An Early History Of Space Stations: The Brick Moon Made Real

August 20, 2026 by Al Williams 2 Comments

People have lived in space stations for decades now, but something is wrong with them. Where are the big rotating wheels? You know the ones. They show up in old paintings of the future and, perhaps most memorably, in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Spin a great wheel in space, and people can stroll around inside with something that feels suspiciously like gravity. It seems like an obvious idea.

It is also an old idea. Much older than actual spaceflight, in fact. But to find the beginning of the space station, we have to go back to a time when powered aircraft were still several decades in the future.

A Moon Made of Bricks

In 1869, Edward Everett Hale published The Brick Moon in The Atlantic Monthly. The moon in question wasn’t natural. Hale imagined building a 200-foot-diameter sphere made from bricks and putting it into orbit as a navigation aid. Sailors could sight it and use its known orbit to determine their longitude. There was only one small problem: the thing was accidentally launched with people aboard.

That makes The Brick Moon generally regarded as not only the first fictional artificial satellite, but also the first fictional space station. Hale followed it in 1870 with Life on the Brick Moon, describing how the accidental colonists got along up there.

Hale didn’t have rockets. He proposed flinging the thing into the sky with giant flywheels, but, then again, it was 1869, so we’re inclined to cut him some slack. As the 19th century turned into the 20th, however, people started doing the math.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is best remembered for putting rocket flight on a sound theoretical footing. The Russian schoolteacher wrote extensively about orbital flight and space habitation, envisioning people living in orbit long before anyone had demonstrated that a liquid-fueled rocket actually worked. His ideas included rotating habitats to provide artificial gravity.

Hermann Oberth’s 1923 book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen — The Rocket into Planetary Space — Oberth went beyond fiction and seriously considered a permanently inhabited station. He envisioned it being periodically supplied by smaller rockets, serving as an observation and communications platform, and even acting as a jumping-off point for trips farther into space. He also suggested spinning the station to give the crew artificial gravity.

Continue reading “An Early History Of Space Stations: The Brick Moon Made Real” →

Teardown Shows Low-Fi Microphone Is Surprisingly Sophisticated

August 20, 2026 by Donald Papp No comments

The Ting FX EP-2350 by Teenage Engineering is a standalone microphone with a few extras, including samples and built-in effect presets that can be modified by the user. It also has a distinctive design, and [Sam Holland] does an in-depth teardown that offers some insights that are worth keeping in one’s back pocket. The large, side-mounted lever in particular is an interesting bit, but more about that in a moment.

Inside the device is a single PCB, which has a cutout in the middle for a pair of AAA cells. A Raspberry Pi 2350 drives the device’s functions, supported by various components which [Sam] identifies, although he mostly looks at everything from the perspective of a mechanical engineer as he critiques the design. It’s a clean-looking, intentionally low-fi design that belies how complex the device really is.

The multi-function, chunky, spring-loaded side lever is of particular interest. It has three sensors: two switches and a potentiometer. One switch detects when the lever is at rest, or depressed by any amount at all. The potentiometer mates with the pivot point of the lever, allowing the device to directly sense how far the lever is pushed. The last switch triggers when the lever is pushed all the way in. Together, it forms an intuitive input that combines powering on (the device wakes up from sleep mode as soon as the lever is pressed) with the ability to adjust effects in proportion with how far the lever is pressed, while also bottoming out with a distinct click that itself acts as an input signal.

One other interesting bit is the light pipes that carry light from multiple indicator LEDs to the outside of the device. A textured surface acts as a diffuser and helps the lit surface look smooth, while a coating of silver paint prevents light bleed and (probably) maximizes light transmission through the plastic. Hot glue makes a pretty good light pipe material but if DIY light pipes end up in your next project, sanding the exit surface and giving the rest a coating of silver paint just might be worth a shot. Continue reading “Teardown Shows Low-Fi Microphone Is Surprisingly Sophisticated” →

Reading Isn’t Rocket Science… But In This Case…

August 20, 2026 by Al Williams 9 Comments

While Hackaday’s bread and butter is, of course, hacks, we sometimes cover things that most of us are interested in that are probably out of reach for the typical hacker. Space, for example, is undeniably cool, even though your chances of putting yourself or even your own rover on the Moon aren’t very good at the moment (but, of course, give it time). If you are looking for something to put on your e-reader and you are also interested in space, save your money and get some downloadable books directly from NASA.

There’s something for everyone on the site. The site has four main categories: aeronautics, Hubble, science, and NASA history. Aeronautics has two volumes of “NASA’s Contributions to Aeronautics,” a book on the X-15, and a book about aviation pressure suits. Want to know more about the giant wind tunnel at Langley?

For the Hubble, you’ll find titles that have great images, of course, but also a book with an overview of the telescope or, if you prefer, about gravitational lensing.

The science titles go really deep with books on black holes, Landsat, the Cassini mission, and the Spitzer telescope. If you prefer history, there’s everything from a history of near-Earth object research to lessons from the Columbia tragedy for engineers, managers, and leaders. We were also interested in the book “Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication.”

The books are typically available in EPUB or PDF, and they are all free. Just what you need for your next plane trip or to round out your Calibre library.

We do love free books, we just can’t get enough.

NASA Tests Featherweight Radar Antenna For SkyFall Mars Helicopters

August 19, 2026 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

After the little Mars helicopter Ingenuity blew everyone away with its performance, it was clear that a future Mars mission should involve more helicopters like it, with even more capabilities. The main proposal here is NASA’s SkyFall mission which would involve three autonomous helicopters, capable of searching for resources like water. To this end they would need a ground-penetrating radar system, with the antenna somehow folding away for landings, an idea that JPL is currently testing.

The SkyFall mission is currently penciled in to commence in 2028, following which it will be deployed from the Space Reactor-1 fission reactor-powered spacecraft based around elements of the now discarded Lunar Gateway space station. This obviously poses some uncertainties around when and if this mission will actually take place, but that doesn’t prevent JPL engineers from solving issues with these SkyFall helicopters.

As the antenna for the ground-penetrating radar extends beyond the landing legs, it was crucial that said antenna was flexible enough to simply fold in on itself like fabric. For this they used an existing flexible antenna design called Vivaldi, which was downscaled for the helicopters and subsequently tested to see how many simulated Mars landings it would be able to resist, as well as the effect of the cold nights and warm days.

We’re looking forward to seeing these SkyFall helicopters zip over the Martian surface. Maybe they can even swing by Ingenuity while they’re in the neighborhood.

An arm and a hand: on the arm is a chunky blue box, and in the hand is a phone showing a dashboard.

HYDR8 Will Lead You To Water, But Will You Drink?

August 19, 2026 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

[Ayushmaan] states up front that most of his free time is spent “building things that probably didn’t need to exist”. Well, this one might be an anomaly, because it seems pretty useful to us.

HYDR8, as it says on the tin, is a wearable that knows when it’s time to hydrate. The impetus for this one was something we all chase: the flow state. [Ayushmaan] would sit down, get deep into work, and look up hours later to to find that he had a headache and a full water bottle. Phone reminders were soon swiped away in annoyance.

This wearable is based on a XIAO ESP32-C3. It reads heart rate, oxygenation, skin temperature, and both the ambient temperature and humidity. It also learns your personal resting numbers range.

Taking all of this into consideration, it generates a heat/hydration stress score between 0-100. The thing is, HYDR8 tells you specifically what to do; sometimes it’s ‘drink water’ and other times, it’s ‘find shade’.

The wearable itself, while somewhat chunky, is pretty simple: it only shows the time and a message when it matters. The ESP32 hosts a full dashboard on your phone.

Keep in mind that this is not a medical device, it’s an experiment, a prototype. It can’t measure how hydrated you are. Instead, it measure hydration stress.

If you don’t want to wear anything, here’s a smart straw that uses a tiny turbine flowmeter and a Hall effect sensor to record the volume sipped, and detect whether the sipper is low on fluids. And if you find yourself under the hot lights of a wet bulb event, here’s how to survive it.

Mini Blinking Barrels Keep Desktop Traffic In Check

August 19, 2026 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

Your desk or bench is a work area, so why not make it look the part? That’s the idea behind the miniature blinking traffic barrels that [Glen Akins] recently put together. Of course, just a single blinking light doesn’t really sell the idea of a busy construction zone, so he spent a somewhat surprising amount of time and effort optimizing the design for small-scale production.

The end result is a fascinating write-up that dives into the design decisions [Glen] made. Every aspect of this project, from the overhang of the “handle” on the 3D printed barrel to the number of passive components on the PCB was carefully considered. Critics may say [Glen] put too much thought into something that didn’t need to be so complex, but projects like these are an excellent way to keep your skills sharp — there’s no such thing as practicing too much.

Starting with the design of the barrel itself, we appreciate that [Glen] kept the capabilities of his desktop 3D printer in mind. By breaking the design up into multiple pieces and avoiding overly steep angles, he produced a design that prints cleanly without the need for support material. His step-by-step documentation and screenshots also serve as a great introduction to designing parts in Fusion if that’s something you’re interested in.

From there, things switch over to the electronics. Some in the audience will bemoan that he’s using a PIC12F1612 microcontroller to blink a single LED instead of a 555, but [Glen] brought the receipts on this one. Not only does the PIC offer more flexibility in terms of getting the blinking to look the way he wants, but it requires fewer passive components on the board and is considerably more energy efficient than the iconic timer IC. Even if you ignore all the other advantages, he calculates that going with a 555 would have cut the battery life of the finished product by approximately 15%.

This is one of those projects that’s difficult to summarize in such a terse format, as every time you think the write-up must be about over it takes a new turn on you. We were mildly bemused when the second iteration of the PCB popped up, but by the time he introduced the custom programming adapter board, we knew [Glen] wasn’t messing around.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen [Glen]’s handiwork. You may recall seeing his RP2040-powered sound board earlier this year, but his name has been popping up on these pages for more than a decade now.