DEATH FROM THE SKIES: METEOR STRIKES STILL A DANGER?

100 years ago today, local people in Shepard, Texas, were rocked by a massive explosion as a meteor smashed through the roof of a house in the town. Luckily that was all the damage there was, and no one was killed. On June 30 a year later, the Tunguska event took place, which was a very much bigger event altogether.

The 1908 Tunguska event has always been mysterious and intriguing because there were no known witnesses, and it has been difficult to fully understand what caused the explosion that flattened more than 2000 square kilometres (800 square miles) of Siberian forest (pictured). However, recent research by Michael Kelly of Cornell University has confirmed that the cause was almost certainly a comet exploding in the atmosphere.

Kelly saw that weather events after Tunguska were similar to those after several Space Shuttle launches, when water vapour from the Shuttle’s exhaust caused bright night-time clouds. This is similar to conditions after Tunguska, when nights were so bright that you could read a newspaper at midnight across much of Europe. Kelly has concluded that the only source that could provide such a huge amount of extra water vapour in 1908 would have been the head of a water-ice comet, flashing to instant steam as it hit the atmosphere at anything up to 72 km/sec (45 miles/sec).

Are we in danger of a repeat Tunguska event? It’s impossible to say absolutely, but there are no known dangerous comets or asteroids presently visible in the skies. Still, rocks from space make a great plot for an end-of-the-world drama, as Bruce Willis showed in the 1998 Hollywood sci-fi drama Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay of Transformers fame. Dubious science aside, it was a good humoured romp that deserved its box office success. Enjoy the trailer!

TRANSFORMERS MASHUP: ROBOT-ON-ROBOT MEGAWARS

Here’s a start-of-the-week break from serious science, or even serious science fiction. Watch the Autobots and Decepticons crash and collide in this well-made mashup of video gaming on various platforms that include Nintendo DS and Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and PSP, PC, and XBox 360.

Video gaming - officially known as interactive entertainment - is serious stuff financially, with the value of the international gaming industry running at more than $1 billion USD every month. Launch sales can be enormous - Grand Theft Auto IV took more than $500 million USD in its first weekend on sale, beating the previous record-holder, the epic sci-fi game Halo 3.

RED STAR FUTURE FIGHTER

In an alternate timestream, maybe the Soviet Empire storms on, battling dissidents, freedom lovers, and all-comers. Well, that’s the flavour of French designer Bruno Delussu’s tasty retro-future air-fighter.

The plane has no windows, as external info is presented to the pilot via 360-degree hi-def video displays. The tail unit looks fresh off a World War II-era German Messerschmitt jet, but no matter: it looks great, even if there’s no room for fuel tanks to supply that massive reaction system. Instead, the craft could use zero-point energy, sucking power from the fabric of space-time itself. Yes please.

RETRO-FUTURE LUXO-WHEELS FROM FRANCE

French designer Bruno Delussu is a master of retro-futurist concepts. His Bugatti Stratos takes its main cues from the Bugatti Type 57S Atlantic, a 1930s design that is constantly at or near the top of most best-looking car lists. Here in 2009, the Stratos may take inspiration from the past, but the result is fresh and hugely desirable.

Would it work on future streets? Delussi’s Stratos is pure styling, with little or no regard to technical or production issues, so maybe the design is too pure to make in today’s car plants, or to drive on the potholed highways. However, in times to come, affordable small-scale robotic custom production is a strong possibility, and with space- and energy-saving alternative fuel sources starting to come onstream, highly individual cars like these may be possible in the not too distant future. Let’s hope so, but only time will tell.

Bruno Delussu's website is here.

SALUTE TO MICHAEL JACKSON, A STAR AMONG STARS

Michael Jackson's music has been with us for so long, and yet Thriller feels as fresh as yesterday.

Rest in peace, Michael.

ALIEN FISH ON A MOON OF SATURN?

Results from the Cassini spaceprobe, currently exploring Saturn and its 60-plus moons, indicate that the moon Enceladus could be a home for life, as there may be water trapped under its frozen surface. Cassini shows that geyser-like plumes (middle picture) erupt from ‘tiger stripe’ fractures (bottom) across the moon's south pole, and seem to come from an underground ocean or deep caverns.

The water could be salty, like the Earth's oceans, and not too acidic for life. Importantly, Cassini has also detected organic chemicals, results that suggest there’s a possibility of life down there.

Cassini first saw the plumes in 2005, when scientists thought they were probably violent gushers; today it seems more likely that they are steady vapour jets, caused by water leaking through the icy surface. Commenting in the magazine Nature US planetary scientist Dr John Spencer has suggested a picture of Enceladus that includes: “...the possibility of misty ice caverns floored with pools and channels of salty water, lurking beneath the tiger stripes. What else may lurk in those salty pools, if they exist, remains to be seen."

Cassini will make two more flybys of Enceladus in November this year.

Cassini information is here, and Nature magazine is here, though much of the information is for subscribers only.

GOLLANCZ BIG BLACK BOOKS MEGA-COLLECTIONS

Gollancz Books is boosting its Big Black Books (BBB) sci-fi and fantasy titles, with collections by Lyonesse author Jack Vance, and Conan the Barbarian author, Robert E Howard.

Conan's Brethren will be published in hardback on 17 September, priced £20 GBP (top picture). The 750-page book will include Howard's fantasy fiction that featured Conan's barbarian warriors-in-arms, all presented in chronological order. In January 2010, Gollancz will follow up with a complete edition of Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy.

Interestingly, Conan's Brethren will have an afterword by author Stephen Jones, plus cover, frontispiece, and inside art by the excellent artist Les Edwards. Simon Spanton, deputy publishing director at Gollancz, reckons: "The afterword charts the history of the series and is a good added extra”.

Future plans include publishing one or two BBB collections a year. Starcruzer reckons these two BBBs look like good news for fantasy lovers and fans of the mighty-thewed one - here's hoping for some biggie sci-fi themed editions.

The bottom picture shows a poster advertising the Conan movie of 1982, in which the mighty Arnie gave a splendid performance, if you didn't mind a somewhat limited script. It's worth a look, if only for historical interest.

Visit Gollancz here, and Conan’s Brethren at a whopping pre-order discount on Amazon, here.

IS A NEW ROBOT RACE COMING?

Noel Sharkey is professor of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics at Sheffield University, and was chief judge of the ace TV series, Robot Wars. And now Sharkey has things to say about the future of robots.

As Sharkey observes, “Nano-technology has reduced sensors and electronics to such a small scale that you can pack much more on to a robot now”. Simply put, the more computing power that’s available, the closer we come to the autonomous and intelligent robots of our sci-fi dreams. Droids like C3PO and R2D2 may finally be coming true.

Military robots (more than 6000 of them in Iraq alone) and industrial robots (more than 1.2 million around the world) get the headlines, but it’s servitor robots that will change our daily lives, and the way ahead is being led by the Japanese.

Japan is an aging society, and it is not a culture that has high numbers of immigrants of any sort, let alone in the caring professions. So Japan is concentrating on developing caring, sharing, helping robots, ones that will interact with people - particularly older ones - to make their lives easier.

Prototypes like the Honda Asimo (see pictures) have already proved they can be useful in a limited way. With development, little Asimo could be the forebear of a new race of robot servitors. Whether they’ll ever turn out to be mad and bad (Amazing cover) is anyone’s guess - let’s hope not!

You can read about Asimo and other Honda robots here.

PINK POWER GUNDAM

We had to show this pinkly-encrusted Gundam, though we can't find out out what the purpose is. Still, it makes a change from the uber-macho image of most combat mecha warriors.

More images available at the Japanese Motocity.com here, though why a biker-site features a pink Gundam is a bit of a mystery!

GIANT LIFE-SIZE GUNDAM IN JAPAN

As part of celebrating 30 years of Gundam fighting machines, a life-size Gundam - Real-G - has been erected at the Shiokaze park in Japan. Real-G's a biggie, as you can see from the picture (top) of assembly workers applying the finishing touches earlier this month.

Gundams have been staggeringly successful over the years. They first appeared in April 1979, in a Japanese TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam. Since then the concept has been franchised, and the range now includes manga, anime, books, video games, toys and scale models of various sorts. The Isuzu VX-2 concept car (middle picture) and Mitsubishi Evo were styled with Gundam in mind, and Gundam art is also popular (bottom). An original by Hisahi Tenmyouya was auctioned for £600,000 USD in 2005. Overall, the Gundam business is reckoned to be worth more than $500 million USD a year.

The Gundam backstory is nicely polished, with O’Neill cylinders (remember them?) and Lagrange points being part of the scenery. Helium 3 is a basic fuel, though Minovsky energy is entirely fictional. The political story includes the battling forces of Zeon and the Earth Federation. The Gundams are weapons that can work in varying gravity fields, and able to do most of the things a human commando can do, hence giant humanoid combat machines.

Gundam fan Danny Choo has a great blog showing Real-G, here.

You can take a look at a few items from the galaxy of Gundam merchandise, here.

ALIENS ARE AMONG US AGAIN? IT’S CROP CIRCLE SEASON!

Just a reminder that you need to keep an eye open for those mysterious field objects, crop circles. It’s all a weird business, open to interpretation - and even more, to misinterpretation. There are those who claim to make circles, or at least know someone who does - and if you’re interested in finding out about them, you could visit the Circlemakers website (top picture).

However let’s not laugh too loudly at people who think that ETs or UFOs are involved, as there definitely seems to be something odd going on. The Starcruzer crew has had a couple of close encounters with crop circle-type activities over the years. The first was in 1963 in Wiltshire, UK, when farmer Roy Blanchard reported mysterious happenings on his land. A neighbour also reported that a cow was suffering from an unusual skin disease, flaking as if it had been exposed to heat or radiation.

Robert Randall, an Australian astro-physicist of the time, offered the theory that a spacecraft had made a bad landing, bounced across three fields and then righted itself, to reveal three undercarriage marks plus a truck-sized crater. Randall thought the spacecraft had come from the planet Uranus, but sad to say, no Uranians or Little Green Men (LGMs) were ever spotted.

Now I was a boy at the time and actually saw some of this. I strolled up to the field in question early one morning, after my elder brother had reported talk in the pub the night before. And I did see a trio of equally spaced metre-wide depressions in the ground, and strange black cobwebby material covering nearby hedges. But by the time I had gone back to fetch a camera, the area was taped off, the army was investigating, and small boys were definitely not allowed back in!

So... something odd happened. There was mention of a buried World War 2 bomb going off without warning, but whether that was fact or deliberate misinformation, we’ll probably never know.

Coming up to date, only last month, I saw a ‘crop circle’ near Avebury, not so far away from Blanchard’s whodunnit, but this looked to be made by humans, without much idea of the symmetry normally expected of crop circles (middle picture). However, the new circle (bottom) delighted a small Avebury boy who was very pleased to talk about such mysterious goings on!

Visit Circlemakers here.

SURROGATES GRAPHIC NOVEL

...and here's a look at The Surrogates graphic novel jacket - a nice visual treatment that suits the storyline very well indeed. We're looking forward to the follow-up title.

BRUCE WILLIS BACK (WITH HAIR) IN ‘SURROGATES’ MOVIE

It looks like this autumn at the cinema is going to be a sci-fi fest - The Road with Charlize Theron looks interesting, as does Surrogates starring Bruce Willis.

Surrogates is based loosely on the graphic novels by Robert Vendetti and Brett Weldele. To quote a review, “The year is 2054. Virtual reality and cybernetics allows users to interact with the world without leaving their homes. It's a perfect world...” But of course it’s not perfect, and the story that follows has earned top-star review ratings. A new title Flesh and Bone is due late July.

Just one thing in the movie - the thatch Bruce wears proves that he’s one of the few people on the planet who actually looks better with a bald look.

Both graphic novels are available from Amazon here.

SPACEPORT AMERICA GROUND-BREAKING CEREMONY

Virgin Galactic is starting to see results from its massive investment in space tourism at Spaceport America, New Mexico, with ground-breaking ceremonies for the futuristic terminal being built there. The terminal will cover 110,000-plus sq ft when built, and will have an impressive range of green technologies. These include an earth-tube system to reduce air-conditioning costs, and rooftop solar thermal panels for hot water.

The WhiteKnight Two mothership Eve was due to make an overflight for the ceremony, but an actuator alarm at 47,000 ft (14,326 m) meant that the pilots landed for checks at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport. By 15 June, Eve had made nine test flights, and reached 52,400 ft (15,980 m), not far short of the height needed for launching SpaceShip Two into suborbital flight.

The Virgin Galactic team is going great guns towards its goal of providing edge-of-space tourism. Best wishes from Starcruzer, and we hope to be up there sometime in the not too distant future, too.

You can visit Spaceport America here.

ANOTHER END-OF-THE-WORLD MOVIE - BUT ‘THE ROAD’ LOOKS GOOD

The Road is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, published in 2006 and written by Cormac McCarthy, an American author who has carried off cartloads of literary prizes. It’s a post-apocalyptic story of a father and son, making a journey across a savage country that has been all but destroyed by mysterious events.

Pre-release buzz is that the movie makes a fine translation from the book. It’s certainly not a mega-bucks production - at $30 million or so, it’s on the cheap side for anything connected with a sci-fi theme.

The Road is due for release in October this year.

STAR WARS JEDI MASTER YODA AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Warwick Davis, the actor who starred in Return of the Jedi and Willow, has written an eventful autobiography Life’s Too Short which will be published internationally early 2010.

Davis has a genetic condition called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED) and is barely 107 cm (42 in) tall. His filmography is a long one though, with roles in movies such as Labyrinth, Star Wars, and Harry Potter.

His autobiography sounds like it will make a good read, with off-the-set tales of working with a galaxy of Hollywood stars and directors, from Harrison Ford and Val Kilmer to George Lucas and Ron Howard. His condition seems to have created both challenges and opportunities - having SED must make carving out a career tough, but a six-footer isn’t going to play Jedi Master Yoda.

We’re looking forward to curling up with this book, and will keep you posted on publication dates.

JOHN CARTER OF MARS CGI-FEST IN PROGRESS

Edgar Rice Burroughs is famed, and rightly so, for his Tarzan stories. They’ve been in books, magazines, TV series and movies. But the other great ERB invention, tales of John Carter’s exploits on the planet Mars, have not fared so well on the big screen.

John Carter was a former Confederate soldier, who was transported by unknown means to the red planet, an imaginary world bursting with life, from gorgeously exotic princesses to weirdly strange Martian fauna such as the eight-legged thoat.

Mars, or Barsoom in Martian-speak, was a planet with wow factor, that’s for sure - and certainly makes the dusty reality a little disappointing.

Burroughs wrote a dozen Barsoom tales, but there has been no major Hollywood movie release as yet. So it’s great to hear that the CGI-masters at Pixar - responsible for such terrific releases as Toy Story and The Incredibles, are moving forward with a production based largely on A Princess of Mars. From what we hear, there’ll be villains and swordfights, curvy Barsoom maidens, and maybe even a ‘Martian Face’ or two.

It’s early days yet, with release not expected until sometime in 2012. But it’s an excellent year for release, as it will mark the centenary of Barsoom’s first appearance in print.

The video above reveals a fascinating insight into animation efforts back in the 1930s. John Carter has his own site here.

Meantime, the Barsoom books are still in print. You can buy them at Amazon here.

BLAST FROM THE PAST FOR THUNDERBIRDS FANS

Gerry Anderson’s many puppet series have shown on TVs around the world in huge numbers. The titles are legion, and are still popular with fans - if you grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, then names like Stingray, Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Lady Penelope should do a good job of tickling up those memory cells.

Anderson’s comic publishing backed up his TV puppet empire, with the weekly Century 21 styled to look like a colour ‘newspaper of the future’. It was a big success, with a first issue that sold 750,00 copies.

And now there’s a pair of attractive books complied by Chris Bentley (jacket, top picture), with picture strip art (middle picture) from C21 artists and writers. The books really open up the past for Anderson enthusiasts.

We’ve just looked through Volume 1, and it’s a thickie (164 pages), packed with colour (even the ink smells nice), and has excellent reproduction that’s probably better than the original comics. My fave artist from that era is the masterly Frank Bellamy, whose portrayals of mighty explosions and rocket takeoffs (bottom) remain unbeaten to this day.

Century 21 Volume 1 is published by Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. Volume 2 is published tomorrow, June 18; both titles are available from Amazon here.

YOUR NAME ON RED PLANET MARS!

Here's a reminder that you can add you name to a microchip that should be on course for Mars in 2011.

The chip will be carried on the NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), a six-wheel rover that will check whether Mars ever was, or still is, an environment able to support microbial life.

The MSL is a bigger and more sophisticated machine than the present Spirit and Opportunity rovers that have been crawling around on the Martian surface since 2004. The picture above compared the old and new designs, with MSL shown on the left.

Here's the NASA/JPL link to add your name to the chip, here.

SPACEGIRL VALENTINA - SALUTE TO THE WORLD’S FIRST WOMAN IN SPACE

This day in 1963, Valentina Tereshkova blasted off from the Soviet Union to become the first human female to leave the Earth. Valentina had been selected from more than 400 applicants the year before, and was one of a shortlist of five potential spacegirls - she was just 26 years old at the time of her orbital flight.

The idea of a female cosmonaut was the brainchild of Sergei Korolyev, rocket scientist in charge of the Soviet space effort. Among Valentina’s plus-points were that she was a parachutist, from an ordinary family (‘proletarian’ in Communist-speak), a father who had fought bravely in World War 2, and she weighed less than 70 kg (154 lb).

The flight lasted just 70 minutes short of three days, during which time Valentina made Earth observations and carried out many tests on herself, to check the effects of spaceflight and the freefall environment on the female body. Much of the flight was fairly unpleasant, as she felt sick and uncomfortable, but she still completed 48 orbits, far more than US astronauts of the time had completed.

After the flight she was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, and is still revered for her achievements - only last year, at the age of 71, she carried the torch for the Russian Summer Olympics in St Petersburg.

Of course, spacegirls are nothing new for science fiction fans, and many a teenage youth (including me) dreamed of one day meeting an astronette in a tight-fitting spacesuit! So here Starcruzer presents a trio of gorgeous gals, from the golden age of sci-fi. And the suits are not so far fetched either - future designs will almost certainly be body-hugging designs, rather than the bulky outfits used so far.

The spacegirls date from (top to bottom) 1943, 1951, and 1965.

YIKES! ASTEROID JUST MISSED US!

Just a reminder folks, that five years ago we weren’t too far from a massive asteroid hit on our small blue marble. Asteroid 2002 MN came within 120,000 km (75,000 miles) of Earth, which sounds a lot, but is actually no more than one-third the way to the Moon.

Asteroid 2002 MN was about 100 metres (328 ft) across, big enough to cause damage on a similar scale to the Tunguska Event of 1908, thought to be an exploding comet head that devastated a large area of Siberia. The closest recorded near-miss was a much smaller asteroid called 1994 XM1, which passed about 105,000 km (65,000 miles) away.

Hollywood has been there too of course, with the movie Deep Impact. It was fairly dire in terms of plot but the special-effects towards the end were OK, though New York is totalled once again - how about taking out another country’s big city next time, guys? You can have a look at Deep Impact on the video above; it’s been given a music audio track to replace the original, but that’s no bad thing.

LOOKING FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS - THE ET HUNT HEATS UP

Astronomers at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma, Canaries, have reported a way to search planetary atmospheres for life signs. The aim is increase our chances of finding alien life outside the solar system.

The science team used the WHT and other La Palma instruments to look for information on our own planet’s chemical makeup, by checking on earthlight visible during a lunar eclipse. In the light measured, called the transmission spectrum, were signs of gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that were clear signs of life. These include large quantities of methane, a waste gas given off by many animals. Cows alone contribute some 16 percent of the world's atmospheric methane!

So that’s all right then - now we know there's life on Earth! More importantly, similar techniques will make it easier to check on the atmospheres of alien worlds, far beyond our Solar System.

It’s hard to believe that in the days of the Apollo missions, not a single extrasolar planet had been found - indeed, no one knew if any existed at all. But the science fiction community had faith - we knew they were there all along, just as we’re still expecting to find ET and weird critters out there one day.

Visit the William Herschel Telescope homepage here.

PLANS FOR A MASSIVE CITY IN SPACE

The Asten concept (top picture), named after an Egyptian god said to direct the motion of heavenly bodies, was the recent winner of a NASA-sponsored competition. The brainchild of Eric Yam, a 12th grader at Toronto Northern Secondary School, Asten is impressive for its approach and detailed thinking - his pdf competition entry is no less than 93 pages long.

Eric built in part on the cancelled Transhab concept (middle picture). This was a modular structure that contained all the equipment needed for medium-term survival in space. Carried into space in package form, Transhab would have inflated to provide full-size orbital living accommodation.

Transhab made a good start, but Eric made a conceptual leap, to imagine a huge, mile-high (1.6 km) hollow cylinder consisting of strings of interconnected living modules (bottom), housing a population of 10,000 people. Earth-normal artificial gravity would be created by spinning the Asten, just like the ring-shaped stations of science fiction dreams.

Perhaps a weak point are the reasons given to build it in the first place, with justifications that have been around since the 1970s. These include: solar power export to Earth, a way-station to the Moon and beyond, a safe haven in case of massive planetary meteor strike.

Frankly, Starcruzer doesn’t buy these, as there are probably easier and cheaper solutions to be had. In fact, like anything to do with exploration and new frontiers, the real reason is probably nice and simple - “We’ll do it because we want to”.

So on that basis, well done Eric - Asten is a fantastic achievement.

You can download Asten information here.

FUTURE CITIES OR FUTURE DREAMS?

If the LCROSS or other probes find accessible moonwater, then the way could be cleared for future communities living on the Moon.

Whether these are troglodyte-style buried dwellings, or soaring architecture that makes full use of the Moon’s low gravity is a moot point. But there won’t be any lack of ideas, that’s for sure - people have been dreaming up incredible structures for a loooong time, and here are just a few.

From top to bottom: Frank R. Paul’s Saturnian city was drawn at the height of this artist’s powers. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he was a one-man creative powerhouse, producing covers for dozens of magazines, including Amazing Stories, Science Wonder Stories and many others.

Future Cities was a book I created in 1979, with art by the late Brian Lewis, a talented artist who also painted covers for the British sci-fi mag New Worlds. This title was one of three I wrote with Ken Gatland, former President of the renowned British Interplanetary Society.

Coming up to date, the Water Building Resort is a concept for a sustainable megastructure from Spanish architect, Orlando de Urrutia. Visually, it’s based on the form of a water drop, and you can visit his blog here.

WILL WE FIND WATER ON THE MOON SOON?

All being well, next week should see the launch of the NASA Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission. On 17 June, LCROSS will leave Earth, aiming at the Moon to find water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole.

Lunar water is important to future human exploration of the Moon, as its presence should make permanent bases easier to maintain. Having a local supply means that it need not be hauled all the way from our blue marble.

According to plan, LCROSS will smash into one of the Moon’s polar craters with two impactor probes in October this year, to test the theory that ancient ice may lie buried under the surface. The blast will blow off clouds of debris that can be analyzed to see if there really is water - liquid gold for humans - on the Moon.

NASA has a very nice mini-movie of the LCROSS mission here. Science fiction fans please note that it’s also a homage to that classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in its use of music - The Blue Danube waltz plays in the LCROSS movie, just as it did in 2001.

And on the YouTube video shown above, there’s a delightful compilation of the scenes in 2001 where the Blue Danube played. Watch, listen, and enjoy, but you might have to blink away a tear - for director Stanley Kubrick created a spacefaring future that in the heady days of the Apollo flights, many really believed could happen.

YouTube compilation sequence by MetalApe