7 Projects That Help Star Trek Live Long and Prosper
Today is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s first TV broadcast. Logically, the most appropriate way to celebrate is with a DIY project. Live long and prosper!
spacecraft
Bill Nye’s LightSail: Making Sci-Fi Real
The quest to solve one of the persistent barriers to citizen space exploration.
Making Fun: Kid’s Room Spacecraft
I built a spaceship for my four-year-old’s room. It has a control panel full of interesting displays and whiz-bang space sounds. A joystick controls lights and sounds for the engine and thrusters. The payload bay has a motorized hatch and and contains a robot arm for deploying payloads like toy satellites. Headsets provide an audio link between the spacecraft and the Mission Control desk in the other son’s room.
Launching $125,000 into space
With three days still left to go on their crowdfunding campaign, the hackers behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project who wanted to recover the ISEE-3 spacecraft and return it operations, have passed their funding goal.
Crowdfunding the Recovery of a Lost Spacecraft
The hackers behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project have moved on to a different challenge. Not content with images, this time they want to recover a whole spacecraft. They want to bring the ISEE-3 space probe home to Earth.
Stunning compilation of high-speed shuttle launch footage
Matt Melis and Kevin Burke of Cleveland’s NASA Glenn Research Center narrate this remarkable 45-minute video highlights compilation of some 30 high-speed clips recorded by the 125 cameras–most of them film-based—that documented each space shuttle launch. Most of this footage was recorded for engineering purposes and, as part of an ongoing effort to commemorate the shuttle program, is now being re-cut for public appreciation. Space, engineering, and photography enthusiasts will completely geek out over this video, and anyone with a pair of eyes is certain to at least enjoy it. If you can, you should watch the whole thing. If you don’t have time, you should at least scan forward to 21:00 to watch the super-slow-motion close-range shot, taken from the support structure, of the entire vehicle as it passes by. Also, I’d personally recommend the wide-angle footage at 31:10 for absolute aesthetic beauty, as well as the booster plumes passing in front of the sun at 34:50. [Thanks, Rachel!]
SpaceX launches commercial space flight
Founded by Elon Musk of PayPal and Tesla Motors fame, Space X has become the first company to successfully build and launch a spacecraft into low Earth orbit and have it return safely. Launched from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifted its Dragon cargo capsule into orbit, performed extensive test maneuvers across two orbits, and splashed down just after 11 a.m. PST on December 8, 2010.
