According to the Seattle Times, Allen, 58, is teaming up with famed aerospace engineer Burt Rutan to develop what the pair is calling a “revolutionary approach to private space travel” for people, cargo or satellites.

“I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight,” said Allen in a statement. “To offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system.”

The new project, called Stratolaunch Systems, will use giant twin-boom aircraft to launch a rocket and space capsule from the air that will deliver payloads of cargo into low earth orbit.

Wired reports that the aircraft used to carry the booster rocket will be the largest airplane in the world, with a wingspan much longer than a football field: 385 feet. It will use six 747 engines, have a gross weight of more than 1.2 million pounds, and require a runway 12,000 feet long.

Once the launch system is proven to be safe and reliable, manned flights will follow, Stratolaunch Systems officials said.

Allen announced the first test flight is targeted within five years.

Space.com points out that the new project isn’t Allen’s first foray into the realm of private space travel, as the billionaire previously partnered with Rutan to bankroll the construction of SpaceShipOne, the first privately built manned craft to reach suborbital space.

“Paul and I pioneered private space travel with SpaceShipOne, which led to Virgin Galactic’s commercial suborbital SpaceShipTwo Program,” Rutan, who will join Stratolaunch Systems as a board member, said in a statement. “Now, we will have the opportunity to extend that capability to orbit and beyond.”

For more information on Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems Project, watch the video below or head over to the company’s official website here.

Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch: Microsoft Co-Founder Unveils Space-Travel Venture is a post from: The Inquisitr

At its base, Evri offers a semantic discovery engine that delivers grouped search results around a topic. Like any search engine, you enter the term you’re looking for, and it delivers results, but it a more user friendly fashion than Google. Here’s a couple of screen shots on various search terms I made on the site (including a vanity search) to give you an idea:

The results aren’t bad, although like any service of this type, the results aren’t as strong as the results you’ll get out of Google. There’s also no site matching in some results, so for example although I have a page, it never links me to The Inquisitr or even my own personal blog. It is however better than some I’ve previously seen.

Top of the new features with the move into open beta is the Evri content recommendation widget. The widget shows how the people, places, and things in an article are connected to other things on the web and in the news. From there, users can drill down within specific relationships and focus on just what interests them. The code can be embedded at a bar at the end of a post with a pop-up, with options for a sidebar or even full box coming shortly. If it sounds familiar, it looks identical to the widgets offered by Sphere, although obviously with a different base for results.

Evri has also unveiled the Evri Garden, billed as Evri’s technology playground, allowing those interested to directly interact with the same back end system Evri scientists and engineers use.

These sorts of semantic/ networked search type services have been popping up regularly over the last two years, and normally I’d be dismissive of most of them unless they completely wowed me. Evri doesn’t wow me, but it’s not half bad either, and even at this early stage it is most definitely usable. The company is led by ex-Amazon VP of Technology, Neil Rosema and counts Paul Allen as a lead investor, so talent and smarts isn’t lacking here. It’s not the next Google, but the needle is slightly pointing to the winner side when considering its future.

Evri launches into open beta with new features is a post from: The Inquisitr