Tagged: paul allen

Billionaire Paul Allen’s spaceship project has reached a milestone in the form of the world's widest garage door. 

The door will make way for a strange vehicle under assembly in the Mojave Desert. 

Allen's team has the most unusual plan, out of several private space ventures, for sending people and satellites into orbit. They'll launch their rockets from the belly of a gigantic airplane, which looks like two Boeing 747s bonded together. And constructing that bizarre jet requires a building wide enough to shelter it.

Sitting in a coffee shop with a friend 10 days ago, I got a call from an 800-number, I took it and it was a credit card fraud warning. I didn’t answer the questions and ended the call. You know, never give information to unsolicited caller.

Then it hit me that maybe my family debit card would be shut down, so my wife called our bank and suddenly Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and I had something in common financially! We’d both had our credit/debit cards hacked.

And apparently we're not an exclusive club.

Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, is more than doubling his investment in unraveling mysteries of the brain – and bringing some of America’s top scientists to a new lab in Seattle. They say they're building "brain observatories," where they hope to answer big questions about how the mind works.

They'll peer inside the brain, similar to how groups of astronomers gather at major observatories to peer into the stars for answers about the formation of the universe.

What is it about our super rich tech guys and local culture that makes them want to send people into outer space?

Yesterday, the space venture backed by Jeff Bezos (of Amazon fame) announced it was ready to conduct a “pad-abort test” in the summer of 2012, according to Flightglobal. The test is a crucial milestone in qualifying the company's New Shepard vehicle for human spaceflight.  

Paul Allen is bankrolling a dramatic new space-craft, which aims to launch satellites later this decade, and maybe people, too. The project uses an airplane made from two rebuilt Boeing 747’s. 

It looks a little like a flying catamaran. It will be the largest airplane ever built, with six jet engines. And hanging from the wing in the middle will be a rocket.

Paul Allen’s new company, Stratolaunch Systems hopes to bring airport-like operations to the launch of commercial and government payloads and, eventually, human missions. Plans call for a first flight within five years, according to a company press release.

The air-launch-to-orbit system will mean lower costs, greater safety, and more flexibility and responsiveness than is possible today with ground-based systems, the company declares.

If you’re a fan of the movie “Avatar” you might really like the exhibition opening Saturday at Seattle’s Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

“Avatar” director James Cameron – a pal of EMP/SFM co-founder Paul Allen – will be on hand for a Friday event which will feature some of the film’s actors and Richie Baneham, who won the Academy Award for best visual effects.