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HP made a VR backpack for on-the-job training
To date, VR backpack PCs have been aimed at gamers who just don't want to trip over cords while they're fending off baddies. But what about pros who want to collaborate, or soldiers who want to train on a virtual battlefield? HP thinks it has a fix. It's launching the Z VR Backpack, a spin on the Omen backpack concept that targets the pro crowd. It's not as ostentatious as the Omen, for a start, but the big deal is its suitability to the rigors of work. The backpack is rugged enough to meet military-grade drop, dust and water resistance standards, and it uses business-class hardware that includes a vPro-enabled quad Core i7 and Quadro P5200 graphics with a hefty 16GB of video memory.
Saturn's largest moon has enough energy to run a colony
Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, is one of the few viable places humans can explore first-hand beyond Mars. It's relatively safe from radiation, it's covered in liquid (though not water) and otherwise relatively safe. But could more than a handful of people even stay there for very long? Apparently, the answer is yes. Researchers have conducted a study showing that Titan should have enough energy to sustain a colony. The first arrivals might have to build a nuclear power plant and take advantage of radioactive decay, but colonists could use the abundance of hydrocarbon lakes to generate power by combining hydrogen with acetylene (which should also be plentiful). And since Saturn creates strong tides, you could use turbines to generate plenty of electricity.
An artwork controlled by a colony of bacteria
The Tate Modern's Turbine Hall has always been a vacuous space. Five storys high, with 35,000 sq ft. of space for artworks, it's been home to some of the London museum's most memorable exhibitions. Its latest, by sheer spirit of invention, is no exception.
Elon Musk's Mars colony would have a horde of mining robots
If it wasn't already clear that Elon Musk has considered virtually every aspect of what it would take to colonize Mars, it is now. As part of his Reddit AMA session, the SpaceX founder has revealed that his vision of a permanent colony would entail a huge number of "miner/tunneling droids." The robots would build large volumes of underground pressurized space for industrial activity, leaving geodesic domes (made of carbon fiber and glass) for everyday living. As a resident, you might never see the 'ugly' side of settling the Red Planet.
Scientists find a way to make concrete on Mars
If humans are ever going to have a long-term presence on Mars, they'll need to make their own buildings -- they can't count on timely shipments from Earth. But how do they do that when the resources they have will share little in common with what they knew back home? Northwestern University researchers have an idea. They've developed a concrete that uses Mars' native materials. You only have to heat sulphur until it melts, mix it with an equal part of Martian soil and let it cool. The finished concrete is very strong, easy to work with and recyclable -- you just have to reheat it to get some building supplies back.
God game Maia lands on Steam Early Access in December
Colony management simulator Maia will launch on Steam on December 3 via Early Access. The game earned £140,481 ($225,219) on Kickstarter in late November 2012. The god game has players building an underground colony to avoid hostile creatures on the surface of a planet. Maia's world is procedurally-generated and features both top-down and first-person game modes. Simon Roth, the game's developer, noted that direct pre-orders have already totaled a tidy £12,000 ($19,238).
Life.Lab's Colony brings location-specific art controller to the iPhone
Colony is a new free application that showed up on the iPhone App Store just recently, but it won't do much of anything if you download it -- unless you're hooked up to the WiFi at the Life.Lab building in Digital Harbour in Melbourne, Australia. The app is actually part of an art installation by an artist named Troy Innocent, and was developed by Stewart Haines specifically to control the setup there in Melbourne.It's a very interesting project -- while it doesn't mean much to anyone not in Digital Harbour, the idea of bringing the iPhone into a location-specific setup is intriguing. Haines has a nice page on his site that details the process of creating the app, and you get to not only see the thought behind the process, but some of the concepts and tech behind the app as well. Very cool.There are lots of location-specific applications that have yet to be explored on the iPhone, most of them commercial (putting your order in while waiting in line at Starbucks, for instance). But Colony looks like a really thoughtful take on the idea -- I would say that it's too bad you have to go all the way to Australia to use it, but then again that's kind of the point.
In space no one can hear you scream... but they can "hear you now"
Did you know that NASA was building a base of operations in the south pole of the Moon? Did you know colonists would be living and working there? Did you know that plans are in motion to establish a satellite phone network which would allow said colonists to communicate with one another? Well, it's all true... and more! According to a report, NASA and the British National Space Centre (BNSC) are preparing a trial phone network to be deployed on the Moon. The system, called MoonLite, will be comparable to the satellite phone networks of the 80's and 90's here on Earth, and will be used to facilitate communication between occupants on the base and robots and workers which are out and about. The satellites will handle data as well as voice communication, with 3kbps downstream and 2kbps up -- though we're told Verizon will control the entire system, with plans to bottleneck speed at will.[Via PHONE Magazine]
