UPDATE:
Boy Howdy! are we getting closer to the day when someone not a character in a novel will be head to say “yeah, the tube linings are shot, we’re going to have to replace them all”…
Grasshopper Successfully Completes 80M Hover Slam
On Thursday, March 7, 2013, SpaceX’s Grasshopper doubled its highest leap to date to rise 24 stories or 80.1 meters (262.8 feet), hovering for approximately 34 seconds and landing safely using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. Grasshopper touched down with its most accurate precision thus far on the centermost part of the launch pad. At touchdown, the thrust to weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one, proving a key landing algorithm for Falcon 9. The test was completed at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.
Grasshopper, SpaceX’s vertical and takeoff and landing (VTVL) vehicle, continues SpaceX’s work toward one of its key goals – developing fully and rapidly reusable rockets, a feat that will transform space exploration by radically reducing its cost. With Grasshopper, SpaceX engineers are testing the technology that would enable a launched rocket to land intact, rather than burning up upon reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere.
This is Grasshopper’s fourth in a series of test flights, with each test demonstrating exponential increases in altitude. Last September, Grasshopper flew to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet), in November, it flew to 5.4 meters (17.7 feet) and in December, it flew to 40 meters (131 feet).
Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.
Click the images for a video
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The Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy is the largest publicly-accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and utopian literature in the world. The collection is a major resource for research and is visited by scholars from around the world for both its American and international holdings. It features over 300,000 items including over 100,000 hardback and paperback books; full runs of pulp magazines; nearly 100,000 fanzines, film and visual material, including 500 shooting scripts from science fiction films; comic books, anime and manga; and collectible ephemera and realia, including cards, posters, pins and action figures. The Eaton Collection is located on the fourth floor of the Tomás Rivera Library in the Department of Special Collections & Archives.
(Amazing Stories is going to be doing a bit of cross-promotion with the Eaton Collection and its up-coming conference
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Google is featuring an interactive graphic drawn from The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy in celebration of Douglas Adam’s 61st birthday –
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Matthew Maher, author of the Atopia chronicles sent in the following:
(Your readers) might be interested in following the day-by-day, hour-by-hour launch of my new novel CyberStorm this Friday, Mar.15th (I am #1 best-selling author of my previous novel Atopia Chronicles)–I have just started a new author’s Facebook page:
It’s nice to see Adams honored with a Google Doodle. If there is such a thing, I would say that Adams is the Patron Saint of Scide Splitters (my series of reviews of humorous SF here at Amazing Stories). And while I am making saints out of atheists, I will borrow Kurt Vonnegut’s statement at Isaac Asimov’s funeral, “He’s up in heaven now.” A bit of humor that all three of them would have enjoyed.