When a friend of mine working for Popular Mechanics invited me to a private screening of the movie Moon, I naturally hopped on the chance. It’s director Duncan Jones’ (David Bowie’s son, natch) first full-length film and it was made on a shoestring budget of $5 million. But enough about that. What did I actually think of the movie? Click on, my friends.
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While World of Warcraft still reigns supreme as king of the MMOs, Blizzard has an unusual competitor entering the market: NASA. The government space agency is developing an MMO that takes place around 2035 and focuses on “being in a habitat on a planetary surface and doing things like mining Helium-3 for fuel, operating a hydroponics facility to grow plants and create oxygen and operating robots and vehicles.” Sounds pretty entertaining if you’re interested in outer space.
The working title for the MMO is called Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond and it’s being developed using the Unreal 3 engine. The prospect of being able to walk around on Mars and level up through real-world applications (as opposed to casting Fire III) should excite dorks of all walks of life. Judging by the screenshots, NASA’s MMO is looking to be a lot of fun for any gamer.
When NASA gets really bored, it starts doing pointless comparisons of the first successful landing on the moon. Only the brightest minds at NASA will be jotting down coordinates and tracing all of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s movements. It turns out that the two original mooninites only hopped around in an area smaller than a soccer field.
So NASA: Interplanetary exploration? We care. Beer in space? We care. Your old missions compared to modern day sports? Don’t care. Figure out space travel instead of wasting time dwelling in the past. Unless of course, dwelling in the past eventually leads to innovative space traveling techniques that lead to the creation of sports in space.
Sometimes you stumble across a piece of gadgetry that can really help brighten up your home (both figuratively and literally). Essentially, the Smoon Ombrella is a device that acts as a light source and vaguely resembles a glowing moon in the sky when placed on your Manhattan rooftop or sun room or dungeon, etc. The product of furniture designers Beau & Bien, this LED lamp runs off solar energy and can go a whopping 6 days on just 10 hours of charge.
This Plexiglas beast won’t come cheap. At $2200, it’s most certainly catered to the rich. Something tells me you could design a similar non-solar version for much cheaper.
On some days, it rains and rains until a flood surrounds us and nothing is left but water. We walk through crowds of people to our jobs, staying inside a cubicle for hours until leaving to return home. The next day, the process is repeated and it continues to rain. Nothing new can come with the rain. Nothing dry. It is, in essence, the ending of all mankind.
Except you’re on the Moon! Schweet! There isn’t any rain on the Moon but should it happen, you’ll be one prepared motherfucker with this non-Bluetooth umbrella.
An eco-friendly moon that’s painted on an average cabinet; it’s sure to keep its owner awake all through the night. In the dark, the cabinet creates an illuminating effect that tries to mimic moonlight. Though you can’t grow space beer on it, you can still put your clothes in it.
The picture makes the glow look a little too intense for my tastes, so I ask the question: where’s the on/off switch? Ah hell, you can always throw a drape over it.
If one day we are forced to expand our lives to the moon, we don’t want to make the same mistakes we’ve made here on Earth. Enter Luna Gaia, a green concept idea for making the moon living experience not only enjoyable, but friendly to the lunar environment.
Luna Gaia would be a self-sustaining habitat, which gathers solar energy and reuses all of its waste (mmm, urine water!) Luna Gaia is more than just your average Green-design lunar habitat (if there is an “average”). It has been presented to NASA, and might even be integrated into real life lunar outposts around the year 2020. That is, if we don’t nuke ourselves to hell before that. — Andrew Dobrow
Moon In My Room [Boing Boing] – Not the sort of full moon we’d like in our beds, but cool nonetheless.
Yoshitomo Nara Clock [SweatyFrog] – A really cool clock design using 84 art pieces by the artist.
Low-Res Man [Core77] – Made out of 1cm acrylic glass cubes, this human figure looks to be a 3D model of a 2D pixelated world.
Google Maps At The Gas Pump [Electronista] – Why wasn’t this done sooner?
– Andrew Dobrow
