Nano2Sol by Marc Boucher

I’ve selected some of my better images taken at this years 2007 Spaceward Games to create The Space Elevator 2008 Calendar. I hope you enjoy it, orders yours today.

• Each page measures 11″ x 8.5″
• Measures 11″ x 17″ when hung on wall
• Full bleed dynamic color
• 100 lb cover weight high gloss paper, wire-o bound
• January 2008 - December 2008, 2009 preview, US holidays marked

As some of you may know one of my other projects is Project Phoenix which is an effort of my newly created company Hyperix Search, Inc. We’re focusing on a vertical search platform. One important aspect of any serious search platform is the need for a distributed file system and it’s map and reduce operations.

MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets and was originally created by Google. For some time now other companies and efforts having trying to replicate and improve on the process that Google created. This video takes you through Microsoft’s version of MapReduce called Dryad.

The 6th International Planetary Probe Workshop will be held at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA on 23 – 27 June 2008. This looks to be an interesting workshop. It also includes an Extreme Environment Technologies course which will be held on the weekend preceding the workshop, 21-22 June 2008. Here’s part of the blurb from the first announcement:

“The goal of the workshop is to bring together an international group of scientists, technologists, engineers, mission designers, and policy makers with an interest in the exploration of solar system bodies with substantial atmospheres. The workshop scope covers the technological challenges and scientific opportunities that are both enabled and constrained by entry, descent, landing and flight in planetary atmospheres.

The 6th workshop will build on the success of the previous workshops to promote international cooperation in probe missions to solar system moons and planets bearing atmospheres, and to provide the opportunity for students, the next generation of planetary scientists, spacecraft engineers, technologists, mission planners, and policy makers to participate in these endeavors.

The world’s space community is focused on expanding our knowledge of planetary atmospheres and their moons, as well as comets and asteroids. In addition to NASA’s studies to define the next major missions, and ESA’s focus on its Cosmic Vision program, the international community has numerous missions in various states of study and development that will target major destinations in our solar system. IPPW-6 is a timely event that welcomes your participation.”

For those of you who didn’t know I’ve been sick since November 2nd. The good news is that I’m finally feeling better, about 80% of normal and should be back to normal by the end of the week. Being as sick as I was meant that my various projects were pushed back yet again and this includes my most pressing project, On Orbit.

I’m happy to report that On Orbit is back on track and today I’ve decided to include a little teaser of the home page. This is not the final version and only shows part of the home page but it will give you a little glimpse as to what the new site will look like.

Click on image for full resolution.

I won’t provide a date just yet as to when we’ll launch but it will be before the end of the month.