At Last, Space Football Is Coming! [Sports]

Stand aside Michael Jordan, because ex-Washington Redskins linebacker Ken Harvey has been pitching NASA scientists and venture capitalists alike on a high concept sport: Float Ball. Planned for venues including space shuttles, the Moon and even Mars, needless to say, it's a crazy idea. Actually, scratch that. It's only a half-crazy idea. Float Ball is a combination of football and basketball in a zero gravity environment. Players bounce their way through the court, ricocheting off the floor, ceiling, obstacles and other players. The goal is to throw the ball through the hoop. The bigger goal is to throw your player with the ball through the hoop—a maneuver we're coining right this second as the space jam. Despite Harvey's popularity space entertainment circles, he has no plans on how to fund the space sport. But he doesn't expect the vision to actualize over night. Astronaut fitness programs coupled with VR simulators would naturally progress into high stakes competitive sportutainment. And while he may be right, Harvey forgets about one thing: Geeks hate jocks. So go build your own spaceship, a'hole. [NYT]

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]

Debunk: Xbox 360 streams HD Netflix over component just fine

There's some hysterical outrage out there right now over the New Xbox Experience's HD Netflix HDCP restrictions -- apparently it only works with HDCP-compliant digital displays, which is prompting a lot of hand-wringing about copyright restrictions and whether older 360s will get "locked out." Well, we're here to make it all better -- that's our NXE-equipped 360 connected over component, happily playing back HD Netflix at 1080i. See? Works fine. The problem is that some older LCD monitors don't support HDCP over DVI, so if you're in the minority of people using an HDMI to DVI adapter to drive an older display that doesn't do HDCP, HD Netflix won't work, since it can't authenticate. That's not the best situation, but DVI isn't a default supported 360 output, so we wouldn't expect 100 percent compatibility -- and besides, you can always run VGA. We're waiting on official confirmation from Microsoft of all this -- we want to get things absolutely right -- but in the meantime you can console yourself with another shot of HD Heroes over component after the break.
Update: Yes, it works with movies too -- we just tried it with The Orphanage (above), and it looked great.






[ Via: Engadget ]

Google, NASA Team Up to Bring Internet to Space [Space]

Google and NASA are partnering up to let space beings (and astronauts) wander the web from up in orbit. Google VP Vint Cerf and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have started working together to create a standardized internet for space, which can finally replace the one-time-use radio equipment system we've been shooting up there since the 1970s. Communicating in space presents a bunch of problems—the Earth's rotation causes senders and receivers to be constantly changing positions, and the long distance causes equally long delays. Our current radio-based network is tailored to almost every new mission, meaning that older equipment can't be repurposed for newer shuttles. Cerf, who more or less co-created the internet, is now figuring out new protocols that'll work in the final frontier. The project, called Interplanetary Internet, will be tested aboard the International Space Station in 2009. If it works out, space missions in the future will be able to use the same systems, ultimately making communicating from above much, much cheaper and easier. I wonder what their ping rates will be. [Technology Review]

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]

EA-18G Fighter Jet Growls Enemy Networks Away [Airplanes]

When I first came across this photo I thought it was a new classified starfighter being tested by the Navy and Boeing Phantom Works in a secret underground anechoic chamber in the Moon. Then I realized it had the shape of something closer to Earth: It looked like an F-18 but it is not. It's an EA-18G Growler, a variant of the F/A-18F Super Hornet Block II that is not designed to kill kill faster faster, but for airborne electronic attacks. Now finishing its testing phase as it gets ready to enter action next action, the EA-18G will replace the current and aging EA-6B Prowler. With its two F414-GE-400 engines, totalling 44,000-pound of trust, it's a much more powerful beast than the 4-seater Prowler. The EA-18G's mission is to jam the enemy networks from the air, using a variety of systems installed on a pallet in the gun bay and in two wingtip pods. The remaining nine weapons stations are available for other pods containing the electronics necessary for standoff jamming, escort jamming, time critical strike, and communications countermeasures. In the cockpit, it has an active electronically scanned array radar, which is capable of pinpointing the targets that need to be jammed (or destroyed using specialized radio-bound missiles) with greater accuracy than ever before. In other words, to give mess with the Wi-Fi network of all those terrorist living in their desert caves.

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]

NASA demos 2020's 12-wheeled, pressurized lunar rover concept car

We've all seen black and white footage of astronauts on the moon hot doggin' it over craters and dunes in a trick electric buggy, but that was over thirty years ago. In 2020, when a new generation of astronauts head there, they'll need a new generation of whip too, and that's just what NASA recently demonstrated to the public. Called the Small Pressurized Rover Concept, it looks to be an evolution of the 12-wheeled Chariot prototype we saw earlier this year, pimped out with an air-tight cabin that sleeps two and some bitchin' gold dubs. Inside a pair of explorers can go lunar RVing for up to two weeks at a time, covering 625 miles on one charge at a leisurely 6 mph, hopping out through rear-mounted (non-next-gen) spacesuits when something interesting catches their eye. You know, like aliens or something. Could happen.
[Thanks, Peter D.]

[ Via: Engadget ]
[ Tag: lunar rover, lunar vehicle, LunarRover, LunarVehicle, moon, nasa, small pressurized rover concept, SmallPressurizedRoverConcept ]

Hubble's 486 Computer Blue Screens (i.e. Fails), Repair Efforts Remain in Limbo [Hubble Space Telescope]

Hold the phone, people, the Hubble is still broken. There was word early Thursday morning that a Monkey Island-era 486 backup computer was going to take the reigns and begin mission critical operations, but a day later NASA scientists revealed the dusty old thing was better suited for minesweeper than capturing awe-inspiring deep field images of the observable universe. The 486 was activated Thursday, and that went well, NASA scientists said. It was everything else on board the aging space telescope that pooped the bed, unfortunately. When the 486 fired up, a low-voltage power supply issue sidelined one of Hubble's cameras, and prevented it from rebooting properly. Not good. After that, further unidentified "computer trouble" hit Hubble hard, and ended all recovery efforts instantly. Now NASA is tasked with going through piles of data beamed back from Hubble since the malfunction on Friday to find a cure. Today the best case scenario for Hubble is that engineers get it up and running late next week, said Art Whipple, a Hubble manager. The worst case scenario is Hubble has to wait for human hands to arrive next year as part of a shuttle mission. And fixing the telescope with astronauts is no joke. As we noted in September when this mess first started, fixing Hubble by hand is more risky that you could possibly imagine. Unless you're an astronaut, of course. [MSNBC]

NASA Returns to the Moon as Indian Spacecraft Stowaway [Space]

The Chandrayaan-1, literally "Lunar Craft", launched today from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on the southeastern coast of India. The spacecraft will orbit the Moon for two years, charting its mineral composition, searching for ice, and helium-3, all three fundamental for the establishment of a lunar outpost. Or a call center. It can go either way. Chandrayaan-1 is India's first mission to our satellite, and it's also NASA's return to the moon after the Apollo missions:

Two NASA instruments to map the lunar surface will launch on India's maiden moon voyage. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper will assess mineral resources, and the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar, or Mini-SAR, will map the polar regions and look for ice deposits.

Apart from these two NASA instruments and three European Space Agency instruments, the Chandrayaan-1 is carrying the C1XS, an X-ray Spectrometer to get high-quality, X-ray spectroscopic mapping of the Moon, a near infrared spectrometer called SIR-2 to study the chemical composition of the Moons crust and mantle, and SARA, the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyser which will study plasma-surface interactions in space for the first time. [ISRO and NASA]

[ Via: Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog ]
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