If you could recreate any of the capabilities of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit in real life, it would probably be the ability to fly, the super strength, or maybe even the palm-mounted lasers that can cut through whatever obstacle is in your path. But let’s be real, all that stuff is way too hard to try and pull off. Plus you’ll probably just end up accidentally killing yourself in the backyard.
After Richard Branson delivered some inspiring words from his seat aboard SpaceShipTwo Unity, he unbuckled himself and started to float around the vehicle’s cabin along with three other Virgin Galactic employees. Reaching an apogee of 86 kilometers (53 miles), the passengers enjoyed four minutes of weightlessness during the July 2021 flight that was live-streamed over the Internet to an audience of millions. After years of delays, SpaceShipTwo had finally demonstrated it was capable of taking paying customers to the edge of space. As far as victories go — it was pretty impressive.
Yet despite the spectacle, weeks and months went by without an announcement about when commercial flights of the world’s first “spaceline” would finally begin. Now, nearly two years after Branson’s flight, Unity has flown again. Except instead of carrying the first group of customers, it performed the sort of un-powered test flight that Virgin Galactic hasn’t performed since 2017. Clearly, something didn’t go to plan back then.
Richard Branson aboard Unity
The company is being as tight-lipped as ever, saying only that this test flight was necessary to “evaluate the performance of the spaceship…following the modification period.” The exact nature of these modifications is unclear, but for some hints, we could look at the New Yorker article from September 2021. It alleged that, unwilling to derail Branson’s highly publicized flight, Unity’s pilots decided not to abort their ascent despite several warning lights in the cockpit alerting them that the vehicle’s trajectory was deviating from the norm. Virgin Galactic later denied their characterization of the event, but the fact remains that Unity did leave its designated airspace during the flight, and that the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the spacecraft until an investigation into the mishap could be completed. Continue reading “Virgin Galactic Cautiously Returns To Flight”→
If you’ve travelling via bike, you’ll know there’s a certain advantage to packing light. But what if you need to take your beefy desktop-replacement laptop with you on one of these trips? These power hungry machines can’t go far without their chargers (or a place to plug them in), which generally makes them poor traveling companions.
While the few minutes it takes for a spacecraft’s booster rocket to claw its way out of Earth’s gravity well might be the most obviously hazardous period of the mission, an incredible number of things still need to go right before anyone on the ground can truly relax. Space is about as unforgiving an environment as you can imagine, and once your carefully designed vehicle is on its way out to the black, there’s not a whole lot you can do to help it along if things don’t go according to plan.
That’s precisely where the European Space Agency (ESA) currently finds themselves with their Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft. The April 14th launch from the Guiana Space Centre went off without a hitch, but when the probe’s 16 meter (52 foot) radar antenna was commanded to unfurl, something got jammed up. Judging by the images taken from onboard cameras, the antenna has only extended to roughly 1/3rd its total length.
An onboard view of the antenna.
The going theory is that one of the release pins has gotten stuck somewhere, preventing the antenna from moving any further. If that’s the case, it could mean jiggling the pin a few millimeters would get them back in the game. Unfortunately, there’s no gremlins with little hammers stowed away in the craft, so engineers on the ground will have to get a little more creative. Continue reading “ESA’s Jupiter-bound Probe Hits Antenna Snag”→
Ultimately, the goal of Hackaday is to shine a light on the incredible projects coming from the hardware hacking community. In the vast majority of cases, said projects end up being one-off creations — a clever solution that solved a specific problem for the creator, which may or may not be directly applicable to anyone else. But occasionally, perhaps one in every few thousand projects, we see an idea that’s compelling enough to become a commercial product.
Today, we’re happy to add the Cocoa Press to that list. Creator [Ellie Weinstein] has recently unveiled a commercialized version of the chocolate 3D printer she’s been working on for several years, and true to the maker spirit, it’s being offered as a DIY kit. You can currently put a $100 USD deposit on the final product, which is expected to ship before the end of the year. Assembly time is estimated to be around 10 hours and no previous experience with building 3D printers is required, though we’re sure it wouldn’t hurt.
While roaming the halls of Vintage Computer Festival East 2023, we ran into [Adrian Black], who was eager to talk about the importance of classic computing in his own life and how his experience hosting the YouTube channel Adrian’s Digital Basement has impacted him these last few years.
On his channel, [Adrian] spends most of his time repairing vintage systems or exploring little-known aspects of hardware from the early days of desktop computing. His exploits have brought him to the pages of Hackaday in the past, most recently just last month, when we covered his work to add an RGB interface to a mid-1990s Sony Trinitron CRT display. But in talking to him, you quickly realize he’d be working on the very same projects whether the camera was rolling or not. He’s not out to game the YouTube algorithm; he’s just having a good time in the basement poking around with the sort of old gear that at one time would have been completely out of reach.
Exploring a rare SWTPC 6800 computer
In fact, it’s this sense of nostalgia that [Adrian] believes is responsible not just for the growing popularity of his channel but for the retrocomputing community as a whole. For many who grew up with these machines, they were far too expensive or complex to ever crack open (literally and figuratively) when they were new. Now, decades later, people like himself finally find themselves able to buy and enjoy these once-coveted objects.
Critically, they now also have the skills to do them justice, not to mention access to a worldwide community of like-minded folks who are still producing hardware and software that can be used with these classic machines. For those of a certain age, it’s literally a dream come true.
[Adrian] was just one of the retro aficionados we got a chance to talk to during VCF East 2023. We already brought you the chat we had with [Andy Geppert] about magnetic core memory and his Core64 device, but there’s plenty more to come. Stay tuned.
We’d all love to change the world and make it a better place, but let’s be honest…that’s a pretty tall order. Even the best of ideas, implemented perfectly, can only do so much globally. But that doesn’t mean the individual can’t make a difference — you just need to think on a different scale. If improving everyone’s life is a bit out of reach, why not settle for a smaller group? Or perhaps even just one person?
That’s precisely what we’re looking for in the Assistive Tech Challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize. In this Challenge, we’re asking the community to come up with ideas to help those with disabilities live fuller and more comfortable lives.
Whether you help develop an improved prosthesis that could benefit thousands, or design a bespoke communication device that gives a voice to just a single individual, it’s hard to imagine a more noble way to put your skills and knowledge to use.
Looking to lend a hand? You’ve got from now until May 30th to enter your Assistive Tech project. It doesn’t matter what kind of impairment it focuses on — so long as it helps somebody work, learn, or play, it’s fair game to us.
The ten finalists for this Challenge will be announced around June 12th, but you’ll have to wait until Hackaday Supercon in November to find out which projects take home their share of the more than $100,000 in cash prizes graciously provided by sponsors Digi-Key and SupplyFrame.
