Space tourism is just two years away thanks to new rocket-powered plane

A rocket-powered plane that will allow tourists to travel in space is in development and will start flights in two years.

 

Plans have been revealed for ‘Lynx’, a two-seater ’space taxi’, which will be capable of flying 37miles above the Earth from 2010.

Flights will cost passengers £50,000 for a journey in the rocket-powered vehicle that is intended to operate like a normal aeroplane by taking off and landing on runways.

It will reach twice the speed of sound on its ascent to offer space tourists spectacular views of Earth.

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An artist’s impression of the Lynx – making space tourism possible from 2010, according to its developers

The developments come just months after Richard Branson unveiled his Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger space tourism vehicle, which might start flight tests later this year.

Developed by US company XCOR, Lynx will be roughly the same size as a private jet and it will run on kerosene and liquid oxygen.

Jeff Greason, CEO of XCOR, said: ‘The Lynx will offer affordable access to space for individuals, researchers and educators.

‘Future versions of Lynx will offer ever-improving capabilities for scientific and engineering research and commercial applications.

‘The spaceship, roughly the size of a small private airplane, will first take off in 2010 and will be capable of flying several times each day.’

Lynx will have a pressurised cabin but the pilot and passenger will wear helmets and pressure suits for safety.

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The Lynx will be a two-seater vehicle capable of flying 37miles above the Earth

Greason continued: ‘Its liquid fuel engines will provide the enhanced safety, durability, reliability and maintainability that keep operating costs low.

‘They are fully reusable, burn cleanly, and release fewer particulates than solid fuel or hybrid-rocket motors.’

Passengers on Lynx will need medical clearance before flying and they will be trained how to evacuate the rocket and operate the suits.

Once in space, passengers will be able to enjoy the views from a co-pilot position. They will have to remain strapped in at all times.

XCOR test pilot Colonel Rick Searfoss, a former pilot astronaut and space shuttle commander, said: ‘The acceleration, the weightlessness, and the view will provide you with an experience that is out of this world.

‘And the best part is that you’ll ride right up front, like a co-pilot, instead of [at the] back, like cargo.’

The Lynx has been in development for the past three years.

Dubai’s prince buys $2.7 million camel

MADINAT ZAYED, United Arab Emirates – Dubai’s crown prince paid $2.7 million for a camel during a desert festival celebrating Bedouin traditions in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, state-run media said Tuesday.

The festival also included a camel beauty contest, where thousands of owners strutted their animals in a bid for the top prize of finest overall camel and separate categories such as best neck, head, lips, nose, hump, legs or feet.

Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the son of Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed, bought 16 camels for $4.5 million, including one female camel for $2.7 million, the state news agency WAM reported.

The agency called the price tag “unprecedented” but it was not clear if it was an official record.

The hefty sum was still a fraction of the record price paid at auction for a horse. The Green Monkey, a thoroughbred colt, was purchased at a Florida auction in 2006 for $16 million.

There was no indication what Hamdan, Dubai’s heir apparent, planned to do with the animal though female camels are often used for racing. Owning fine camels is also a mark of prestige for the ruling elite in the Persian Gulf.

Abu Dhabi’s ruling family organized the nine-day festival in a bid to preserve the nomadic way of life in the desert that predates the discovery of oil in the region in the 1960s.

More than 17,000 camels from the oil-rich Gulf countries — the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain — were registered for the beauty contest, which gave out millions of dollars in prize money and more than 100 four-wheel-drive vehicles and pickup trucks, the agency said.

Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates and, with the lion’s share of the country’s oil resources, the richest of the seven semiautonomous emirates that make up the country. Dubai, the largest emirate in population, has been undergoing an unprecedented boom as its leaders shape it into a major financial center.

Why Do Some People Sleepwalk?

Neurologist Antonio Oliviero of the National Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo, Spain, explains:

Sleep disorders such as sleepwalking arise when normal physiological systems are active at inappropriate times. We do not yet understand why the brain issues commands to the muscles during certain phases of sleep, but we do know that these commands are usually suppressed by other neurological mechanisms. At times this suppression can be incomplete—because of genetic or environmental factors or physical immaturity—and actions that normally occur during wakefulness emerge in sleep.

People can perform a variety of activities while asleep, from simply sitting up in bed to more complex behavior such as housecleaning or driving a car. Individuals in this trancelike state are difficult to rouse, and if awoken they are often confused and unaware of the events that have taken place. Sleepwalking most often occurs during childhood, perhaps because children spend more time in the “deep sleep” phase of slumber. Physical activity only happens during the non–rapid eye movement (NREM) cycle of deep sleep, which precedes the dreaming state of REM sleep.

Recently my team proposed a possible physiological mechanism underlying sleepwalking. During normal sleep the chemical messenger gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) acts as an inhibitor that stifles the activity of the brain’s motor system. In children the neurons that release this neurotransmitter are still developing and have not yet fully established a network of connections to keep motor activity under control. As a result, many kids have insufficient amounts of GABA, leaving their motor neurons capable of commanding the body to move even during sleep. In some, this inhibitory system may remain underdeveloped—or be rendered less effective by environmental factors—and sleepwalking can persist into adulthood.

Sleepwalking runs in families, indicating that there is a genetic component. The identical twin of a person who sleepwalks often, for example, typically shares this nocturnal habit. Studies have also shown that frequent sleepwalking is associated with sleep deprivation, fever, stress and intake of drugs, especially sedatives, hypnotics, antipsychotics, stimulants and antihistamines.

To clarify the many mysteries of sleepwalking, we need to find out more about the brain mechanisms that control sleep and arousal states. Future research will have to focus not only on what is happening while sleepwalkers are sleeping but also on the characteristics of their waking brains.

Why do we get “brain freeze” when we eat something cold?
-Christina Zuniga, via e-mail

Mark A. W. Andrews, professor of physiology and director of the Independent Study Pathway at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, replies:

This commonly experienced pain, also known as an ice cream headache, results from quickly eating or drinking very cold substances. Officially termed sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (talk about a painful mouthful!), it is the di­rect result of the rapid cooling and rewarming of the blood vessels in the palate, or the roof of the mouth. A similar but painless blood vessel response causes the face to appear “flushed” after being outside on a cold day. In both instances, the cold temperature causes blood vessels to constrict and then experience extreme rebound dilation as they warm up again.

In the palate, this dilation is sensed by nearby pain receptors, which then send signals back to the brain via the trigeminal nerve, one of the major nerves of the facial area. This nerve also senses facial pain, so as the signals are conducted the brain interprets the pain as coming from the forehead—the same “referred pain” phenomenon seen in heart attacks. Brain-freeze pain may last from a few seconds to a few minutes, which is blissfully short as compared with the duration of its cousin, the migraine headache. Research suggests that the same vascular mechanism and nerve implicated in brain freeze cause the aura (sensory disturbance) and pulsatile (throbbing pain) phases of migraines. Interestingly, it is impossible to give yourself an ice cream headache in cold weather—only in a warm ambient temperature will it hurt to wolf down a banana split.

Fortunately, abstaining from ice cream is not necessary. Placing the tongue hard against the palate may help, as will eating cold foods more slowly or warming food in the front of your mouth before swallowing.

6 Insane Cults (That Would Probably Be a Lot of Fun)

#6.

The Raelian Movement

Founded by a dude who appears to have stolen his clothes after a stint as an extra on Star Trek, the Raelians are one of the few cults that occasionally make the news down here on Earth.

Rael lets you know on his website that he’s a Frenchman who used to be a cabaret singer and a race car driver, which realistically is slightly cooler than being a carpenter like Jesus or jolly fat man like Buddha. All of this was prior to meeting an alien named Yahweh, of course, who came to Rael to tell him about the origin of mankind as well as offering him the service of several futuristic sex robots.

Oh, hell yes. The Pope offers people holiday blessings and waves from behind bullet proof glass. Rael bangs sex robots from another galaxy. We’re not saying one’s cooler than the other, we’re just saying sex robots are cooler than anything the Pope has probably even thought of doing.

www.rael.org

The movement is noted for such awesome things as claiming in 2002 to have cloned a human (which turned out to sort of being entirely untrue) and accusations of brainwashing via sex. Suavely balding leader Rael also has his own harem of women called the Order of Angels, who apparently exist just to bang the men and donate eggs to human cloning efforts.

Not content with all this amateur whoring, Rael also has an actual subgroup of real-life whores called Rael’s Girls made up solely of woman who work in the sex industry. If this whole religion sounds like some insanely clever man’s diabolical plan to wear pajamas all day and fuck really gullible women then, congratulations, you may qualify to enter the inner sanctum. Membership numbers indicate followers in the tens of thousands, most of whom were probably swayed in no way by the religion having its own skank squad.

#5.

The Cosmic People of Light Powers

The Cosmic People of Light Powers is a Czech cult that’s more intense and has a better back story than the whole Matrix trilogy combined. The Cosmic People aren’t your typical downer cult. You’ll find no leaders with 100 wives who tell followers he must baptize them with his semen. But the Cosmic People do believe in an alien named Ashtar Sheran.

Ashtar has a fleet of 10 million spaceships that orbit the Earth. With that many spaceships, the odds of getting a primo suite when the time comes to leave Earth and head off for a picnic on Venus seem almost guaranteed. Score one for the true believers.

Membership numbers are a bit sketchy with the leader of the group claiming thousands to hundreds of thousands of sympathizers, while “government” sources say a couple hundred people, and hint that all of them may be mentally ill. Nonsense, we say! The Cosmos, as we like to imagine them calling themselves, are just more open to the task of understanding the truth about the infernal saurians chipping our hearts and how, as their website says, “95 percent of our physical bodies are controlled by forces of darkness.” Which means many of us only control our wang, hand or some other appendage. The rest is under the control of evil lizard men. Hey, don’t act like you didn’t suspect this all along.

The website is full of useful information about these lizard men and various other aliens, all cleverly hidden by intense colors and rambling broken English.

angels-light.org is one of the few websites we’ve seen with an “Evacuation” option

It was their frequent images of flaming hearts and the terrifyingly awesome pictures of Nordic aliens which made our research team confident that space is populated by Swedish models who want nothing more than to help us destroy the lizard men, and then make sweet space love.

#4.

Church of God with Signs Following

Understanding why your average Sunday service bores the hell out of most churchgoers, the Church of God with Signs Following turns every service into an insane orgy of pious madness and potential fatalities that puts even the UFC to shame.

You may know these people better as “snake handlers” and there could be anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 of them just waiting to accidentally kill themselves for the Lord on any given Sunday.

Snake handlers engage in all the normal stuff you’d expect at a religious service: speaking in tongues, screaming, spasming, spinning in circles, occasionally drinking poison and, why the heck not, handling snakes. The faithful defend their extreme and sometimes deadly beliefs by saying everything they do comes directly from the Bible, specifically Mark 16:17-18, which if you add some words to it, says to bring a bunch of snakes into church.

Sure, basing an entire belief system around a single passage from the Bible is pretty out there, given that there are quite a few things in the Bible that would have your ass sent straight to prison if you were to attempt them in public. But at Cracked, we don’t believe in doing anything half-assed and you can’t help but admire the way the church just up and ran with the snake thing. There’s even the odd death at these services. Our only suggested change would be adding the word “X-TREME” in their name somewhere.

For those in the know, of course, those deaths were just the result of people who lacked faith, faith being the universal method to prevent snake bites, followed closely by not dancing around like a drunkard at a hootenanny with a poisonous snake in your hands. And just because some people will point out the passage these churches hold as sacred, it’s generally footnoted in most versions of the Bible as having most likely been edited in at a later date, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t want us to taunt poisonous creatures. It may mean that, but if people weren’t willing to take risks for what they believe in, Jackass would have never existed. And we can all agree that God wouldn’t have wanted that.

#3.

Family International

Also known as the Children of God and the Family of Love, these folks are the reason most of us know the word “cult” today. We say accept no substitute when you want to devote your life and soul to a group of societal outcasts.

Most famous for giving sex a more prominent role in their beliefs than your average Amish, the Family has a tradition of religious prostitution. While suckers at regular churches handed out pamphlets threatening you with Hell if you didn’t go to Church, the Family used positive reinforcement by having people fuck you to convert you, a marketing ploy that could probably sell anything from sandwiches to shoes full of broken glass.

Since they decided to take an official stand against sexual child abuse, which they happily claim to have stopped a full 18 years after they were founded in 1968 (really, who knew child molestation was wrong before 1986?).

They also take a stand on sexuality believing that it’s cool for chicks to be bi. But only if a dude is there, which is something Jesus probably would have said if he’d thought of it. Also of note: that this cult exists in the real world and not a porno, though we can only guess at what inspired it.

Like most Christian-based religions, the Family loves Jesus. Unlike most, they feel they literally love Jesus. During sex or masturbation, women are encouraged to imagine it’s Jesus working his magic on them. Men, as you may expect, are encouraged to imagine they are women, so as not to seem gay when they think of Jesus doing them. You didn’t expect that? Neither did we. But, we try to always keep an open mind.

In fact it’s nice to know that as a member you’d be way closer to the Lord than most people claim to be. Way, way closer.

#2.

The Brethren

Cult life may get a lot of trash from the bulk of the population and the media, but there’s something to be said for a group that offers you not only a kick-ass super hero team name like the Brethren, but also tips on scoring free food. The Brethren, founded by a former marine, have a history of raiding trash receptacles for sweet, expired produce.

The Brethren are nomadic, which means signing up is a guaranteed road trip to somewhere. Possibly the nearest Dumpster, but possibly Mexico or Canada with their exciting trash bins full of delicious tacos and dead moose.

They live simple lives, wanting to be like Jesus, but probably without that pain in the ass crucifixion part. Also, appealing to the lazier nature of man, they feel having an actual job gets in the way of getting to heaven. It’s at this point that we raise our hands and say, “THE MAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH.”

Also frowned upon are most clothes, worldly possessions and personal grooming, leaving members in brown tunics with long hair and beards, roaming the world on bicycles with backpacks like college kids trying to find themselves in Europe, minus the pot and wacky misadventures with tranny whores.

Much of life in the Brethren seems to be wandering, preaching the good word about the ZZ Top look and living without anything at all, staying in abandoned buildings and trying hard to figure out what exactly separates them from mere hobos.

Leader and non-hobo Jim Roberts

Either way, all of this means you’re not saddled with the expectation to hand over a chunk of your paycheck every week, because you don’t have one. You don’t have to worry about cleaning your house or doing the dishes because you don’t have any. No cares about paying off that credit card, since you don’t any. Well, maybe you have one from before your conversion, but it’s not like they’ll know where to send the bills.

#1.

The House of Yahweh

Having a leader you can believe in is the key to any good cult. Luckily, the House of Yahweh has Buffalo Bill Hawkins. And Buffalo Bill has a YouTube account.

Unlike popular religions which try to bore us with things like scripture and goodness, the House of Yahweh is all about making sure we know what the fuck is going wrong out there in the world. For instance, did you know Satan is a woman who appoints all political and religious leaders, with the probable exception of Buffalo Bill? Or that by mid-2001 80 percent of the world’s population will be killed by a nuclear war and then it won’t rain for over 1,000 days? And when Y2K hits, you better make sure you’re on the right side of Jesus or you’re gonna be so screwed.

Bill’s book, The Nuclear Baby. Cover art by ’80s-era Megadeth.

Fortunately, Buffalo Bill is a prophet so while those Catholics are caught on the toilet when the Rapture hits, he will have found all of his followers the right mountain top to stand on to make it easier on God to take us all away and we will have all had time to have some snacks and pee before it happens.

While some might argue that, as a prophet, maybe his dates should make sense or maybe he should have known he was about to be arrested for bigamy back in February of 2008, we believe this is probably all just part of the master plan. Look at the video again. There’s totally a master plan.

If you enjoyed that, check out David Wong’s rundown of The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses. Then, enjoy our in-depth critique of the Church of Scientology (a critique which, it should be noted, uses more dildos than most). Or, head over to the blog for some adorable robot heckling with Ross Wolinsky.

Fear in the genes

Fear is partly down to your genes, but this process changes as you grow older.

Even though fear is partly genetic, the things that terrify us change as we age.Getty

If snakes strike terror in your toddler’s heart, he might still grow to be brave. A tendency toward fearfulness does have genetic underpinnings, but those shift several times as children become adults, a study has found.

The worries of adolescents differ from those of young children — fear of the dark gives way to squeamishness about blood in a well-documented developmental progression. Now, psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and his colleagues have found that the genetic factors that leave a person prone to fear also shift during development.

To tease apart the effect of genes and upbringing, the researchers tracked 2,490 Swedish twins as they aged from 8 to 20 years old, asking them to answer questions sent by mail. The twins were quizzed on whether they were afraid of 13 potentially terrifying phenomena, including lightning, dentists, spiders and heights.

At every age a child was more likely to be fearful if their identical twin was too. Fraternal twins also shared a tendency towards fearfulness but the link was less strong, indicating a genetic component to fearfulness.

Fear factors

However, despite this evidence for a genetic effect, children weren’t consistently prone to fear as they grew up. Evidence for multiple fear factors comes from the comparison between ages – some twins were similarly fearful at age 8, but not at older ages.

Similarly, young adult responders who were easily frightened were no more likely to have had a fearful identical twin during early adolescence, the team reports in the Archives of General Psychiatry ¹. “You might have fairly substantial changes in levels of fearfulness over time because different genetic effects are coming online at different ages,” Kendler says.

The genes that contribute to fearfulness at different ages remain unknown, as evidence for the shift lies entirely in the strength of the links between fear levels in identical twins across time.

Work to identify specific genes for such complex traits is in its infancy, says psychiatrist Murray Stein, who studies the biological underpinnings of anxiety at the University of California, San Diego. “We are starting to see findings of specific genes being associated with particular kinds of temperaments,” Stein says, but he notes that variation in any of these genes explains only a very small percentage of variability in human behaviour.

Stein thinks that the study highlights the importance of recognizing that the factors that lead to excessive fears, or phobias, may change over time. “It could be that we’re going to need very different interventions at different stages of people’s growth and development,” he says.