Space Pioneer Wally Schirra Dies At 84

From CBS news

Astronaut Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr., one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts and the only man to fly on all three of NASA's early space missions, has died at the age of 84. Schirra, commanded the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit, in 1962. Schirra became the third American to orbit the Earth, circling the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than nine hours. He returned to space three years later as commander of Gemini 6-A and guided his two-man capsule toward Gemini 7, already in orbit. On Dec. 15, 1965, the two ships came within a few feet of each other as they shot through space, some 185 miles above the Earth. It was the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit. His third and final space flight in 1968 inaugurated the Apollo program. For the Apollo 7 mission in October 1968 — which followed the deadly Apollo launch pad fire which killed fellow Mercury teammate Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee — Schirra's crew ran a shakedown cruise, and for eleven days, they tested what was essentially a brand new spacecraft in every possible way. In all, Schirra logged nearly 300 hours in space.

Thanks to Nelson for bringing this to my attention

StarWars type Binoculars on Darpa drawing board

In a new effort dubbed "Luke's Binoculars" -- after the high-tech binoculars Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is setting out to create its own version of this science-fiction hardware. These binoculars will add a strange and powerful new weapon in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more powerful than anything available today. To be able to achieve this level of power, Darpa hopes to integrate technologies that have been in laboratories for years, ranging from flat-field, wide-angle optics, to the use of advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures. The defense agency wants the binoculars to have a range of 1,000 to 10,000 meters, compared to the current generation, which can see out only 300 to 1,000 meters, also the binoculars are supposed to provide a 120-degree field of view and be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away. The most far-reaching component of the binoculars has nothing to do with the optics: it's Darpa's aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer's neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders

Code Guardian -homebrew CGI animation treat

What if WW2 was fought by giant robots? Well I want to thank Geekend and SFSignals for bringing this gem to my attention. a homebrew animator has cooked up C.O.D.E. Guardian, a 13-minute CG mini-movie that posits what World War II would have been like if the major powers had giant mecha robots at their disposal. The link that the title goes to is part 1 but the second part is available right on the same page on youtube. For a short, this is wildly entertaining and extremely well done. I would sit through a full lenght of this! Check it out!

Genetic discrimination ban edges closer to reality

By a fairly wide 420-3 margin, the House of Representatives gave a nearly unanimous thumbs-up to the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which would "prohibit employers from using genetic information or test results when making employment and health benefits decisions" if it gets a similar nod of approval from the Senate. if the bill becomes law, health insurers couldn't use "genetic information to set premiums," nor could they require customers to submit genetic tests. Essentially, this could ensure that any future human mutation hacks you inflict on yourself, or more frightening, any robotic humanoid whose genes would find it out, will be safe from scrutiny come interview time.

Space telescopes image the Sombrero Galaxy

Data from a trio of space telescopes – Chandra, Spitzer and Hubble – have been combined to produce the new image of the sombrero Galaxy. Chandra observations reveal hot gas that glows in X rays and extends about 60,000 light years from the centre of the galaxy, which itself is only 50,000 light years wide. The gas is probably being blown outwards by a wind driven by supernova explosions in the galaxy.

Click on the article title to go to the site. They have an excellent short video of how the image of this galaxy was put together from the data from the other three telescopes.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders