Word: testing
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...group made its money in hedge funds and Internet ventures. There are babes too, barefoot and bikini clad, millionaires in their own right. Everyone is sitting in a circle on low beach chairs, wiggling toes in the white sand while debating the wisdom of getting into a centrifuge to test vomit potential at the high G-forces needed to soar into space. That's when the merry prankster himself, Sir Richard--master of Virgin Air, Virgin Records, Virgin stem cells, Virgin everything if he had his way--shows up and starts talking about sex in space. A vision of weightless...
While Branson was hitting the beach with future passengers, his competitors-- smart, rich and innovative like him--were busily at work plotting to beat him into space. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just tested his first prototype for personal space travel in West Texas. John Carmack, co-creator of the Doom and Quake games, is test-firing rockets for the next generation of spaceliners and lunar landers near Dallas. In California, Jim Benson, founder of Compusearch, is developing a space taxi with a motor that runs on rubber and laughing gas. (Don't laugh. It works.) PayPal co-founder Elon Musk...
...parking-lot flight a couple of years ago and roughed up one of our earlier vehicles." Not to worry, he says jokingly: there will be a glass top over the saddle seat. At least he sounded as if he was joking. Pixel has made more than 30 unmanned test flights and could begin carrying commercial payloads next year...
...January he lifted the veil somewhat, releasing a video of the first test flight last November--a cozy affair on his ranch, with a Jumbotron for the spectators, a bouncy castle for the kids and a chuck wagon. The scaled-down prototype flew up 285 ft.--and 30 sec. later landed successfully. "My only job at the launch was to open the champagne, and I broke the cork off in the bottle," he blogged later. (You can almost hear that mad-scientist laugh of his.) "Fortunately, our other valve operations went more smoothly...
...rights to NASA's canceled TransHab inflatable habitat and set to work creating his own commercial space stations and hotels. Last July Genesis I shot into space, ballooned to limo size and began circling the globe with a box of Mexican jumping beans and some roaches on board as test subjects, making it the first private space station (and roach motel) in the universe. Genesis II, upgrading its passenger list to scorpions and ants, goes up in April--at about the time Bigelow says he will unveil his business plan to the National Space Symposium...