My new copywriting website now live

My wife Wendy and I have just updated the website for our copywriting services.

We write clear, persuasive copy to help companies more effectively market their products and services. Our clients have included American Express, Canon USA, and a host of technology startups since 1998.

New samples, testimonials, and more are now online. Check it out at www.belfioreandkagan.com.

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SpaceX one step away from launch

Got this photo in from Space Exploration Technologies during the night. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is sitting on pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. Over the weekend, the team fired the rocket's nine engines in a test run lasting several seconds.

Next step, a test launch to orbit, some time in the next two to three weeks.

Falcon 9 is powerful enough to send 7 astronauts to low Earth orbit. For now it will be pressed into service by NASA for cargo delivery flights to the International Space Station. But Falcon 9, along with the SpaceX Dragon capsule, is number one on the runway as America's next manned spaceship, gearing up to take over the Space Shuttle's duties when it retires this year.

Photo credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX

X-51 hypersonic waverider prepping for spring flight

Here's an Air Force video report on one of the projects I cover in my book The Department of Mad Scientists.

http://www.af.mil/news/video/index.asp?cid=3&sid=11769

The X-51 project seeks to break new ground in the field of hypersonic (mach 5+) air breathing flight. If all goes well, an unmanned aircraft will drop from a B-52 bomber off the California coast, fire a solid fuel booster rocket to get up to operating speed, and then light up a scramjet engine to get up to mach 6.

This will be the first time that a scramjet stays lit for as long as its fuel supply holds out. Previous tests have achieved powered flight for only a few seconds at a time. Staying lit for over a minute will be a first, and has tremendous implications for the future of aviation. See, for example, program manager Charlie Brink's discussion of using scramjets for spaceflight in the second half of the video.

Thanks to Nancy Colaguori of the X-51's propulsion contractor, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, for the link.

ARPA-E awarding $100 million for energy breakthroughs

ARPA-E, the wild-haired agency of the Department of Energy inspired by DARPA, has just announced that it will award an additional $100 million for breakthrough energy projects.

Job one for ARPA-E is solving the nation's energy problems. And high on the list of desperately needed tech is grid storage. "By investing in the development of grid-scale energy storage technology," says an ARPA-E press release today, "this funding opportunity will allow the U.S. to assume global technology and manufacturing leadership in the emerging and potentially massive global market for stationary electricity storage infrastructure."

Sun power and wind power hold enormous potential for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, but only if some economical way can be found to use their power when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. There are also vast fortunes to be made, if this problem can be solved. Said IDC Energy Insights analyst Sam Jaffe in a recent podcast:

For instance, in Hawaii right now, there's been a large buildout of photovoltaic—still in the single percentage points of overall electricity generated—but it's causing a significant strain on a local utility. The local utility is now saying 'we cannot take any more distributed photovoltaic without some sort of storage and storage management system to avoid hurting our distribution system.' And that's in the single percentage points.

Ordinary lead acid batteries won't cut it for large scale storage, and more advanced lithium-ion batteries, like those in laptops, are too expensive. Very likely no single solution will do the job, but rather a hybrid approach. Some contenders for grid-scale storage include liquid metal batteries (already getting ARPA-E money) and flywheels.