Monday, March 16, 2009

Military Spending at its Best

CNN

The scientist that worked on anti-missile laser technology are now hoping to use the same technology to kill mosquitoes. The device would detect mosquitoes based on the sound they make as they fly and then fire a laser at them. So the laser would only fire if it hears a mosquitoes, meaning people near the device would likely not get hit by lasers.

It kind of sounds like a really expensive bug zapper, but then again, it only kills mosquitoes, nothing else. Seems pretty brilliant if someone is only looking to wipe out mosquitoes without harming anything else.

LA Times

The Pentagon has spent $400 million on developing spy blimps. The blimps would fly at 65,000 feet and could stay afloat up to 10 years. Seems like a lot to spend on what on the surface seems pretty low-tech, but considering it can cost up to $100 million to launch a single satellite, it's probably not a bad idea.

1 comment:

Celeste said...

Not so sure about those crazy blimps. But here's a great article on the mosquito laser. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html

you should look at it, just for the last line.