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NASA Ames' director talks Yuri's Night, Google, and more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.--In April 2006, NASA announced that it was bringing in University of Arizona astronomy professor and former brigadier general Simon "Pete" Worden to be the director of its NASA Ames Research Center here.

Since then, Worden has brought a fresh perspective to the helm of one of NASA's most important research facilities, demonstrated through initiatives such as giving a keynote address to the International Space Development Conference from the virtual world Second Life. (Note: My wife works at Second Life publisher Linden Lab).

But along with administrators at several other NASA facilities, Worden has … Read more

Correction: Etsy artists will not go into space, but their artwork will

OK, this makes more sense.

CNET News.com reported earlier on a collaboration between crafts site Etsy and the NASA Ames Research Center on a new contest that encourages members of the Etsy community to design NASA-inspired handmade goods. The announcement was made at the PSFK Conference in New York during a panel discussion featuring NASA's Andrew Hoppin and Etsy founder Robert Kalin.

In an unintended verbal gaffe, Kalin said, "We'll send the two winners into space." The audience, along with this reporter, assumed he meant that the Etsy crafters who won the contest would get … Read more

NASA testing Lunar Chariot

It has six wheels, all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steering, and it's a concept of a 2020 model year car. Oh, and it's designed to drive on the moon. NASA has been working on a vehicle, the Lunar Chariot, for astronauts to use on a planned return to the moon in 2020. The design for the Lunar Chariot was influenced by the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which proved the usefulness of having multiple driven wheels over an incredibly hostile landscape. With its all-wheel-steering, it can drive in a crab-like sideways motion, further improving its mobility over difficult surfaces. The Chariot lacks … Read more

NASA, Etsy partner on 'space craft' contest

This post was updated at 11:51 AM PT in order to correct a misstatement that was made in the announcement. The winning artwork from the Etsy-NASA contest, not the artists, will make a trip into space. Read the correction post here.

NEW YORK--What does a marketplace for handmade crafts have to do with a NASA project in virtual world Second Life?

A lot, apparently, according to a panel at Thursday's PSFK Conference that paired Robert Kalin, founder of the Brooklyn-based handmade goods site Etsy, and Andrew Hoppin, co-founder of NASA Co-Labs at the NASA Ames Research Center. The … Read more

Killer Download: The dark side of Firefox

We've looked at and reviewed Windows and Firefox themes before at CNET Download.com, but after getting a new computer at home, I figured it was time to revisit new themes. Though a Firefox theme is hardly a must-have Killer Download, I would argue a working (or nonworking) environment in which you feel comfortable makes all your computing more enjoyable. Once I got the new system online, along with my usual security downloads and other useful utilities, I decided a little browser customization was in order.

Most of my regular computing at home including e-mail, writing, and other work-related … Read more

Where we care more about the camera than coming up with titles

EPISODE 53

Gov. Spitzer.... [insert joke here]. Jeff's Mogul nabs an upgrade, and we reveal the winner of Super Smash Bros. Brawl! Plus, do we really need to be going into space? And If you want to win something, e-mail your best faux Steven Segal movie titles to us (the404 [at] cnet [dot] com). Don't worry about that bumper before the show, it's still us.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

NASA runs Fedora...lots and lots of Fedora

From its countdown server to the video streams behind NASA TV, NASA runs a lot of Fedora (and Red Hat Enterprise Linux), as Jack Aboutboul was privileged to see on a recent tour of NASA's facilities in Jacksonville, Florida.

I suppose it's not surprising that an organization like NASA would use free software like Fedora, in addition to its commercial cousin, RHEL. After all, NASA is powered by rocket scientists (pun intended) that want maximum control over their IT. Fedora gives that to them. No, they don't get commercial support for it, but they likely don't … Read more

Google's Schmidt urges NASA to "create more luck" through open development

In a speech celebrating NASA's fiftieth anniversary, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt urged NASA to be more collaborative with other agencies and even the general public. He suggested that Google's successes often result from opening up without knowing where the breakthroughs would occur.

While Schmidt acknowledged that government agencies like NASA can't wholly adopt Google's "shift and iterate" model whereby it throws a lot of projects at the wall to see what sticks, it

...can learn from open-software development and projects like Linux and MySQL, where collaboration is necessary. And the agency can learn about the value of flexibility from companies like Google, he said.… Read more

NASA considering making a virtual world

There are all kinds of virtual worlds these days: Those for kids, for adults, centered around fantasy battles, and even those centered on space.

But no one has a better hold on space than NASA, and that agency is now considering creating its own virtual world, according to the BBC.

"The virtual world would be aimed at students and would 'simulate real NASA engineering and science missions,'" the BBC wrote, adding that the space agency has put out requests for vendors interested in producing the virtual world.

The idea behind the so-called massively multiplayer online game would be … Read more