Old Computer

The Harwell Dekatron is officially the world's oldest working digital computer, again.  (I missed the story of its restoration last year, but El Reg pointed me to it yesterday). The Dekatron part of the name refers to the 10-position clock-face style glowing number valves, which were the best thing at the time for storing digits until the transistor changed everything a few years later.  It was no faster at sums than a man with a mechanical calculator, but the point was that humans get tired, and this beast could chug along for hours. Its 2.5 tonne bulk is now over at Bletchley Park.

Moon Flyby

You may know that the GRAIL lunar orbiters finished their mission of mapping the moon at the end of last year; the JPL just released a cool video they took of flying low over the moon.

Pioneering

The Pioneer space probes are slowing down, and we didn't know why for quite some time. This article seems to indicate the mystery is solved (hint: it wasn't anything too mysterious). Along the way there are many interesting and nerdy nuggets of info like what those things on the end of those poles are (radioactive power sources). Anyway, the story ends with a plea to make sure raw experimental data is kept readable though the years; one poor guy had to get transmission data off some mouldy tape that was found "under the stairs" at the JPL.

Space Game

Elite was a game that allowed you to freely explore several galaxies in a 3D spaceship, at a time when games had to fit in 32 kilobytes of memory. You show your age if you admit to playing the original game, but who cares about that when there is a sequel planned that uses the full power of modern PCs, with their hardware graphics and 8 gigabytes of memory?

Moon Bot

Astrobotic Technology Inc. (a spinoff of Carnegie Mellon University) are building a robot that will go to the moon's north pole to search for ice. Polaris is equipped with a drill to test the rocks and a fin of solar cells, which are vertical so they can capture the low-lying sun's rays. A lunar day lasts 14 Earth days, and the scientists say only 10 of those are bright enough to prospect for water at the dark poles.

Moon Lift

LiftPort, the space elevator company, has been resurrected with a Kickstarter that was funded over 1000%. The special materials required for an Earth elevator don't quite exist yet, so focus has been switched to the moon, where plain Kevlar will suffice. I contributed a small amount to this one; if you missed it, we are assured there will be other opportunities. We are not properly living in the Future if we don't have robots delivering our stuff down a ribbon to the surface of the moon!

New Robots

Robots have been helping in factories for some time now, but this one is different, and not just because he has a face. Baxter is a gentle robot; this means he doesn't have to be put in a cage like his predecessors. He is slow and careful enough to not hurt puny humans when they inevitably get in the way. To program him, you can take hold of his arm and show him what to do. In the future, robots will be our friends, only rarely going back in time to kill our ancestors.