Posts Tagged ‘Jeff Bezos’
Cybergeeks combine with Rutan for plane as launch platform
The tycoons of cyberspace are looking to bankroll America’s resurgence in outer space, reviving “Star Trek” dreams that first interested them in science.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen made the latest step…unveiling plans for a new commercial spaceship that, instead of blasting off a launch pad, would be carried high into the atmosphere by the widest plane ever built before it fires its rockets.
He joins Silicon Valley powerhouses Elon Musk of PayPal and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com in a new private space race that attempts to fill the gap left when the U.S. government ended the space shuttle program…
Allen is working with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, who collaborated with the tycoon in 2004 to win a $10 million prize for the first flight of a private spaceship that went into space but not orbit.
Allen says his enormous airplane and spaceship system will go to “the next big step: a private orbital space platform business…”
Their plane will have a 380-foot (116-meter) wingspan — longer than a football field and wider than the biggest aircraft ever, Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose.
It will launch a space capsule equipped with a booster rocket, which will send the spacecraft into orbit. This method saves money by not using rocket fuel to get off the ground. The spaceship may hold as many as six people…
Stratolaunch, to be based in Huntsville, Alabama, bills its method of getting to space as “any orbit, any time.” Rutan will build the carrier aircraft, which will use six 747 engines. The first unmanned test flight is tentatively scheduled for 2016…
Allen’s company is looking at making money from tourists and launching small communications satellites, as well as from NASA and the Defense Department, said former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a Stratolaunch board member…
As Allen puts it – he’s “a huge fan of anything to push the boundaries of science.” He sponsors a great deal of basic research including the SETI Project. This is something that can be a business – and great fun for anyone who grew up ready for space travel.
Are you klutzy enough to need an air bag for your smartphone?
Diagram from the patent application
Jeff Bezos is worried about phone safety. Not your safety while you’re distracted by your phone. No, he’s worried about the gadget itself.
The Amazon boss and his colleague, Vice President Gregory M. Hart, filed a patent application to protect their idea of an air bag that inflates around your mobile device if you drop it. Broadly, the duo are seeking to patent the idea of a “system and method for protecting devices from impact damage…”
The idea is to use a device’s built-in gyroscope, camera, or other sensors to determine if the device its moving quickly toward the ground or some other object. If it determines that damaging impact is imminent, it triggers a protection system to absorb the fall…
And the patent filing isn’t just attempting to cover device air bags. Bezos and Hart also envision a “reorientation element” that would turn the device so that it hits the ground on the side of the device where the air bag has been deployed. And it doesn’t have to be an air bag. The filing also contemplates using “a propulsion element, a spring, an impact absorbing structure, and a reinforced edge,” among other protection elements.
Of course, you still could buy a humungous case or just quit dropping the bloody thing. I presume the addition of the air bag also makes it float if you drop your phone into the toilet.
Imagine the passage of history measured by a 10,000 year clock
High on a rocky ridge in the desert, nestled among the brush, is the topmost part of a clock that has been ticking for thousands of years.
It looks out over the ruins of a spaceport, built by a rich man whose name was forgotten long ago.
Most of the clock is deep inside the mountain, below the ridgeline. To get there, you hike for days through the heat; the only sounds are the buzzing of flies and the whisper of the occasional breeze. You climb up through the brush, then pass through a hidden door into the darkness and silence of the clock chamber. Far above your head, in the darkness, a massive pendulum swings slowly back and forth, making the clock tick once every 10 seconds.
‘In the year 4000, you’ll go see this clock and you’ll wonder, “Why on Earth did they build this?”‘ — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos No one knows who built it, or why. They built it well, and even now it keeps perfect time. All we know of these strange people is that they were obsessed with the future.
Why else would they build something that had no purpose except to mark time for thousands of years?
The rich man is Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and he has indeed started construction on a clock that he hopes will run for 10,000 years.
For Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, the clock is not just the ultimate prestige timepiece. It’s a symbol of the power of long-term thinking. His hope is that building it will change the way humanity thinks about time, encouraging our distant descendants to take a longer view than we have…
It’s a monumental undertaking that Bezos and the crew of people designing and building the clock repeatedly compare to the Egyptian pyramids. And as with the pharaohs, it takes a certain amount of ego — even hubris — to consider building such a monument. But it’s also an unparalleled engineering problem, challenging its makers to think about how to keep a machine intact, operational and accurate over a time span longer than most human-made objects have even existed.
I’ve been following discussions about building this clock for over a decade. Starting with articles by Danny Hillis and Stewart Brand at the Edge and Wired.
Check out the website. Reflect upon the task. It ain’t Ozymandias – I hope.
Return or exchange presents – before you receive them?
Undoubtedly, the Thread and Bobbin Sewing Kit that Aunt Mildred sent from Amazon.com for Christmas will never see a stitch. The Stallion Stable Music Box might have looked pretty on the computer screen, but under the tree’s flickering lights, it is frightful. The polka-dot nightgown has never been a good idea, even with free shipping.
These gifts sent via some warehouse many miles away are not only unwanted, but also a multimillion-dollar headache: They have to be repacked, labeled, dropped off and shipped back to Amazon’s Island of Misfit Toys. Then a new present has to be packed, labeled and shipped again. Efficient, the process is not.
Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon’s innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to “Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred,” the patent says. “For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.
Amazon’s proposal has raised the ire of the Miss Manners crowd, which thinks the scheme rather uncouth. After all, receiving an e-mail notification of a forthcoming gift – and thereby being able to check its price – is hardly the same as unwrapping the item at home.
Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of the late etiquette author Emily Post and spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute, said she hopes the company realizes it is risking major backlash and abandons the idea. Because of Amazon’s dominance online, she and others say they fear the idea could spread throughout the e-retailing industry, which this holiday season racked up $28 billion in gift purchases.
“This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving,” Post said. “The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world’s transactions…”
Amazon appears to be quite serious: Its patent was awarded not just to Amazon, but to its founder, Jeff Bezos…Amazon’s patent is 12 pages long, with numerous diagrams, including a “Gift Conversion Rules Wizard” that shows how a user could select rules such as, “No clothes with wool.” The document makes for curious reading, reducing the art of gift giving to the dry language of patentry…
RTFA. The patent description is about as dry – and humorous – as you might expect.
Learn a bit more about business and traffic management – once a topic near and dear to my heart – or at least my wallet.
