The British Science Festival 2010 is being held in Birmingham from 14-19 September:

• Programme of events

A gala dinner at the Festival will feature the launch of The New Optimists, a compilation of refreshingly positive views from UK scientists. From the Amazon page:

"The New Optimists is the most exhilarating of books. It looks to the future, not with rose-tinted glasses, but with a clear vision, aware of difficulties and challenges yet convinced that research and experiment can help the human race to overcome them." Excerpt from the Foreword by Jenny Uglow In the late eighteenth century, a small group of scientists gathered in Birmingham to form the Lunar Society, a debating group of scientists, artists, philosophers and businessmen. Their vision changed the face of the world. Today s inheritors of this vision, over 80 medics, life scientists, engineers, chemists, computer and digital media scientists, environmental and energy experts have combined in The New Optimists to share with us their view of the world and what the future holds. And the future is positive. The New Optimists takes us on an exhilarating journey into the minds of some of the UK s leading scientists and reveals just how much is happening in our research centres and universities, driving towards the common good. From tackling the big challenges, such as curing cancer, to living in harmony with our environment, the book reveals how scientists are breaking new barriers as they overcome obstacles to progress. From the role of behaviour in human health to role of science in society, The New Optimists opens your mind to the endless possibilities of focused and responsible research and helps us face the future with confidence."

• The New Optimists website

The Danish group Copenhagen Suborbitals plans a test launch of its suborbital rocket HEAT-1X, with a British dummy named "Randy" on board:

• Danish rocketeers ready to launch British dummy -- Spaceman blog, BBC Online

Dear colleagues

We have just been awarded funding from the Transport iNet to support research in conjunction with Leicester University’s Space Research Centre to investigate the use of advanced manufacturing techniques for the production of components for space exploration projects.

We are looking for two researchers to join the project team for 6 months starting Sept/October. One researcher will be involved in integrating a vision system for quality control within a Selective Laser Melting (SLM) machine, ideally they should have experience in programming in PYTHON. The second researcher will be undertaking process development trials and this may suit someone with a mechanical engineering background.

The researchers will spend a significant proportion of their time working alongside development engineers at MTT Technologies Ltd in Stone (Staffordshire) and there may be the potential for continued employment with the company at the end of the 6month period.

Please can you forward this email to students who you think may be interested and also let me know if you think you have a suitable candidate in mind.

Best regards

David

Prof. David Ian Wimpenny
Head of Additive Manufacturing
Department of Engineering
Faculty of Technology
De Montfort University

Reposted by request:

Here's something a little different ;-) Some of the best and most interesting depictions of near-future space technology in recent fiction have been in the medium of anime, or Japanese animation. I gave a talk on this subject at the UK anime convention Aya Revolution, discussing some of the best space anime and how they touch on real-world space technology.

A video of slides and clips from the talk is available for download. Apologies for the quality, but it had to be compressed quite heavily to create a reasonable file size (the original MOV generated by Keynote was 1GB in size!).

• View in browser
• Download 80MB MP4

Virgin Galactic has responded to reports in the Irish Independent saying that it is only accepting US citizens, describing the article as "completely inaccurate".

A Virgin official said Cyril Bennis, an Irishman living in the UK, had inquired about flying non-US citizens on its flights and was told that they were accepting deposits from Americans and others alike “because we fully intend to be able to fly these pioneering people”.

• Virgin: Irish article 'completely inaccurate' -- Newspace Journal

Rocketeer comments: VG will indeed be flying such noted non-Americans as Richard Branson himself (duh!) and Stephen Hawking. Whoever wrote the original report in the Independent had clearly failed to do a modicum of research.

Jonathan Amos posts a story on the upcoming launch of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and how its British-built superconducting magnet has been substituted with a conventional Chinese-built system.

• How the 'LHC in space' lost its British 'engine' -- Spaceman, BBC

CEO of Excalibur Almaz, Art Dula, receives Pioneer of NewSpace Award from the Space Frontier Foundation at the 2010 NewSpace Conference in Silicon Valley, CA.

The Ariadna programme is a funded initiative that links ESA with European academia for studies in advanced space technology concepts.

• An online map showing all previous and current Ariadna collaborations
• Ariadnet: a collaborative website supporting Ariadna studies
• Currently open Ariadna Calls

The University of Glasgow conducted 'Encounter 2029', a study of asteroid deflection as part of the Ariadna programme: