I've been doing some thinking about Cyber Renaissance and the system management problems the company is trying to solve. It's still an early stage startup and we're exploring some ideas about using autonomic clusters of computers to do useful work. This is an interesting problem domain, and may prove to be profitable.

We're looking at using a functional programming language such as Erlang or Haskell to implement this since they promise improved reliability and effective use of the multi-core processors that are now mainstream. As we develop our ideas, we'll experiment with the functional programming paradigm to see how well it fits both the problem domain and our brains.

Virgin Galactic's Space Ship Two has been publicly unveiled. It will begin flight tests next year and begin commercial service in 2011.

A less direct, but more efficient biofuel production process is being used by starup ZeaChem to yield 135 gallons of ethanol per ton of cellulose feedstock compared to 100 gallons for more conventional methods. After converting cellulose to sugars with acid, their process uses bacterial from termite guts to transform the sugar to acetic acid which is combined with hydrogen to produce ethanol. ZeaChem is preparing to scale up from laboratory scale production to a 250,000 gallon per year pilot plant.

Harley Davidson announced last week that it was shutting down its Buell motorcycle operation and selling MV Agusta. Buell is one of the more interesting Marques and this is sad news. Best of luck to Erik Buell and his merry band of elves.

While most of the private space industry is focusing on commercializing the Earth to Low Earth Orbit market, others are looking farther out. In this interview former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz discusses the latest milestone achieved for his VASIMR rocket engine for deep space missions, and the next steps for his company, Ad Astra Rocket.

It looks like SpaceX will be carrying NASA's water in 2011, following the retirement of the Shuttle. This is intended to be an interim measure pending Orion/Ares development, but given the huge deficits being incurred by the current administration, it may end up being a long term solution.

Cyber Renaissance is a new startup dedicated to the creation of an open source Network Management System using Erlang. I've joined the forum to begin kicking around ideas with the founder.

In this study on location-based services, the acceptance and utility of location tracking versus location aware services was measured for a group of college age people in a controlled environment. In this experiment, the subjects found location tracking more useful, but had privacy concerns about the technology.

I suspect that in a more diverse and unpredictable environment, privacy issues would be more critical and the utility difference between location tracking and location aware services would be smaller. We can then expect location aware services to see faster market growth than location tracking services.

SpaceX had a successful launch of their Falcon 1 launch vehicle today. It is the first privately developed orbital launch vehicle. Congratulations to the SpaceX team. Ad Astra!

I'm often annoyed by the overuse of the Gaussian (often called Normal) probability distribution in statistics. In The Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses not just annoyance, but outrage, at such usage. He presents a pragmatic and contrarian view of probability and statistics, particularly as they relate to risk and decision analysis. A black swan is a rare, unexpected event that has a large impact. Europeans believed that all swans were white until the first black swan was sighted in Australia.

We never know true probabilities, we can only estimate them using various statistical methods. Using a set of data to estimate the probability of a particular event occurring requires that some probability distribution be used as a model. The Gaussian is often used because it is mathematically tractable and fits some common phenomena. Knowing the mean and variance of a Gaussian is to know the whole distribution. Since probabilities fall off exponentially with distance from the mean, the mean can be, and too often is, treated almost like a constant. Over reliance on the Gaussian causes people to underestimate the likelihood of rare events. When the rare events have major consequences, disastrous decisions often result.

No amount of data can prove that a model is correct, but it only takes one data point to prove it wrong. People often throw out 'outliers' that don't fit the Gaussian model to get a better fit, but this leads to underestimating the true variability and increasing the chance of being blindsided by the unexpected. Games of chance are often used to teach probability theory since they're easy to understand. However, they represent a sanitized and simplified world in which the rules are known and probabilities easily calculated. The real world is messier than that and contains hostile players.

This book is a must read for anyone dealing with risk in the modern world, that is, for everyone. Extreme, rare events aren't really predictable, but one can see possibilities. Since black swans can positive as well as negative, Taleb recommends maximizing exposure to the good black swans and minimizing exposure to the bad ones. Easier said than done .

In an Atlantic piece, Not Your Father's Space Program, Glenn Reynolds gives his impressions of the 2008 International Space Development Conference. Big government run space programs like NASA's aren't the only game in town any more. The excitement is centered on private companies incrementally developing for-profit space ventures.

There's an interesting thread on comp.lang.apl on the viability of APL started by Morten Kromberg of Dyalog APL. There's been some doom and gloom on the news group about APL's future. Morton pointed out that, while some of the mainframe APL applications and associated consulting opportunities have gone away, APL is still a highly productive language for solving problems, and that Dyalog and the other commercial APL vendors are doing fine.

Array Programming Languages provide good abstractions for exploring novel problem spaces, making attractive for entrepreneurial efforts where multiple prototypes must be constructed and evaluated in short order.

Armadillo Aerospace continues the development of their modular rocket system with engine refinement and vehicle integration work. I've mostly watched their Lunar Lander Challenge efforts, but that's really a side business opportunity that provides a good arena for testing their ideas. They're after the low cost space launch business, and if successful, their approach does promise to be very cost effective.

Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic have unveiled the design for SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. The first vehicles are under construction and testing will begin this summer.

Glen Reynolds points to a Motor Trend article on the Tesla that's billed as a driving impression, it begins with a digression into the origin of the Tesla name and spends a lot of time on the company's business maneuvering and the car's transmission issues. Understandable, since these will determine whether the Tesla is real, or just a curiosity. The article is vaguely skeptical of the Tesla's green bonafides and more analysis would have been appropriate.

Good news is the fix for the transmission issue. They're going to a single speed transmission and a more powerful version of the electric motor. Oh, and they like the way it drives, too.

We drove down to Alamogordo, NM Friday to visit a friend and attend the X Prize Cup on Saturday and Sunday at Holloman AFB, and returned today. It was a fun weekend, though I was disappointed that Armadillo Aerospace didn't win the Lunar Lander Challenge. They were very close. Next year there should be more than one team competing and with two million dollars still on the table, it should be interesting.

I was more disappointed that the Space Elevator Challenge was not part of the X Prize Cup this year. I guess the Spaceward foundation wanted to go their own way, but I think there was a lot of synergy in having the events co-located last year.

On the positive side, the airshow held in conjunction with the X Prize Cup was outstanding. The F-22 Raptor was especially impressive.

We went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival with my brother and neice. It's grown a lot since we last saw it. Of the crafts on display, I found Badger Blades the most interesting.

Interesting Erik Buell interview at the Telegraph. Corporate leaders talk a lot about passion, but few show it the way that Erik does. He seems to be deeply committed both to his motorcycles and to his customers.

Rand Simberg has a wrapup of the recent Space Access conference. In short, while Big Space is struggling, Little Space is doing fine, one baby step at a time.

Blue Origin apparently had another test flight yesterday. It'd be nice if they weren't so secretive.