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SpaceShipOne lands safely!

From CNN:

“Onlookers held their breath as the manned SpaceShipOne performed unexpected but spectacular acrobatics on its way into space, the first step toward winning the Ansari X Prize on Wednesday.”

I think this is the most significant space flight since the US landed on the moon…at least as significant as the Shuttle program. The first private spaceflight in history should go up there with the Wright Brothers, the Apollo missions, the Concord and the US Shuttle program as a milestone in aeronautics.

This is a HUGE month for space…Richard Branson announced that Virgin Atlantic was going to try to be Virgin Galactic and offer spaceflight, and Xeni of BoingBoing went weightless with the first commercial company licensed to operate zero-g flights in the US.

I’ll just say, as someone who visited NASA at the age of 9 or 10 and has been a sci-fi freak his entire life, this stuff is incredibly exciting. Space tourism = sign me up. I’m looking at the cost of the zero-g flights ($2950) and going “that’s not too bad…” 🙂

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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