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Earth Prepares To Snap First-Ever Image Of A Black Hole's Event Horizon (Synopsis)

“Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.” -Dag Hammarskjold One of relativity’s oddest predictions is the existence of black holes, objects so dense and massive that nothing, not event light can escape from them. But that lack-of-escaping is limited to a certain volume of space: that within the black hole’s event horizon. Although black holes have been detected and identified, an event horizon has never yet been imaged. That, however, is likely about to change when the Event Horizon Telescope…

Physics on the air: From the very small to the expanding universe!!!!

Not only is our universe expanding, but with the LHC online we may even find the elusive Higgs Boson soon. Tune in this Sunday for a discussion about the very small and very large in our universe with two prominent physicists: Keith Olive, Physicist at the U of M's Theoretical Physics Institute, and Jim Peebles, Albert Einstein Professor of Science Emeritus, Princeton University will be guests on the show, broadcast live on AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9 to 10 AM central. Professor Keith Olive is a distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. His research areas…

Restoring the Office of Technology Assessment to Its Rightful Place

Over at his new digs, Chris Mooney talks about efforts to re-launch the OTA: I’m starting to detect some buzz on this very important front, which I wrote about in detail in 2005’s The Republican War on Science and elsewhere. Basically, the story is this: In 1995 the Gingrich Republicans, looking to slash budgets–and looking askance at science in general in many areas–got rid of their scientific advisory office, which had been in existence since 1972 and had become world renowned not only for accurate studies, but for far-ranging analyses that forecast future science and technology problems…

Why don't we love science fiction?

"The British are sniffy about sci-fi, but there is nothing artificial in its ability to convey apprehension about the universe and ourselves." Folks are always going on about Science Fiction in these parts. And that's fun. Figured I'd add a link to this essay, "Why don't we love science fiction?," from the UK's Times Online. It refers to two works about SF: A Science Fiction Omnibus edited by Brian Aldiss and Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science by Mark L Brake and Neil Hook. A few excerpts. This one: The big problem with being sniffy about SF is that…

A Weekend Ideological Survey

The Center For American Progress recently released the results of a political positions survey. They asked respondents to rate their level of agreement with 40 questions on a scale of 0-10, with 0 at the 'disagree' end of the spectrum. They converted each person's responses into a numerical value (that they call a 'composite ideology measure') between 0 and 400. They've also put the online version of the survey up on their website. I came in as "extremely progressive" (although I still swear I'm a moderate), with a score of 315/400. If you take the survey, I'd be very interested to hear…

God makes DNA replication suspiciously evolutionary, tricks me again

God is so tricky. New research reveals that the structure of a DNA replication molecule is similar across all three domains of life: In two papers that will be concurrently published in the August edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (now available on-line), the researchers report the identification of a helical substructure within a superfamily of proteins, called AAA+, as the molecular "initiator" of DNA replication in a bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and in a eukaryote, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. Taken with earlier research that identified AAA…

Study on blogging in the lives of academic mothers

From my email box: My name is Annie Fox and I am a graduate student in Social Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Currently, I am conducting a study examining the role of blogging in the lives of Academic mothers. We have identified you as a potential participant because your blog came up in our web search for relevant blogs. Consequently, we would like to invite you to participate in our research study. Your participation would involve the completion of an anonymous online survey. The survey contains a mixture of multiple-choice and open-response questions, and should take less…

What I've learned so far at the PSA.

This is not an exhaustive account of my experiences at the PSA so far, but rather what's at the top of my Day-Quil-addled head: I am not the only academic whose tastes run to hand-drawn slides. However, it is possible that I am the youngest academic whose tastes run to hand-drawn slides. Apparently, using Powerpoint marks me as nearly as tremendous a Luddite as using actual overheads. Keynote is where it's at. (But I may be unwilling to actually invest the time necessary to make the transition, especially seeing as how I like hand-drawn slides.) A "coffee breaks" in the conference schedule…

Spotted jellies.

Here are some more jelly pictures from my most recent visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Today, the Spotted jelly (Mastigias papua). I really like the coloration of these critters, as well as the way that they swim together in patterns that look like a complicated water ballet. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Online Field Guide, those coffee-with-cream colored spots are due to tiny algae called zooxanthellae growing in the jellies. The algae aren't just cosmetic -- they also produce nutrients that feed the jellies, supplementing their zooplankton diet. If you're serving as a home…

Bay Area Darwin fans: hear The Origin Cycle at Stanford this Thursday evening.

Thursday, October 8, at 8 pm, the Firebird Ensemble will be performing The Origin Cycle, eight selections from Charles Darwin's work Origin of Species set to music. The performance will be at Stanford University's Campbell Recital Hall, and tickets are free, but you'll want to reserve your seats online ahead of the performance. Here's a bit of information on The Origin Cycle: Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is not only one of the most important scientific works of all time, but one of the most beautifully written. In The Origin Cycle, eight contemporary composers set fragments of Darwin'…

Dear Prudence

I think Carl gets right to the heart of the issue both in this online conversation and in his book. "Are we really just getting started thinking about this stuff?" he asks. In some cases, it seems that regulators are forcing researchers to go to near-impossible lengths to ensure safety despite no conceivable risk. (Hillman's cavity-fighting tooth bug?) In other cases, researchers appear to be rushing ahead with no one stopping them. Carl highlights what I consider a prime example of the latter issue in "Darwin at the Drugstore" (subsection "Skin of the Frog"). He describes how Michael Zasloff…

Fired Up For iGEM

iGEM officially starts for the Harvard team tomorrow for some good old-fashioned fun with BioBricks, arabidopsis, protein-based sweeteners, and shRNA! Our goal is to make a system for genetically engineering plants safely and easily with some hopefully fun and useful applications in the short term. iGEM (the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition) is about fun and open science, so we hope you enjoy following along with our adventure on our wiki, blog, twitter, or even become a fan on facebook. As a proud teaching fellow I'll be posting updates here periodically all summer,…

Our AIBS Talk; and Going Carbon Neutral

So here's the bad news: This picture of Matt is probably the only reasonably good one from our latest talk, at the American Institute of Biological Sciences annual meeting yesterday. But here's the good news: The entire talk was recorded and should be available soon enough on YouTube. We're looking forward to it coming online, and will let you know forthwith when it does so. In the audience this time were a number of AAAS fellows (won't embarrass them by naming names), climate science whistleblower Rick Piltz (ClimateScienceWatch.org author), and fellow ScienceBlogger Jason Rosenhouse. As…

Why Science Journals Need to Move to Online Only Publishing

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been catching up on my science reading, and that's reminded me just how much I hate it when journal articles refer to supplemental materials. I'm not bothered when tables that used to go in what we old-timers once called appendices wind up in supplemental materials: very few people want to read the descriptions of 2,000 bacterial strains, for instance. But that's not what most supplemental materials are, or how they arose (we'll get to that in a bit). Not only is it a hassle to download an article, only to realize that there's a supplement you need and…

Maternity Leave

Hi Folks - The more I look at my life, the more I think I'm not doing things as well as I could be - too many balls in the air.  Many of the things I care about are paying a price.   The addition of the chronic sleep deprivation that goes with a new baby is pushing me to strip down my life to the bare minimum. What's frustrating me most is that writing and online work are taking up time I should be spending on sustainability measures - while I'm writing about the joys of pickling, I'm not actually making pickles with the kids.   For a long time this was manageable, but right now, with a two…

App.net and the Free Problem

Have you heard of App.net? If not, check it out. The basic premise is to create a social media platform that is aligned with users' interest. And so, gasp, it costs money! The CEO, Dalton Caldwell, has a neat video explaining the inception of the project and the philosophy of the venture. Critics have said Caldwell's proposal is misunderstood, and that users are projecting their own ideals onto the platform. They have said that there are too many men on App.net. They have said that it's just another gated community, and segmenting away users is a bad thing. I joined and still think it…

Teens and Online Social Networks

How many of you have been blogging since June 1997? Not many, I think. But danah boyd has. And she's been studying online social networks almost as long, first starting with Friendster, then moving on to MySpace and Facebook as those appeared on the horizon and became popular. Recently, danah defended her Dissertation on this topic and, a few days ago, posted the entire Dissertation online for everyone to download and read - Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (pdf): Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began…

ScienceOnline'09 - introducing the participants 5

Let's highlight some more of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference: Greg Laden is an anthropologist, a part time independent scholar and part time associate adviser with the Program for Individualized Learning at the the University of Minnesota and a prolific SciBling blogger. He will be on the panel Hey, You Can't Say That! Benjamin Landis is a student in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke. Patric Lane is the Health and Science Editor at UNC-Chapel Hill News Services. Les Lang is the Director of Research Communications and Assistant Director of Public…

The Graduate Junction

Graduate Junction is a new social networking site designed for graduate students and postdocs. I looked around a bit and found it clean, easy-to-use and potentially useful. This is how they explain it - give it a try and let me know what you think: The Graduate Junction is a brand new website designed to help early career researchers make contact with others with similar research interests, regardless of which department, institution or country they work in. Designed by two graduate researchers at the University of Durham, The Graduate Junction has proved very popular with research students…

Science Blogging Conference - Registration is now open!

Late last night we opened the registration for the 2nd Science Blogging Conference, to be held on January 19th, 2008 on the Sigma Xi campus (publishers of 'American Scientist') in the Research Triangle Park which is officially on the territory of Durham, NC. To register, go to the registration form and fill out the details. To see who is already registered, go here. If you will be here on day before, on Friday, January 18th and want to join us for dinner, add you name to this list. If you are on Facebook, join the Conference Event and invite your friends. Some of the news will be…

The Best of March

I posted 133 times in March. I was quite focused on science communication and journalism this month and blogged quite a lot about these topics. See, for example, Why it is important for media articles to link to scientific papers, or New science journalism ecosystem: new inter-species interactions, new niches or What is journalism and do PIOs do it? And what's with advertising? or What is Journalism? or Push vs. Pull strategies in science communication. And I was keeping tab on what others are saying: Science Journalism/Communication week in review, Science Journalism must-reads of the day,…

Myrmecos Blog at Two Years

Myrmecos Blog appeared online two years ago today.   While I'm obviously the guy writing most of the posts, the reason we're still on the air isn't me and my bloviating.  It is all of you guys- the readers, the guest bloggers, the commentators. Without the life provided to the site by the many participants, I'd long since have lost the incentive to keep at it.  So, a heartfelt thank you. If I had to finger any one difference between blogging in 2007 and blogging in 2009, it is this.  In 2007 blogs had already risen to mainstream acceptability, especially in the political, commercial, and…

Technical difficulties

As many of you may have noticed, we're having some technical difficulties, with prolonged posting times for comments, errors, etc. I assure you that, however much it might annoy you to watch your browser chug away slowly and seemingly endlessly after you've composed your pithy and erudite comment and hit "Post," only to deliver an error message at the end, it annoys me infinitely more because it's happening to me nearly every time I try to edit or save a post or comment and has been for several days now. I've learned that what's going on is tha apparently traffic at ScienceBlogs has finally…

12 Books for Every Sustainability Nut

Note: I'm way behind on my 31 books resolution - I'll have to hurry to catch up. In the meantime, will you count these 12? I bet you don't own them! Worms Eat my Laundry by Alcea Grovestock - Worms are hot - in-house domestic composting is everywhere. But have you considered the way red wigglers could augment your laundry routine? After all, so many of us, taken up with homestead and farm work, garden and family chores have developed that layer of laundry that never seems to get washed, composting at the bottom of the hamper. With the addition of red worms and regular contributions to…

The GOP Needs New Followers, Not Leaders

Well, the leaders suck pretty bad too. Having just spent two weeks in Virginia, this account of a meeting of McCain/Palin supporters rings true: I immediately realized that the McCain/Palin folks were having a little meeting....I sat down at the table next to the group just as they were starting their meeting. As soon as the last member of their group came in, they prayed. In their prayer they begged that God "deliver the country from the evil socialists" and even prayed that "Obama find God"... ....The next person lamented that their whole office was voting for Obama. The McCain/Palin…

To Subsidize Corporate Bond Issues, Less Money for Education

I've written before about how the Collapse of the Jenga of Shit (aka the 'subprime' loan crisis) has raised the price of borrowing money--which is paid for with higher state and local taxes--due to the collapse of bond insurers and a liquidity crisis in municipal bonds. Now your property and sales taxes can take another hike courtesy of ratings agency like Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings. From the New York Times (italics mine): If they are right, billions of taxpayers' dollars -- money that could be used to build schools, pave roads and repair bridges --…

China: A Looming Antibiotic Resistance Problem

And you thought fixing the renminbi was bad. By way of Glyn Moody, we find that The Guardian has a very disturbing report about antibiotic resistance in China (italics mine): Chinese doctors routinely hand out multiple doses of antibiotics for simple maladies like the sore throats and the country's farmers excessive dependence on the drugs has tainted the food chain. Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA . There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly…

Rent Extraction + For-Profit Healthcare = Sepsis

Imagine someone had designed a device that would essentially eliminate bloodstream infections (sepsis) caused by contamination of needleless injection ports. Great news right? Well, guess what happens next: Unlike some of the solutions floated by big medical device makers, such as coating the ports with silver, Shaw's innovation added only a few pennies to the cost of production. And it seemed to be remarkably effective: a 2007 clinical study funded by Shaw's company and conducted by the independent SGS Laboratories found the device prevented germs from being transferred to catheters…

Research, Teaching, Tuition, and Overheads

Someday, a science reporter is going to hybridize with an economics reporter and then the topic of how science is funded will actually be covered accurately. Until then, you're stuck with the Mad Biologist. By way of The Intersection, we come across this Chronicle of Higher Education commentary by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. I think the overall point, which is that colleges and universities have strayed from their core mission, which is education, is a good one. But like much commentary on this subject, it neglects the harsh, cold reality of revenue (Got Pepsi?). Here's their…

Public health is public

The national bird flu plan is quite explicit in its promises to local public health. There aren't any. The plan is, "you're on your own." Fair enough. A pandemic happens everywhere so there's no "outside" to send help from. But how well prepared is local public health? Bush has given them the power and supposedly provided them with money to handle bioterrorism attacks. That should have been some help. It wasn't. Unfortunately what the left hand giveth, the Right Hand taketh away. From Cape Cod, Massachusetts: But budget cuts over the past few years, coupled with a lack of staff, have left…

Discover the STEM Power of Walmart -- From Farm Production and Fleet Truck Design to Energy Efficiency and Skilled Trade Employment!

  Many people know Walmart as the largest corporate retailer in the world, but did you also realize it is a leading innovator and employer in STEM? At Festival Expo 2014, you'll discover in unforgettable ways this other side of Walmart, which this year is serving as an Americum-level Sponsor of the Festival! Walmart's imprint on STEM is significant worldwide, and is especially noted for: developing ways to make its foods more healthful by reducing sodium, sugar and fat; designing high-tech fleet trucks; working with farmers to produce better crop yields; creating energy-efficient retail…

Things to Remember About US Healthcare

A lot of the media coverage of the healthcare debate lately has focused on the politics, probably because journalists feel like they've already spent several months explaining the various aspects of proposed reform. But there are a few things that bear repeating, because not everyone seems to remember them. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has one key reminder: In the US, we already ration healthcare: We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford. I've used these numbers before…

The mess at Interior

One of the peculiarities of our media right now is that, as everyone knows, the best political reporting is being done by a couple of comedy shows on cable. Another source that has been surprising me is Rolling Stone, which has unshackled a couple of wild men, Tim Dickinson and Matt Taibbi, to go after the corruption and insanity of American politics — one of those things we once upon a time expected our newspaper journalists to do. I guess the powers-that-be think it's safe to let the drug-addled hippies and punks (and college professors) who read Rolling Stone to know about the failures of…

New ?Guide Book To Medieval Stockholm

Historiska media is a publishing house in Lund. In recent years they have been putting out pop-sci guide books about Medieval Sweden, province by province. I've reviewed the volumes about Södermanland and Uppland provinces here. And now my friend and Fornvännen co-editor Elisabet Regner has written the first volume in the series that deals with a town, not a province: about Stockholm, in whose suburbs I've lived for almost all my life. Together with the Uppland and Södermanland volumes, Det medeltida Stockholm gives us Stockholmers a pretty good grip on our Medieval surroundings. I shouldn't…

Levees and the National Flood Insurance Program (NAP)

The National Academies Press of the United States has recently released a report that will be of interest to those of you concerned with climate change (which better be every one of you dammit!). The report talks about increasing floods due to weather whiplash and sea level rise due to glacial melting (and subsidence), mainly in relation to the levees program and insurance, but also more generally. Here's a small excerpt to give you a flavor: Community flood risk scenarios will continue to evolve as change occurs. Climate change will have a variety of regional impacts, and the geographic…

Calculating The Carbon Cost Of ... well, anything.

There is currently a twitter argument happening, along with a bit of a blogging swarm, over a chimera of a remark made by John Stossle and Bjorn Lomborg. They made the claim that a million electric cars would have no benefit with resect to Carbon emissions. The crux of the argument is that there is a Carbon cost to manufacturing and running electric cars. When we manufacture anything, we emit Carbon, and when we make electricity to run the cars, we emit Carbon, etc. etc. Lomborg is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here I want to focus on one aspect of why he is wrong that applies…

EBooks and Agencies

The big publishing news this week is the US Department of Justice bringing an anti-trust suit against the major book publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to force the "agency model" of ebook pricing on Amazon and other retailers, resulting in higher prices for consumers. I already links dumped an article about the detailed charges, and three of the six companies involved have agreed to a settlement that will change the way their books get priced. A couple of the publishers, particularly Macmillan, whose nasty public spat with Amazon kicked this whole thing off, have decided to fight…

DonorsChoose: Buy This Blog

At the time of this writing, the Uncertain Principles blog challenge stands in first place on the ScienceBlogs Leaderboard, with just under $2,000 in donations so far. That's almost a third of the challenge goal of $6000 in just three days, which is fantastic. Thank you for your generosity. Of course, that still leaves $4,000 to go, which means more donations are definitely wanted. The hip thing to do appears to be to offer incentives for donations, and who am I to pass up a good idea. So, here you go: For a $30 donation to the DonorsChoose challenge, you can buy this blog. Details, terms,…

Hello, world

Well, I just flew in from DC, and boy, are my arms tired. But seriously, folks.... It's a fine thing to be asked to guestblog by the eminent Dr. Oilcan, and I'll do my best to entertain you sporadically over the next few weeks. Like he said, I first met Chad back in his Usenet days, which was back in my Usenet days as well. That's obvious, yeah, but it's key that we both refer to time on Usenet as long past. I haven't read or posted to a newsgroup in five years, and even then my interest had been pretty much dead for a couple years. I first encountered Usenet as a wide-eyed…

Creationist Physics 101

A weird anti-evolution crank seems to be ramping up his efforts around the blogosphere recently: C. David Parsons has been leaving comments at Florida Citizens for Science, and Wesley Elsberry directly addresses his "conflict driven" views. Parsons has apparently been trying to raise his profile because he has a new book out, and he wants creationists to buy it. It's being put out by Tate Publishing, which seems to be a vanity press dedicated specifically to bilking Christian authors. If you have $40 and a complete lack of sense, you too can be the proud owner of The Quest for Right: The…

Fall Break

The beginning of this week was fall break at our college campus. We had the weekend off as well as Monday and Tuesday. Since I had been planning to return home to northern Minnesota for the first time since moving down to west central Minnesota in August, I decided to take Thursday and Friday off also. The few days I spent away from this desolate prairie wasteland and back among the conifers and lakes were phenomenally enjoyable. This is my first year of college away from home and a long way from home it is. I remember the first few weeks I was down here, only vaguely though, a lot of…

ScienceGrandma has left the building

After staying with us for about a month, ScienceGrandma is now on the plane flight back to her home. Last night was our first night without her. Below the fold, a few reflections on living with three generations under one roof. I am happy to be returning to the master bedroom and bath, which we had given up because of accessibility issues. For the duration of her visit, we'd moved a guest bed into my home office and I'd cleared off some bookshelves for clothes. Two adults and a toddler in a single tiny bathroom gets a bit crowded, especially because of needing to keep everything out of a…

Stimulating shovel-ready NIH extramural research

Over the weekend, Comrade PhysioProf at DrugMonkey posted on the details of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus funds distribution for the US National Institutes of Health. For some unusual reason, the letter that was sent to NIH investigators and posted on the NIH website has now been removed and replaced today by the statement: The announcement from the Acting NIH Director will be issued later today. We are making every effort to get this vital information to you as soon as possible. This page was last reviewed on February 23, 2009. From the DrugMonkey post and an article…

Fire Drill!

[I'm foregoing the usual Saturday miscellany for a Very Special Built on Facts. It's important!] Imagine a basketball sitting on the top of a hill. The slope of the hill is pretty gentle, and so you can roll the ball around a bit without the risk of it rolling away. But hit it too hard and it's going to catch the slope and zoom off. You and many of the materials which surround you are not so different. They're made of atoms which are comfortable so long as you don't hit them very hard. But hit them hard enough with oxygen molecules and they'll go flying away. And they'll hit other…

So how will you spend your 37 tons of carbon?

Inspired by a letter to New Scientist by Londoner Guy Robinson, herewith a not-so-abstract thought experiment based on the trillionth-ton climate change concept. According to a pair of papers recently published in Nature, the Earth stands a good chance of warming more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels if our cumulative atmospheric emissions of carbon since those days reaches a trillion tons. So far, we've emitted about 520 billion tons. leaving us with just 480 billion tons before we enter into dangerous global warming territory. But some of our total emissions are tied to agricultural (…

Happy Warriors for Vaccines

The NYTimes profiles Paul Offit, author of Autism's False Prophets. Offit has been taking the anti-vaccine lobby to task over pseudoscience, and he hasn't been winning many friends in the process: Those backing Dr. Offit say he was forced into the role. Opponents of vaccines have held rallies, appeared on talk shows like "Oprah" and "Imus in the Morning," been the heroes of made-for-TV movies and found a celebrity spokeswoman in Jenny McCarthy, the actress and former Playboy model who has an autistic son. Meanwhile, the response from public health officials has been muted and couched in dull…

Martial Zoo Law

Over the last couple of weeks, a number of the zookeeper and exotic pet listservs I subscribe to have read more like the classifieds in the back of Field & Stream. Obviously due to the recent tragedy at the San Francisco Zoo, these are boom times for the tranquilizer gun business. I thought I might share a little about what I've learned. The Arsenal: Blow Guns - Good for short range, especially in cages. Wait a minute, blow guns!? Yes, and apparently they have come a long way since our great-great-grandfathers (or in my case, my uncle Jon) used them to score monkey dinners from the tree…

Living within your ethics: animal research and medical care.

From time to time, when we've talked about people who object to research with animals on ethical grounds, the claim has been made that it is hypocritical for people with these objections to avail themselves of modern medicine. Our drugs and surgical interventions, after all, are typically the result of research that includes animal research. Occasionally, a response like this is made: There is no reason to opt out of the existing treatments, since the animal suffering that went into that research cannot be undone. Given that these past animals suffered, the knowledge produced from their…

40 years of Star Trek

Continuing on the nerd/geek theme, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that today is the 40th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek series. Forty years, hundreds of TV episodes and books, and several movies later, the franchise is completely ingrained in American culture, so much so that catch phrases like "Beam me up!" are recognized by pretty much everyone. One thing I'm not so sure I'm all that enthusiastic about is the CBS Paramount project to remaster all of the original 79 episodes, replacing many of the special effects with state-of-the art digital recreations of the…

Getting Started with Rockets

Estes is the major brand in low power rocketry, with Quest as an alternative. If you launched rockets as a kid, it was probably Estes. They make black powder motors in cardboard cases. As I have moved on to the bigger projects, the only lingering reason to consider these motors is that you can tape the top of one to the bottom of another for a cheap and easy way to do multi-stage rockets. Realize though that this shifts the weight of the rocket to the rear, which can make them unstable, as I have learned from adding three motors to a rocket designed for one: "Icarus" came back about 15…