands after the current mission, Endeavour will undergo a major dismantling program to render her safe to be displayed in a museum--in this case the California Science Center in Los Angeles, although the shuttle's Canadarm robot arm is being removed for display in an undecided location in Canada.
Microsoft doesn't receive a lot of accolades in the press--or even much coverage at all--but when it comes the company's legal team, Microsoft sure does deserve a round of applause.
Though Microsoft has struggled to tap into the mobile market, it's actually earning money hand over fist from an unlikely source: Android smartphones. According to Asymco, which cites a report released today by Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, Microsoft earns $5 for every HTC phone sold that runs the Android platform. The Steve Ballmer Tax, as we'll henceforth call it, stems from a patent settlement with HTC over intellectual property infringement that requires the smartphone maker to pay Microsoft a pretty hefty fee for each unit sold--a settlement that is bringing Microsoft Paul-Allen-megayacht-loads of cash.
Asymco estimates that with 30 million HTC Android smartphones shipped, Microsoft has made up to $150 million worth of revenues from the settlement. That's roughly five times as much income that Microsoft has earned from its own Windows Phone licenses, Asymco adds.
What's more, Pritchard says Microsoft is filing suits against other Android phone makers, and could see a similar patent settlement with potentially even higher fees per device (between $7.50 to $12.50).
The lesson here: If you can't quite get your own mobile efforts off the ground, try suing the crap out of your competitors.
As NASA settles for a tried and trusted solution, Britain's plans for a next-gen Space Shuttle inch forward with the Skylon: A black, future-tech spaceplane that absolutely looks the part.
The Skylon has, in a way, been some three decades in development already--stretching almost back to the days of Apollo, curiously also the model for NASA's future spacecraft. But European and British regulators have just now given approval to its design. The European Space Agency panel, which had been evaluating it, was mainly investigating the rocketplane's unusual engine, around which the entire wicked-cool craft is based. Now they've given it a thumbs-up, it may ultimately turn into the most sci-fi-looking spaceship we've ever flown.
Back in the 1980s, just as NASA was gearing up its Space Shuttle efforts, British Aerospace and Rolls Royce put together their own spaceplane concepts. Unlike the Shuttle, HOTOL was to be a "single stage to orbit" vehicle, taking off from a runway like an aircraft, then powering itself into orbit--a completely different and un-rocket-ish solution from the British boffins. It didn't work out, for numerous technical, financial, and political reasons and the EU, with Britain's input, concentrated on its successful Ariane series of conventional rocket launchers instead. But the designers behind HOTOL's novel engines kept the project ticking over, and eventually evolved it into Skylon.
The Shuttle ended up being a fairly conventional rocket. Sure there's that asymmetric design, with the winged Shuttle strapped to the side of the fuel tanks, and sure she's probably the most sophisticated single machine we've ever built. But ultimately to get into orbit she has to push against gravity, burning millions of pounds of fuel in rocket engines. The liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel sits in the iconic orange fuel tank, and has to be hauled halfway into space along with the Shuttle--one of the reasons those solid fuel boosters are strapped to it is to help with this task.
Skylon does it differently. Her engines, dubbed Sabre, also burn liquid hydrogen and oxygen, but they actually breathe in that oxygen from the air itself--cooling it, extracting it from the other gases, and then compressing it before firing it through the engine much as the final stage of the Space Shuttle's engines do.
Why do this? It sounds complex, weird, and just like those white-coated bespectacled Brits to be eccentric in their thinking, but it has one huge benefit: You don't need to haul thousands of pounds of oxygen with you. In one swoop, the entire spacecraft is simplified. No boosters (to leak and explode, as in the Challenger disaster), no external fuel tank to fracture or shed foam at hypersonic speeds (which led to the Collumbia disaster): Just a sleek single-bodied spaceship that looks like an SR 71 Blackbird spyplane and a Naboo starship from Star Warsgot together in a pub over some good beer, nipped off to a hotel and produced a mutant baby.
Skylon promises to be able to haul up to 15 tons of cargo into space, which could of course include a smaller interplanetary human-carrying spaceship among more normal satellite payloads. Because it's an entirely re-usable design, with less fuel needed to be processed and stored (so the ground support is simplified), and without hundreds of tons of super-high-tech equipment thrown away on each flight, the cost of getting it into space could be many times cheaper--as low as $40 million a flight, compared to the current cheapest solution with SpaceX at around $60 million for Falcon 9 rockets.
Will we see it soon? Skylon's makers say the engines and aircraft body are possible using current technology. Now it depends on getting business interest, money and government backing to develop and test the engines. No mean feat. But if it all comes together (and it's a huge if, but remember all those EU government payments), Skylon could become the Concorde of space.
Let's face it, we've all had the urge to run screaming down the freeway shirtless and about Star Wars, or even on occasion vote for Ralph Nader. But no one so perfectly encapsulates the extravagant entertainment lifestyle as Tracy Jordan, whose name isn't the only blatant similarity to the real-life Tracy Morgan.
Disco Stu doesn't advertise, but Disco Stu doesn't stop the beat, either. The hardest partyer of Springfield (who isn't a depressing drunk Like Homer or Barney), both Disco Stu and Duffman could always be counted on as the town's resident party monsters, regardless of their crippling, crippling inner pain. But unlike Duffman, there's only one Disco Stu.
What he lacks in size, the bawdy imp of the Lannister family more than makes up for in his voracious appetite for both women and wine. Even the threat of "flying" or the brink of War for Westeros can't keep Tyrion from enjoying the fruits of his wit, standing with a good party, or a enjoying good roll in the hay.
Life of the Party: Vic Sahay and Scott Krinsky of Chuck
We didn't say you'd be comfortable at the party, or that Jeff would be wearing pants. We only say that in timeless musical performance, drug-induced stupor, or simply a marathon game of Missile Command (because let's face it, we're all nerds), Jeff and Lester can always be counted on to play their part for both the party and the partial restraining orders they inevitably find themselves with.
It's Hollywood, bitch! Whether at Eminem or Johnny Drama's party, things will find a way to spin out of control for Vincent Chase and crew. But who hasn't dreamed of the chance to fight Eminem?
The celebrity lifestyle of partying can run the gamut of success, like the range between Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter and Mark Wahlberg in The Happening. No, if only Vincent Chase could talk to animals.
You wish your dad were as fun-loving as Randy Marsh, who in true South Park form will take any opportunity to either overreact wildly to the latest disaster or drink himself silly at the slightest good news. Unfortunately, like your dad, he will inevitably end up in his underwear in front of your friends and neighbors. Thanks, Dad.
Life of the Party: Aniz Anisari of Parks and Recreation
Whether manning the desk opposite Leslie Knope, down in the Snakehole lounge or running Entertainment 720, Tom Haverford is your go-to party mogul, throwing the illest bashes and dopest, most exclusive EVENTS this side of...rural...Indiana. Dream big, guys.
After a lifetime of service with the Navy SEALs, anyone would want to take it easy down in Miami bedding women, downing drinks, and wasting away in Margaritaville, let alone being Bruce Campbell. And even with all the regular action he finds himself in, Sam Axe's many colorful shirts party hard enough for all of us.
There's a very good reason we chose Peter Griffin over one of Family Guy's many peripheral characters, or even Homer Simpson for the role of patriarch party animal. No other parent shows such reckless abandon for the welfare of his family in the name of a good gag, or a legendary binge.
And considering these traits lend themselves to Brian and Stewie as well, we have to wonder just what Seth MacFarlane does when he's not producing all animation ever.
Life of the Party: Steve Buscemi of Boardwalk Empire
Like a boss, it 's Nucky Thompson's job to keep the party going during the prohibition era. And no gangster, politician, corrupt cop or bug-eyed vision problem could keep the boozing baron of Boardwalk Empire from living life in style with his cronies and lovely ladies alike.
Who among us hasn't over-indulged at an office party, exposed ourselves to our superiors, or lit ourselves on fire in a fit of dancing? Truly Meredith Palmer is a benchmark for us all when it comes to the drink and the art of office politics.
Life of the Party: Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell of Saturday Night Live
The spiritual successors to Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's "wild and crazy guys," neither rejection nor being kicked out of the club could keep the undefinable love of partying away from the Butabi brothers, who could easily keep the beat going at a local nursing home after hours.
And really, what is love anyway, if not an celebration of life. What is love?
Whether dancing around in diapers, snorting heroin with the Virgin Mary, or Tyler Durden-ing your way through the afterlife, you all everybody couldn't' come close to partying on par with the hippest, hobbitest island castaway this side of Middle Earth.
Love 'em or hate 'em, the Jersey Shore cast have had more than their fifteen minutes of fame, and will live on in the countless spin-offs that follow their hard-partying, fist-pumping plague across Italy. And for one, we hope that the endless stream of fistfights, blowouts, and won-won juice never stops flowing.
Ah, how times have changed. Were we to work in the '60s, I could finally stop receiving all those dirty looks for constantly swilling scotch at my desk. But my writing tools aside, the boys of Mad Men throw epic parties in and out of the office, and the body parts will fly, whether in sexy or horrifically bloody context.
Well, she literally was a party animal. She had claws and brainwashed the people of Bon Temps into throwing orgies left and right, all as a means to raise the bull-god Dionysus. Wait, I thought this was about vampires? What the hell are they drinking on this show, other than TruBlood?
Life of the Party: Lucy Lawless and John Hannah of Spartacus: Blood and Sand
They partied themselves to death. And by that, we mean enslaved and abused their gladiators to the point of season one ending in a bloody mess of carnage and debauchery, but Jupiter's c@ck, could those Romans throw one hell of a soiree. And don't forget, the party's over when Lucretia returns in Spartacus: Vengeance!
I wonder what Viva Bianca would have to say on the subject...
Life of the Party: John de Lancie of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Well if you were omnipotent, you probably couldn't resist springing random mariachi bands, re-enacting the tale of Robin Hood, or generally taking any opportunity to make merriment and irritate the stuffiest of Star Trek captains, or even Patrick Stewart himself.
And yet tragically, we may never live to see a J.J. Abrams take on the godly jester of the latter alphabet. Who's the real party pooper?
Life of the Party: The gang from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
You couldn't always count on the gang to remember their parties (they do own and abuse a bar, after all), but despite their many issues with drug and alcohol abuse, the group from Paddy's has managed to throw some epic blowouts, from dance parties to Halloween ragers, put perhaps the most memorable was the Russian Roulette parties Frank would put on in the basement.
It's just not a party until there's at least one smoking hole in someone's head
He has to party! Lest the alcohol stop flowing, his circuits fail and the ol' five o'clock rust appears and he power down forever. Of course, a particular affinity for Gloria Estefan doesn't hurt either.
Honorable mention goes to Hedonism-bot, who as his name suggests...well...yeah.
Life of the Party: Michaelangelo of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!
Never mind how ooze would transform turtles into intelligent beings who practice martial arts in a sewer, or obey an equally perplexing sewer rat. And never you mind why they wear masks to hide their identities...being giant turtles. The real question for the raddest dude of all the Turtles was, where could the pizza be found, in what direction the surf was going, how high the five was, and how to successfully cow a bunga. What the hell is a "bunga," anyway?
Much as we're glad to have Steve-O alive and well after his many recorded brushes with substance abuse, we can't help but miss the hard-partying, wasabi-snorting, eyeball-leeching Wildboyz of old, or at least something to tide us over until the inevitable J4ck4ss.
Life of the Party: Charlie Sheen of Two and a Half Men
Art more than imitates real life, folks. And neither Goddess, nor Vatican assassin, nor the most powerful of warlocks or the bloodiest of tigers could stop either Charlie Harper, or Charlie Sheen, from winning all there is to win in the bachelor lifestyle of the rich and famous.
Life of the Party: Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother
Keeper of the Bro code and second in awesome-ness perhaps only to Neil Patrick Harris himself, Barney Stinson has proven himself a master of the party time and time again with an uncanny ability to make any occasion...you knew it was coming...legend...wait for it...DARY.
