Wallops Awaits Word
Virginia may learn today whether more rockets will launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
NASA selected Orbital Sciences Corp. in February for a $320 million cooperative program to develop a commercial cargo delivery system to supply the international space station after the space shuttle is retired in 2010. Orbital, based in Dulles, said then it planned to use the Eastern Shore’s Wallops for early missions.
However, Florida politicians pounced and have been generously trying to lure Orbital to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. To help Virginia compete, a bipartisan group of state legislators from Hampton Roads and the Shore authorized $16 million in infrastructure improvements for Wallops.
It is hoped that Orbital will call Gov. Timothy M. Kaine today , so Virginians can watch more space-bound rockets streak from the Eastern Shore.
Nintendo’s new Wii Fit exercise video system hit the market last month. You can do yoga, strength training, balance exercises and aerobics right in your living room using the balance board.
Who’s sprung for one, and what do you think of it? Does it give you a good workout? What do you like or dislike about it? Does it get your kids off the sofa? Does it have staying power, or will it go the way of other gimmicky exercise equipment?
Pilot writer Elizabeth Simpson wants to know what you think. E- mail her at elizabeth .simpson@pilotonline.com.
– Staff and wire reports Not all domains are created equal. Some appear more dangerous than others, antivirus software vendor McAfee reported last week.
McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are “.hk” (Hong Kong), “.cn” (China) and “.info” (information). Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.
It identified a little more than 5 percent of the sites under the “.com” domain as dangerous.
The least risky? McAfee flagged just 0.05 percent of “.gov” (government) sites. Apple fans will be sorely disappointed if Steve Jobs doesn’t pull a new version of the iPhone out of his pocket today during his keynote speech at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Speculation about the next iPhone reached a fever pitch in recent weeks. In one example, a year-old import-tracking firm used the iPhone to demonstrate its prowess as a corporate intelligence provider.
Importgenius.com reported that Apple and its logistics partners have imported 188 truck-size shipping containers “of a product type never before declared on its shipping manifests.” According to U.S. Customs data, each container held 40,000 units of something dubbed “electric computers” on bills of lading.
While it’s a leap to presume those are iPhones, it’s not a big one. Stay tuned.
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