Well, today SpaceShipOne launched again, and if its final altitude of 368,000 feet is verified, will become the winner of the coveted X Prize. Congratulations to all involved.

• CNN.com
• The official X Prize site

Volcanic unrest, that is. It appears that Mount St. Helens is rumbling a bit, enough so that scientists have posted a warning of volcanic unrest.

Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has changed significantly during the past 24 hours and the changes make us believe that there is an increased likelihood of a hazardous event, which warrants release of this Notice of Volcanic Unrest. The swarm of very small, shallow earthquakes (less than Magnitude 1) that began on the morning of 23 September peaked about mid-day on 24 September and slowly declined through yesterday morning. However, since then the character of the swarm has changed to include more than ten larger earthquakes (Magnitude 2-2.8), the most in a 24-hr period since the eruption of October 1986. In addition, some of the earthquakes are of a type that suggests the involvement of pressurized fluids (water and steam) or perhaps magma. The events are still occurring at shallow depths (less than one mile) below the lava dome that formed in the crater between 1980 and 1986.

Shake, rattle and roll.

I remember observing the eruption from the relatively safe area around Portland, but we still got inches of ash on the ground. Quite a mess. Let’s hope for a more mild show.

Finally got back to looking at the video from the crash of Armadillo Aerospace’s 48inch test vehicle. In the words of Bugs Bunny, what goes up, comes down hard. Ouch!

There were two failures of launch vehicles this weekend. The 48 inch launch vehicle of Armadillo Aerospace crashed, leaving what was described on their website as “$35,000 of rocket is now a whole lot of primo Armadillo Droppings”. Why the failure? Ran out of propellant. Doh! I’m told there are pictures and video on their website, but since Slashdot is running this story, I suspect it will be several hours before I’ll be able to have a peek.

Eric Meier and Phillip Storm of Space Transport Corp, a much more modest and low budget affair, also had a vehicle failure when their rocket engine exploded at 100 feet. The parachute failed to deploy, and the rocket crashed to the ground.

California scientists have created a synthetic prion, a rogue protein that was used to infect mice with a brain destroying infection.

Prions are the cause of several fatal diseases, including BSE (bovine spongiform encephalitis) and CJG (Creutsfeldt-Jakob disease). It’s a nasty, nasty disease, which was chronicled in Richard Rhodes’ book Deadly Feasts. It’s not exactly comforting synthetic analogs of existing infectious prions have been synthesized in the laboratory. CJD is a disease with 100% fatality, and prions are immune to normal sterilization procedures with are effective against other infectious agents. Not good, not good.

Oh, wait, I guess it is. Sorry Chewie.

The BBC is reporting that scientists Vitaliy Fadeyev and Carl Haber of Lawrence Berkeley Labs are using non-contact means to reconstruct sound from old records and wax cylinders. They have been funded by the Library of Congress to help in their preservation of the 128 million audio iteems in their inventory.

You can read a bit more about the effort at LBL’s own press release, which includes both audio played with a stylus and reconstructed with their technique. You can go here for even more technical info, including their JAES paper.

Nature ran an online article entitled: Could laptops run on spinach?: Solar cells turn over a new leaf. Curiously enough, I have been going over plant and animal metabolism with my son who is doing a semester of college biology, so I’ve been forced to review the chemical reactions that take place as part of the Calvin cycle, so I found the article interesting. The functioning of biological nano-machines can still teach us a great deal.

Sciencenews.org has a better synopsis with some references.

Everybody needs 5 lbs of Silly Putty, although I must admit I can’t imagine why. The official site is at sillyputty.com. Aaron’s Putty World offers all sorts different kinds which you can order in 1lb bags. Or you could try ordering 100lb quantities from Dupont.

New Scientist is currently running an interview with Burt Rutan where he admits there was some potentially catastrophic failings in SpaceShipOne’s inaguaral space flight: a coupling collapsed when the rocket motor kicked in (the bang reported by astronaut Mike Melvill) and a brief period where the craft lost attitude control. Had this loss of control occurred earlier, it could have been “bad”.

The fellows at Scaled Composites have not announced when there X-prize attempt will occur. It’s clear that they have a few problems to work through, less the celebration of yesterday be turned into a catastrophe, and an astronaut be turned into confetti.

I was pondering yesterday’s flight of SpaceShipOne, and decided to lookup the information surrounding the first American sub-orbital flights. Alan Shepard – Project Mercury Freedom 7 has most of the details. It’s interesting to compare the two flight profiles: Shepard pulls something over six g’s on ascent, and hits 11 on descent, whereas SpaceShipOne pulled about five on ascent, and just coasted down with very little excessive g-loading. The Mercury capsule required explosive bolts, parachutes, and a water landing. SpaceShipOne coasted to a stop on an ordinary runway, and allowed Melvill to wave to the crowd even before he stopped rolling. And of course, the Mercury Freedom 7 required a pressure suit, apparently without appropriate accomadation for urination…

Oh, and here are some plans for a paper model of the Mercury Redstone rocket.