DARPA Urban Challenge semi-finalists, location announced

DARPA director Tony Tether has just released the list of 36 teams that made it into the semi-finals for the Urban Challenge for autonomous vehicles capable navigating through city streets with other moving traffic. List here:

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/teamlist.asp

The event will be held at the military urban training facility at Victorville, CA on November 3.

Makes sense that it wouldn't be held in a populated city.

More updates soon as I finish up the last day here at the DARPA Technology Symposium in Anaheim, California.

DARPA

I've just finalized the deal on my next book project for Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins. The new book, to be completed in about a year, will focus on the blue sky technologies advanced by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Kicking off the project, I have the top story on wired.com today, about a DARPA project to build a prosthetic arm that's as fully functional as a native arm. That's project engineer and test subject Jonathan Kuniholm in my photo at work on the arm's software at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab.

Today through Thursday I'm at the DARPA Technology Symposium in Anaheim, California, where DARPA program managers, engineers working on DARPA-funded projects, and mad scientists from all over the country are meeting to figure out how to turn science fiction into science fact.

The exhibit hall hasn't even opened yet, and already my mind has been blown by talk of plants that can grow hydrogen as a cheap power source, the effort to define how the brain thinks with new forms of mathematics, and programmable materials that can morph to form any product imaginable.

Stay tuned for updates.

Wired.com top story

I have the front page of Wired.com today, with an article on the effect of last week's accident at Scaled Composites on the NewSpace industry.

Check out the comments area for a statement from future space passenger Reda Anderson.

There's also an excerpt from my book Rocketeers detailing Brian Binnie's X PRIZE-winning flight in SpaceShipOne and a photogallery of pictures from the book.

A bad day at Scaled Composites

An explosion during a test of rocket engine compenents by SpaceShipTwo builder Scaled Composites claimed the lives of three Scaled employees and seriously injured three others yesterday, according to various reports.

This is sure to set back the SpaceShipTwo program, and casts a pall on the entire industry.

Those of us in and around the commercial space industry have known from day one that deaths were inevitable during the opening of the final frontier, but that doesn't make it any easier to take.

My heart goes out to the good people at Scaled Composites and their families. I pray for a speedy recovery for those injured, and I offer that those who who died did not do so in vain. They were working to uplift all of humanity, and I very deeply appreciate their sacrifice. They are my heroes.

--Update at 2:12 p.m. ET--
We're doing updates on the Popular Science website at www.popsci.com as more information becomes available.

Book signings, podcasts, and a review

Back from Washington, where I launched my book Rocketeers at the National Air & Space Museum and the NewSpace 2007 conference. There's me signing books at the museum's Udvar-Hazy center at Dulles Airport. Larry Lowe, writer for Air & Space Smithsonian, took the picture.

C-SPAN taped the talk I gave at the museum's National Mall location before my signing there on Friday. Should be on C-SPAN2's Book TV in a couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, HarperCollins has posted some podcasts I recorded about the book, including a complete synopsis told in six minutes.

And the August Wired has a review of the book giving it eight out of ten stars.

On C-SPAN at National Air & Space Museum

Just heard that C-SPAN will tape my upcoming talk and reading at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum for Book TV on S-SPAN2. The show bills itself as "Top Nonfiction Authors Every Weekend." Hey! That must be me!

If you're going be in Washington, DC for the NewSpace 2007 conference this week, or if you're there anyway, come on over to the museum this Friday, July 20, at 3:00 p.m.

That's the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. What a great way to celebrate--among some of the most historically important air- and spacecraft in the world, including the Apollo 11 command module and SpaceShipOne, which started the personal spaceflight revolution chronicled by my book Rocketeers.

The book isn't officially published until July 31, but the museum gift shop will sell copies in advance for me to sign in honor of Apollo 11 and the space conference.

I was originally slated to read in the gift shop, but since the TV crew is coming, the museum is going to rope off a gallery for me and whoever wants to check it out.

I'll be at the museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport to talk and sign again on Sunday, July 22 at 1:00 p.m. Hope to see you there!

Responder

Back from Huntsville and a visit with Orion Propulsion, led by Tim Pickens. Some highlights:

--Barbeque at the Pickens residence. The Pickens clan gathered for burgers and hot dogs (I brought the veggie burgers), Volkswagen-tinkering, rocket truck tours, and hybrid suitcase rocket demos.

--Orion's a profitable, $2-million company owned by its main engineers, with no investors. It's poised to expand significantly. If NASA selects Boeing to build the Ares 1 upper stage, Orion will build maneuvering and roll control thrusters for the system. NASA expects to choose between the Boeing team and one led by Alliant Techsystems next month.

--Last month, Orion was awarded a contract from the Army to build a rocket called Responder: 22 pounds to low Earth orbit that can be launched for under $1 million on a moment's notice from a portable pad. Pickens envisions hundreds of pop-up satellites transforming the satellite launch industry.

--Speaking of vision, Pickens moved me and filmmaker Mark Greene to tears as we taped an interview with him at Orion. He spoke of his and his 15-year-old daughter's dream to fly to space, and he told us how he started Orion by selling rocket parts on eBay. If I can do this, you can too, he said. Pickens is at once disarmingly down-home in his presentation and powerfully eloquent, a winning combination.

Mark and I hope to have video to post in the next couple of weeks.

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Correction on 7/16/07 at 2:14 PM ET

Tim Pickens phoned me just now to clarify that his contract for Responder is just for a study by way of Colsa Corporation, not direct from the Army, and not for actually building the system.