SpaceX showed off a video of a recent test of their ‘grasshopper’ rocket, one that has the ability to land vertically (it takes off vertically too, but that’s kinda taken for granted with a rocket, ya know?). This is fantastic technology for it may lead to truly reusable rockets, which should dramatically lower the costs of getting into orbit, or even landing on the Moon or Mars. Check out the video below. It’s impressive, for the rocket gained some significant altitude for a test like this (~300′?) before coming back down for a landing.
Peak Stuff
Until we learn to live more sustainable lifestyles, we’re going to be faced with more ‘peak stuff’, where demand for a particular resource exceeds supply. Fast Company has a nice article on this subject if you want to read more. One example is clean water. More people equals greater demand, but resources are diminishing as glaciers melt and some aquifers are depleted. Food is another one, though the system is so wasteful (in this country at least) that I’m optimistic we can make some big improvements there. Or at the least, stop burning food (turning corn into ethanol to power cars).
Where is Peak Oil?
The idea of Peak Oil, where demand exceeds supply, threatened us for a long time yet continual advances in oil extraction techniques keeps pushing that date farther and farther out, as explained in a recent article over at FastCompany (worth reading if you’re into this stuff!). Instead, we’re facing a new dilemma…we’ve gotten so good at extracting fossil fuels from the ground, that we now face the grim reality of the environmental impact of consuming the known and accessible fossil fuel reserves. If we want to stay below the internationally-agreed upon 2°C of global warming, we can dump about 565 gigatons more CO2 into the atmosphere. The problem is that current fossil fuel reserves, ignoring any future discoveries, contain about 2,795 gigatons of CO2 (source). Yeah. Not good. Either fossil fuels need to get so expensive that people stop using them, or we’re going to really mess up this planet.
Negative health impacts of too little sleep
I came across a really interesting article over at Care2 that talks about the health impacts of not getting enough sleep. I think everyone knows they ‘should’ get plenty of sleep, but why? Just to feel happier? Nope. It turns out that not sleeping enough can affect many aspects of your health:
1. Neuropsychiatric disorders, impaired alertness and cognition, and headaches
2. Vision problems, including blurred vision, floppy eyelid syndrome, glaucoma, even temporary blindness
3. High blood pressure
4. Increased levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress
5. Cancer
6. Difficulty with sexual functioning
7. Increased food cravings and hunger
8. Insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes
9. Hearing loss
10. Muscle weakness and decreased athletic performance
11. Heart disease
12. Skin problems and rashes, including eczema
13. Hair loss
14. Disrupted metabolism, weight gain and obesity
Or to put it another way…just about everything you can think of. My personal metric for whether I’m getting enough sleep, is if I wake up on my own, feeling well-rested, before my alarm goes off. For me, it’s just a matter of getting to bed at a decent time and letting the body do its thing.
MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner
Makerbot just unveiled a prototype of a new 3D scanner at SXSW, designed for the casual 3D printer users out there. It’s fast, but what’s really key is that it produces water-tight models (no gaps in the surfaces) that are ready to scale and send to your printer. At this point, details are sparse…stay tuned to this blog for updates or sign up for email updates directly from the source at Makerbot.