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.

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.

One of the greatest living scientists, Professor Stephen Hawking, is to be depicted in a bronze statue sited near his office in Cambridge. The sculptor, 32-year-old Brightonian Eve Shepherd, has been following Hawking around to learn more about his personality.

The statue will cost £250,000, and aims to show the "power of Professor Hawking's mind and the fragility of his body". A scale model's been made that shows Hawking inside a whirl of some kind, like a black hole. You can see that above. The artist is unsure when the final sculpture will be complete.

(via BBC)

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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.

To say that the principle behind it is controversial would be seriously understating matters. An article on the process in New Scientist enticed a barrage of criticism, with people saying it isn't possible, or that they'd done their sums wrong, or that the article should simply not have been published.

A mere 30 years after Arthur C. Clarke first mooted the idea of running super-thin, lightweight cables into space and tethering them to a satellite in his book The Fountains of Paradise, Japanese scientists reckon they're ready to bring all the parts together and make it happen.

For a relatively low in space travel terms bill of £5bn, the boffins think they're close to solving the carbon nanotube technology issue that could make the existence of 22,000 mile-long cables possible. That amount of rope or even Ethernet cable would snap under its own weight, but carbon nanotubes are light enough to go from Earth to a satellite. They just need to be made four-times stronger than they are today.

The Japanese scheme apparently favours stringing up an additional nanotube alongside the elevator to carry the power, allowing the cars to power themselves into space using a similar system used by the Japanese bullet trains. They are so serious about it they have registered a domain name - check out the Japan Space Elevator Association for more news. It's in Japanese, mind.

(Via The Times)

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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 is celebrating its 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.

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.

It's fitted with a GPS unit, so wherever you are, it can identify what you're looking at. Alternatively, if you want to find a particular object, the unit will guide you to the correct spot in the sky.

It's also loaded up with useful facts and trivia about skyward stuff, and can be updated via its USB connection.

It's not cheap, retailing at around US$300.

(Via Gadget Sleuth)

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It's a Star Wars wedding. Not just a cake grandma made that, from the right angle, looks a bit like a 2D Death Star, but a proper, CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY DID THAT? Star Wars wedding. Everyone put in some effort.

Here's a small celebratory montage we've put together of the finest photos. The highlight is the ginger man who grew his beard out to be Chewbacca, plus the grey-haired man who used his natural assets to do a superb Ben Kenobi. The T.I.E. Fighters let the side down a bit, mind. What's with the socks?

The entire set is, incredibly, viewable by the general public over on Flickr. We wanted to poke fun, but... it's sensational.

Although when they get divorced in three years time, the print outs of these novelty photos will be the first thing to go on the big fire in the garden, along with all of HIS STUPID TOYS.

(Via GF)

Wedding gifts: Battlestar Galactica toaster (for her) | R2-D2 webcam (for him)

You may have already read about SpaceX's failure to get their privately funded rocketship Falcon 1 into space on Saturday night, but just what you may have missed is the news that stowed onboard the doomed rocket-ship, ready for delivery to space, were three commercial satellites and the cremated remains of 200 people.

Of those 200 urns of ashes blown into mile-high confetti, one happened to contain the remains of everyone's favourite Scottish Star Trek engineer: Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (actor James Doohan).

A couple of weeks ago the sixth man on the moon, Edgar Mitchell, in an apparent bid to catch up with James Watson in the "man of science inexplicably becomes a crackpot" stakes, went on the radio and claimed that the human race has made contact with aliens and there's a big cover-up to disguise this fact.

Maybe he's not mad after all if Aviation Week, a publication not usually known for its hyperbole (or generally not known) is right with its story about NASA deliberately sitting on a huge announcement?

To be fair to the Bebo group by the name of A Message From Earth (AMFE), who are about to beam cultural data out into space, their content might actually be quite be good. The question remains though as to whether their intended alienlife targets will actually enjoy it or understand it at all.

The idea is that the group will send 500 multimedia messages, via Alexander Zaitsev and his radio telescope in the Ukraine, out into the black void, directed towards a planet by the name of Gliese 581c and any possible inhabitants. With its distance from a red sun and the likelihood of water, it has the right kind of conditions to support life such as ours.

The important point about this is that they are the kind of ET life that might just be able to work out that the YouTube clip of the sneezing panda is actually funny. One step ahead of me then.

For some, the dream of shrugging off earth's seeming inescapable pull just got a big step closer. Sir Richard Branson has just finished the grand unveiling of his first commercial space craft in the Mojave desert.

At the naming ceremony, the ship was christened 'EVE' in honour of Branson's mother. Aside from a potentially lucrative way for Branson to earn more cash, the White Knight II series of aircraft represents ground-breaking leap forward in aerospace technology. It is the largest completely carbon fibre aircraft in the world.

I feel rather sorry for the sixth man to walk on the moon aka Dr Edgar Micthell. Here he is, on radio, telling the world exactly what they want to hear and I'm about to sit and just take the piss. I can't help it, but I promise to be gentle Dr M, I promise.

So, the Apollo 14 veteran spills the lot:

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real."

"It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so," he says. "But slowly it's leaked out," he says. He says, "Some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it." But the trouble lies in his picture of these beings and their culture.

Now just before we all rush out to the boozer, take a second to remember how small we all are and, basically, how bloody brilliantly mind-blowing space is. Here are pictures from the stars of what it looks like when the moon passes in front of the Earth - from 31 million miles away.

Far out, man.

(via Gizmodo)

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You know all that saving you've been doing? No, not real saving. I mean like money tied up in your house and anything you might have stashed away for your children's education. Yeah, well it's time to cash it in because there's an auction about to take place for a truck load of movie props including Marty McFly's hoverboard and Darth Vader's T.I.E. Fighter from Star Wars.

It may be only an 18-inch prop but the curve-winged space vessel is expected to fetch £100,000. If you haven't quite got that kind of wonga, then may I recommend the holy grail from The Last Crusade at £12,500 or, perhaps something to convince the kids to get to bed, Jack's axe from The Shining at just £3,500?

The auction takes place on 31st July and 1st August at the Profiles in History auction house, Hollywood, but I'm sure they take telephone bids.

(via Daily Record)

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It may take decades to qualify as an astronaut but you can get your name on the moon in a matter of minutes. Since 1st May NASA has been inviting people of all creeds and nations to sign a register online that'll be taken up there in America's return flight to our favourite hunk of cheese in the sky.

The deadline was at the end of last month but it's now been extended to 25th July. So far they gathered over one million names and each of them has received their very own printable certificate to prove the fact. That a piece of the has just gone stellar.

The must-have Christmas gift of 2008 for the 3-11-year-old demographic, it is, and we can hardly believe such an amazing item exists, a TARDIS wardrobe. It is such a great idea. One of the world's best ideas, alongside automatically slicing bread with a machine and trainers with air in the soles for extra bounciness.

Fashioned out of the finest canvas and non-sustainable pine, the TARDIS wardrobe boasts a "single rail" and "zippable doors." But it's not about features. It's about shape and colour, and it saying "POLICE BOX" in the correct font.

It is also the ideal Christmas gift for those in the 33-49-year-old sci-fi fan demographic, along with some Babylon 5 slippers and a Star Trek pipe. The TARDIS wardrobe is yours on Amazon for £30.

Imagine cutting feet holes in it and wearing it to a cosplay convention. Guaranteed sex.

(Via Toyology)

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Recent testing of ancient moon rock collected by astronauts in the 70s has found evidence of water. Scientists have been applying new and more powerful techniques on the volcanic glass 'pebbles', which were unavailable back when we were popping back forth to our orbiting neighbour.

These findings challenge long-held beliefs that the moon is completely dry and that in turn throws doubt on a theory that the moon was formed when Earth had a bit of a misunderstanding with a passing proto-planet.

Our lives are monitored by an increasingly sophisticated array of digital observers, be it from CCTV, speed cameras, internet usage monitoring, those blokes from TV licensing that won't leave me alone... There's no way around it, but what if - WHAT IF? - you could have your very own eye-in-the-sky, silently watching everyone and everything around you? That would take the edge off, right?

A British Company has the answer: small, cheap, easy-to-build spy satellites that can be launched into space and left to take photos of anything you care to gawp at from your orbiting observation post. Surrey Satellite Technology (SST) is making these babies at the low low cost of $10 million. Call it five million quid, or one decent EuroMillions win.