Yesterday marked a momentous day in U.S. history as NASA launched its final space shuttle, ending a 30-year era. Four astronauts—commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus—are leading the 12-day Atlantis mission, the 135th and final flight of the storied space shuttle program. After Atlantis returns to Earth, NASA will officially retire the… → Read More
Well, well, well. Yesterday morning I wrote a quick thing about the U.S. Navy and Raytheon’s successful laser attack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Several hours later DRUDGE~! runs the same story way up top, in bold red font. The point is: I beat Drudge. Yes! I bring this up because, in the hours after I wrote the story a whole bunch of pictures came out that are worth your time gawking… → Read More
There’s no way to begin this next story without breaking out this movie quote: “If I were creating the world I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, Day One!” With that out of the way, for the first time in human history a laser was used to shoot down an aircraft in flight. Well done to the fine folks at the US Navy. → Read More
In September, defense contractor Raytheon announced an agreement to purchase R&D innovator BBN Technologies, but didn’t say for how much. Today, the deal closed and the price came out. It is $350 million.
Investors Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners, who co-led a management buyout in 2004, made out very nicely. Accel says that its cut was more than $100 million, which suggests it… → Read More
This kind of exoskeleton has been around for a while in prototypes and blueprints; I remember seeing one in DARPA paperwork years ago, but I think that now they’re getting out of the prototyping stage. The article compares it to Iron Man because it’s timely but I think that’s quite a stretch; it’s much more like a power loader or a dude from Exo-Squad. It can lift a payload… → Read More
http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271552990 I met a guy at a friend’s birthday party who works for Raytheon out here in the Boston area and he was really dodgy when I asked him specifically what he did for the defense contractor. He took an interest in the fact that I wrote for a gadget web site and mentioned that he “sorta works with gadgets” but… → Read More
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