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SEATTLE--Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan have teamed up on a new winged rocket that would be carried aloft by a gargantuan twin-fuselage mothership and then dropped from 30,000 feet for the climb to orbit, they announced today.

The new rocket will be funded by Allen through a new company known as Stratolaunch Systems and built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif.

The 1.2-million-pound six-engine carrier aircraft, with a wingspan of 385 feet, will be built by Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., a company founded by Rutan and now owned by … Read more

Billionaire Paul Allen today announced his grand ambition for the next generation of manned space travel: the largest aircraft ever built, which would be capable of orbital missions with quick turnarounds, greater safety, and better cost-effectiveness than anything previously launched.

At a press conference this morning in Seattle, Allen--a co-founder of Microsoft--along with Burt Rutan unveiled their new company, Stratolaunch Systems. Allen and Rutan previously collaborated on the creation of SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize for being the first privately funded spacecraft to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, Allen and Rutan are at it again, and at … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--If you thought the Fukushima disaster derailed nuclear power worldwide, look again.

Evacuations and the havoc caused by meltdowns at four reactor cores at the Fukushima power plant earlier this year prompted Japan to shift away from nuclear power and recatalyzed a nuclear phase-out in Germany. But many countries remain enthusiastic about nuclear power, and interest in newer technologies has increased because they are safer, according to a panel of industry professionals here at the MIT Energy Finance Forum on Friday.

"Our investors have a very long time horizon and the reason they supported it is the … Read more

Aquion Energy, a developer of nontoxic batteries, announced today it has raised $30 million in venture capital funding.

Investors in this round of funding include Foundation Capital, TriplePoint Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.

The company previously was operating on venture funding from Kleiner, as well as a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Pittsburgh, Penn. start-up, which grew from a Carnegie Mellon University research project, has been developing grid-scale energy storage without the use of "hazardous materials, corrosive acids, or noxious fumes," according to Aquion.

Specifically, Aquion Energy has developed … Read more

Intel will put its large spotlight on Ultrabook laptops and Windows 8, among other technologies, at its annual developer conference next week.

In a keynote on September 14, Mooly Eden, general manager of the PC client group at Intel, will describe the "transformation of the PC" being driven by Ultrabooks at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), according to an overview of the forum CNET received from Intel today. IDF begins next Tuesday.

Ultrabooks are very light, very thin Windows laptops that compete with the MacBook Air. The core hardware includes Intel second-generation "Sandy Bridge" processors and … Read more

It seems that many people on the Internet have no qualms about "borrowing" other people's work and either failing to attribute it properly or outright claiming it as their own. Photographers and other artists who wish to share their work online are well advised to use watermarks to ensure that their name is never separated from their creations. Scaling Watermark is a simple program that can brand your images with watermarks that can be read at both full size and thumbnail size. It's not as fancy as some other watermark programs we've seen, but we … Read more

Kitchens are filled with appliances and gadgets often designed to do very specific tasks. Whether you want to weigh, measure, chop, store, dice, mince, or grind, chances are there is an appliance for that. But sometimes just because something is designed to do what you need it to do, it doesn't necessarily mean it can do what you need it to do. How does this seemingly paradoxical statement measure up when held up to the cool stainless steel gleam of the kitchen? Easy. When working in quantity, everything looks different.

Home kitchen gear isn't usually tailored for large … Read more

The design of appliances and gadgets in the kitchen tend to play a bit of follow the leader; most things look alike. When comparing a food processor with another food processor, chances are they share similar attributes. Practitioners of industrial design try to overcome these commonalities, but more often than not the end product doesn't reflect these goals. It's not easy to turn a piece of kitchen gear into a new work featuring striking design. Which is probably for the best, as it is kind of helpful to know what the gadget is before you grab it. But … Read more

It is not uncommon for kitchen appliances that do one thing well to do another, similar thing just as well. Often that secondary functionality becomes your primary use for the product (think grinding spices in a coffee grinder).

You may not think it makes any sense to use a blender as a scale, but that's exactly what DeLonghi has done--incorporate a scale into a food processor. The DFP950 12-Cup Food Processor combines two similar kitchen gadgets with a third--not altogether unlikely--kitchen essential. Featuring a tare function, you can add exactly the amount of ingredients you need directly in your … Read more