Aug 10 2011

Amazon announce free Kindle Science Fiction and Fantasy digest

Amazon have recently announce that a digest version of “Fantasy & Science Fiction” magazine is available as a free subscription. The digest version contains all the news from the full magazine and one free story per issue. It also includes a description of the other stories available in the full magazine. Getting the free version is highly recommended – and the extended version is also well worth it.

Fantasy & Science Fiction digest at: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Amazon’s Facebook annoucement: http://www.facebook.com/kindle/posts/10150340437291558

Fantasy & Science Fiction extended edition at: Amazon US | Amazon UK

James.

Aug 9 2011

Cleaning up space junk in Earth orbit

Every year Earth-orbit gets filled with more and more junk – obsolete and defunct satellites and rocket pods, and debris caused by collisions of exiting junk. Hopefullly this latest attempt to start the clean up process will gain some traction. Providing the funding for private enterprise to do the clean-up will also help to nurture space technology skills within the private sector.

Article here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14405118

James.

Aug 9 2011

More than 20k students signed up for free Stanford artificial intelligence course

A novel use of the Internet to try to bring education about a classic science fiction plot construct – artificial intelligence. I’m sure we are a paradigm shift or two away from getting this right in reality, but the more people that have a solid gounding in the current techniques, the more likely that a breakthrough will come.

Article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/more-20k-students-signed-free-stanford-artificial-intelligence-180749273.html

The class and registration link here:

http://www.ai-class.com/

James

Aug 7 2011

Private Space Race Heats up as Boeing Selects Atlas V Engine

I’m excited to see competition heating up in the provision of private orbital capabilities. A healthy commercial market should open up new ways to exploit the technology and opportunity, such as tourism. It will also allow national and international space agencies to start building the knowledge to tackle the bigger challenges of getting people back to the Moon and then out to the planets and beyond.

Details of Boeings latest move here: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/193171/20110805/spacex-boeing-private-space-race-nasa-atlas-v-rocket.htm

James

Aug 7 2011

NASA’S Juno Spacecraft Launches To Jupiter

I’m looking forward to the imagery and science that this probe will capture.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/aug/HQ_11-257_Juno_Launch.html

James.

Aug 6 2011

Agencies – available now on Kindle

Agencies, the debut novel by James Aston, is now available on Amazon Kindle. Buy your copy now.

Agencies

Humanity has made its first steps to colonise the Moon and exploit the resources of the asteroid belt and outer planets.

During a surveying mission to find water deposits within craters on the Moon, Aldion and his team discover a covert underground structure. No-one knows who built it or why – except one man.

The discovery is the flash-point that triggers the latent hostility between the now-private security agencies of Earth – leading to an escalating series of conflicts. Threaded through these conflicts, Carth must try to get to the structure first to avoid an unthinkable loss.