Tag: Space
Japanese space researchers design handy combined toilet/underpant system
Demand a toilet AND underpants in one handy device? The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has got it covered!
The clichéd slightly wacky Japanese scientists have built the amazing below gadget, which could eliminate toilet trips for good. Poo and wee are sucked out by a pump, with a built-in washer/dryer system cleaning up the resulting mess, leaving you relaxed, fresh and dry. It’s genius. Especially if the suction pump also comes with optional ‘entertainment’ attachments.
Might not be the most comfortable thing to wear about the place, but it’ll definitely…
REVIEW: Wacom Bamboo Applications
Following my preview of the new applications available for Wacom’s “Bamboo” PC input tablets the other week, Wacom has sent me a tablet to have a play with, and test out the new apps. Here’s what I think.
Bamboo Scribe
I was originally going to try to write this whole post just using the tablet and bamboo scribe to convert my handwriting into text, but then I realised that it would take me hours. I don’t have hours, so you’ve got a keyboarded post instead.
International Space Station flushes rubbish down the world's toilet
Floating miles above the Earth in the International Space Station must really put things into perspective. The world is such a small, fragile place compared to the rest of the universe – from above, all conflicts must seem pointless, and it must be pretty clear that humanity must put aside its differences in order to ensure the survival of this small blue and green marble.
Or at least, that’s what I thought it must be like until I learnt that astronauts are as bad as the rest of us. Apparently they dump their rubbish without a care into the unsuspecting environment too. Yesterday, a “refrigerator sized” Ammonia tank, which was thrown overboard from the ISS in July 2007 landed in the Tasman sea, to which a NASA spokesman responded by rubbing his hands together and saying “It’s Australia’s problem now”, before walking away nonchalantly.
Wacom's "Bamboo" tablets get a bunch of new features
Wacom has just announced a whole host of new applications for their “Bamboo” range of consumer input tablets. There’s Bamboo Scribe, Bamboo Link, Bamboo Space, Bamboo Dock and Bamboo Minis…
New Moon Rover has red stripe to boost street cred
Pictured above isn’t a new concept car from Ferrari or whoever, but a new Moon rover designed by Carnegie Mellon University. And it looks pretty damn cool. It even has a cool name – the Scarab.
Whilst Mars may have Spirit and Opportunity plodding along like dorks, collecting samples and taking photos, the Moon may soon have this beast tearing up the craters – and I don’t just mean that in the hyperbolic sense, as it is designed to get at the minerals a metre below the surface on the dark side of the moon.
Users of Bebo have sent their messages into space
Of all the people in the world you’d like to have communicating with alien leaders in a potential “first contact” scenario, would Bebo users really be the #1 choice? Well, that’s what’s happening, as the social networking site’s users’ suggestions for images and text to send into space as part of its ‘A Message From Earth’ project have been… sent into space.
501 messages from Bebo users – including photos of Richard and Judy and pop band McFly’s opinions on Cheryl Cole – were sent off from Ukraine’s National Space Agency yesterday in a fantastic waste of everyone’s time. Here’s Bebo’s sensational illustration of how sending messages into space works:
The messages will take a shade over 20 years…
The Chinese are building an "impossible" space drive
There’s a school of thought in Science, not widely subscribed to, that says “if it looks impossible, keep trying to do it until it works”. That’s the attitude China are taking towards perpetual motion, and they reckon they’ve cracked it. It’s an electromagnetic drive, which converts electromagnetic energy into thrust via microwaves. That’s a picture of it, up there.
"Norton, we have a problem": Virus on-board the ISS
The following is probably quite a scary sentence if you’re several miles up and outside the Earth’s atmosphere: “A computer virus has made it’s way on to the International Space Station”. That’s right – up in space, where no one can hear you scream and where there are no rescue missions, there’s a virus threatening to wreak havoc…
NASA celebrates its 50th Anniversary in style – with a Flash-based website.
NASA is celebrating it's 50th Anniversary with a party.
Not a crazy, balls-out, scientists running around getting naked and drunk kind of party. No. What they're having is a balls-out, online, multimedia, Flash-animated, interactive website kind of party. Rock on!
Actually, they are gonna have a real party (a 'gala', no less) later in the year ('balls-out', as yet unknown), but they really have launched an interactive, online, what-i-said-above website to celebrate, and it's really quite good. I've been playing with it for over an hour now, and it's endlessly fascinating. It really is!
I mean, I'm a sucker for pictorial versions of anything. I hate sitting down with a sheet of text and having to read it all, so an interactive, online, thingamy-what-i-said-above is a great fun way for NASA to really communicate (especially to the kids) what exactly it is they've been doing for the past 50 years.
Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium identifies heavenly bodies (in the sky)
I love the night sky, but beyond “The Plough” and Venus, I get a bit stuck trying to identify the various planets, stars, and constellations, so the SkyScout Personal Planetarium sounds like a great little gadget…
