ILM was called in late in the 'Avatar' development process to help finish a series of the movie's shots.
(Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)Update (11:49 a.m.): Weta Digital has been contacted for comment, and this story will be updated when and if the company responds.
SAN FRANCISCO--About a year ago, with James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" well under way, it became clear that Weta Digital, the visual effects studio doing much of the computer generated imagery, or CGI, on the project, was a bit in over its head.
At that point, the movie, which opened Friday, was about 40 minutes longer than it ended up being, and what was needed to finish the project was another company that could come in and lend a helping hand--and do so at the same, very high level, that Weta was working at.
And that's where Industrial Light & Magic came in, recalled John Knoll, the Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor tasked with parachuting in to help finish what was, more than on most films, the crucial job of crafting the "Avatar" CGI work.
What followed was months of coordination between ILM, Weta, and Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, with a primary goal of ensuring that the two visual effects teams, one in San Francisco and the other in New Zealand, avoided any unnecessary duplication of effort, even as both sometimes found themselves working on effects for the same movie sequences.
For ILM, this wasn't the first time it had been called in to help rescue another effects house, but it may well have been the first time it did so for one as big and as accomplished as Weta. And while ILM's overall contribution to the finished film was minor compared to Weta's, the fact that "Avatar" came out on time and is being seen as a visual tour de force is certainly due, in part, to ILM's ability to come in and, if not save the day, at least contribute mightily to the day turning out well.
For Knoll, the challenge of working alongside Weta was about identifying a body of work that limited the number of assets the ILM team had to develop and which would allow them to be the most helpful. Ultimately, they were handed the keys to creating the visual effects for many of the specialized vehicles in the film, including the Valkyrie, a large shuttle used to move people and equipment, and several different types of helicopters, as well as the landscapes those vehicles lived in.
ILM was mostly given responsibility for doing the visual effects on the film's aircraft, notably its helicopters and the Valkyrie, a large-scale shuttle.
(Credit: Industrial Light & Magic)ILM also did the effects work on the film's final battle scene, taking responsibility for the shots of all the vehicles taking off, as well as the sequence's cockpit interior shots.
Working together on a scene
For the most part, the teams at ILM and Weta worked on different scenes, but Knoll said there were some in which the two companies handles different parts of the same sequence. An example, he said, was a scene in the film where a group of helicopters attack the giant "home tree," where the Navi, the humanoid alien race in the film, live. Knoll said that the effects in the scene were mainly put together by Weta, but ILM handled all the shots in which the camera looks back toward the choppers.
In the scenes where the two effects houses both were charged with creating shots, the challenge was figuring out how to "checkerboard" the shots, Knoll said, especially because in some cases, ILM didn't know what Weta's work looked like.
"You keep cutting back between ILM shots and Weta shots," Knoll said. "They're really intermixed. I was worried, because we had to get going and go pretty far down the line before we had any Weta shots to refer to. We were both doing development in parallel."
This might have been a serious problem on many film projects, but with "Avatar," both ILM and Weta were working from extremely detailed templates given to them by Cameron. Knoll said that the templates gave his team very specific direction on how they should construct their shots, down to rough indications of the lighting in the scenes.
"It did help that the templates were so specific," Knoll said. "They were very detailed and Jim [Cameron] was very insistent: 'I've put a lot of time into making sure these are exactly what I want them to be, so you need to do a good job of matching that.'"
Still, with both houses working in parallel, there was certainly a bit of a race to finish a shot, Knoll said, because the team that was fastest would be able to more or less set the tone for the whole scene. "Whoever gets there first is who drives it," he said.
ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll hopes that audiences won't be able to tell the difference between shots created by Industrial Light & Magic and those created by the film's original visual effects house, Weta Digital.
(Credit: Weta)"For example, in the home tree sequence, we have to fire a bunch of missiles," Knoll recalled. "[There wasn't] anything established for what the missile trails look like. We did our own version of the what [they] would look like and Jim liked it, so that's what Weta had to match."
Of course, in other cases, Weta would finish first, and ILM would have to match what the New Zealanders came up with. And in some cases, it was a bit of "splitting the difference," Knoll said. Ultimately, he added, he hopes that audience members won't be able to tell that two separate visual effects teams shared the work.
All-CGI explosions
One benefit for the entire film industry of having ILM step in to help out on "Avatar" may be that in working on the project, Knoll and his team came up with a new way to completely computer-generate large-scale, close-up explosions.
Until now, big fiery explosions in CGI-heavy films have been shot with live camera and then had visual effects added to them. But Knoll said that because of some of the limitation of matching Cameron's templates for "Avatar," there was no practical way to meet the movie's explosive needs with live-action.
"We've done CG explosions in the past," Knoll said, "but never with this level of realism, and never this close up."
Fortunately, ILM had pioneered the rendering of the visual movement of fluids in films like "Poseidon" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," and Knoll knew that the shape and movement dynamics of an explosion were similar to that of water.
"The same underlying engine is being used on this," Knoll said. "The motion of the underlying gas is similar to the motion of fluids. The medium is relatively uncompressable. So when there's movement of the medium, it can't change volume real dramatically. So if you push on one side, something has to push on the other side."
That meant that ILM could take the graphics engine it had created for fluid shots in the previous films and apply the same basic technology for the explosions in "Avatar." Though there are clearly some major differences between fluid and big fire--notably that as fuel burns, fire expands, and then retracts when the fuel goes away, the technique was similar enough that the technology could be adapted to the needs of "Avatar."
"I think this is going to be an important technique (for the industry) in the future," Knoll said, "to tailor-make an explosion that looks good close up."
NASA Ames' Vertical Motion Simulator, the largest-such simulator in the world, has been used since 1980 to help train pilots to fly helicopters, fighters, and space shuttles. Now, it is being used for training on the next-generation lunar lander.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--There I was, staking my claim to a pilot's slot in one of NASA's next-generation lunar landers, and to be perfectly frank, I think I'd better not quit my day job.
"I think we probably walked away from that," said NASA aerospace engineer Eric Mueller, after one rough touchdown. It was an overly charitable assessment of my performance. I'd hate to know what he was really thinking.
If you've been paying attention, you're probably aware that there are no current missions to the moon, and so you know that I wasn't actually trying to land there. But I was piloting the same equipment that real-life astronauts have been using to prepare for potential future lunar trips, and so you'll have to forgive me for being a bit disappointed that my skills are likely not up to snuff.
This indulging of my astronaut fantasies was part of a visit last week to NASA's Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS), the world's largest tool for training those whose actual job is to fly lunar landers, space shuttles, helicopters, Joint Strike Fighters, and even bobsleds on the skills and tricks necessary to get their crafts safely to their destinations.
Based in the Aviation Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center, the VMS offers those who use it six degrees of freedom, including 60 feet of vertical and 40 feet of lateral motion simulation inside a huge, 100-foot-tall chamber that looks like something over which an auto mechanic would salivate. Those "flying" the simulator (see video below) have 20 feet of movement in both in the left and right directions, as well as 4 feet forward and back, and 25 degrees of roll, pitch, and yaw.
Originally opened in 1980 to enable pilots to test-fly helicopters, the VMS is currently being used, among other things, to help NASA get ready for what is likely to be its next great mission: a return to the moon with Constellation, the space agency's long-awaited next-generation program and the followup to the Space Shuttle program.
Over the years, according to Kathleen Starmer, the deputy director of NASA's SimLabs outreach team, VMS has been used by a wide range of private companies and military agencies that have needed to run vertical motion tests, including Boeing, Lockheed, Grumman, and others. And today, even when the simulator is not set up for faux lunar landings, it is in use 100 percent of available time, Starmer said. Those wishing to use it need only show that their project can offer some benefit to NASA, and be able to pony up about $5,000 a day.
Flying Altair
But I hadn't come to the VMS to see what it would be like to fly a helicopter. I'd come for a shot at Altair, the next-generation lunar lander, and the one that will be the business end of the Constellation program, at least on the surface of the moon.
According to Karl Bilimoria, an aerospace engineer in the VMS program, NASA is now in the process of running its third formal Altair simulation. When reporters aren't being allowed to barely land in the simulator, "pro astronauts," as Bilimoria put it, are coming to Ames and spending full days in the VMS. One reason for that, he said, is that with Altair, the pilots will need to master pinpoint landing accuracy: they'll need to put the craft down within 10 feet of their designated landing sites on the moon, requiring far more precision than what was required of the pilots of the Apollo age.
This is expected to be a difficult task with Altair because one of the design philosophies of the Constellation program will be to shave as much mass as possible off the payload in order to reduce takeoff weight--and save tremendous amounts of money that each additional pound costs to put in space. Bilimoria said NASA hopes to outfit Altair with the smallest possible control jets, a configuration that makes minute control of the landing craft more difficult than was the case with its much sportier Apollo counterpart.
Which would mean, of course, that NASA is trying to offset the loss of some of the brute force control that comes with less propulsion on the lander with state of-the-art electronics: advanced control systems and advanced cockpit displays.
It might not be possible to achieve the kind of landing accuracy NASA wants with the reduced control jet profile, Bilimoria said, but "before we throw our hands up," it will try to solve the problem with technological advances. "We can always squeeze out a little more," he said. "The question is, is it enough?"
To date, Bilimoria said that multiple simulations have shown that technology isn't quite up to the task at hand, and that it could be another year of running tests in the VMS before it's known if the goal is possible. Of course, any return trip to the moon is many years away, but Mueller explained that NASA is doing this work now in order to have the most advanced notice possible if it's going to be necessary to design Altair with larger control jets.
Rough landings
Inside the cockpit, I was strapped in and given some quick instruction (see video below) on how to read the two major digital displays and how to use them in conjunction with a set of joysticks to properly land the craft. The space is set up to resemble what an actual Altair interior would look like, down to the view out the window, and the narrow working space that is partially made possible by having both the pilot and co-pilot stand up straight rather than sit down.
In fact, the Altair cockpit simulator is one of five separate "interchangeable cabs" used in the VMS to mimic different kinds of vehicles, from rotorcrafts to fighters to transport vehicles. Each cab can be set up with conventional aircraft instruments or advanced avionics, depending on the needs of the client using the simulator.
On an Altair pilot's right is what is known as a vertical situation display, which Mueller said is a fairly typical glass cockpit-type display that, for the most part, would be familiar to fixed-wing pilots, and which is new for a lunar lander. The idea, said Mueller, is that this display provides good cues for landing.
On the left side is the horizontal situation display, a newer system that provides Altair's pilots with velocity vectors, and a touchdown display. This system features a set of "bells and whistles" developed at Ames and designed to help the pilot keep a "nice hover" over the landing spot and to improve their hover and descent skills.
One display in the cockpit shows the ground and the landing pad, and the lander's progress towards a proper touchdown.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)And, just to help the pilot with more true-to-life visual cues, there's also a "view" out the front windows, as well as a view from straight down underneath the lander at the ground below.
For someone skilled at piloting any kind of aircraft--even simulated ones in video games--landing the faux Altair is not that hard. The visual cues are extremely intuitive--basically, just keep a little dot in the center of the screen by tapping the joystick one way or another--and it's designed to be fairly simple, in the VMS, at least, to land.
Adding to the realism, of course, is the fact that the cockpit rocks back and forth and left and right, as it would in real life. So if you overcorrect, get ready to tilt the wrong way. Given my lack of skills, I found myself doing that far more than I should have.
Still, in each of my landing attempts, I managed to get the craft onto the lunar "surface," not even crashing once.
The progress of the lander is marked by the green line on the display in this picture. The long, squiggly line is evidence of a rather lengthy and roundabout approach to the lunar surface.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)To be sure, though, none of the current or future astronauts have to worry much about me being a competitor for their spots on actual moon missions.
Nor would they worry about competition from a CNET colleague who accompanied me to the VMS. As he attempted to fly the lander, his progress was recorded as a long, very squiggly green line on one of the displays, evidence of a remarkable lack of precision.
In the control room, two VMS scientists watched my colleague's progress and shook their heads.
"We've never seen anything like this," said one, of my colleague's roundabout approach to the ground.
"He still hit the pad," said the other. "It's amazing."
According to IBM, 'BlueMatter, a new algorithm created by IBM researchers in collaboration with Stanford University, exploits the Blue Gene supercomputing architecture in order to noninvasively measure and map the connections between all cortical and sub-cortical locations within the human brain using magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging. Mapping the wiring diagram of the brain is crucial to untangling its vast communication network and understanding how it represents and processes information.'
(Credit: IBM)Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM.
According to the researcher, Dharmendra Modha, the manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, scientists from his company and some of the world's most prestigious universities have already managed to simulate the computing complexity of the feline cortex, a feat that could augur a day not too far off when it will be possible to ramp up to what the human brain can accomplish.
Last year, IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal. Just a year later, Modha said, his team, working in conjunction with the universities' scientists, have achieved two major milestones.
The first was a real-time cortical simulation that achieved more than 1 billion spiking neurons, as well as 10 trillion individual learning synapses. According to Modha, that exceeds what a cat's cortex is capable of.
Second, the scientists created a fresh algorithm they're calling BlueMatter that is aimed at spelling out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha suggested, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information.
The human brain, Modha said, is fundamentally different from today's computers in power and size, and he and the many scientists he is working with are eager to learn from the brain how to build new kinds of computing architectures. Part of the reason, he added, is that as our world gets more and more complex, a "tsunami" of data is being produced and analyzing those data demands "a new kind of cognitive system, a brain-like system, to make sense of it."
To achieve the goal, Modha and his fellow scientists are combining supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology research to demonstrate what's possible. The work they've done has progressed in just a year from the granting of the DARPA contract to today's achievements.
Modha said that examples of what could be done with computers working at this scale are realistic analysis of the world's water supply systems, or financial systems. The idea is to detect causality behind phenomena, and to make those connections quickly and effortlessly, the way the human brain works. Writing such a program using today's computers would be impossible, he said, but these future computers would be able to quickly distill answers to these kinds of enormous problems.
There's no promise, of course, that Modha and his colleagues will be able to advance the difference between the power of the cat and human cortexes in the next decade. After all, there's a difference of a factor of 20 between the two. But he sounded optimistic that a decade is a realistic goal.
But regardless of the timing, the aim is clear: reverse-engineer the human brain and learn its computational algorithms. And then deploy them in a bid to solve some of the world's most complicated computing problems.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--While I'm sure that many of the people in the room were familiar with prediction markets, I wonder how many of them had ever seen an active one up close and personal before.
Providing that sense of deep immersion, of course, was exactly the point of an exercise run Monday during a session of Singularity University's executive program by Melanie Swan, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager. Swan, the principal of MS Futures Group, had tasked small groups of students with coming up with world-changing product ideas and then simultaneously had the students vote in an online prediction market looking at which product and team would be rewarded with the most faux-venture capital.
Despite the fact that some technical problems got in the way, the point was made: prediction markets, given enough active participation, are increasingly seen as an excellent way to arrive at the answers to any number of questions, whether it's sales figures, who will win presidential elections, or who will get the most VC funding. Indeed, the winning technology concept--a pill that could cure cancer--and team were accurately prognosticated by the market.
For the group of superstar achievers like the students in the executive program, this was but one piece of a meticulously constructed nine-day education that many hope will supplement and enhance already successful careers in a wide range of disciplines.
Other sessions included looks at the state-of-the-art in medical research from Daniel Kraft, an instructor in Stanford's cancer/stem cell biology institute, and Chris deCharms, the founder of Omneuron, a company working on new MRI technologies; future forecasting from Peter Bishop, the coordinator of the futures studies program at the University of Houston; a workshop in the future of medicine and biomedical technology from Stanford developmental biotechnology professor, Stuart Kim; and a talk by Harvard Law School professor and Internet law expert Johnathan Zittrain.
And that was all just on Monday.
Four start-ups emerged
Earlier this year, Singularity University (SU) ran its inaugural summer session, a nine-week program based at NASA's Ames Research Center here in the heart of Silicon Valley, aimed at giving the best 40 of more than 1,200 applicants a highly concentrated education in a series of exponentially growing technologies like biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; AI, robotics, and cognitive computing.
For those students, who were chosen based on having demonstrated top-level academic rigor, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, an interest in global issues and who were seen as already being at the top of their chosen fields, the nine weeks were a marathon of long days and nights of lectures from world-leading thinkers, workshops in the technologies that could shape the future and group projects centered on coming up with ways to positively impact a billion people. Already, four start-ups have emerged from the summer session.
But now the first of SU's nine-day executive program is in full swing, and according to co-founder, X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, the goal now is to distill the best parts of the nine-week SU version and present them to the new students in a way that will be of the most use to them.
"The executive program is really focused on providing the information in a much more organized and digestible fashion for executives, addressing the issue of what's in the lab today and where is this going in five years," said Diamandis (see video below). "What is the key terminology that (the students) should know about these fields, what are the top ten breakthrough milestones that you should be watching out for, and, ultimately, how are these breakthroughs going to affect you, your company and your industry."
That's obviously a very ambitious mission statement, but for many of the 20 people lucky enough to be taking part in the executive program, Diamandis and his fellow organizers have succeeded in pulling together something very worthwhile, even as it is one of the most intense experiences of their lives.
"It's like taking medical school and boiling down four years into about four days," said Michael Gillam, a physician who runs the health care innovation lab at Microsoft. "That will give you a sense of the sort of depth of the material" covered during the executive session.
From the beginning, SU's founders--futurist and "The Singuality is Near" author Ray Kurzweil; Diamandis; and ex-Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail--had planned on the institution offering both the longer summer sessions and shorter, three- and nine-day executive programs. In the process of actually putting them together, though, Ismail said, the three-day version got scrapped for simply being too short.
Instead, the executive program's first group of students--20 people of varying ages and professions, half of whom are American and half international--arrived at Ames on Friday having paid the $15,000 fee, each in search of something a little bit different.
Sole focus is on tomorrow
For Gillam, the rationale for taking nine days off from work--he said he'd come on vacation from Microsoft since it would have been impossible to take part in the summer session--was crystal clear: to get a deep dive in the technologies that are coming screaming down the line at us.
"You can go almost anywhere today and hear about historical trends (or a) deep analysis of today," Gillam said. "But there's virtually no place where the sole focus is on tomorrow, and where we are going. That was extremely intriguing and what captured my attention."
For Peter Platzer, a currencies and commodities trader from New York, attending SU was all about having meaningful interactions with the diverse and accomplished group of faculty and staff and to get a better understanding of the kinds of exponential technologies that are being discussed there.
And according to organizers, some of the students, whose numbers include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and government representatives, even came solely for the chance to meet, and potentially invest with, members of the start-ups that came out of the summer session.
Alumni network
Those potential relationships are possible because one of the things that's already developing at SU is a strong alumni network. That's evident at the executive program in the group of summer session graduates who have returned as faculty assistants--who also happen to be able to sit in on all the deliberations and discussions--and in the number of faculty who themselves have come back for more.
Diamandis said that there's no doubt that SU is fostering an ongoing network that is sure to benefit all who join. For example, he suggested that if, in the future, a graduate wanted to find someone who was a European robotics expert, they would likely be able to find such a person in the SU program. Because the executive program will be repeated in February and again in April, and the nine-week program next summer, there will only be more members of the network as time passes.
And as proof that SU graduates take their membership in that network seriously, Ismail pointed out that though it's only been two months since the summer students graduated, they'd already had a reunion.
To faculty member Dan Barry, a former NASA astronaut--and cast member of CNET News parent company CBS' "Survivor"--the main difference between the summer session students and those in the executive program is that while the former tended to be very smart people at crossroads in their lives and careers, the latter are very established in their respective businesses and are seeing how they can become aware of, and perhaps utilize, the future technologies being discussed.
Still, Barry said he sees more similarities than differences between the two groups. Both, he said, are "interested in technology and the future and are concerned about the state of the planet and the people on it."
For Barry, taking part as part of the faculty has been a refreshing change of course that, thanks to the "potential and excitement (I see) reflected in their eyes," has re-energized him professionally.
"When I talk with other astronauts...about space, we tend to talk about technical things," Barry said. "When I talk (to the students) it helps me to remember...what's spectacular about going to space."
At NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, Calif., two K10 rovers navigate a lunar-like landscape. The K10 program is designed to help NASA do more advanced surveys and surveillance of the moon, and for the time being, the robots are being deployed in a series of similar environments across the planet.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--For a few minutes Thursday, as I steered one of NASA's K10 intelligent robots across a small field of rocky, sandy terrain, I could almost imagine myself piloting the rover across the surface of Mars or the moon.
Until, that is, I realized I had pretty much no idea what I was doing, and saw that my struggles to steer the rover forward were actually sending it backward. Given that this little robot is worth at least as much as a mid-range Mercedes, I was relieved to see the eagle-eyed scientist standing a few feet away from it as it approached a group of large rocks that could send it sprawling, a switch in his hand capable of stopping it dead in its tracks.
I was spending the afternoon at NASA's Ames Research Center here, talking with Terry Fong, the director of the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG), about the K10 rover program--an initiative designed for remote scouting operations on the moon or Mars. To be sure, the program has been around for a few years, but Fong and his team are constantly tweaking the robots, and so what I got my hands on Thursday (remotely, at least) was a great deal more sophisticated than would have been the case just a few years ago.
We had driven out to Ames' faux lunar/Martian landscape, a 40-meters by 80-meters field of rocks and dirt tucked away in a quiet corner on the western side of the giant NASA facility. I've been to Ames many times, but this was by far the most peaceful part of the grounds I've visited: the shriek of a red-tailed hawk as it soared high overhead was the only real sound besides a gentle wind.
Fong took us into a small shed just outside a small trailer, and sitting inside was K10 "Red," one of the two rovers his team has here. It's called red because it has a big patch of red on its body. Its twin, K10 "Black" was nearby, already prowling around, lost in its own lunar fantasy, different from K10 Red only in that its body is black.
The two rovers (see video below, but be prepared for substantial wind noise) are built to travel at "human walking speed," Fong explained, and can handle between 90 percent to 95 percent of the terrain here. That includes some softball-size rocks, plenty of loose sand and dirt and even a few steep inclines. Fong allowed that some of the bigger rocks, maybe soccer ball-sized, might be a problem, and the steepest part of the incline might cause the rovers to lose traction. But in general, these are sturdy little robots built to withstand some truly out-of-this-world conditions.
According to NASA, the K10 robots are crucial elements of the space program's directive to achieve more complete investigation of the moon than was possible during the Apollo program.
"Human missions to the moon will provide numerous opportunities to advance the scientific exploration of the lunar surface," a NASA brochure about the K10 robots reads. "Initially, human exploration of the moon will be for short periods of time--no more than a few weeks per year. To make use of the time between human missions, robots can be used to perform highly repetitive and long-duration tasks, such as site-mapping and science reconnaissance.
"NASA's K10 robots are designed to be remotely operated on planetary surfaces and act as scouts for human explorers. Scouting is an essential phase of fieldwork, particularly for geology, to help establish priorities and scientific objectives. Robotic scouting can improve human exploration of the moon by providing mission planners with detailed ground-level information to supplement and complement data collected by orbiting satellites."
Imagine, in the future, the Constellation program kicks in and NASA begins sending manned missions to the moon. Fong explained that the K10s would be essential to maximizing the research that could be done in between visits by astronauts. Indeed, they could be left behind after one mission and then be deployed to gather intelligence for the next manned mission, data that could complement what NASA can see with instruments in lunar orbit.
And while the K10s I saw ran off of Lithium-Ion laptop batteries with a life of about four hours, Fong said K10s that stay on the moon could run on an ongoing basis on solar, or on power cells.
Continuous navigation
To look at them, today's K10s are unchanged since their introduction eight years ago. But pop the hood, as it were, and what you find is an ever-changing Red Hat Linux-based brain. Every few months, Fong said, he and his team replace the standard PC laptops that serve as the K10s nerve centers with newer and more powerful ones. Even considering what a top-of-the-line laptop costs, a couple new computers are pretty cheap compared to the tens of thousands of dollars' worth of lidar, navigational equipment, sun trackers--which allow the robots to figure out precisely where they are, an advantage over compasses when they're being used for field tests in far northern parts of the world--3D surveying instruments and more.
Fong said that while much about K10s remains the same today as in the past, one recent innovation has been building in the ability to process data on the go, rather than what was possible in early missions on Mars, where rovers had to stop, calculate, move, stop, calculate, move and so on. That means, he said, that now, K10s can make real-time navigation decisions, progress that means they can cover ground much faster than their predecessors.
A K10 mini, a one-fifth scale robot NASA's intelligent robots group has built.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)All told, explained Fong, a K10 robot is smart enough to figure out a path between point A and point B and determine which parts of the terrain it encounters it needs to skirt due to big rocks or other dangerous conditions.
In some cases, the IRG scientists will test the limits of what the K10 can do. Fong said that during trials last summer at the lunar-like Black Point Lava Flow, in Arizona, he and his team tweaked the K10s' algorithms so that the rovers would push on, despite confronting bush clusters that compute as rocks to be avoided.
"The robot says, 'Hey, it's rocks,' so we make it a lot more aggressive," said Fong.
Five football fields
One reason the K10s are so important to NASA is that they feature 3D laser scanners capable of surveying as much as 500 yards ahead and identifying and analyzing objects as small as pencil erasers. Similarly, the rovers carry downward pointing cameras that take very high-resolution pictures every few feet, images that can then be used to help the mission planners decide where and how to explore in the future.
Back in a lab at Ames, Fong reached into a large suitcase and pulled out what he called a K10 mini (see video below). This is a one-fifth size model rover that is an experiment to see what's possible on a much smaller scale.
The idea behind the mini rover, Fong said, was to try to understand what's possible with a robot that small. And while it's only the size of a small dog, he explained that its basic software was the same as its larger cousins, and was actually built up around the smallest Thinkpad laptop the IRG scientists could find.
And now, the IRG team is looking toward what's next for the K10s. And that, said Fong, is to determine how best to marry the rovers with human teams so that they can be used to support explorers instead of being autonomous. The Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers were built to do everything on their own, the K10s can be employed for wide ranges of tasks that aren't efficient or productive for the folks in space suits. And not only that, but because the K10s can be mounted on the lunar exploration vehicles NASA expects to send its personnel around on the moon in, they can be used for research, surveying and exploration wherever the astronauts go.
But at the same time, NASA knows they have a great deal of utility as autonomous explorers, and on the moon, which is within reasonable striking distance of the Earth, there's even less risk involved than there would be on Mars with putting the K10s through rigorous paces since, even if one got damaged, the next manned lunar mission could come and fix them.
Of course, if you're part of the IRG team, or you're an astronaut trained in operating, or working with, a rover, you probably have a lot of confidence about what the robot's limits are. Why else would anyone trust you with such an expensive toy?
For me, however, clutching that joystick back at Ames, trying to get my K10 to go right, or hop over that little rock, every wrong move seems like potential catastrophe. I think it's going to be a while before anyone lets me play with one of those thing without having a guy watching every move I make with it, ready to push his big red button to keep me from sending it sprawling and costing taxpayers a Mercedes' worth of cash. And I'm OK with that.
On Thursday, Popular Mechanics magazine will unveil its 2009 Breakthrough awards. Included on the list is a series of innovators, as well as a number of products, including this lawn mower, the Hustler Zeon, which is the world's first all-electric, zero-turning-radius mower. It can cover an acre of grass on a single charge.
(Credit: Popular Mechanics)Popular Mechanics magazine on Thursday will unveil its fifth-annual Breakthrough Award winners, an august collection of designers and products that could do much more than their share to change the world for the better.
From famous inventors like Dean Kamen to a flying car for the Third World to bacteria-powered batteries--and much in-between--the awards are meant to highlight technologies that will shape the way people around the world live and how they interact with everyday products.
Each year, the magazine's editors scour the country for a worthy group of winners, and this year, in the end, Popular Mechanics settled on one leadership award winner, one next-generation honoree, eight Breakthrough innovators and 10 Breakthrough products.
"In all cases, there's a really practical application that we see coming about," said Jerry Beilinson, the magazine's deputy editor, "so these aren't theoretical scientific applications. (They're going to) change the world and have a really positive aspect on people's lives."
Beilinson said that after five years of identifying technological breakthrough products and innovators, certain themes have emerged in the editors' preferences. Among the most important, he said, is alternative energy and products and designers that push that category forward.
"If I look back (at the last few years of doing the awards), we looked at aviation and we looked at medicine," he said. "But over the last few years, I think the things that have been clear themes that we've been looking at that have emerged (are) alternative energy and appropriate technologies for the developing world."
And while the themes can be forward-looking, the individual awards celebrate a "moment in time," he said.
"We're sort of picking the moment at which it's become real, and passed the threshold and seems like its worthy of an award," Beilinson said. "But most of these kinds of things do take some time to develop."
For this year's Breakthrough Leadership award, Popular Mechanics honored Dean Kamen, an inventor with more than 440 patents who may be best known for creating the incredible but commercially disappointing Segway personal transporter.
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A look across the so-called Navy Command Center of the Future, a prototype facility being built at the SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific in San Diego and which is intended to show senior decision makers in the Navy and other military services, what is possible when it comes to actionable working environments.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SAN DIEGO--I have seen the future of military command centers, and it is small rooms with glass walls and video screens with built-in artificial intelligence.
That's probably a gross oversimplification, but those are certainly some of the elements on display at the Navy's Command Center of the Future, a prototype project currently under way at the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific here.
For those not familiar with SPAWAR, it is a Navy laboratory tasked with "creating an unfair advantage for our war fighters," according to Jim Fallin, the facility's director of communications, that designs "systems, infrastructure, sensors and the means needed to create a fully netted combat force that operates and interlaces all the domains of warfare, from seabed to space."
With clients and partners that include the U.S. Army, Marines, and Air Force, as well as many universities and other institutions, SPAWAR is a growing--and hiring--research institution that aims to give America's military services "the ability to disrupt any adversary's ability to conduct warfare."
And given that these are the guys recently tasked with reworking the White House's famous Situation Room, they also seem like the right ones to take the traditional military command center--with huge rooms, row after row after row of desks with computers and huge video screens--and flip such environments on their head. In other words, SPAWAR has nothing short of a major assignment on its hands: to build the kind of center that will best serve the soldiers and decision makers of the future, all while minimizing the physical space necessary for such rooms and maximizing the use of technology.
Showcasing the technology of the future
The Command Center of the Future (CCoF), which has had a budget so far of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, first opened its doors just four months ago and is clearly not yet finished. But given that it's a prototype of the kinds of military action centers that are likely to be in use five or ten years down the line, it's probably best that the SPAWAR folks not rush to finish their work.
Upon entering what turns out to be a pretty small room deep inside a nondescript SPAWAR office building, visitors are greeted initially by a wall of military insignia and then by a dimly-lit, quiet, room with gleaming glass walls and banks of video screens installed behind the glass.
According to my host, SPAWAR research engineer Jeff Clarkson, who is leading the project, the CCoF has as one of its main purposes the highlighting and showcasing of the technologies of the future.
Notwithstanding the visit of a CNET News reporter, the typical visitor since the doors to the CCoF opened four months ago have included VIPs like Navy admirals, the secretary of the Navy, the chief of Naval Operations, and others eager to see the kinds of facilities likely to be featured on warships and in Department of Defense facilities a few years from now.
And the idea behind this room--which is far from operational--is to convey, in its small space, what a future command center may well look like, Clarkson said.
One clear goal of the CCoF is to show how military decision makers no longer need to be together in a single room in order to work on actionable intelligence, make strategic decisions, or communicate with subordinate personnel around the world. Rather, the room is designed to bring together those who need to be involved in discussions surrounding specific military engagements, regardless of whether they're local. Indeed, the room's very mission statement is to make it possible to rely on video teleconferencing and artificial intelligence in such meetings.
And while the CCoF is still in its early stages--its many video screens are still tuned to cable news channels rather than remote Navy locations--Clarkson and his team are hopeful that they will soon move to the next stage and build into the room the technologies that will showcase just how the people who will use it will interact with the tools of the future.
For example, while the video screens today are nothing more than TVs with shiny glass covers, they will soon feature multitouch overlays that will mean many of the glass surfaces will allow decision makers to manipulate data and other information simply by running their fingers over the glass, much as users of iPhones do today.
Similarly, while it's still in a presentation stage, the CCoF will be used for things like mocking up Flash representations of the control system of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) so that decision makers can see how much control they have over such assets from far across the world.
'The art of the possible'
Just after entering the room, visitors notice an area that is separated from the main space by its own set of glass walls. In normal circumstances, this is where to place junior staff members in front of a couple of computers.
But the idea behind this sub-room is to give decision makers a private, secure, place to go for classified discussions. And while it might initially be counter-intuitive to have such discussions in what at first appears much like a fish tank, Clarkson explained that in fact, that room is designed with glass that can automatically turn dark, as well as sound-proofing that can make it entirely secure.
And the point of this, Clarkson continued, is to make it possible for such senior officials to be able to huddle together for highly sensitive discussions without having to leave the command center, saving a great deal of time for everyone involved.
To be sure, this room inside this San Diego building is by no means a final product. In fact, even when future command centers are being constructed, they will likely have an infinite number of sizes and configurations that will match their surroundings: smaller rooms on Navy ships and larger ones inside Department of Defense buildings, Clarkson said.
But for now, as military VIPs show up to see the prototype, the idea is really to give them a sense of "the art of the possible," as Fallin put it.
Changing mission needs
Clarkson said that one of the major focuses of the CCoF is to prove that such an environment can be flexible and adaptable to "changing mission needs."
That means that the rooms need to be easily reconfigurable, something that is clear in how it was set up during my visit. On one side of the room, a group of eight chairs was set up as a place for seating junior staff while senior officials put their heads together at the main round-table.
But that configuration was just one way for the room to be presented, Clarkson said. And anyway, many of those who would take place in the kinds of discussions that would be centered in the room would be at remote locations, communicating via teleconference.
Yet Clarkson said even such virtual communication would be aided by the latest technologies. One such advance would be an implementation of artificial intelligence that would display, on the appropriate screens on the glass walls, documents being talked about by those on the screens.
In other words, Clarkson said, the CCoF would have AI meant to discern what is being talked about during a teleconference and to know how to source up whatever documents are needed as they're needed.
At the same time, the technology could also keep track of those on-screen and show, for the benefit of those in the room, little heads-up displays (HUDs) that identify each on-screen speaker.
And while the command centers of the future may be needed by senior officials to set strategy during specific action, they are also likely to be manned 24/7 by junior officials making sure that proper communications with supporting organizations are always under way.
Ultimately, Clarkson said, the state-of-the-art in command center workflow theory is built around the idea of flow. He explained that research has shown that decision makers think better if they can move around while they talk and that's why the CCoF here has been designed to allow such senior officials to walk and talk and never lose sight of those they're communicating with. In the past, by comparison, the experience has been much more sedentary, with officials coming in and sitting down at a table the entire time.
"We want to create a sense of guests and hosts being able to walk (around) together and still be discussing," said Clarkson. "They still have security and still have information, and they can look up something if (they) need it."
And while the command center of the past--like, say, the alternate command center of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)--has traditionally been a basketball court-size space with endless rows of desks, Clarkson said he hopes that the work being done on the CCoF will demonstrate that in the wars of the future, what's really needed is technology to bring dispersed people together so that they can discuss the important topics of the day, no matter where they are.
"We're just trying to show what's possible," Clarkson said, "what's coming down the pipeline, and what we envision the future to be."
The heck with decades of one basic way of making speakers. A Waltham, Mass., company says it has developed an all-new and much better system, and hopes to change the way the consumer electronics deliver sound.
The idea behind the new speaker technology, known as Edge Motion, from Emo Labs is to jettison the traditional magnet-and-cone model in favor of something a lot more space-efficient, an innovation that is crucial in today's environment of rapidly shrinking devices. According to Emo Labs CEO Jason Carlson, while flat-screen TVs, for example, are getting thinner and thinner and the picture getting better and better, the sound quality is going in the opposite direction.
Emo Labs plans to unveil its Edge Motion technology at DemoFall 09 Tuesday in San Diego.
According to Emo Labs, 'Unlike traditional speakers that operate like linear pistons, Edge Motion audio technology uses force along the side of a diaphragm to produce sound waves.'
(Credit: Emo Labs)As an alternative, Emo Labs proposes its new, patented, speaker technology: clear, thin plastic sheets placed over, say, a TV screen, that put out sharp and accurate sound courtesy of vibrations produced by a series of postage-stamp-size actuators on the sides.
And not only is this approach more space-efficient--though more expensive--than what has been in practice for more than 60 years, but it's also capable, using just a single plastic panel, of putting out stereo sound. That's done, Carlson explained, by sending signals from both the left and right sides of the membrane and "clamping" it in the middle.
Another important element of the system, he added, is that Edge Motion speakers can produce dialogue in the center of the panel, rather than on the sides. This is the approach used in movie theaters, where the speakers are directly behind the screen, Carlson argued, and something that has been lacking in existing consumer electronics.
To date, Emo Labs has been able to scale its speakers into devices as big as a 42-inch television. But Carlson said he's confident that the company can go bigger than that in the future. For now, it plans on selling its equipment directly to device manufacturers, and Carlson acknowledges that the system is more expensive than legacy speakers. However, he said, he hopes that the technology will catch on and allow for cost efficiencies over time.
And while he touts the sound quality of the new speakers, Carlson is not trying to position Emo Labs' system as appropriate for every device. In fact, he said, the company doesn't expect the equipment to be used in the main television in a high-quality home theater set-up with 5.1 surround sound, mainly because it's a hassle to install in such systems. Rather, Emo Labs is shooting to be the speaker provider for second, third or fourth TVs in the house, or computer monitors.
Will it work? It's hard to say. By costing more, Emo Labs is potentially limiting its market. But these days, device geeks want the best of everything, and so if the sound quality is truly superior, the company may well be able to find an audience. But without early adopters, it may be in trouble.
For CNET News' latest coverage from DemoFall 09, click here.
Vint Cerf, the 'father of the Internet,' is one of the many thought leaders that students at Singularity University get a chance to learn from.
(Credit: Singularity University)MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Sitting in a classroom, listening to students explain their approach to an assignment to develop an initiative to impact the lives of a billion people over ten years, one could be forgiven for taking it all with a grain of salt.
After all, student projects like this are usually peppered with holes, naive assumptions, and unrealistic goals.
But here at Singularity University, things are a little different. This group project, which aims to flip the car sharing movement on its head and bring affordable transportation to the masses, started less than two weeks ago but has already won a prize and attracted venture capital interest.
That's because Singularity University is no run-of-the-mill academic institution, and its students are not the usual breed of dreamers with good intentions. Founded by leading futurist and "The Singularity is Near" author Ray Kurzweil, X Prize chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, and former Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail, the nine-week course examines exponentially growing technologies like biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; AI, robotics, and cognitive computing. As well, the 40 students in the program are focusing on future studies and forecasting, and finance and entrepreneurship.
Those chosen for the program are truly the cream of the crop. After all, they have regular access to superstar teachers like George Smoot, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics; Dan Kammen, co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore; Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist; and Stephanie Langhoff, NASA Ames' chief scientist. And speakers include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe.
According to program director Ismail, this summer's inaugural Singularity University class of 40 students was chosen from among more than 1,200 applicants from around the world. Ismail said there were three main criteria for selection: students who already had top-level academic rigor and who are already at the top of their respective fields; those who have demonstrated leadership and entrepreneurial skills; and those who have demonstrated interest in global issues.
The result? A class of doctors, advisers to prime ministers, CEOs and successful start-up founders, just to name a few.
Singularity University students get regular access to technology superstars like PayPal co-founder and hedge fund manager, Peter Thiel.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)So when I showed up Wednesday to observe the program in action and first sat in on the car-sharing group project demonstration, I realized this was something I should take seriously.
The 40 students are split into four teams, which get three weeks to come up with a project that, as stated above, could impact a billion people over the next 10 years. The presentation I saw was by a group that was calling itself Gettaround, and which has set as its goal the creation of a new car-sharing program that would incentivize car owners to rent out their vehicles to members, while also making it easier for people to find cars to use for short drives in many more places than are served today by companies like ZipCar or CityCarShare. Ultimately, the idea is to spread the program to developing countries around the world, ideally helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process.
At the heart of Gettaround's proposal was an iPhone application designed to make it possible for members to locate available cars and, then, when physically approaching them, to start the engines via a low-priced kit installed in the vehicles.
The app was awarded the "best money-making iPhone app" prize at a recent iPhoneDevCamp event in Sunnyvale, Calif., and on the strength of that, the team members said that they've already identified interested venture capitalists and are most likely going to pursue the project as a real business upon completion of Singularity University.
Students speak
After the presentation, I got a chance to speak with some of the program's students about their experiences at Singularity University over the last eight weeks.
This is an amazingly diverse group. Among the 40 students, half are from other countries, and 35 percent are women. The average age is 31.
I first talked to Sarah Sclarsic, 25, of Boston. She's a former medical school student who had previously designed her own emerging technologies major at Harvard University and who has a deep interest in health care and public health.
Sclarsic said the Singularity University course has been hectic, "but for me, that's good."
Among the most valuable aspects of the program, she said, is that students are shown, from the beginning, how the various fields being taught here relate to each other or, at least, can cross over in real-world practice.
She pointed out how she had never before thought about how someone working in quantum computing might have their research converge with health care, or how fields like computational biology, quantum computing, and protein folding intersect.
The results of such convergence down the line? That doctors may be able to design new therapies meant for specific patients, a "huge ability we've never had before."
But this isn't the distant future, she pointed out. The main focus of Singularity University is to teach the students how the various disciplines being taught will converge in the near future, and to help them see how to turn these developing technologies into real-world businesses.
For V.J. Anma, an entrepreneur from Seattle (via India), deciding to come to Singularity University, where tuition is $25,000 (though many students get at least some scholarship help), was based on his conclusion that his career building high-tech start-ups would be enhanced through introductions to his fellow high-powered students and the industry leaders and venture capitalists they'd meet. He was also drawn to the idea of discovering how the various technologies being taught all relate to each other.
"It has definitely lived up to my expectation of being able to learn new ideas and connect with people," Anma said.
One phrase he used to describe the intensity of the program, especially the early weeks, was that it was "like drinking from a fire hose."
Oddly, that was the exact same phrase used by another student, Paul Lem, a doctor and biosciences company CEO from Ottawa, Canada. Lem said Singularity University offers its students so many world-class mentors and "so many amazing opportunities" that, yes, "it's like drinking from a fire hose."
Lem, too, lauded the program's focus on teaching the students to "think about where all these exponential technologies (are) going, and to see where they're all going to intersect."
A huge fan of hockey star Wayne Gretsky, Lem said that one invaluable piece of the program is that it helps students visualize the near future and to "skate to where the puck is going to be." In other words, they will--hopefully--be able to determine where the various fields of technology being taught are heading and be among the first to get there to capitalize on the convergence.
"I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out," Lem said, "but mix enough of this stuff together, and really cool stuff is going to happen. Seeds are being planted in the ground, and they're going to germinate and sprout this cool rain forest of incredible things."
To Ismail, this inaugural Singularity University program has been a revelation about what's possible when you bring together so many talented students with the kinds of world class instructors that are possible in Silicon Valley.
He said he thinks the program has been going "phenomenally well" and said that he's been blown away by some of the ingenuity on display.
For example, he recalled that during a discussion on entrepreneurship, one student registered a domain name, threw up some Google AdWords against it, and started generating real revenues. All during a single lecture.
Ismail didn't use the drinking from a fire hose image, but he did say that he's been amazed at seeing the breadth of what's "coming down the pike" in the various fields being taught in the program and that, "I've been surprised by how mentally drained I am at the end of each day."
He also said that, so far, there are five companies likely to be started by groups of students in the program, including the Gettaround team, and that some of the program's founders are already interested in putting money into some of the projects.
The number of such companies emerging from the program should only increase in future years, as Singularity University will expand from 40 students to 120 next year. But despite a larger class, there's still no way that everyone who wants to take part will be able to attend. And with that in mind, Ismail said, the program is considering how it can share its content with the world at large. One possibility is the Ted conference model, in which lectures and discussions may well be posted online for all to see, free of charge.
For now, though, it's all private, and to the students who managed to get in, an extremely valuable experience. They seem acutely aware that they have been granted access to what could be one of the most exclusive technology clubs in the world, and one that will almost certainly bear important fruit in their careers.
"Creativity is about mixing and matching different building blocks together to build something new and powerful," Lem said. "I've never before been in a place where there are so many building blocks that you can move around."
Correction: This post was updated at 5:40 p.m. PDT with the correct spelling of Salim Ismail's name.
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a 1940s-era rococo rocket that Burning Man attendees will have a chance to climb through. They may even get to see it launch.
(Credit: Raygun Gothic Rocketship)
OAKLAND, Calif.--Want a trip back to the romanticism and innocence with which space travel was associated in the 1940s? Then get yourself to Burning Man, starting August 31 in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.
That's where the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a retro rocket "made" in 1944, will be on display for the thousands of participants at the annual countercultural arts festival to play in and around.
In reality, of course, the rocket wasn't made in the 1940s; It's being made as we speak in a warehouse in a run-down part of Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco. But don't bother telling the more than 60 artists, scientists, engineers, and others who are putting countless hours of their time and energy into creating the rocket ship that their narrative is fiction: they're having too much fun crafting that narrative as they go to listen to any naysayers.
The project, which is led by artists Sean Orlando, David Shulman, and Nathaniel Taylor, is one of 25 that received funding from the Burning Man organization. It is almost certainly the only one that will take visitors back in time to a place where space travel wasn't beset by some of the real-life failures and inefficiencies of NASA and other space agencies, and the disappointments that can come from mixing politics with science.
Rather, the Raygun Gothic Rocketship is pure whimsy, mixed, of course, with some serious research into what a rocket of this era and style would be like.
For the most part, the rocket and many of its components were designed using a CAD program called SolidWorks, Orlando explained when I visited the warehouse Friday.
In the real world, though, it will be a 40-foot-tall retro masterpiece, complete with 17-foot-tall legs and three main compartments rising another 23 feet in the air. Once installed in the desert, it will be attached to an adjacent 25-foot-tall gantry by a 10-foot bridge. Visitors will be able to climb up through the three compartments and then go down via the gantry.
The plan, Orlando said, is to have a launch event on the evening of Friday, September 4. Prior to the event, a very, very loud siren will be set off to announce to the thousands of Burning Man participants that fueling is about to start, and then those participants will begin to gather outside a 500-foot safety perimeter. Come launch time, be prepared for some special surprises, Orlando suggested.
Making the rocket
Featuring a solid steel frame, the rocket will be skinned entirely in brushed aluminum. And befitting a Burning Man ethos of "do-it-yourself," every bit of that aluminum is being made in the warehouse in Oakland on a set of what are known as English wheels, contraptions that can shape the metal into pieces with the rounded edges necessary for making a rocket.
It will feature 42 aluminum panels, as well as the three legs, and it will all be held together by thousands of rivets. All in all, complete with its rococo shape, the rocket will very much like look like what it's supposed to be: a spacecraft built 55 years ago that has traveled through time and found its way to 2009.
Asked where it was built, Orlando and Shulman laughed and admitted they needed a little more work on their back story.
Just above the legs will be a main compartment serving as the engine room, armory, and life and biosciences lab. Participants will be able to look down through the floor at the rocket's engine (see video below), which will feature six power cells, each of which will display a high-voltage lighting effect. That effect, courtesy of 12,000 volts of electricity, was crafted in conjunction with a professor from the department of engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Participants will be invited to climb through each of the three compartments and to explore the many displays they'll come across. The idea is to give visitors a sense of what such a rocket would be like inside. The second compartment will feature crew quarters, navigational and observational tools, and audio and video communications and scientific instruments. All of these things will be available for participants to play with.
There will also be a telescope that participants will be able to look through for "deep scanning" of space. The idea there, said Shulman, is that crew members would need to look out into space to determine approach trajectories for when the rocket docks when it lands.
Similarly, there will also be a probe launcher, which will fire off small rockets. Sticking with the narrative, the rockets are intended to travel one-to-two parsecs. Practically, they may fly three or four hundred feet, where they can be picked up by passersby, who, hopefully, will return them to the main rocket ship in exchange for small gifts.
The rocket features a telescope that crew members used to peer into space for docking.
(Credit: Raygun Gothic Rocketship)At the top of the rocket is the cockpit, where a lovely pilot's chair will be installed. The chair will be made to rotate around, and allow the pilot to engage with the ship's flight controls. The pilot will have access to communications so that he (or she) can talk to those in the compartments below. For that, the team is utilizing 1930s and 1940s-era hand-cranked telephones.
How the idea began
I asked Orlando and Shulman how the idea for the Raygun Gothic Rocket ship began, and Orlando said that, from the beginning, they wanted to work on a retro rocket based on a romantic 1940s aesthetic.
A big part of that, said Orlando, whose father was a NASA contractor, was building up a sense of the excitement and innocence around space travel that still existed in the 1930s and 1940s, when science fiction was "still very positive and wide-eyed" and people saw nearly unlimited potential for space.
Added Shulman, the idea was to bring out that sense of wonder that perhaps went away a bit when the Cold War kicked in and politicians took the space program into another direction.
And for participants who visit the rocket, Shulman said, the hope is that they will walk away with the feeling that they got to take part in a "real rocket from the 1940s."
"We want it to be disorienting," Shulman said, "and create doubt: is it real, or is it not."
