Finely riding that razored edge between tragedy and comedy, the New York Times reports that not only did the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket lose its three satellites and fail to reach orbit during a recent launch, but it also destroyed the remains of actor James Doohan, best known as the original Star Trek's Chief Engineer "Scotty." The actor's ashes -- as well as those of over 200 others -- were being carried into orbit by the rocket when complications with the ship's stage separation led to the (assumed) destruction of the craft. This recent mishap puts a sad period on the end of the sentence that already included an earlier loss and eventual recovery of the remains.

[Via Slashdot]

za9000's LCARS-like touch panel isn't quite ready to hop aboard any spacecraft, but it sure seems to do a fine job of controlling his home. Truthfully, detailing this thing in words wouldn't do it justice, so we'll leave it to you to don your best Spock face and check out the three-minute clip waiting just past the break.

[Thanks, Daniel]

You know those elephant-sized medical scanners? Totally amazing machines, sure, but things like that aren't apt to be shipped into obscure jungles throughout Africa. Thankfully, a team of researchers have developed something that could bring medical scanning to an even larger chunk of the world: a real live Tricorder. Of course, it's not really going by that moniker, but the diminutive scanner is able to interface with a cellphone via USB and utilize its 3G / WiFi access to send raw scan data to servers and receive images back. Granted, you won't get any high-resolution viewing from your average mobile, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

For those unaware, "veiled in secrecy" is an extreme understatement when it comes to the next Star Trek flick -- if there actually is a next Star Trek flick, that is. Nevertheless, an undercover photographer managed to grab some recent shots of a film production operating under the title "Corporate Headquarters," and a few snaps caught a vehicle that looks awfully similar to the 300MPG Aptera. Coincidentally enough, said craft was also missing from last week's New York Auto Show. Look, we aren't piecing together clues in a valiant attempt to get you stoked about seeing a space aged automobile in a movie that may or may not even be real (okay, it's real), but then again, it's hard to shake the evidence.

[Via AutoblogGreen]

It seemed pretty impressive when a user managed to get Windows Mobile 6 Standard up and running on a busted old HTC StarTrek -- but WM Professional 6.1 on that badboy? You had us at hello. A member of the xda-dvelopers forum named Erofich has managed to hack together an install of the touchscreen-only mobile OS for the decidedly non-touchscreen flip phone. The configuration includes a number of workarounds for using the keypad as opposed to a finger or stylus, and it looks like there aren't a ton of issues right now. We're pretty sure that this isn't the speediest or most robust implementation of the software, but it's an admirable feat nonetheless. We doff our caps to you, sir.

[Thanks, maflow]

If the intersection of 1st and 1st in the East Village is the nexus of the universe, then this Blu-ray Laser Phaser is easily the nerdom equivalent. Kipkay -- already Internet-famous for his phone line and remote control hacks -- crosses a toy Star Trek phaser with the PlayStation 3's laser assembly for a weapon of retina sizzling proportions. Check the video after the break for all the hot dremeling action.

[Via Blogmond]

Ariel Waldman contributes Adgadget, a column about the intersection of advertising and technology.

Technologically better equipped than booth babes, fantasy fembots seem to be popping up everywhere in ad campaigns these days. Alcohol seems to be popular with the fembots -- they're employed in ads from both Heineken and Svedka -- but Philips is utilizing them in a campaign for an electric razor as well.

It's pretty easy to be creeped out by the influx of ready-to-serve robots -- and not just because these fembots could be the beginnings of the Singularity in disguise. (C'mon, what more suitable "smarter-than-human brain-computer-interface" would be better to take over the human race than one that offered kegs and clean shaves as a "gift from the Greeks"? And who better to be behind the downfall of society than advertisers?) Misogynist undertones run rampant throughout all the ads, so it's no shock that feminine cyborgs are used exclusively in advertising targeting young males -- they tap right into stock fantasies of complete feminine subservience.

If you somehow managed to hold off on picking up a Toshiba HD DVD player along with eight free titles, and you eat, sleep, and breathe Star Trek, we've got a feeling your resistance is futile. In an admittedly interesting promotional move, Toshiba has teamed with CBS to offer those who purchase Star Trek: The Original Series HD DVD box set and any Toshiba HD DVD player a "limited edition Star Trek Phaser remote" that will operate Tosh's HD DVD players. Regrettably, there's no mention as to how many of these things will actually be handed out, but if you're even remotely (ahem) interested, we'd be on the ball as soon as the set lands.

Although the idea of teleporting individuals from one place to another in order to sidestep the headache of rush hour traffic has been around for quite some time, a team of Australian physicists are busy making it work (on a smaller scale, of course). Granted, they don't fully expect their teleportation scheme to be used on humans in the near future, but there's always hope, right? Anyway, the team has developed a so-called "simple way to transport atoms," which involves bringing the atoms to almost absolute zero, beaming them with two lasers, and using fiber optics to transport them to any other place at the speed of light where they "enter a second condensate" and reconstruct. We'll keep you posted on when human trialing (hopefully) begins.

The 1,500 Trek-obssesed citizens of Vulcan, Alberta are spicing up their annual Galaxyfest this year with the launch of the "Vulcan Space Adventure," an immersive VR game that takes place inside a recreation of the Enterprise. The CA$250,000 game, built by VR firm GestureTek, allows up to three players cast as Starfleet trainees to simulataneously interact with a virtual environment created by multple cameras and holographic screens. After being led into the simulation chamber -- built to look like the bridge of the Enterprise -- by "Captain Krok," visitors take orders from Starfleet Command and then use GestureTek's "point-and-click" VR system to complete their mission. The system, which doesn't require the player to wear any cumbersome VR gear, is one of only two GestureTek installations in Canada. We just hope the game doesn't get too real: what happened to that poor redshirt in these photos? A couple more after the jump...

When you've got folks dreaming up such things as a $2.5 trillion "space sunshade," we reckon a Star Trek-style deflector shield isn't too far-fetched. Apparently, a team of British scientists are looking into the possibility of crafting such a device in order to " protect astronauts from radiation" when they venture beyond the Earth's protective magnetic envelope, or "magnetosphere." Reportedly, the team is hoping to "to mimic the magnetic field which protects the Earth" and deploy the shields "around spacecraft and on the surfaces of planets to deflect harmful energetic particles." As nation's begin to revive plans of space exploration, the homegrown shield should look mighty attractive at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting, but details concerning a proposed launch date, and moreover, the presumably lofty pricetag, have yet to emerge.

[Via Slashdot]

Hot on the heels of being crowned the most prolific pirating university in the land, Purdue is donning its halo once again by kicking out yet another invention that will surely make the world a better place to reside. The Mini 10 prototype is a handheld chemical analyzer that its creators have likened to Star Trek's "Tricorder," and while the internal abilities should genuinely impress, we're handing out a round of golf claps for the uber-glitzy motif it's got going on. The sophisticated sensing system measures just 13.5- x 8.5- x 7.5-inches and weighs in at 22-pounds, which is around 30 times less than conventional mass spectrometers, and aside from its ability to be completely portable via battery power, it still sports the same sniffing capabilities as its mammoth-sized siblings. In order to cram such potent chemical sensing abilities into such a small package, a miniature mass spectrometer is "combined with a technique called desorption electrospray ionization (DESI)," and can display the chemical composition of materials in a "matter of minutes without harming the samples." Interestingly enough, the prototype has already analyzed garb, food, and actual cocaine, and while we're not quite sure when you'll be able to snatch one of these up to "check in" on your mischievous teen, a couple of Indiana-based firms are apparently already looking into commercialization options.

Slashdot]

It was a long day for the Boy Genius, but dude hooked Engadget Mobile up with a veritable cornucopia of launch plans for Cingular, including releases for the Motorola KRZR (aka Canary), V3i, HTC Hermes and StarTrek, the new BlackBerry Stealth, the Treo Nitro and Treo Lennon, HP iPAQ hw6920/25, and Nokia E62. Go check 'em out over at Engadget Mobile, you won't be sorry.

Treo Nitro and Treo Lennon coming to Cingular in October
The Boy Genius Report: BlackBerry Stealth
The Boy Genius Report: Canary is KRZR, getting launched September
The Boy Genius Report: Cingular snags Motorola V3i, Sony Ericsson w810
The Boy Genius Report: HTC Hermes & StarTrek, and iPAQ hw6920 coming to US
Nokia E62 to drop for $599/$399 in September/October

HTC, making sure that the enjoyment of our fresh Star Trek is kept to an absolute minimum, looks to be preparing a spectrum of lustworthy new devices. This information is entirely unconfirmed, and we don't know much about what we're about to tell you -- some of these code names are as new to us as they are to you -- but we can tell you it comes from a reliable source.

First up, the Muse has been mercifully renamed the "Melody," and the Triolgy has become "Monet." The Hermes, which is just starting to drop across Europe, has been upped to 400MHz for full-scale production; you might recall we recently reported that O2 was bringing a 400MHz Hermes to the table, and it now appears this will be standard fare for launches going forward. Trinity (pictured) specs are coming into focus, and we should expect this beast to throw down HSDPA, WiFi, and integrated GPS. There have been some rumblings of an "Artemis" recently, and that device still appears to be on the map, bringing integrated GPS and a trackball (wha?) but topping out with EDGE data. The "Herald" sounds positively gorgeous, similar in concept and functionality to the Hermes but measuring just 17mm thick. The Foreseer and Monet will be joined by the "Oxygen" in HTC's mobile TV lineup, though we don't know which standard it'll be packing. Looking to steal some of the Q's thunder, the "Excalibur" will be getting its QWERTY on and running Smartphone. Finally, look for "Vera" as a possible successor to the Star Trek, packing HSDPA and a front-facing camera for video calling.

That's a lot of unconfirmed data to digest, we know, and we're still trying to make sense of it all ourselves. No word on release windows for most of these -- if we could divine you a Vera tomorrow, we would -- but as always, we'll be burning the midnight oil in our quest for deets.