Landlocked Swiss Hit the Beach at Lake Zurich

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Sunbathing on the shores of Lake Zurich, Switzerland

Switzerland s a landlocked country. Whats more, Switzerland is a cold country; even in the middle of summer temperatures can be downright chilly. But the Swiss, stoic to a fault, don’t let the lack of a coastline or the brisk winds sweeping down from the snow-clad summer Alps hinder their summer beach outings. Instead of the ocean they head for the lakes, and one of the more popular places to spend a day at the beach is Lake Zurich.

This 24-mile long lake, which was gouged out by a glacier during the last Ice Age, sits in a densely populated region, surrounded by a beautiful pre-Alpine setting. Although almost a million inhabitants live around the shores of Lake Zurich, a third of the its shoreline is still freely accessible, and residents flock city beach resorts to swim and sunbathe, making the most of the country’s short summer season.

Giant Ferris wheel towers over city beach resort in Zurich

Strandbad Mythenquai resort, located in Zurich proper, offers a long stretch of sandy beach complete with diving platform, children’s playground, barbecue facilities, boutique, massage, aerobics, volleyball, and a good waterfront restaurant, all framed by the spectacular Alps. Close by, Seebad Enge is another popular lakeside resort that features floating rafts, designated women-only areas, massage, Yoga classes and saunas. There’s even a giant Ferris wheel at the resort, which at one time was the tallest in the world. Singapore claimed the title for highest Ferrris wheel in 2008, but Zurich’s wheel still provides stunning views across the lake.

Sunbathers stretch out on expansive lawns surrounding the lake shore

Tourist brochures insist that the lake water climbs to 68 degrees in the midst of summer, and that folks actually swim in it, but on the day I strolled along its shores few had ventured into the water. I am, however, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt – it was rather gray and drizzly that day. And even in these less-than-perfect conditions, scores of people were sprawled on lawns and splayed on docks jutting into the lake, as if daring the sun to peek through the cloud cover.

Photo Credits: Barbara Weibel

Article by Barbara Weibel of Hole In The Donut Travels

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Our ice is disappearing | Bad Astronomy

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If you are a normal person trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong on an issue, it can be pretty confusing. When it comes to things like global warming, there are folks out there who twist, distort, and spin the facts so grievously that it’s hard to tell the difference between what they are doing and outright lying. And when one of them does it, a slew of others pick it up, making the chorus of nonsense self-reinforcing, muddying the waters even more.

We saw this happen with the CRU emails that were hacked — a situation which was nowhere near as important as so many trumped them up to be — and of course we will see it again and again.

To help staunch that, there are two points about global warming I’ve recently come across that I want to make sure are very clear.

1) Some global warming denialists obfuscate what’s going on with Antarctica, saying the ice there is actually growing, not melting. That is patently false. Where it really matters, Antarctic ice is melting.

antarctic_iceloss

As you can see by this NASA graphic from the linked page, Antarctica loses over 100 billion tons of ice per year, the equivalent of about a hundred cubic kilometers (more than 20 cubic miles) of ice. That number is hard to grasp, but it’s the equivalent to the volume of a mountain about 14,000 feet high — or, if you prefer, it’s like saying that one Colorado Rocky Mountain’s worth of ice disappears every year. Just in Antarctica alone.

You may note that the line fitted to the points in that graph is changing its slope, getting steeper with time. I wouldn’t extrapolate that too much, but if true, it means the loss rate is accelerating.

2) The IPCC report in 2007 was a landmark analysis of the current GW situation. It has been attacked repeatedly by denialists, of course. As it happens, in one part of the report they said that Himalayan glaciers may melt away completely by 2035. This turns out to have been based on a report that was not peer-reviewed, and most likely incorrect.

However, this does not mean the entire report is wrong, and it certainly doesn’t even mean that Himalayan glaciers are fine! Quite the opposite, in fact. A new study of Himalayan ice using satellite data shows that the ice is disappearing, and from 2003 to 2009 shrank at a rate of 47 billion tons per year. I’ll be careful to note that the uncertainty in this measurement is about 25% (12 Gt/year) and has a short baseline in time, but even considering that, the loss of Himalayan ice is definitely large and almost certainly increasing — perhaps twice as rapidly now as it was in the past 40 years before the study.

This is supported by a ground-based study of over 600 glaciers being monitored by Chinese scientists, which showed that between 1980 and 1995, 90% of those glaciers were retreating, and in the period of 1995 – 2005, 95% retreated. In other words, the vast majority of the glaciers studied were losing ice, and in more recent years the number of glaciers losing ice increased.

This is all consistent with global loss rates of ice: it’s disappearing faster now than it was in previous decades.

himalayan_glacier

Get a good look at Himalayan glaciers while you still can.

Expect to hear the antiglobal warming crowd crowing over this, and the media misreporting this to sow more doubt about global warming. But the important point to remember is this: the Himalayan ice really is shrinking, and the same thing is happening in Antarctica.

Global warming is real. It’s also getting worse. You can shout, you can scream until you’re red in the face, and you can deny the facts all you want. But facts are pesky: they exist whether you believe in them or not.

My thanks to expert glaciologists Drs. Lonnie Thompson and C. K . Shum for taking time to explain the Himalayan studies to me and for providing me with the numbers from the ground studies.

Glacier image from mckaysavage’s Flickr stream licensed under creative comons.


New (Possibly) Touchscreen BlackBerry Bold Spotted [BlackBerry]

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RIM has already been moving away from the trackball to the trackpad, but this new image of a yet to be released device shows neither. All signs point to the first touchscreen BlackBerry Bold.

There's not much more information available beyond the picture, but it's certainly a relief to see an improvement over earlier touchscreen prototypes. And it's even better to see RIM continuing to innovate, although it's likely months before we see this—or the final version of it—in stores. With the BlackBerry Storm having had touchscreen capability for some time, it's only natural to see that technology infiltrate other brands.

But what do all you BlackBerry enthusiasts think? Is this sacrilege, or progress?

UPDATE: Crackberry is reporting that this is almost definitely an early Magnum prototype, which sounds right to me. So expect to see a lot of these design elements sometime this year, though probably not this exact design. [Cell Guru via FoneFrenzy]


Create Your Own Faked iPhone 4.0 Screenshots [Photoshop Contest]

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People love trying to trick us with fake shots of unreleased Apple products. We recently received the shot above of the supposed iPhone 4.0 firmware, which we know for a fact is a fake. Can you do better?

It's really easy to fake a screenshot on the iPhone. Simply make what you want in Photoshop, load it onto your phone as a photo and take a photo of the phone with it on the screen. That's clearly what the person who made the above shot did. The above shot is a jailbreak app, but you get the idea.

So what do you hope to see in the iPhone 4.0 software? Go nuts! Send your best entries to me at contests@gizmodo.com with iPhone Fakes in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs under 800k in size, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I'll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!


Anthony Lane on Darwin | The Loom

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Charles_Darwin_in_1855Anthony Lane reviews the new Darwin biopic Creation in the New Yorker. As is his habit, Lane manages to write some lovely stuff about a movie he doesn’t care much for (”at once slow and overwrought”). I have to agree with him on this, for example:

[Actor Paul] Bettany, with his jungly sideburns and smooth pate, offers a reasonable likeness of the great man, although he lacks the shaggy overhang of brow, extending far beyond the sunken eye sockets, which lent Darwin not only his solemn frown but, it must be said, his semi-simian air. I sometimes wonder if his tracing of our ancestry began not on his travels, or at his desk, but one morning when he glanced into his shaving mirror.

[Image: Wikipedia]

Microsoft’s Warped Arc Keyboard Gets a Hands On [Peripherals]

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The guys at DVICE got one of the first fondles of the bizarre Microsoft Arc keyboard that raised some eyebrows at CES. Initial impressions were positive for both design and functionality.

Interestingly, the bottom of the keyboard is actually flat—so it won't hug your lap as one might have initially presumed. However, the arched keys were comfortable to type on and, overall, the feel was described simply: "great."

On the downside, if you don't like smudging and quiet keyboards, the Arc is probably not for you. It also lacks the color range of Microsoft's Arc mice and, inexplicably, the included USB dongle doesn't accommodate both peripherals. Still, if you want a functional keyboard that actually complements your decor, the Arc might be worth looking into. [Microsoft and DVICE]


Blinking Cadavers Lead to New Treatment for Blindness | Discoblog

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eyelid-cadaverIt’s a disconcerting thought, but somewhere out there lies a cadaver… blinking.

Beyond the fright, however, lies the hope for the suffering–scientists have found a way to make an eyelid blink using electrical charges. It’s a big development that can help people with eyelid paralysis who face the possibility of going blind.

Currently, eyelid paralysis is treated either by transferring a muscle from the leg into the face–a lengthy process that may not be suitable for elderly or sick patients–or suturing a gold weight inside the eye, which helps close the eye with the aid of gravity. But neither solution has many takers. Searching for an alternative, surgeons at the University of California at Davis experimented with artificial muscles with six donated human cadavers.

LiveScience reports:

The artificial muscle they used acts like human muscle by expanding and contracting in response to electrical input. Developed by engineers at SRI International of Palo Alto, Calif., the muscle includes a piece of soft acrylic or silicone sandwiched between carbon particle electrode layers. When a current is applied, the outer layers get pressed together and squash the soft center, expanding the artificial muscle as a whole. When the charge is removed, it contracts.

Scientists say this is the first wave of artificial muscle being used in biological systems. In the future, the procedure may be used to treat patients with facial paralysis caused by stroke, injury, or combat. The findings were reported in the January-February issue of journal Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

Researchers say the procedure might be available for patients with eyelid paralysis over the next five years. They are now conducting their studies on live gerbils. Phew! That’s so much better than the thought of bagged, tagged, and blinking cadavers.

Related Content:
80beats: Step Towards an AIDS Vaccine? Monkey Muscles Produce HIV-Fighting Proteins
DISCOVER: New Treatment Lets Paralysed Rats Walk Without Using Their Brains
DISCOVER: FDA Approves Drug That Promises Movie Star Eyelashes
DISCOVER: Her American Face- Transplant Patient Shows Off Her New Look

Image: University of California Regents

speed fluctuation

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im solo runing a backpressure type steam turbine with 110 barg suply pressure with 5507 RPM min govornor and 8260 RPM max speed.

but it fluctuates at 6200 rpm. ???

Smartphone Car Mount Made In Under 10 Minutes and For Less Than $2 [Phones]

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Made in under 10 minutes for less than two bucks, this adjustable smartphone car mount was created by one very frustrated Scion XB driver, fed up of not being able to find a suitable cradle.

Using some PVC parts picked up at a hardware store, plastic coated wire and adhesive-backed craft foam, Instructables user NiftyCurly constructed the cradle you can see above, which he describes as being a "rock solid, quick and dirty $2 mount." [Instructables]


Please Support The Relief Effort In Haiti | The Intersection

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Amputation patients only receiving Motrin for pain.

Doctors in Haiti are in critical need of medical supplies. Like so many, I am heartbroken and wish there were more I could personally do to help. Please join me in making a donation to the relief effort and encourage others to do so as well.

Organizations where you can contribute:

American Red Cross International Response Fund
AmeriCares Help For Haiti
Direct Relief International
Doctors without Borders
HaitiArise
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
Mercy Corps
Oxfam
Partners In Health
UNICEF
Yele Haiti


The "Next Generation" of Microsoft Phones Making Cameos All Over the Internet [Microsoft]

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Rumors about Microsoft's mobile plan are evolving, weirdly! Today, we've got dueling speculation: from Twitter, evidence of new "Danger" hardware; from Microsoft, mention of "the next generation of Windows Phone." It's mystery meat, this stuff, but at least it's juicy.

Engadget spent the better part of their morning piecing together a puzzle's worth of cryptic, oddly tagged tweets from unknown Twitter users. What was so interesting about these Tweets? See if you can tell:

DANGER. Lots of DANGER. This is the company that made the Sidekick, and that Microsoft absorbed. It's also the division variously implicated in the exclusive Pink phone documents leaked to us back in September, which may or may not actually represent Microsoft's next phone play, rather than a straightforward Windows Mobile X evolution. The kicker? Sidekick devices don't tag their tweets "Danger", and these tweets have been ramping up very quickly in the past week. So!

Microsoft's been giving more direct clues as well, by way of their MIX 10 conference site. MIX is an annual developers' conference held by Microsoft in March, just after Mobile World Congress, where Microsoft is almost definitely making some kind of mobile announcement. Peek the schedule, and you'll find this:

The next generation of Windows Mobile phones. Sounds like a bit of an overstatement for an incremental update like Windows Mobile 6.5.3/6.6/whatever, and why would developers need new guidance for developing on a platform built on the same codebase, anyway? Again: delicious mystery meat.

The wild, scattershot nature of these rumors is actually what keep them interesting, I think. There's evidence that we're soon going to see Pink, and that we're soon going to see Windows Mobile 7. The obvious conclusion, if not a particularly descriptive one, is that we're going to see a new thing—a single new thing—that's the product of all the wild rumors we've heard so far, changing nomenclature aside. And, fingers crossed, it may actually be awesome. [Engadget, MobileTechWorld]


Microsoft Sorta Apologizes For Points System, May Be Moving to Real Money [XBox360]

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One of the most annoying aspects of the Xbox 360 Marketplace is Microsoft Points, a fake currency used to buy games and add-ons that obscures how much real money you're spending. But that may be on the way out.

In an interview with G4, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg had this to say about the Points system.

We never intended to ever mislead people. I think we want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we're looking at. How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars?

This is good news! The Points system is transparently sleazy, with it set up so you can only buy points in chunks that are not easily divided into the amount games and such are sold for. Basically, products are all sold in numbers divisible by 200 (200, 400, 1200 point prices are standard) while you can only buy points in chunks divisible by 500 (500, 1000, 2000 or 5000 points are your only options). This almost always leaves you with an awkward number of points left over that you're forced to pay for. You then need to add more points to that awkward remainder to buy more, which will probably give you another awkward remainder, and so on and so forth. This is absolutely the only reason Microsoft has for not allowing you to just buy chunks of 400 or 800 points at a time.

Combine this with the fact that putting a different number value between a product and it's true dollar value is designed to make you forget you're spending real money (it's easier to justify spending 5000 points than $62.50), and you see why this is a pretty anti-consumer system. So it's good news that Microsoft is considering changing it!

But don't think they're just doing it because they've suddenly acquired a conscience. In all likelihood, if Microsoft moves away from the Points system on Xbox Live, it's because they're planning on expanding the Zune Marketplace and integrating it more with the Xbox 360. The Zune Marketplace is in dollars (or whatever local currency you're using), and it'd be much easier to unify the two systems by switching it all to currency than cramming the points system into the Zune Marketplace.

But whatever motivation Microsoft has, moving away from the points system and into real currency is definitely a good thing. Allowing people to pay for only what they want using the normal currency they use every day is just more honest all around, and you can't argue with honesty. [G4 via Kotaku]


The Toilet of Tomorrow [Concepts]

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You don't know how to use this toilet? Wait, wait, you don't know about the three seashells, either?? How could someone not understand the three seashells? Well, before you are further humiliated, let me explain.

The Home Core Integrated Toilet, a concept by Dang Jingwei, fits a pedestal sink and a toilet into one, eco-friendly unit with a dangerous-looking swivel.

When you wash your hands or brush your teeth in the sink, the system can retain this "gray water" for the toilet. Apparently, your butt excretions are not as picky as your mouth—who woulda thunk—so mixing some toothpaste with what is already wretched waste is no big deal. (Though, I'll admit, it's an image I'm not exactly keen on seeing.)

As for the seashells, those are just there to hold hand jewelry. What were you doing with them? [Yanko Design via DVICE]


Uncle Sam: No More Snakes on Planes, Already | 80beats

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burmese-pythonwebThis week federal officials said they want to ban the importation of nine large and exotic snake species. The move is designed to quell the spread of those slithering reptiles that have gotten loose and thrived in Florida and especially in the Everglades, and that threaten to spread further across the country.

More than a million of these snakes—including the giant Burmese python, boa constrictors, and several kinds of anaconda—have come to the United States in the last 30 years as pets. But invariably, over the years, some slithered loose — or were released by owners who found their reptile[s] more than they could handle. Today, many thousands nest wild in Florida’s suburban yards, parks and the Everglades [Science News]. At least one of the species, the northern African rock python, is considered dangerous to humans.

The importation ban is not all: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar also said the government would like to ban interstate sales of these snakes already inside the United States. That means someone couldn’t drive down to Texas and buy a baby python and then legally bring it home to Maryland. It would even become illegal to tote a long-owned boa across states lines — from New York to New Jersey, for instance — when someone moved [Science News]. Whether dedicated snake lovers would ditch their pets upon moving just because the government says so, however, remains to be seen.

Florida officials, for their part, have adopted the typical response to an animal reaching out-of-control numbers: hunting season. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission already allows licensed hunters to kill snakes they encounter during small-game and other hunting seasons in wildlife management areas. But the agency also intends to create a two-month season specifically for the troublesome snakes, said spokeswoman Gabriella Ferraro [Miami Herald].

The Interior Department hopes to formally propose the new rules in February. We’ll see whether it’s too little too late for the Everglades’ ecological balance. As conservation expert Stuart Pimm wrote for National Geographic, the Burmese python could be emerging as the top predator, displacing the famous alligators there.

Related Content:
80beats: New, Extra-Vicious Python Species Is on the Loose in Florida
80beats: How to Control Florida’s Invasive, Occasionally Killer Pythons?
80beats: Everglades Restoration Plan Is Failing, Report Says
Discoblog: When Animals Invade, Part II: Pythons Taking Over South Florida
DISCOVER: The Truth About Invasive Species
DISCOVER: Humans vs. Animals: Our Fiercest Battles With Invasive Species (photo gallery)

Image: flickr / benjgibbs


Looking for hardware jpeg decoder chips

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Hi,

I'm looking for hardware jpeg decoder chips which can drive a color LCD from its resident RAM. The chip needs to be microcontroller addressable to load a jpeg file. So far I've found Solomon SysTech (SSD1921) and Epson (S1D13717) but they are a bit overkill, and the datasheet is the size

Tank Shell Thickness

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Please help me out to solve this :- I did some calculation but i donot know is it ok or not

Design Temp=120 degree c= 248 F

Design Pressure= 1.0 kg/sqcm/FV= 14.233 psi

Joint Efficiency = 0.7

Corrosion Allowance = 3mm.

Material = IS 2062 Gr.B

CST OD= 2200 mm.

CST THK assumed = 10

Commercial Spaceflight Federation Responds to the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel’s 2009 Annual Report

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Washington, D.C. – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation released the following statement on the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel’s 2009 annual report:

While the Commercial Spaceflight Federation agrees with the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) on its recognition of the importance of commercial spaceflight both for cargo and crew missions, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation disagrees with certain other conclusions and finds some of the assertions in the ASAP’s Annual Report to be incorrect.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation commends the ASAP on their finding in the ASAP 2009 Annual Report that commercial spaceflight “is emerging as one of the critical programs for NASA” and that “if there is a widening gap, COTS could play a key role and could be a critical program for flight safety of the astronauts.”

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation agrees with the ASAP that NASA must “quickly establish fundamental safety requirements for…programs that may in the future be used to get NASA’s astronauts to Low Earth Orbit (LEO)” and agrees with the ASAP’s direction to NASA that “considerable work must be done,” and that NASA should “accelerate the level of effort underway.” To aid this process, the commercial space industry stands ready to begin working now with NASA to agree on a commercial human-rating plan, including the appropriate standards, requirements for vehicles to meet those standards, and the mechanism by which compliance with those standards will be validated, and industry has established a Commercial Orbital Spaceflight Safety Working Group to engage with NASA and FAA.

Since the ASAP correctly points out that NASA has not yet developed standards and processes for human-rating commercial vehicles, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation disagrees with ASAP’s implication that safety will be compromised because “no COTS manufacturer is currently HRR qualified,” because, quite simply, it is impossible for companies to meet standards that do not currently exist. Until such time as commercial human-rating standards are determined, industry continues to develop vehicle hardware based on the only standards available: those NASA established for its own vehicles, known as NPR 8705.2B. As no commercial provider has yet been tasked by NASA to begin working through a NASA human-rating process, for the ASAP to state that “no COTS manufacturer is currently HRR qualified” is akin to saying that someone didn’t pass his driver’s test when he’s still waiting in line at the DMV and hasn’t even been given the exam yet.

The ASAP’s repeated references to the two “COTS firms” ignores the fact that many companies, including both established firms and new entrants, will compete in the Commercial Crew Program envisioned by the Augustine Committee. While the Falcon 9 and Taurus II vehicles have already met numerous hardware milestones and will have a substantial track record by the time any astronauts are placed onboard, several other potential Commercial Crew providers envision use of launch vehicles such as the Atlas V, vehicles that are already entrusted by the government to launch multi-billion dollar national security payloads upon which the lives of our troops overseas depend.

Despite the ASAP Report’s contention that commercial vehicles are “nothing more than unsubstantiated claims,” the demonstrated track records of commercial vehicles and numerous upcoming manifested cargo flights ensure that no astronaut will fly on a commercial vehicle that lacks a long, proven track record. The Atlas V, for example, has a record of 19 consecutive successful launches and the Atlas family of rockets has had over 90 consecutive successes, and dozens of flights of the Atlas, Taurus, and Falcon vehicles are scheduled to occur before 2014 in addition to successful flights already completed.

Further, thirteen former NASA astronauts, who have accumulated a total of 42 space missions, stated in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that commercial spaceflight can be conducted safely:
      “We are fully confident that the commercial spaceflight sector can provide a level of safety equal to that offered by the venerable Russian Soyuz system, which has flown safely for the last 38 years, and exceeding that of the Space Shuttle. Commercial transportation systems using boosters such as the Atlas V, Taurus II, or Falcon 9 will have the advantage of multiple unmanned flights to build a track record of safe operations prior to carrying humans. These vehicles are already set to fly over 40 flights to orbit in the next four years.”

In contrast, ASAP describes the Ares I as “demonstrated” despite the fact the Augustine Committee determined the Ares I vehicle will likely not fly until 2017, and the ASAP ignores the fact that NASA is planning to place astronauts on the second orbital flight of the Ares I system. As Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley recently stated, placing astronauts on these early Ares I flights poses a safety risk equal to or worse than that of the current Space Shuttle:
      “What at least some of our work suggests is that, yes, on the second launch the LOC [loss of crew] risk may be roughly on par with today’s mature shuttle risk. Other assessments are less rosy (a little riskier than a shuttle launch).”

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation disagrees with the ASAP’s characterization of a Commercial Crew Program as an “alternative” to Ares I, because these two systems fulfill very different missions – Commercial Crew is not an alternative to systems designed to travel beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Commercial Crew is akin to developing a Gemini spacecraft for low Earth orbit, rather than an Apollo spacecraft for reaching the Moon. The Orion exploration vehicle, for example, must reenter the atmosphere at one-and-a-half times orbital velocity, encountering nearly double the heat loads that a LEO-only spacecraft would encounter. Because it serves a simpler mission, any vehicle that is designed simply to service the Space Station and other LEO destinations will be more cost-effective without sacrificing safety.

The ASAP mischaracterized how safety was treated by The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (also known as the “Augustine Committee”). The ASAP’s 2009 Annual Report perpetuates the unfortunate misconception that Augustine Committee inappropriately assumed safety to be a “given” (here the ASAP appears to be misquoting the Augustine Committee’s statement that safety was treated as “sine qua non” – in fact, “sine qua non” is universally defined as “something absolutely indispensable or essential”).  As Norm Augustine stated in a Congressional hearing, safety was “the number one issue for us [the Committee] to consider.”  The Augustine Committee, whose 10 members have cumulatively amassed 293 years of space industry experience, spent an extensive amount of time on safety issues and determined that “the Committee… would not suggest that a commercial service be provided for transportation of NASA crew if NASA could not be convinced that it was substantially safe.” In contrast, the ASAP stated it has “not yet had the opportunity to evaluate any of these [commercial] concepts with regard to inherent safety issues.

About the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
The mission of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) is to promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry. CSF member organizations include commercial spaceflight developers, operators, and spaceports. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is governed by a board of directors, composed of the member companies’ CEO-level officers and entrepreneurs. For more information please visit http://www.commercialspaceflight.org or contact Executive Director John Gedmark at john@commercialspaceflight.org or at 202.349.1121.