Here’s the remastered final version of Andrew McCombs’ classic documentary “The Principia Process,” which chronicles the spring 2002 launch season, and the beginnings of Team Principia. Watch and enjoy.

Hulu.com is a brand-new, free, ad-supported streaming video service which combines content from more than fifty providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more. Although Hulu has been live since October, the site just emerged today from its private beta-testing phase and is now open to everyone–as long as you live in the United States.

Hulu lets you watch full-length feature films like The Big Lebowski or The Usual Suspects, or recent television episodes of Family Guy or The Office. Plus there’s a fair number of canceled cult classics like Firefly.

Both shows and movies are interrupted with brief commercial breaks, but these can be –ahem– suppressed, and they are definitely less intrusive than those on regular commercial television. Content on Hulu is certainly limited, but they’re just getting started, and I must say, with respect to the movie selection, I’d be inclined to browse Hulu for decent flicks before I’ll suffer the crap from the Netflix “Watch Instantly” archive.

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This excellent video from the TED Talks website deals with biomimicry, the concept of getting engineering inspiration from the natural world.

From the abstract: With 3.8 billion years of research and development on its side, nature has already solved problems that human designers and engineers still struggle with.

In this inspiring talk, Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry — the way humans mimic nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. And because the champion adapters in the natural world are, by definition, those that can survive without destroying the environment that sustains them, biomimicry can contribute to the long-term health of our planet.

On January 23, 2008, Burt Rutan and Richard Branson unveiled the new designs of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft, White Knight 2. This engaging animation gives you a sense of what a suborbital trip on SpaceShipTwo might be like.

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“A well thought out test plan is a necessity for any first flight.” That is the admonition of former astronaut “Hoot” Gibson in this informative 24-minute video from the Experimental Aircraft Association.

The probability of an accident occurring in a homebuilt aircraft is high during its initial flight test phase. This is especially true if the builder-pilot has limited experience in the type of aircraft being flown. Often homebuilders put so much emphasis on completing the project that they forget to hone their flying skills during the construction period.

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