I honestly believe the human race pushed too far today. I read the following article on Popular Science and it blew my mind with the sheer power. OK I appreciate a Nuclear Warhead has more oomph but this thing is still pretty frightening.

In Utah today, NASA completed a successful test of the world’s largest, most powerful solid rocket motor, the DM-2. For two minutes, the motor, designed to provide up to 3.6 million pounds of thrust, roaringly fired a column of flame, while some 760 instruments monitored its every aspect. Best to turn down your speakers before the countdown in this video hits zero.

Before the motor was fired, the engineers chilled it to 40 degrees below zero, for additional stress testing. It reportedly passed every test. The motor is intended to be used in the heavy-lift rocket segment of the Constellation program that NASA has slated for 2015.

Full story at [Link]

Have you ever seen something in the news that has made you think, “Hmmm… The Terminator movie is actually coming true”?

This story really did it for me.

A Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout UAV strayed into restricted airspace above Washington DC after departing Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland on August 2, the result of a software logic flaw that caused the operator to momentarily lose contact with the drone. Programmed to circle when communications are severed, the chopper failed to follow its failure protocol, instead heading twenty-three miles on a north/northwest trajectory — which could have had serious consequences had it been equipped with 70mm Hydra rocket pods or Hellfire Tankbuster missiles. Although this type of incident is rare, it is not unheard of: last September the Air Force had to take down an MQ-9 Reaper in Afghanistan when it failed to adhere to failure protocols after dropping communications with the ground. At least, that’s what we’d like to believe… the alternative scenario is too frightening to consider.

-Engadget

Its not suprising, therefore, that Lockheed Martin and Kaman’s unmanned helicopter won a US military contract recently, most likely because it didn’t stray towards the White House, and also because you can opt for a human pilot!

I have adopted a new hobby lately. Well. I say hobby…

I trawl the ‘Recommended’ section of my Google Reader account looking for odd and quirky things. Its amazing what you can find!

For example, how amazing is this walk in bookcase?! Bet it smells fantastic.

The Ark, designed by Rintala Eggertsson Architects is a book lovers dream – the ultimate bookshelf, one that you can literally climb inside and spend the day in. Talk about getting lost in a good book!

Or how about this (expensive) Honeymoon suite?

Have you ever seen anything more amazing?! Conrad Maldives Rangali Island‘s unique underwater suite is actually the hotel’s restaurant "Ithaa," which can been converted into a boudoir below the Indian Ocean in honor of its fifth anniversary. One night comes complete with Champagne breakfast and aquatic swim-bys from blue-striped snapper, sting rays, parrot fish, and moray eels. The tab is pretty steep, and you need to request the room at least 14 days in advance, but it certainly gives new meaning to the term "sleeping with the fishes."

Cool or what?!

This is what high-end Smartphones looked like in 2007:

Smartphones were an established consumer-electronics market with devices that people thought were pretty cool, but often frustrating and with serious shortcomings and design flaws.

Then this happened:

Other manufacturers had neglected Touchscreens for years, but Apple figured out how to do a Touchscreen well, and did.

Fans of the former types of Smartphones and much of the tech press declared this Smartphone useless or not capable enough because of its lack of a keyboard, its non-removable battery, its lack of expansion slots or ports, and other hardware features in which Apple chose differently from what most other manufacturers were doing.

That ended up not mattering. Now, most high-end Smartphones look like this:

In early 2010, subcompact, inexpensive computers (a.k.a. “netbooks”) looked like this:

Netbooks were an established consumer-electronics market with devices that people thought were pretty cool, but often frustrating and with serious shortcomings and design flaws.

Then this happened:

Other manufacturers had neglected tablets for years, but Apple figured out how to do a tablet well, and did.

Fans of Netbooks and much of the tech press declared this subcompact, inexpensive computer useless or not capable enough because of its lack of a keyboard, its non-removable battery, its lack of expansion slots or ports, and other hardware features in which Apple chose differently from what most other manufacturers were doing.

That ended up not mattering. And now, other manufacturers are scrambling to build tablet products as quickly as possible.

The exciting big question is: What next?

This is a prototype digital camera Kodak produced way back in 1975. The toaster-sized system relied on a cassette tape for recording data. The digitised images took 23 seconds to record to tape which then had to be played back using a specialised system, shown in the second photo. Damn! 1975? I wasn’t even born. I never would have guessed they had this sort of thing back then.

I honestly can’t imagine dealing with 23-second-per-image write times and cassette tapes. Memories of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum come flooding back!

Quality piece of work right here!

Artist Link

So you thought music piracy was new? Wrong. Above is how your grandparents used to get their groove on to The Beatles without forking out for the latest LP’s. I reckon you could get some pretty ‘groovy’ effects by mixing up different coloured vinyl.

What happens when you strap a Nexus One to a rocket with 1,000lbs of thrust and throw it up 28,000 feet in the sky? The first such launch didn’t go so well, with the rocket suffering a ballistic return. The second flight was rather more successful, and the video results can be seen below – captured by the phone itself!

Perhaps Steve Jobs will wish he’d used a Taiwanese production company rather than Chinese Foxconn for the iPhone4 after this piece of CGI genius.

The blue halo is Steve’s ‘Reality Distortion Field’

Plus! Watch how Steve cures the grip of death with a Light Sabre.

(more…)

This is the best chair design I have seen so far. The gravity balance is fully reclined. Your legs can be elevated above your head, and the feeling of floating free of gravity should be amazing. But the price is way too high, over $2000 for one unit.