Evolution Man, or How I Ate My Father:
The Evolution Man follows the struggle of a small tribe of cavemen in northern Africa as they try to keep one step ahead of Mother Nature. This nameless band of pre-humans has many of the same conceits and concerns that we have today: finding the perfect cave for the whole family (hopefully bear-free), keeping a successful marriage without resorting to a swing of the club, and figuring out how to make ends meet in a dwindling economy when Dad’s accidentally burned down the nearby forest.
Stephan Kinsella points to a germane quote from PatNews :
“which probably describes the first [fictional] murder for intellectual property… The father of a prehistoric horde of wannabe-humans invents fire making. While the father has an “open-source” concept of intellectual property, the son wants to sell the invention to other hordes, give out licenses and make cross-licensing deals. Finally, the father has to die…”
Independent of any individual mentioned heretofore, my groundbreaking EULA also makes light of cavemen IP chicanery.
Solar super-sail could reach Mars in a month:
A LICK of paint could help a spacecraft powered by a solar sail get from Earth to Mars in just one month, seven times faster than the craft that took the rovers Spirit and Opportunity to the Red Planet.
Gregory Benford of the University of California, Irvine, and his brother James, who runs aerospace research firm Microwave Sciences in Lafayette, California, envisage beaming microwave energy up from Earth to boil off volatile molecules from a specially formulated paint applied to the sail. The recoil of the molecules as they streamed off the sail would give it a significant kick that would help the craft on its way. “It’s a different way of thinking about propulsion,” Gregory Benford says. “We leave the engine on the ground.”
One engineering feat I am curious to know why it was not addressed in the article: numerous space probes like Voyager 1 & 2 use nuclear reactors to generate energy (radioisotopic thermoelectric generator). Why not simply place a reactor somewhere on the craft instead of depending on a large and expensive dish from Earth?
