Funny that after my last post about Soyuz this happened on Sunday. This is the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach Earth orbit, an achievement that is mind-blowing given such activity has historically been the preserve of technologically advanced nations with budgets to match. Incredible stuff; the kind of moment that makes me feel I'm living in the future I used to imagine as a child. Go SpaceX.

"Wow, this is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of an enormous amount of work by a great team. The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion — middle of the bullseye — and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake. I will have a more complete post launch statement tomorrow, as right now I'm in a bit of a daze and need to go celebrate."
Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX

I really like the fact you can follow current developments and the history of the project on their site, successes and failures recorded for all to see.

I've caught a cold, maybe one of those change of the seasons things that sometimes catches me and lays me up for a few days. I was so congested earlier in the week that due to the pressure in my head even reading was difficult for more than half an hour at a time. Anyhow, I'm on the mend but still feeling very fuzzy round the edges.I did find a little time to look up... the history of human endeavour in space.

What caught my eye was a repercussion from the Russia / Georgia conflagration. Apparently with the shuttle no longer flying from 2010 the Russian Soyuz will be the only way of reaching the International Space Station. This means that for US astronauts to reach orbit they'll need to buy a ticket from the Russians which is politically sensitive given the US's disapproval of Russian behaviour towards Georgia.

I'm amazed by this. Space programmes have always been the utimate in terms of big league national pride, if you care about that sort of thing, and the Americans generally do so to be left in this situation is a bit of an oversight. What's also amazing is that, although I guess it's been upgraded substantially since it first flew in 1966, the Soyuz is still going strong as a reliable launcher / spacecraft. The Russian space programme, with the first satellite, animal and human into orbit, was clearly built to last.

Damien Hirst's art leaves me cold. But that is beside the point. From other people's perspective it has worth, although I do wonder how much of this is an aesthetic appreciation and not a confidence in the ability of the work to hold or increase its monetary value. The point is made here that an original conceptual sketch, hand drawn by the artist, is worth many times less than the finished work which is made via a production process in which the artist plays no physical part.

Is the person willing to pay £500,000 for the final piece making a statement to others, pleasing themselves or simply obtaining a portable piece of wealth?

The Bank of England doesn't print individual bank notes worth half a million quid, however given the publicity surrounding the Hirst auction I'm now confident people know the value of a Hirst as well as they do a printed piece of paper featuring the head of the monarch. In that sense the artwork is no different to a house or anything else that a person invests in based on faith that we hold some collective belief it is worth something. I could not bring myself to buy or take out a mortgage on a place I intended to make a home that I did not find aesthetically pleasing.

In the wider world there seems to be an abstract notion of ever-increasing worth that's causing the wheels to wobble precariously on the capitalist bandwagon. If I were Hirst my next series of works would be wallet-sized pieces of art mass-produced for the wealthy who wish to pay for items with something less vulgar than a piece of plastic with their name embossed on the front.

Would £111m in liquid assets and a well-known signature be enough to set up your own small bank in these turbulent days?

Elephants in front of the Brighton Dome

This was a nice surprise to see this morning. Check out the topiary! Each sculpture appeared to have been sponsored by a business in support of an elephant charity.

Elephants in the Royal Pavilion Gardens

It was lovely to see people wandering in and reacting with big smiles when they saw this herd in the Royal Pavilion gardens. Be good to see this sort of thing more often; it brightened my day.

1 original comment:

Have just purchased one of the above baby elephants. Hopefully being delivered tomorrow to Pavilion Gardens Cafe. Want the elephant to help raise funds towards improving the Pavilion Gardens for the public.
Comment by David Sewell — 11 December, 2008 @ 9:09 pm

This should be interesting. The BBC are tracking an individual shipping container as it travels round the world transporting cargo for a year. Hopefully this will also include the type of goods it carries as it's put to work.

I didn't realise until a couple of years ago how something seemingly mundane was the main component in a complex system that has had a profound impact on our world. I haven't read this yet but it's on my list: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.

Thing is, when something becomes a standard it can start to influence other areas of innovation such as the  datacentre-in-a-box concept that has done the rounds. The latest version of this is Google's patent on stacking a load of these at sea to be cooled and powered by the waves. I've read how when Google started they piled bare bones systems in plastic desk drawers and just left them, it being cheaper to add more capacity than spend time swapping out faulty units. This idea has now been scaled-up  to the size of entire containers that are only swapped out when a certain number of modules fail. As our demand for additional capacity increases so the solutions for answering that demand scale accordingly.