Throughout history mankind has been fascinated with space and the stars and planets. From the early astronomers of the ancient world in Egypt and Greece to the space race of the 20th century, there has been an obsession with the night skies and what they contain.

The need to travel and explore has shaped human history, and educational websites like planets.org.uk are a testament to the changing desire to explore space. Exploration has led to the formation of the modern world as people journeyed across the world, colonised new lands and created empires. Undoubtedly, the next step is to voyage beyond the confines of Earth and into space. But will space travel ever become commonplace? When will we be able to get on a spaceship and go on holiday to the moon?

In the mid 20th century, many optimistic futurologists predicted that the average family would be jetting off to space for a holiday by the year 2000. While space holidays remain far from the norm, since 2001 there have been seven space tourists, of various nationalities, all travelling with the company ‘Space Adventures’ on journeys averaging 11 days. However, these trips into space cost each person an average of twenty million dollars and involved lengthy periods of training.

Now, however, several companies are offering trips into space that will – although still expensive – be available to many more people. The average space adventurer in future can expect several days’ training at a space centre followed by an adrenaline-charged take-off from Earth. Once in low-earth orbit they will have stunning views of the planet and will be able to perhaps perform a few zero-gravity somersaults (dubbed ‘astrobatics’). There will then be a relatively gentle ‘glide’ home. The whole trip will take about two and a half hours. This is significantly shorter than the average ‘holiday’ but it will certainly be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

To date, 410 people have booked a trip into space with Virgin Galactic. With flights from Canada, New Mexico and Sweden and with plans for hotels aboard space shuttles in development, it seems likely that space travel will certainly become available, at least to the wealthy, within this generation. Whether it ever becomes accessible to all – and indeed whether it ever should be – remains to be seen. Given the pattern of human history, however and people’s unquenchable thirst to explore the unknown, it seems probable that at some point in the future mass space tourism will become a reality.

This article was Authored by Jack Rasmussen, keen astronomer and self-confessed nerd.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is digital ‘crypto-currency’ that allows users to transfer money from one wallet to another with little no transaction fee. It is essentially an open source currency that is available to anyone and can be transferred to anyone. Bitcoin is secure and anonymous, transactions are public but parties involved in the transaction are not identified. For this reason, bitcoin has been the subject of much controversy and has led to the open purchase of drugs and weapons online with absolutely no regulation.

If you’re still not sure what bitcoin is then read this article about ‘what is bitcoin?’

How does bitcoin affect how we do business?

Currently the answer is that it doesn’t. Not enough people have adopted this new ‘currency’ for it to reach a point where people need to use it. Some of the benefits of using bitcoin to purchase and sell goods or services are:

1. Transactions are either low cost or completely free.
2. Transactions are completely anonymous.
3. The supply of bitcoin is fixed and predictable.

There are a few main benefits to using bitcoin. However the anonymity has tarnished bitcoin’s legitimacy as it is now almost entirely associated with drugs and firearms. So do the negatives outweigh the positives for businesses looking to adopt bitcoin?

Well besides from the terrible reputation there are a few things that could go wrong:

1. Governments put a ban on bitcoin due to black market issues.
2. Bitcoin is highly volatile and will almost always be highly volatile until it is backed by something of inherent value (possibly gold).
3. While bitcoin is incredibly secure from an encryption point of view, your wallet is stored on your harddrive and can therefore be completely erased. You can also have all of your BTC (bitcoin) stolen if someone is able to login to your account.

At this moment in time it is implausible for a business to take on such a risk. In some exceptions – such as with the online poker market in the US, depositing with bitcoin provides a good ‘loophole’ to avoid prosecution for gambling online; however the legality of such a loophole is not entirely clear. This may be an answer to the question “what poker sites accept US players?”

While bitcoin is certainly an interesting development and is clearly showing moderate success, it is still too hard to say whether it will gain credibility and become popular enough to change the way we do business.

A lot of iPad users are unaware of ultra portable and iPad-compatible projectors that make watching your 7″ content a much more emmersive experience. Whether you are looking to play games on a bigger screen, watch movies with friends or present to a large audience – an iPad projector from our friends at ipadprojector.org will allow you to do all of that almost 200″ from just a tiny iPad or iPad 2 screen.

iPad Projectors for iPad 2

The initial iPad model was not particularly compatible with any projectors. Microvision launched a projector called the SHOWWX that allowed connectivity to the iPad as well as all VGA devices. It was the first of its kind to really be a success in the industry and since then many pocket projectors have followed. Just over a year on from the initial SHOWWX release, the SHOWWX+ HDMI has come to market that allows connectivity to any device with a HDMI socket. And yes, that includes the iPad 2. This iPad projector still has the same ultra small (iPhone sized) shell and was designed largely to work as an iPad 2 projector. With a higher contrast and brighter display than much of its competitors, the SHOWWX+ HDMI is certainly one of the best ‘pico’ projectors around for iPad and iPad 2.

iPad 3 Projector?

If the rumours are true then we may expect to see built in projectors for the iPad 3 and iPhone 5 in 2012. This would dramatically increase the usability of the iPad but it may also wipe out the market for iPad specific projectors.

But forget the rumours. If you are the owner of an iPad or iPad 2 then you should really take a closer look at these iPad projectors – arguably one of the best mobile devices of 2011.