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In Search of the First Rocket Manby Paul Gilster on January 27, 2016 If you're interested enough in space to be reading this site, you've probably run into the name of Wan Hu. He's the subject of a tale that may well be spurious, but it's certainly lively. It seems that some time around the year 1500 AD, Wan Hu took his fascination with rocketry to the logical limit by building a chair equipped with 47 gunpowder rockets. Lit by 47 attendants, the combined rockets took Wan Hu somewhere, but just where is unknown, as he is said to have...

A new chart produced by Republicans staffers on the Senate Budget Committee shows food stamp enrollment continuing to increase even as the unemployment rate goes down. From October 2009 to October 2012 the unemployment rate has declined from 10.2 percent to 7.9 percent. In that same time frame, nearly ten million new recipients have been added to the food stamp rolls, according to government data analyzed by the Republican committee staff. “Spending on the food stamp program has increased every single year since 2000, and a record number of individuals now receive the benefit. For instance, food stamp enrollment has...

WASHINGTON - The net worth of U.S. households climbed to a record high in the final quarter of last year, boosted mostly by gains on stocks, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday. Net worth — the difference between households' total assets, such as houses and bank accounts, and their total liabilities, such as mortgages and credit card debt, totaled $55.6 trillion in the October-to-December quarter. That marked a 2.5 percent growth rate from the third quarter, the previous quarterly record high. Stocks gains helped fuel the increase in net worth, although real-estate gains played a role, too. For all of last...

LOS ANGELES — California Gov. Gray Davis this week reported a massive budget shortfall, despite the fact the state was enjoying a $10 billion surplus when he entered office four years ago. "The shortfall is $34.8 billion, far more than any expert predicted," Davis said Thursday, announcing his administration's budget projection for the next 18 months. Davis blames the poor economy and a decline in tax revenue, due in part to the burst of the technology bubble and the subsequent fallout in the stock market. But critics say the real problem is the 35 percent increase in state spending that...

<p>Skeptical Republicans say the $34.8 billion figure is inflated to justify tax hikes.</p> <p>Gov. Gray Davis pegged California's budget shortfall at $34.8 billion Wednesday, a figure that surpasses the annual revenues of Safeway, the yearly value of the state's farm commodities and the entire budgets of every state but New York.</p>