NASA PROBE TO EXPLORE LIFE ON EUROPA

Here's a video that talks about a future NASA probe to Europa, moon of Jupiter. It's an ice-covered little world, but one that appears to have a vast sub-surface ocean... and where's there's water, they may be life.

Meantime Starcruzer's new site is looking good for launch later this year. Check back often.

STARCRUZER BOLDLY GOES TO A NEW SITE

Starcruzer is moving to a new site very soon, so please check back from time to time to view progress.

See you in the new dimension.

WEIRD MONOWHEELS PAST AND FUTURE

Retro futures make a fascinating study - all those amazing ideas that never saw the light of day, and others that became so changed as to be almost unrecognizable.

And it’s interesting too, to see what subjects exercised thinkers; ideas rarely arrive singly, instead fresh takes from different creators get outlined, and the best one usually wins. However, in the real world other factors (such as marketing skills) may outweigh technical merits, examples including VHS vs Betamax, 8-track vs Compact Cassette, or Mac vs PC.

Even so, some concepts are just so plain weird or impracticable that any number of designs won’t change the way things already are, and here’s the monowheel to prove the point. Magazines from before World War II were forever featuring strange giant-wheel machines, as if they were ready to kill the standard automobile dead. But sometimes an idea alone is not enough to change the world, as these retro offerings show.

Mind you, designers are still at it - the bottom picture (actually a bi-wheel not a pure mono) was conceived only recently. Will it be a future winner? The Starcruzer crew reckons it looks cute, but isn’t placing any bets on success.

FROM ZEPPELIN TO MOSQUITO MINI-FLYER

Today’s the day, back in 1889, that the famed Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patented his first airship design, called a ‘navigable balloon’. Airships became a major part of early aviation, and were pressed into combat service on bombing missions in World War I. Later on, they never really stood a chance against the speed and practicality of fast-developing conventional aircraft, and with the 1937 loss of the giant Hindenburg (its splendid dining room is shown in the top picture) while attempting to land in New Jersey, the airship age came to a halt. Small numbers are still made today, but the ‘age of the airship’ is long gone.

Meantime, what about that smaller, yet hugely desirable object, the personal aircraft? One that you can use as casually as an automobile is probably as far away as ever, but that doesn’t stop people from dreaming up new ideas. And here’s a nice little concept for a single-seater called the Muecke, or Mosquito (lower pictures). The designer, Daniel Kocyba from Germany, reckons his concept would be good as a personal sports machine, but it could also be used as a spotter or control craft for fire, police and coastguard operations. The tiny Muecke might also provide a neat solution for rushing emergency medical packages - nothing like sailing over traffic jams with that vital supply of blood.

An important feature of the Muecke is the contra-rotating lift rotor layout, which does away with the need for a tail rotor, so reducing the helo’s weight and complexity. Will the Muecke - or something like it - ever get built? We can only hazard a ‘maybe’, but computerized easy-fly controls make such machines a strong future possibility.

Visit Daniel Kocyba here.

METEOR STORM - TARGET EARTH!

Today’s the day for Perseid-max, the peak time for the annual Perseid meteor shower that we see as a splendid ‘shooting stars’ display: brief streaks of light in the sky as cosmic particles burn up in the upper atmosphere. These particular ones are so-named because they appear to come from the part of the heavens occupied by the constellation Perseus.

The Perseids should be visible in the pre-dawn and evening skies, and usually peak at a rate of around one or two a minute. They appear every August with such regularity because they are a part of a meteor stream, a vast quantity of dust and rock particles orbiting the Sun. They are the broken remains of an ancient comet that we pass through as the orbits of the stream and the Earth intersect once a year.

Sky map courtesy StarDate Online

DAY ONE - SURVIVING THE INVADERS

Here’s an intriguing trailer for a new post-apocalypse NBC TV series due to air March 2010. Day One features a bunch of survivors from a devastating - yet mysterious - alien invasion, in which civilization is devastated. The group is a disparate collection of people who happen to have apartments in the same Los Angeles residential block.

If this trailer is anything to go by, Day One will be worth watching, as the survivors try to find out just what has happened to them and if possible, rebuild something from the wreckage around. NBC plan to put it into the Heroes slot, and are aiming for a 13-episode series. Keep an eye open for it.

Visit Day One here.

NEIL GAIMAN TAKES ‘BEST NOVEL’ PRIZE AT THE 2009 HUGO AWARDS

The Hugo Awards are one of science fiction’s oldest and most revered prizes - if you win one of these, you can reckon to have earned high status among sci-fi fans and your peers alike. The rocket-shaped award (top picture) is named after Hugo Gernsback, one of the pioneers of the genre, the man responsible for the pioneering Amazing Stories magazine.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (middle picture) took the 2009 Best Novel prize at yesterday’s ceremony in Montreal, Canada. The children’s book is not the first time that English novelist Gaiman has taken honours - in 2002 his American Gods also won a Hugo. Illustrated by Dave McKean, The Graveyard Book describes a child targeted for death by a league of assassins; he escapes into an old graveyard, where he is cared for by the spirits that dwell there.

There were many other prizes at the ceremony, but Pixar’s Wall-E (bottom) stands out for bringing adult values to a nominally children’s cgi animated movie. It picked up the Hugo for Best Long-Form Dramatic Presentation, deservedly so for its observations on artificial intelligence, long-term solitude, and crass overconsumption. And besides, Wall-E is just so cute!

The Starcruzer crew does have a query for the Hugo team though: Why is there no award for videogames? The gaming industry outsells much of the Hollywood and book publishing worlds these days, and many of its top products are purest science-fiction - we reckon that Halo at least deserves at least some kind of honorable mention.

Visit the Hugo Awards here.

You can buy The Graveyard Book here.

All sorts of Wall-E robots are available here.

ROCKET vs SUPERBIKE vs GOLF BALL

We ran across this video recently and, though the Sci-Fi-Techno excuse to include it on Starcruzer is rather thin - Richard Hammond is racing a rocket - it’s fun to watch.

It also reminds your Starcruzer crewchief of high-speed times on a Suzuki bike, a photographer hanging on the back, while snapping away over my shoulder. His target was the speedo needle passing the magic 100, before we ran out of the rather short runway. We made several passes, and got the shots, though the last run ended on the grass over-run area, and the front discs were glazed. Ah, fun memories!

Richard Hammond is of course best known for his regular Top Gear slot, that TV home of all that’s politically incorrect and max power to it for that. Hammond also starred in early series of the pop-science show Brainiac: Science Abuse, source of this video. It’s well worth seeing, if you can receive it. On the video, Hammond’s comment right at the end is priceless, though perhaps not quite the right words to choose on a broadcast show.

FAREWELL SPACEPLANES, HELLO AGAIN CAPSULES - BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS CONESHIP?

Sad to say, the days of those beautiful streamlined spacecraft beloved of science fiction illustrators are no more. Even the dumpy Space Shuttle will soon be no more than a bookmark of history, while single-stage-to-orbit concepts like the X-33 remain an unfulfilled dream.

In their place are coming a new generation of spacecraft that hark back to the successful days of the 1960s and 1970s, when ‘spam in a can’ astronauts rode aboard capsule craft such as Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Today the longest-serving spacecraft is the Russian Soyuz, much improved over the original craft, but essentially unchanged since the first flight in 1966.

Before settling on the shape of NASA’s next-generation crewed spacecraft, many hybrids have been considered, including the one shown here, as envisaged by the supremely talented cgi outfit often used by NASA, John Frassanito & Associates. This particular design features seats for six astronauts plus racking bays for a pair of spacesuits. Riding down from orbit tip-first, soft landing would be achieved by parachutes and airbags, with skids to take the craft’s weight once on terra firma.

It’s a handsome-looking piece of machinery that would offer greater flexibility in landing-point selection than a conventional capsule. However, this advantage is not enough to outweigh the design’s extra cost, weight and complexity.

A pity - it looks good.

MIGHTY MECHS BATTLE IN CGI PEARL HARBOR FIGHT-FEST

We’ve seen big robots and little ones, and Transformer bots that spend some of their time as tasty yellow sports cars. But here's something new, a sort of 'Luftwaffe 1946' alternate-history version of Pearl Harbor.

In fact, this is more alternate than usual, as the attackers at Pearl are generally held to be the forces of Japan, rather than coal-scuttle helmeted Nazis. And the P-51D Mustang fighter wasn't introduced until 1942.

Whatever, this 'Code Guardian' production looks good if only as an ultra-short mini-movie.

A LOOK AT THE SCIENCE BEHIND SURROGATES

Next month’s big release Surrogates starring Bruce Willis looks more interesting by the day. The neat video (top) gives you a feel for the scientific premise behind the blockbuster action of a movie set in 2017, a near-future in which humans live in the ultimate ‘Health-and-Safety’ society - in isolation, never braving the outside world except through robotic bodies. These are the ‘surrogates’ of the title, and are wish-fulfillment fantasies incarnate - stronger and better looking than their human originals, tucked safe and sound away from the world.

It’s a peaceful planet, with physical harm restricted to the surrogates, until FBI agent (Bruce Willis) has to investigate a series of murders, the first victim being the bright spark who invented the surrogate system in the first place. For Willis, life suddenly becomes tough - and deadly dangerous - when he has to actually leave home in order to solve the case.

Health and Safety legislation has become quite a problem in our ‘real’ society - not so much the rules themselves, so much as the fear of litigation they promote. It’s a societal issue - despite recessions and other current woes, many of us live in some of the safest and richest societies the planet has ever known: so rich in fact, that they can afford to worry about ever smaller details, and in doing so encourage us to live in fear of our very shadows.

Visit the Surrogates website here.

ANOTHER BALL-WHEEL WONDER - THIS TIME IT’S THE AUDI SNOOK

Thanks to the efforts of entrants in the Michelin Challenge Design, Starcruzer’s on a roll at the moment with ball-wheeled vehicles, and here’s a neat - if unlikely - design from last year, in the form of the proposed Audi Snook (top pictures) from German designer Tilmann Schlootz.

As conceived, the weird-wheel oddity - which looks for all the world like an automotive Darth Vader helmet - would be available with a pull-apart seat that can be used by one or two people. Not least of the Snook’s virtues in a crowded city would be the ability to slot three of them into a conventional parking bay, though who gets to pay the meter is anyone’s guess.

The balancing ability is something that’s only been possible with the advent of microprocesors that have sufficient computing power to tackle the micro-second decision-making required to maintain an upright stance. And the ancester of this type of vehicle is the Segway. Hailed at its launch in 2001 as being a new-wave solution to almost all urban transportation problems, the Segway has actually achieved only limited success.

For anyone who’s ridden one (see video for a test experience in Lille, France, and pix of the Puma variant) the flaws are pretty obvious, such as the lack of a seat, not much cargo capacity, and zero weather protection. Apart from electric power, Segways have few advantages over much cheaper and simpler traditional bicycles.

At least the Audi Snook addresses some of these issues, and looks quite cool in a weird sort of way, too.

FLY INTO SPACE FOR THE PRICE OF TWO BURGER MEALS

Can't even think about saving for the hyper-price of a Virgin Galactic edge-of-space trip?

If so, maybe a competition entry's worth a punt.

The Ireland-based outfit Voyage2Space.com is running a promotion, at £10.00 GBP ($20.00 USD) per entry, with a flight as the prize. To comply with promotion rules, there's an easy question to answer as well.

The promotion runs from the end of 31 August to 31 October.

If you do enter, the Starcruzer crew wishes you a high five and a high flight.

GI JOE’S DELTA SUITS ECHO ROBERT HEINLEIN’S STARSHIP TROOPERS

The movie GI Joe Rise of the Cobra due for release in most places this week looks a pretty interesting goodies-vs-baddies movie, not least for the metal-attacking green phage (farewell Eiffel Tower) and the Delta 6 Accelerator Suits, intro’d in the video clip above.

Ah, the suits! Shades of the James Bond gadget department here, and of course they hark back to what Starcruzer reckons is the first use of such devices in fiction - and that’s the powered suits worn by the Mobile Infantry in Robert Heinlein’s classic military yarn Starship Troopers, published in 1959. The book made a strong argument for the benefits of public service, both military and civil, and there have been many clashes over Heinlein’s apparent milito-fascistic view of society - but what interested this reviewer on first reading, and ever since, were Heinlein's oh-so-desirable powered suits.

Heinlein was prescient in his view of future-tech, though it’s mostly arrived far quicker than he might have imagined. His suit helmets were packed with heads-up displays, weapons were aimed just by looking at the target, there were built-in medical facilities. But best of all, troopers could JUMP in them - they were seven-league boots for real. Talk about a wish-fulfillment fantasy!

Since Heinlein wrote the book (a UK paperback edition is shown above) many of his predicted technologies have been developed and installed in leading-edge weapon systems, though we’re still waiting for the jump facility. The book is really worth a read, to see the ‘dean of science fiction’ working at the height of his powers.

We haven’t mentioned the Starship Troopers movies here. They’re OK in their way, if somewhat simplified conceptually, but the movie suits are a tragic missed opportunity - they’re little more than standard combat gear, and... they don't jump!

Visit the GI Joe website here.

‘MOON’ MOVIE - STARCRUZER’S TAKE

We finally got to see this little movie last night, after several failed attempts (don’t ask!), so the question is: was it worth it?

Many of Moon’s effects are traditional models, and anyone familiar with the 1970s TV series Space 1999 will recognize the look and feel of dinky moon trucks crawling across a simulated lunar surface. Some shadows are not to scale, and the starry sky is rather unconvincing.

There is at least one console marked ‘sattelite’, the typography harks back to the 1970s, and amid the dirt and grime of the base, computer keyboards remain pristine. Meanwhile, astronauts casually climb in and out of their spacesuits with unlikely abandon.

And yet...

In the end, these are no more than niggles. The main story is a deeply moving tragedy, as we observe the slow collapse of a lone human, played by Sam Rockwell, in conditions that would likely send any of us screaming at the walls, set against a backdrop of the mysterious and uncaring energy corporation, Lunar Industries. The role of GERTY the robot, voiced by Kevin Spacey, is a triumph, especially if you remember HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

And that’s all we need to say - Moon is a thoughtful movie that’s up there with the best of them. The niggles are no more than that, and are proof (if it’s needed) that acting and plotting remain the essential ingredients that make a good movie. Moon is a minor classic - go see it.

POSTCARDS FROM THE FUTURE

Here’s an independent movie we missed when it was released in 2007. Postcards from the Future is a handsome look (see video trailer) at how a future mission to Mars might be carried out in the not-too-distant decades ahead, using the Moon as a prequel to the big jump across interplanetary space.

In practical terms, a Mars mission is looking further away with every passing moment - but it’s still good to dream. And once that elusive replacement for chemical rockets is perfected, the universe will be ours to explore - but not yet, more’s the pity.

When released, Postcards picked up armfuls of awards, not least for its excellent cgi effects. The hardware star of the movie (pictured above) is the massive Coronado, a spacecraft that comes complete with a trio of dish-shaped Mars landers, which look remarkably like scaled-up versions of the British Beagle 2 probe, lost on Mars approach in December 2003.

Postcards from the Future was shot in HD and there’s a DVD available via the website here. It makes good viewing for cgi fans.

CIRCULUS BALL-DESIGN ECHOES DAN DARE ARANJET

The Circulus (top pictures) is a neat idea for a future three-wheeler from US designer Santosh Chawla. It’s actually one of the entries in this year’s Michelin Challenge Design, or in the international tyre company’s words: “Brave + Bold America’s Next Iconic Vehicle”.

This has a splendid ring to it, so how does Santosh’s entry stack up? The main reason for the triple-wheel design is manoeuvrability, using the spheroid front tyre to spin around on the spot, if needed. Circulus would run on a slim hydrogen power plant, have side panels made from recycled plastic, polyurethane seats, and lightweight mechanical parts. Lighting is a space- and energy-saving LED system

It’s a neat design, so good luck Santosh, but of course spherical wheels in themselves are not new. Way back in 1953, readers of the British Eagle comic (bottom) were introduced to the Aranjet Supersport Aquagyro, owned by ‘Pilot of the Future’ Dan Dare.

Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson penned many original concepts, and vehicles that rode on a gyro-stabilized ball were common in his weekly sci-fi picture strip. The workings were never quite explained, but it looked so neat we don’t really mind - and as for this particular version, the Aranjet was a full-on speedboat as well. IWOOT!


Visit Michelin Challenge Design here.