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Canucks in Space

Up to now Canada’s space history is limited to a handful of astronauts, a few satellites, and two generations of robotic arms, but if all goes well in October, Canucks are finally going to be in the space race, eh? Canada’s contender for th

Up to now Canada’s space history is limited to a handful of astronauts, a few satellites, and two generations of robotic arms, but if all goes well in October, Canucks are finally going to be in the space race, eh?

Canada’s contender for the X-Prize – a $10 million award for the first civilian team to make two sub-orbital flights in a two week period – is scheduled to make its first test flight on Oct. 2. An old airport in rural Saskatchewan will provide the take off and landing venue for the launch.

The group behind the launch, the Canadian da Vinci Project Team (www.davinciproject.com), has financial backing from, among others, Sun Microsystems of Canada, Hinz Automation, Waterloo Maple, Keystone Foam Works and, for some reason, the Golden Palace Internet Casino.

Don’t expect a dramatic blast-off for this project. To achieve an altitude of 100 kilometres with two passengers, the team will use the world’s largest reusable helium balloon to ascend the first 24.4 km, after which point a Flash Gordon-looking rocket will take the crew the rest of the way.

After breaking the 100 km mark and holding it for a few a few seconds, the craft will deploy a cone-shape "ballute" to help deflect heat and cushion the landing of the craft, and a parachute to slow the descent. The whole operation is expected to take less than two hours.

There is no definition as to where the earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins – for example, the International Space Station is currently at an orbit of some 400 km. The 100 km mark is an arbitrary figure, and many believe that the real boundary is closer to 100 miles, or about 160 km. Still, for the purposes of aeronautics 100 km is acceptable to most groups – from that height you’re in the darkness of space, you experience weightlessness, and the people look even smaller than ants.

The Canadian launch will be the third test by a group seeking the X-Prize. SpaceShipOne, a project funded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, is scheduled to make its second test launch on Sept. 29. That ship uses a jet plane as a booster to reach a height of about 40 kilometres before blasting off to near-space, and then flies back to earth like a conventional glider. On its first attempt, SpaceShipOne cleared the 100 km barrier by just over 100 metres.

For more information on the X-Prize and the different teams working to make civilian space travel a reality, visit www.xprize.org.

A case for shutting down

Shut Down or Sleep, that is the question. Whether it is better to leave your computer on and running, or turn it off and on, perchance to fry your hard drive and other hardware in the process.

For years computer users have been told that it’s OK to leave their computers on, because turning it on and off and on again was hard on their components. Recent advances in hardware and hard drive technology means that this is no longer the case – turning your computer off at the end of the day is not going to shorten its lifespan.

In addition, start-up times for computers are faster than they’ve ever been. While it’s still slower to start a computer that’s off than a computer that’s sleeping, it’s not the inconvenience it once was.

On the issue of power usage, computers still do use slightly more power when they’re booting up, but not nearly as much as in the past. Meanwhile a sleeping computer is continually draining power.

According to a report by CNN, a sleeping computer uses 35 Watts an hour, which is the equivalent of about three clock radios. That’s not a lot compared to a fridge or a water heater, but when you consider the fact that every second home has a computer these days that adds up to a huge amount of waste.

Bring on Doom

After four years of rumours, speculation, criticisms, delays and the well-publicized theft of a large chunk of software, Doom 3 at last hit the store shelves this week. This could well be the most hyped and most anticipated game release in history, at least since Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Jr. hit the arcades.

What’s the big deal?

Put it this way, Doom and Doom II were both revolutionary in their time. Doom was the first realistic 3D first person shooter to hit the market back in 1993, as well as the first multi-player game that allowed users to create their own levels.

Doom II, released in 1994, was visually breathtaking, using the next generation of 3D technology to create a game that was to set a standard that lasted until its makers at id Software went one better with their own Quake Series.

Doom 3 is expected to break new ground once again, taking advantage of sixth generation 3D capabilities to create a spooky Martian world that is rich in texture, rendered with more realistic shadows and sounds, and is more interactive than ever before. It also has single player and multi-player capability, which is also expected to set a new standard.

The technical specifications are steep – you’re going to need an Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon (or better), a minimum of 384 MB of memory, and a 64MB 3D graphics card to play this game, as well as a 16-bit DirectX 9.0 sound card.

Some video game pundits believe that Doom 3 will be one of the best selling games of all time, assuming that the technical specifications don’t put it out of play for most users.

Google slips up

It seems Google is human after all.

A week after the search engine was virtually shut down by cyber-attacks, the company admitted that it had given out more than 23.2 million shares of stock to employees and consultants in advance of their Initial Public Offering, possibly breaking numerous state and federal laws.

There is no word whether Google plans to delay its IPO, which is expected to raise more than $3.3 billion. The stock options that have already been handed out have a rough worth of $25.9 million.