I know, it's been a while since I posted. TEMPO³ (note the snazzy new easy use of the superscript) has been developing rather rapidly. Some of the recent developments include:

• First major funding
• Contact with Dick Gordon, pilot of Gemini 11, the last living human who's experienced tethered-artificial gravity
• New artwork by artist Michael Carroll

Other developments are pending. We plan to have a preliminary design by early February in preparation for the CubeSat conference which should be in April, though I haven't seen any advertising on it yet.

An asteroid, named 2008 TC3 and a couple meters in diameter, will light up the skies over Africa tonight. Details here. It'll hit at about 10:45PM ET, so you don't have much time to get there...should be quite a show.

The site appears to be pretty busy. Wonder why?

Update, 27 Oct: The impact was confirmed through multiple sources. Orbit@home has a cool animation of what the asteroid 'saw.' I haven't put in the time to get my software working for their project. Wish it was easier.

The recent bailout rescue plan may cost $700B (all caveats are applied in that may...we may not need to spend that much, 'sweeteners' make it cost much more, we may get money back, we may have to spend much more...). The Apollo program to land people on the moon cost $100B in today's dollars. A Mars program could cost less, but would probably run at least $700B. So, Congress just voted to spend 7 Apollos. I like the currency exchange part of the article.

I'm not convinced we're as close to space elevators as some advocates claim, but they're getting some attention, such as in this CNN article.

With guest host: