China 'could reach Moon by 2020'

China has been working on its space programme since the 1970s but in 2003 it sent an astronaut into space, becoming only the third country to launch a person into orbit. Since then, the country's ambitions and capability have grown to the point where the US space agency now thinks China could put people on the Moon within the next decade, if it so wishes.
Dr Michael Griffin, who has been the head of NASA since 2005, told the BBC that China could achieve this milestone before the return mission planned by the United States for the year 2020. President George Bush announced the American Moon initiative in 2004, but Dr Griffin would not be drawn on whether it mattered if China got there before the United States. He even hinted that the two countries could collaborate on space projects in future.
Dr. Michael Griffin: "I think we're always better off if we try to find arenas where we can collaborate rather than quarrel and I would remind your viewers that the first first US-Soviet human space co-operation took place in 1975 at virtually the height of the Cold War and it led in the end, you know, eighteen years later to discussions about an international space station programme in which we are involved together today."
Though China has given no timetable, some observers think a manned Moon mission is inevitable. Dr Griffin said humans needed to continue advancing the frontiers of space exploration, regardless of which countries made the breakthroughs.

iPhone 3G sales hit one million mark

A total of one million 3G iPhones have been sold around the world since the handset's much-anticipated launch last week, according to Apple.
And despite the outages, shortages, and related hand-wringing associated with last Friday's iPhone 3G launch and Thursday's release of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, Apple says there were nevertheless 10 million downloads from its new App Store in its first weekend of existence.
"It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world," said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in a statement.
"The App Store is a grand slam," he added, "with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days. Developers have created some extraordinary applications."

Apple cuts price of flash-drive MacBook Air

Apple has quietly reduced the price of the flash-memory version of the MacBook Air by $500.
Appleinsider tipped us to the new price, which can be found at the online Apple Store. Before today, you would have paid a $999 premium if you wanted a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive, but Apple has reduced that premium to $599. It's also now cheaper to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, $200 instead of $300, on either the flash model or the one with the standard hard drive.
PC companies have been interested in flash memory hard drives for some time, but it's not clear how well they are selling. Using flash memory instead of moving parts to store data improves the reliability of the system; hard drive failures are one of the most common problems experienced by notebook users.
But it's still very expensive to choose a flash drive over a regular hard drive, and potential customers might not be able to justify spending that extra $999, or even $599. Reliability is important, but so is price, and recent news that flash-memory drives are actually a drain on battery life won't help sell them as an upgrade option.