Amateur Rocket Launch Reaches 121000 Feet

Led by Derek Deville, the rocketeers launched their custom-built 26 ft. (8 meter) Qu8k (pronounced "Quake") rocket on September 30, 2011 from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. It reached an altitude of 121,000 feet (36,880 meter) in 92 seconds, at speeds of 2,185 mph (3,516 km/h). Holy speeding missiles, Batman! The Qu8k rocket returned to Earth safely just 8.5 minutes later, landing 3 miles (5 km) from its launch point.

The incredible footage from on on-board camera shows the curvature of Earth and the black sky of space. See the full video below.

The launch was an attempt at the Carmack Prize, a challenge by John Carmack (creator of Doom and Quake and founder of Armadillo Aerospace) to hobbyist rocketeers to launch a rocket past 100,000 feet, log the feat with GPS, and recover the rocket intact after reentry. As the GPS devices on Qu8k failed to log readings above 100,000 feet, the attempt is likely disqualified.

Siri Assistant on iPhone 4S Gets Real World Demo

Stuff has posted an impressive real world demo of Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant on the new iPhone 4S. Despite plenty of background noise, Siri works as intended, opening up websites, sending emails and text messages, checking the weather, setting up wake-up times for the alarm clock, and doing currency conversions all via simple voice commands. And these commands aren’t robotic ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or single word commands you might be used to with automated answering services, instead these are natural-sounding sentences.


Source: slashgear

Robots Have Lightsaber Battle

Robots and lightsabers are cool when apart but combine them, and you have something that is too much for most geeks to pass up. These Yaskawa Motoman robots are generally found on assembly lines, not dueling it out Jedi versus Sith style.


Source: akihabaranews

Predator: A Smart Camera that Learns

A scientific research project by Zdenek Kalal, a PhD at the University of Surrey, UK. More infos about the project here, but isn’t it too… powerful? Do you think?

The World's Smallest Solar Powered Movie Theater

Sol Cinema is the smallest solar powered cinema in the world. It works on solar energy and only 8 adults can fit inside it. Movies are shown on a LED projector.
The UK-based Sol Cinema is 100% powered by the Sun. They say:

"The U.K. isn't famous for sunny days, yet we still manage to run our entire cinema, including video projectors, sound systems, laptops, hard drives and lights from the energy of the sun via solar panels. This means we have no utility bill each year and can perform anywhere at anytime."

The film projector they use is powered by four large lithium-ion batteries that are charged by two 120W solar panels. Sol Cinema refrains from showing anything that glorifies violence or is "too mainstream". They tell customers to think more "Michael Moore rather than Demi Moore".


















































Source: thesolcinema