heinleinblog

Via Livescience.com:

The concept of a superlens came originally from Sir John Pendry in 2000 - although Milton and his colleagues Nicolae Nicorovici and Ross McPhedran conducted closely related studies back in 1994 - and the concept has been studied extensively. Yet no one had realized the cloaking properties until they were discovered through the research by Milton’s team.

The concept of a superlens cloak is a long way from a workable device, but the integrity of the mathematical concept has sent some experimentalists into the laboratory to try and turn the theory into reality. So far, the groups working in this area are not ready to publish papers, but they’ve accomplished enough to keep trying.

“We’re along way off from the Star Trek* device but some of the experimental results achieved so far are surprising and exciting,” Milton noted.

*RAH was a Star Trek fan, making this on topic.

This video of a prototype [tag]powered armor[/tag] rig in use is just too cool to be believed. [tag]Juan Rico[/tag] from [tag]Starship Troopers[/tag] would approve. There’s no direct mention of Heinlein, but there ought to be.

Hat tip: Pinkerton Park.

Remember the ornithopters that welcomed Zeb, Deety, Jake and Hilda to Barsoom in “The Number of the Beast?”

Well, they’ve made one that really works:

Yesterday Dr. James DeLaurier, an aeronautical engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, fulfilled a lifelong dream, seeing his manned mechanical flapping-wing airplane, or ornithopter, fly — a dream first imagined by Leonardo da Vinci.

And with the successful flight DeLaurier has been lucky enough to touch what many describe as the Holy Grail of aeronautical design, achieving a place for himself, his team of volunteers and students in aviation history.

The flapper, as it’s affectionately known, sustained flight over about a third of a kilometre for 14 seconds at about 10:20 a.m. before being hit by a crosswind and almost flipping over, damaging the nose and front wheel on the runway at Downsview Park.

If you read into the article, you find that the flapping wings get a boost from a rocket. I dunno. Strapping a rocking to an ornithopter kinda sounds like strapping a warp drive to covered wagon.

Privately-funded ventures into space was the theme in many of The Master’s works, shich “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “Destination: Moon” and others. And the Heinlein Prize was created to encourage private ventures into space. So it seems natural to give the very first prize to this man:

The trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust have announced the first winner of the Heinlein Prize: Dr. Peter H. Diamandis. Dr. Diamandis will receive a $500,000 award, a gold Heinlein medallion and a replica of the Lady Vivamus sword (from Heinlein’s novel Glory Road) at a ceremony to be held in Houston, Texas on July 7, 2006.

Dr. Diamandis is a leader in the area of commercial space exploration. In the past twenty-five years he has started more than a dozen space organizations. In 1980, he founded the Students for the Exploration and Development in Space; it is now the largest student-based space organization in the world. The best-known of these is probably the X Prize Foundation; its $10 million Ansari X Prize helped to jumpstart the commercial spaceflight industry.

[snip]

“There is no question that Heinlein’s work has inspired and driven me during my career. His novella, The Man who Sold the Moon, is my favorite story. In fact, I flew it as personal cargo aboard SpaceShipOne during the winning Ansari X PRIZE flight on October 4th, 2004.â€? (The Heinlein Prize)

This article from TCS Daily makes a good case for a government-paid space elevator made out of carbon nanotubes:

Most importantly, however, space elevators could save us from going the way of the dinosaurs. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid probably crashed into the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Space elevators would greatly facilitate the detection and deflection of earth-bound asteroids. Space elevators would also make it far easier for humans to colonize space and thus survive any world-destroying disaster. As Robert Heinlein said “The earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”

[tags]space elevators,carbon nanotubes[/tags]

This article in Live Science says that the parasite called Toxoplasma may play a role in Schizophrenia. The writer evokes The Master to make a point:

Are parasites like Toxoplasma subtly altering human behavior? As it turns out, science fiction writers have been thinking about whether or not parasites could alter a human being’s behavior, or even take control of a person. In his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, Robert Heinlein wrote about alien parasites the size of dinner plates that took control of the minds of their hosts, flooding their brains with neurochemicals. In this excerpt, a volunteer strapped to a chair allows a parasite to be introduced; the parasite rides him, taking over his mind. Under these conditions, it is possible to interview the parasite; however, it refuses to answer until zapped with a cattle prod.

We’re getting closer, but we’re not producing “Starship Troopers”-style armor yet:

Of course, the Roughnecks in the title would be the ones from either Robert Heinlein�s book Starship Troopers, or the cartoon (Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles), which was made after the horrible Paul Verhoeven film, not the film itself, which depicted the soldiers without powered armor (love Dina Meyer, but hated the movie, so I had to get that in). The real-life idea here is technology to let soldiers carry up to 220 lbs. in backpacks over all types of terrain. A design team at the University of California, Berkeley, under the lead of Professor Homayoon Kazerooni has completed work on their first prototype, Bleex 1 (Berkeley Lower Extremity EXoskeleton) and are working on Bleex 2.

Can you imagine Rico and the Roughnecks strolling through Fallujah? Sweet. But all we’ve got now is a prototype that will help Poor Bloody Infantry haul more stuff.

And I do agree: Dina Meyer is hot. Denise Richards looks like she could snap in two at any moment (not to mention the lousy taste in men she has). And that hack Paul Verhoeven should fall into a crevice and never crawl out as far as I’m concerned.

Rico,Starship Troopers,Heinlein,powered armor,Fallujah,Dina Meyer,Denise Richards,Paul Verhoeven

Live Science once again uses Heinlein as a reference in this article about theoretical robotic design.

Heinlein also pursued similar ideas a bit earlier in his 1940 novella Waldo, his story about, well, waldoes - he originated the concept as well as the term. A waldo is a remote manipulator that mimics human motion at larger and smaller scales. For example, waldoes that looked like mechanical hands that were six feet across could bend steel girders, as well as “tiny pixy hands, an inch across” used for miniature work. In his later work Time Enough for Love, he wrote about “ultramicrominiature waldoes” that could be used for gene surgery.

Roboticist Hans Moravec conceived of a more “fractal” version of this idea; a “bush robot” (also called a “Fractal branching ultra-dexterous robot”) that literally had manipulators on its manipulators on its manipulators… you get the idea.

Courtesy of this article about the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA):

One such DARPA effort - Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation - could transform today’s infantry “grunts” into high-tech supersoldiers similar to those imagined by Robert Heinlein’s 1959 science-fiction classic Starship Troopers. The $40 million program - already midway through its six-year run - is experimenting with power suits meant to increase by orders of magnitude the toughness and lethality of the average foot soldier.

DARPA’s plans call for the exoskeleton to be built around a “haptic interface,” a series of sensors distributed throughout the suit to read and amplify even the smallest of human muscle movements. According to the agency’s Web site, soldiers encased in this futuristic battle armor will be able to “handle more firepower, wear more ballistic protection, carry larger-caliber weapons and more ammunition, and carry supplies greater distances.” They might also be able to jump to extreme heights and even fly short distances. Peter Parker’s “spidey sense” is tingling just thinking about it.

The exoskeleton research has met with at least a few notable, if modest, successes. At the University of California (Berkeley) Human Engineering Laboratory, a team of researchers has built what might ultimately become the legs of tomorrow’s robo-warrior. According to the lab’s Web site, the “Lower Extremity Enhancer” gives its owner the “ability to carry weights on the order of 120 pounds over any sort of terrain for extended periods of time without undue effort.”

New Mars photos astound scientists

The white stuff is believed to be frozen water that remains throughout the Martian summer.