Tips for getting featured: In your Flickr account, check “Privacy and Permissions,” and check “yes” on “Allow others to share your stuff.” Adding information about your image does not hurt your chances either.
Often, planning a trip can call for using a travel agent. Venturing to unknown lands armed with the advice of someone who has been there before is always a good idea. Now, one travel organization is making it possible to take their agents along with you on your trip.
Travel Leaders Franchise Group will soon be releasing a travel app designed to arm their customers, and only their customers, with customized travel information.
At the time of booking, agents at Travel Leaders will provide a link that enables their clients to download the app prior to their departures. Armed with an augmented reality function, travelers point their devices at a landmark or location to instantly learn about the area’s top sites to visit, along with admission prices, hours of operation and reviews.
The app enables clients to “take their agents with them virtually on a trip,” Roger Block, president of Travel Leaders Franchise Group told Travel Weekly.
Destination content will be fully loaded at the time of the download so clients won’t incur any international roaming charges.
Feeling left out because you don’t have a Travel Leaders agent in your back pocket? Don’t. While this agent-loaded app is personal, so is the do-it-yourself version from TripIt.
The TripIt app takes travel-booking information – via direct entry or by forwarding confirmations from airlines, hotels and other travel service providers – and forms its own itineraries, complete with destination information.
Commercial space travel, well on its way to replacing traditional space exploration, took a step back Saturday, aborting a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Just a little step back though – the launch is set to try again early Tuesday after swapping out a faulty part.
SpaceX scrubbed Saturday’s mission less than a second before liftoff after high temperatures were detected in one of the rocket’s engines.
After Tuesday’s re-launch, SpaceX will fly its Dragon capsule to the ISS to test sensors and propulsion systems, both of which have never before operated in space. If all systems are go, the unmanned capsule will practice docking at the ISS.
Saturday’s scrubbed launch is a good example of why America’s space program is headed in this “commercial” direction. Hours after the scrub, SpaceX had the solution to the problem in place and had moved on to planning for Tuesday’s re-launch. Run the old NASA way, detailed systems engineering, computer simulations and time-consuming analysis would have taken much longer and cost much more.
NASA, fully supportive of SpaceX to the tune of $2 billion, is excited and prepared.
“We’re ready to support when SpaceX is ready to go,” Alan Lindenmoyer, Manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, said in a press conference Saturday.
The new era in space exploration is coming; it’s just been slightly delayed.
“I’ve been to Monument Valley a few times, but the sky was usually cloudless,” says oilfighter. “Boy, what a sunset. The clouds broke, and the wind sent them flying. The last light of the day gave the sky a pastel pink hue.”
Tips for getting featured: in your Flickr account check “Privacy and Permissions,” and check “yes” on “Allow others to share your stuff.” Adding information about your image does not hurt your chances either.
Along with “Drama Over Cowboy Land,” oilfighter tells us, “I used a 2 stop graduated ND filter to balance the exposure, and thus bring out the colors in the clouds. What a beauty!”
Space travel gets farther from the dream stage and closer to reality every day. Today, SpaceX will attempt to become the first private company to dock a capsule with the International Space Station. It’s a critical step in NASA’s plan for private contractors to transport cargo and crew into space and another step towards a new generation of space travel.
Called the Commercial Crew Development Program, NASA’s goal is “to accelerate the availability of U.S. commercial crew transportation capabilities and reduce the gap in American human spaceflight capability. Through this activity, NASA also may be able to spur economic growth as potential new space markets are created,” the space agency said in a press release.
Just one such space market hopes to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals employing cost-effective exploration technologies.
“Water is perhaps the most valuable resource in space. Accessing a water-rich asteroid will greatly enable the large-scale exploration of the solar system. In addition to supporting life, water will also be separated into oxygen and hydrogen for breathable air and rocket propellant,” said Eric Anderson, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, Inc., in a multi-media news release earlier this month.
Touting benefits in the tens of billions of dollars, Planetary Resources says a single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the platinum mined in history.
Late last month, SpaceX webcast a static fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine powerful Merlin engines in preparation for the company’s upcoming launch. Engines ran for two seconds before a planned abort.
The launch will be webcast live early Saturday morning, with commentary from SpaceX corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, California, at www.spacex.com.
Saturday’s flight by SpaceX is “a thoroughly exciting moment in the history of spaceflight, but is just the beginning of a new way of doing business for NASA,” said President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser, John Holdren in the Washington Times.
The webcast will begin approximately 40 minutes before launch when SpaceX hosts will provide information specific to the flight, an overview of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, and commentary on the launch and flight sequences.