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A rescue effort has been launched in hope of finding Abby Sunderland, 16, who set off her emergency beacon locating devices from the southern Indian Ocean early this morning. Sunderland, who had been attempting to sail around the world alone, endured multiple knockdowns in 60-knot winds yesterday (Thursday local time) before conditions briefly abated. However, her parents lost satellite phone contact early this morning and an hour later were notified by the Coast Guard at French-controlled Reunion Islands that both of Sunderland's EPIRB satellite devices had been activated. One apparently is attached to a survival suit and meant to be...

A rescue effort has been launched in hope of finding Abby Sunderland, 16, who set off her emergency beacon locating devices from the southern Indian Ocean early this morning. Sunderland, who had been attempting to sail around the world alone, endured multiple knockdowns in 60-knot winds Thursday before conditions briefly abated. However, her parents lost satellite phone contact early this morning and an hour later were notified by the Australian Coast Guard that both of Sunderland's EPIRB satellite devices had been activated. One is apparently is attached to a survival suit or a life raft and meant to be...

A 'space yacht' propelled only by sunlight particles bouncing off its kite-shaped sails is to launch next month. A rocket carrying the Japanese craft will blast off from Tanegashima Space Center on May 18. Once in space the short cylindrical pod will separate from the rocket spinning up to 20 times a minute. This will help it to unfold its flexible 46ft sail, which is thinner than a human hair.

About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars. ... In principle, a solar sail can do anything a regular sail can do, like tacking.

As the morning fog lifted this morning off Harbor Mouth at Marina del Rey, it revealed a sailboat piloted by a 17-year-old boy from Thousand Oaks who had just become the youngest to sail around the world alone.

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 2, 2008 – Army Staff Sgt. Michael Fradera had never even been on a sailboat before an improvised explosive device in Baghdad blasted away both of his legs during the early days of the troop surge in Iraq. Kevin Wixom, captain of B-Quest II, shows Army Staff Sgt. Michael Fradera how to steer the vessel through San Diego Harbor during the National Veterans Summer Sports Clinic. DoD photo by Donna Miles  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. But yesterday, the former 1st Infantry Division soldier, now medically retired from the Army, was the king of San...

America Supports You: ‘Project Ark’ Sets Sail in HawaiiBy Monique ReubenAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2006 -- As Cheryl Janus reflected on Project Ark, a program for military teens she helped organize this summer, she realized the “ark” did in fact float. Project Ark participants and chaperones take time for a group photo on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri. Project Ark brought teenage children of deployed servicemembers to Hawaii in July to interact and develop skills for coping with their parents’ deployment. Courtesy photo   '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The “ark” in Project...

ABOARD USS IWO JIMA (NNS) -- USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) successfully got underway from its current berth in downtown New Orleans Sept. 21 as Hurricane Rita raged across the Gulf of Mexico. With the successful onload of supplies and personnel, including 647 Marines of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24 MEU), Iwo Jima began its trek down the Mississippi River to safer, open waters. The multipurpose amphibious assault ship has been moored in downtown New Orleans since early September, serving as a command and control hub and providing relief and recovery efforts as part of Joint Task Force (JTF)...

A solar-sail spacecraft is undergoing pre-flight testing, Russian media reported Thursday. The unmanned spacecraft with eight triangular sail blades, each 16.5 yards long, is to be launched in April aboard a Volna rocket. The launch will occur from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea, Lidia Avdeeva, spokeswoman for the Lavochkin production and science association, told the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency. Scientists will study the possibility of using a solar sail as a traction system and as a way to control the spacecraft during its orbit flight, she said. "Technical solutions used in the probe can be a basis for...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Kon-Tiki Replica to Sail, Study Pacific in 2005 Sept. 6, 2004 — By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - A replica of the Kon-Tiki balsa raft will sail the Pacific in 2005 to study mounting environmental threats to the oceans since Thor Heyerdahl made his daredevil 1947 voyage, organizers said on Monday. One of Heyerdahl's grandsons will be among the six-strong crew for the trip from Peru aiming to reach Tahiti, about 310 miles west of the Raroia atoll where the Kon-Tiki ran aground after traveling 4,970 miles in 101 days. Heyerdahl's original voyage defied many experts' predictions that...

TEHRAN (MNA) -- During the latest season of excavations of the northern gate of Takht-e Suleiman, an ancient Zoroastrian fire temple located in northwestern Iran, the stamps of two seals were discovered which indicate that objects entered Takht-e Suleiman from other regions with special tags attached to them which seem to be advertisements. They signify that an early form of advertising was being practiced during the Sassanid era (224-642 C.E.), Yusef Moradi, the head of the excavation team, said on Friday. “The team began its excavations in early August and found the stamps of two seals at the upper levels...

Secrets of an ancient Persian armada sunk off the coast of Greece 2500 years ago are being dredged up by modern archaeologists. A team from Greece, Canada and the United States has just completed a second expedition to retrieve artefacts from 300 ships of the Persian King Darius that were wrecked in a storm off the Mt Athos Peninsula, northern Greece, in 492BC or 493BC. Aucklanders will be among the first to hear the results today when three of the expedition leaders present their findings in a free public lecture at Auckland University. In two trips so far, last October...

Ancient vessel retraces voyages of the past By Stefanos Evripidou IT LOOKS like a tree house stuck on a bamboo banana. In reality it's the incarnation of a pre-Pharaonic reed boat, designed and built to unravel the mysteries of prehistoric navigation. The Abora II drifted in to Larnaca marina yesterday. Weighing in at six- tonnes, the vessel is a totra-reed boat. It is 11.5 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. The man responsible for building the huge boat is Dominique Goerlitz, a biology teacher at a school in Germany. As a student, Goerlitz was fascinated by the...

Family's Feat to Sail the Globe Comes Full Circle By Dana Treen/Associated Press May 22, 2004 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - There's a magical place Ellen Catlin has dreamed about for much of the past six years: a place so special she made it her computer screensaver. It's her bed - the one she crawled into last month after spending almost half her life at sea. At 13, she was ready to come home. That's just what her family did, sailing in from the sea and into the Ortega River, closing the circle on a round-the-globe trip. As the 52-foot sailboat...

  WHO REALLY DISCOVERED AMERICA? William F. Dankenbring    Posted Apr 05.04 WHO REALLY DISCOVERED AMERICA? A stone in a dry creek bed in New Mexico, discovered by early settlers in the region, is one of the most amazing archaeological discoveries in the Western Hemisphere. It contains engraved on its flank the entire Ten Commandments written in ancient Hebrew script! Hebrew scholars, such as Cyrus Gordon of Brandeis University near Boston, have vouched for its authenticity. I visited the site of the huge boulder, near Las Lunas, New Mexico, in 1973 and photographed the Hebrew inscriptions. A local newspaper reporter guided...

Remote-controlled balloons carrying armies of mini-robots could be filling Mars' skies if a project by Californian scientists takes off. Nasa-funded researchers are developing the StratoSail, a balloon with a wing, that can be accurately steered through Mars' winds for months. Like weather balloons, the StratoSail could carry cameras and gadgets to spot potential areas for human missions. The hi-tech devices could also launch robotic probes to monitor the surface. "The ability of long-duration guided planetary balloons to alter their flight path in the atmosphere, to deploy surface probes, and to carry out detailed reconnaissance make them a very powerful tool...

                                                                The Jeanie Johnston An Incredible History The story of the Jeanie Johnston is the story of one of the most momentous periods in Irish history – the era of the Great Famine that swept the country in the middle of the 19th century. It is also a tale of great humanity, remarkable courage and pioneering spirit on the part of Irish people fleeing the dreaded famine, which decimated the population of Ireland in a few short years. It can be truly said that the Jeanie Johnston – and the many similar emigrant ships of the 19th century which it...

VIKINGS RAPED, PILLAGED THEN DID IRONING May 5 2003 VIKINGS were responsible for introducing ironing to Scotland. The pillaging Scandinavians were surprisingly conscious of their appearance and regularly smoothed their clothes. Excavations across Scotland have revealed evidence that the Nordic warriors used ironing boards and smoothing stones to make the job easier. Dr Euan MacKie, of Glasgow University, said he found out about the ironing culture by chance 10 years ago, when his colleague's child found a piece of a whalebone on the Hebridean island of North Uist. He said: "It is probably right to say Vikings introduced ironing to...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured , along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 March 8 Solar Sail Credit: NASA / MSFC Illustration Explanation: Nearly 400 years ago astronomer Johannes Kepler observed comet tails blown by a solar breeze and suggested that vessels might likewise navigate through space using appropriately fashioned sails. It is now widely recognized that sunlight does indeed produce a force which moves comet tails and a large, reflective sail could be a practical means of propelling...