Daily Archives: March 7, 2006

Space exploration = money

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OK finally the boffins have found a way to fund extra space exploration:
yes, tourism is a (small) part of it, but 3554 Amun is a larger incentive:

It’s a space rock about 2 kilometers in diameter that looks as if it might have fallen straight out of The Little Prince. There are three key things to know about 3554 Amun: First, its orbit crosses that of Earth; second, it’s the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroid yet discovered; and finally, it contains (at today’s prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. And if you time your journey right — 2020 looks promising — it’s easier to reach than the Moon.

Wind Farms block RADAR

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It turns out that there’s a whole controversy going on about wind farms, which deliver ‘green’ energy.

The BBC has a story listing 10 objections to wind farms, more than half of which are bunkum, but it turns out that one of the major problems they produce is RADAR clutter, which creates false positives (aircraft being spotted when they really are just a wind farm) or misses the aircraft completely. They are working on ways to negate this effect by putting filters on the RADARs and also by changing the design and placement of the wind turbines to lower their RCS and RADAR interference. Good studies with pretty pictures 🙂