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Outer Space – there’s so much of it to visit, but it’s rather pricey to get there. Nearly 30 years after the last manned mission to the moon, private enterprise seems the best hope for making sci-fi dreams come true. In fact this week marks an important step as the SpaceX “Falcon 9″ rocket will launch their “Dragon” spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into orbit to dock with the International Space Station. Join me as I looks to the skies…

Photo Credit Space X: “Dragon spacecraft on the recovery ship after becoming the first commercial spacecraft to reenter from orbit, in December 2010.”

I write short articles as well as long feature “explainer” articles on topics including: Google Android Smartphones and Tablets, National Broadband Network (NBN), Space, Civil & Military Aviation, Ebooks and the Publishing Industry, Electric cars, Technology augmenting human capabilities etc for Geare Magazine. The editor of GEARE has kindly permitted me to post articles here after the magazine issue the article was printed in has passed its shelf life. I have added updates where new information is relevant.

Star Trekkin’ Across The Universe

Star Trekkin’ across the universe … that’s where space-watchers in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s hoped we’d be by 2012. For once, science (or at least its application) has lagged behind expectations – the only way of planethopping today remains in your imagination, or by watching sci-fi reruns on TV.

Those wildly optimistic hopes and dreams had their context in the 20th century inventions of satellite technology, giant rockets that could send monkeys, dogs and people into orbit around the earth and on missions to the moon. Not to mention the spectacular growth of commercial aviation after World War II and the supersonic Concorde, which had a cruising speed of Mach 2.04 (2170 kilometres per hour).

Yet we have regressed in terms of space flight and civil aviation standards in the last few decades. The last manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17, was in late 1972. The final supersonic flight for Concorde landed in 2003. NASA’s final space shuttle mission was in 2011, after which NASA has been faced with the humiliating prospect of paying the Russian space agency slightly over US$60 million for each Soyuz spacecraft seat they use going roundtrip to the International Space Station (ISS) until the SpaceX Dragon or another American commercial spacecraft is ready for duty. In the interim Russian-built Progress cargoships will be used to supply the ISS with essential materials.

Private or government?

We are at a key juncture for the future of human aviation and space flight. Back on Earth the combination of costcutting airlines and periodic government obsession with security is making flying increasingly frustrating and uncomfortable, all pat-downs, scans and shrinking legroom.

As for space flight, the decisions made by governments and private corporations in the second decade of the 21st century will decide whether manned spaceflight will be relegated to a display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum or evolve into serious plans to build a successor to the ISS and send astronauts to Mars.

Construction of the International Space Station, successor to Salut, Skylab and Mir, has barely been completed in time for the end of the Space Shuttle program, and the ISS won’t last forever either. The NASA budget signed into law by President Obama in late 2010 extends the mission of the ISS until 2020. There is speculation that this could be extended until 2028, but nothing is certain.

In the midst of all this gloom and doom, enter Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Google, putting millions of dollars on the line in a bid to reignite sparks of innovation and enthusiasm in manned space flight and scientific rover missions.

If they succeed, within a few years US astronauts will be going on missions to the ISS in a SpaceX Dragon. The world’s rich will be able to take sub-orbital joyflights in Branson’s less-imaginatively named SpaceShipTwo. And the eyes of the world will able to view footage transmitted from the moon by a privately-funded lunar rover.

Introduction to SpaceX

Regular readers will remember Elon Musk as the founder of Tesla Motors, which I have written about before in a feature article about electric cars. Musk gained his fortune from selling Paypal and has since invested large, along with venture capital partners, in Tesla Motors and SpaceX. While other private companies like Masten Space Systems, Armadillo Aerospace and XCOR Aerospace are competing to build
NASA’s next heavylift vehicles to carry cargo and astronauts tothe ISS, SpaceX is in the lead position.

Photo credit SpaceX : Dragon spacecraft in hangar at Launch Complex 40 at the U.S. Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral
Under President Obama’s bold and controversial new space policy, NASA abandoned the troubled Constellation program which aimed to develop the next generation of spacecraft and booster vehicles to replace the ageing space Space Shuttle fleet. Instead it offered seed funding and the possibility of lucrative service contracts to entrepreneurial commercial spaceship manufacturers able to provide workhorse vessels for transport to and from the ISS.

In this way NASA could focus on flying to Mars and so-called “near-Earth” objects. So far this gamble has seemed to pay off. SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on December 8th 2010, followed by manoeuvres in orbit for the Dragon and a successful splashdown back on Earth.

SpaceX Founder Elon Musk says Dragon is designed to carry seven astronauts at a time to the ISS at a cost of US$20 million a seat, almost 70% less than what the
Russians are charging US astronauts per ISS seat in their Soyuz transports. But there is still a way to go. Transporting humans to space involves a great deal of safety testing.

This week’s launch is SpaceX’s second demonstration flight under a 2006 Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with NASA to develop the capability to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station.

To date, SpaceX has received $381 million for completing 37 out of 40 milestones worth a possible $396 million set in that agreement. Completed milestones include the first test flight in December 2010, during which SpaceX became the first commercial company to send a spacecraft to low-Earth orbit and recover it successfully, something that only three governments – the United States, Russia and China – have ever done.

Once SpaceX has successfully demonstrated Dragon’s ability to berth with the space station, it will begin to fulfill a 2008 contract signed with NASA for a minimum of 12 flights carrying supplies to and from the space station. Without the space shuttle, Dragon is the only spacecraft in the world capable of returning significant cargo from the space station.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic has its roots in Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne concept team, headed by Burt Rutan, which won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize for the first non-government organisation to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.

Richard Branson partnered with Scaled Composites to build two Five SpaceShipTwos (SS2), the first pair of which are called Enterprise and Voyager in homage to Star Trek, and two WhiteKnightTwos. On May 4th 2011, SS2 VSS Enterprise demonstrated its unique reentry ‘feather’ configuration for the first time, rotating the tail section of the vehicle upwards to a 65-degree angle to the fuselage.

For several years Branson’s Virgin Galactic company has been taking deposits from aspiring and rich joyriders keen to stump up the full ticket price of (approximately) US$200,000. For that princely sum a ticket holder will get to experience a flight to about 110km above Earth, including a six-minute period of weightlessness at the apogee (the highest point of the flight’s orbit).

The 110km altitude was not chosen arbitrarily, but because the internationally-recognised boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres(62.1 miles), known as the Kármán line. Space starts here!

In reality, of course, the atmosphere simply gets progressively thinner the higher you go above Earth; the 100km line was chosen because above that altitude a spacecraft has to fly faster than orbital velocity in order to derive sufficient aerodynamic lift from the atmosphere.

Google Lunar X Prize

The Google Lunar X Prize is a follow-up to the Ansari X prize. Launched in 2007, it offers the largest international incentive prize of all time – US$30m – in a prize-money pool to encourage competition among private investors in space science and exploration, with the new challenge being to build a lunar rover that successfully launches, lands and operates on the surface of the moon.

The lion’s share of prize money – US$20m – will go to the team whose rover can travel more than 500 metres on the lunar surface and transmit high-definition images and video back to Earth. There’s US$5m available for second place, and a further US$4m in various bonuses, such as getting your rover travelling more than 5km, or making a precision landing near an Apollo site. A US$1m diversity award will be awarded for diverse use of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

NASA Voyager I and II Spacecraft: Our Boldest Explorers Ever?

If these attempts fail, then mankind’s greatest space achievement may be recorded in the history books as the Voyager I mission – launched on September 5th 1977 and still going strong, soon to enter interstellar space and travelling where no man (or no one) has gone before, and perhaps ever will – more than 17.4 billion kilometres from our sun.

NASA Voyager photo credit: NASA

In 1977, two unmanned spacecraft, designed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were launched on reconnaissance missions to the outer planets. Separate Titan/Centaur rockets launched Voyagers 1 and 2 in September and August 1977 toward Jupiter.

In September 1977, Voyager 1′s camera looked back toward the home planet for a first-ever glimpse of the Earth and its Moon in a single photo.

NASA Voyager view of earth and moon. photo credit: NASA

To find out more read NASA Voyager I and II Spacecraft: Our Boldest Explorers Ever?

ABC TV DVD Voyage to the Planets

The risk that some European countries especially Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain may default on their debt and President Obama’s attention on earthly matters like high unemployment, broken US economy and the upcoming US Presidential election make manned missions to Mars seem unlikely this decade or the next.

However if you’ve always dreamed of catching a rocket to the red planet Mars, marveling at the rings of Saturn and exploring the Kuiper belt past Pluto, watching the recent ABC TV documentary series Voyage to The Planets on DVD is the next best thing.

I especially enjoyed the narration by well-known Australian actor Richard Roxburgh (Blue Murder, Rake, Sanctum) and the series is a great way to introduce space travel to younger members of your family.

This article was originally published in GEARE Magazine issue #66. It is “digitally reprinted” here with permission from the editor. I have added updates where new information is relevant.

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

This is a list of articles, photography and other media work I’ve done as a freelance photographer/journalist during April 2012. I intend to continue writing freelance articles and do more radio interviews in the future. They will be linked to on a regular basis.

Online Reviews & Analysis

ABC Tech & Games on 30th April 2012 I just passed 100,000 dollars in Google earnings. But unlike Nokia, I’m not resting on my laurels. This was purchased by the ABC as a syndicated article from my blog where it was originally published as Levelling Up In Life, Avoiding Complacency.

Print Media Articles

Issue 69 of GEARE magazine will be available at Australian newsagents soon and on Zinio for iPad/Android tablet subscribers at the same time. 17 pages of the magazine are written by me in total

Articles written by me include these topics: Safari tech (Feature), Geocaching, 3D Printing, taking Panoramic photos, Motorola RAZR review, Kobo Touch review, Kindle 4 6″ Wifi review and Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook review.

Here’s a sneak mini preview of what my articles in GEARE 69 look like … you’ll have to buy a copy from a Newsagent if you want to read them

I also wrote an article for Smart Home Ideas magazine about an innovative Australian company called Print2Metal:

Articles for CeBIT/Hannover Fairs

I’ll be writing about a variety of information technology related topics for CeBIT/Hannover Fairs until mid-June 2012. These are some of the more interesting stories I wrote for them during April:

• Interview: Paul De Martini, Newport Consulting Group
• Interview: Jane Huxley, CEO and Publisher, Digital at Fairfax Media
• Interview: Denis Tebbutt, Vendor Engagement, National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) and How IT Industry Can Transform Australian Healthcare
• 5 Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) Issues
• Mobility: Increasing Staff Efficiency Through Teleworking
• Longer Term Implications of Cloud for Organisations & CIO’s

Photojournalism

My favourite photos for April are from a friend’s paintball birthday party where I tagged along as a non combatant taking photos. It looks like an expensive hobby and the red paintballs can look very much like blood which is unsettling at times:

After the 2012 Lizzies iTJourno awards night I went to a piano bar with some friends which was fun. I think the carpet pattern was a Rorschach test (I see a lion, what do you see?):

I often have good ideas for articles that don’t fit the audience of my blogs or deserve a bigger audience so I’ve decided to pitch those ideas to various other publications. Please contact me by email if you have a good idea for an article I could write in 1 of those categories.

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

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It is very dangerous for a business to rely on one particular technology or hero product/service line for it’s continued success. There is a strong temptation to stop innovating when your business comes across a technology product/service idea that takes it to the top.

Blackberry and Nokia are examples of companies that rested on their laurels and fatally took the temptation to coast along enjoying the good times. Now they are learning, perhaps too late, that complacency was one of their biggest weaknesses.

A wise approach for any organisation or individual is to see every piece of good luck or success as a great occasion that must be leveraged swiftly to generate more success in the future. In gaming terms this approach is called “levelling up“.

According to a recent article in New Scientist Level-up life: how gaming can enhance your reality:

“Sophisticated video games have had demonstrable effects on their players. For example, people who frequently play action games often outperform non-gamers on measures of perception and cognition. Other studies have found that intense video game practice improved players’ ability to carry out complex hand-eye coordination tasks and their contrast sensitivity.”

“This shouldn’t be a surprise, says Mark Burgess, a neuropsychologist at University College London. “The brain is constantly reconfiguring itself. Everything new that we learn means that some connections in the brain have been added or altered, even if temporarily,” he says.”

“As a result, Burgess says, the brain is continually creating “schemata” – behavioural ruts that have become entrenched through repetition.”

I haven’t played video games for several years but I did play them for about 15 years. Some of the in-game strategies definitely rubbed off into how I have approached IRL (In Real Life) situations since then.

The kinds of games I enjoyed most were in the real time strategy genre like Dune 2 which required making strategic moves that would pay off in the long term, exploring unknown territory to find and harvest resources that would be accumulated and spent wisely on defensive/offensive measures.

Clearly Blackberry and Nokia are companies that failed to “level it up”. They were happy with their status and resources, so declined taking on risky quests to build new skills and strengths. In the meanwhile their competitors were quietly innovating and building an army of products to attack the complacent market leaders.

Respected mobile industry analyst Horace Dediu from Asymco recently noted that there are “historic consequences of a dip into negative operating margins for a phone vendor”, namely that “there are no examples of vendors who recovered from a position of loss making” which Nokia has recently entered.

Nokia’s result for Q1 2012 was a $1.8bn loss and details show that it is burning through cash reserves, which caused credit rating agencies S&P and Fitch to downgrade Nokia to junk status.

As for RIM’s Blackberry devices their path in the future is also uncertain.

While the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has meant a lot of organisations have been forced to allow employees to use their iPhone and Android smartphones at work, Blackberry’s security credentials mean it is still mandatory for some kinds of organisations especially government and defence.

We will have to wait for announcements from the annual Blackberry World event May 1st-3rd to see whether the press and analysts become more confident. In the meanwhile analyst Horace Dediu says of RIM that all their “growth since [2005] has been in consumer segments. By abandoning that trajectory RIM is effectively giving up on growth. And giving up on growth is simply giving up.”

It would have been far more sensible for these companies to recognise that things can change quickly in the tech sector and it would be wise to invest a significant portion of earnings from a winner idea at the peak of it’s success into looking for new opportunities that could provide new diversified sources of income.

Jean-François Manzoni, Associate Professor of Management at IMD International in Lausanne and founding director of the INSEAD-PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organisations wrote a great magazine article “The Battle Against Complacency” (PDF) which is well worth reading

In it he outlines several ways that can help individuals and organisations battle complacency:

• Keeping a clear focus on the target and/or the vulnerabilities – one of the best ways is to focus on a specific competitor, even if they are #2 or #3 in your field and you are leading in position #1.
• Continuous search for better practices – never decide that you have become an expert in an area to an extent that you don’t have to learn how to improve in it further. Remember you can learn from people who are not in your specific field as well.
• Listen carefully – to what customers are saying and allow new employees to make anonymous reports at the end of their induction about organisational procedures that seemed inefficient/illogical etc.
• Face reality – Do not punish staff who speak their minds and warn about risks up ahead if they can back up these fears with evidence and a track record of good judgement.
• Allow Spare Bandwidth – Give yourself and staff time in their schedules to have energy to contemplate the future rather than treating them like hamsters on a wheel. People exhausted from “firefighting” spot fire problems all the time are much more likely to miss a looming crisis approaching in the future.

I agree with many of Associate Professor Manzoni’s points.

The case study I can supply from my own experience is recently passing earning $100,000 in total over the years from Google Adsense advertising revenue share on my websites, which is a significant amount of money for a solo operator. I was reluctant to share my story as an example but some business friends thought I should because it’s a good example of forward planning.

I looked ahead in late 2008 and saw several big potential risks including the $AUS rising against $USD (which would impact on the $US portion of Google advertising revenue share payments) and a high probability of an increasing flood of low grade web content being created by companies like Demand Media that would crowd out small operators like myself from ranking as highly in search results.

So I saved a large part of the money and 3 years ago while it was still coming in at a healthy rate I diversified into other business areas such as a separate travel/photography site The Road Less Travelled which is growing nicely, events photography, photojournalism and freelance writing for a range of magazines and news/opinion websites.

Fast forward to now and for the reasons I predicted Google advertising is still a useful source of revenue but not as much as it used to be. However that’s OK. I didn’t complacently coast along during the good times so have a diverse range of replacement revenue sources instead.

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

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If you’re Australian and considering what to do with gadgets you don’t need anymore, consider selling them to ReGadget. Regadget buys a range of gadgets including laptop computers, tablets, mobile phones, cameras, games consoles etc.

The first step is to visit the Regadget website which will offer you an instant buy price based on questions you answer such as: does it turn on, condition of the gadget, whether you have original packaging and cables.

For example at time of writing this review an Apple iPad 2 64GB 3G version that turns on, is in excellent condition with original packaging and cables was quoted a buy price of $447.05. If it turns on, is in fair condition without cables or packaging the quote was $292.48.

If the gadget you want to sell isn’t in the ReGadget catalogue or you feel the buy price quote is too low you can submit a custom quote request explaining details eg a photo link showing the gadget is in as new condition.

Note: ReGadget pricing varies all the time and a buy price quote is only locked in once you confirm the sale. Also if you say the condition is excellent but ReGadget receives the gadget and sees it has scratches, damage etc then they will pay you less than the buy price quote, which is a fair policy.

What will happen to your gadgets? Most old gadgets have some usefulness left within them. Depending on the age and condition of the gadget, the gadget will be either reused or recycled. Reusing is much more environmentally friendly than recycling, so it’s a preferred way for ReGadget to dispose of gadgets. If the gadget cannot be reused, it is recycled for the more valuable materials it has inside like gold, rare earths etc.

Regadget is much easier than selling via ebay or second hand forums online. There are no fees or charges and the full buy price quote is deposited as cash in your bank account. ReGadget pays for postage from you to them. You can choose to pay a small fee for registered post insurance if you’re selling an expensive gadget and don’t want to risk it getting lost or damaged by AusPost.

Regadget recently bought the following from me: a recent model smartphone in bad condition but with original packaging and cables for $120 and a semipro Digital SLR camera in excellent condition with all its packaging etc for $540.

A return post satchel was sent to me a few days after I agreed to the buy price quote. I safely packaged the gadgets with bubblewrap and sent them as registered post. Payment arrived in my bank account a few days later and today I used that money to buy a new camera so the story ends perfectly

What was your experience of using ReGadget? Was the price offered fair? Did they pay you quickly? Please add your comments below.

My friend Buzz sold them his old smartphone and this is an excerpt from his review of Regadget:

“ReGadget may not pay back massive sums for your device, however if your phone is sitting around collecting dust this is by far one of the best ways to make some money from it. I’m glad I made $236 out of a device I got for free. I also highly recommend you request a custom quite if you feel there’s something worth noting about your device (condition or other), as you might just get offered a bit more $$$. ReGadget FTW!”

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more