The Downside Of Living In A Digital World 
Australia, NZ And South Africa To Share Square Kilometre Array 
Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action 
When Should You Buy Your Next Gadget? 
How To Destroy The Internet (But Please Don't) 
Aussie IT Pricing Inquiry Now Taking Submissions This is the Ares I-X Launch Abort System, the mini-rocket that will be the tip of the main vehicle, responsible for saving the astronauts’ life in case of a major malfunction at launch.
NASA, when it isn’t finding rogue space lights or mysterious BOOMs of the non-Steve Jobsian variety, is apparently sending rogue science teams to brief President-elect Obama on the future of the space program.
Accompanying a long piece on the future of NASA’s Orion/Constellation system, the NYTimes threw together a nice Flash graphic detailing the individual components of what may or may not (ahem Financiapocalypse) replace the Space Shuttle.
NASA better come up with some good reasons to keep Ares and Orion alive, because Barack Obama is no JFK: The office of the President Elect has send them a questionnaire asking some tough questions about our favourite space program, Space News reports. You know, the one which is supposed to take Humanity back to the Moon and go to Mars. In fact, the questionnaire goes as far as asking if NASA could redesign the Orion spacecraft so it could be launched by the European Ariane 5 or the Japanese H2A:
November 9, 1967, T-minus 8.9 seconds: Thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen begin coursing through the giant centre F1 rocket engine: The Saturn V’s ignition sequence has begun. Next, two outer engines are lit, followed 300 milliseconds later by the other two, ignited in pairs to avoid toppling the 364-foot rocket above. Nine seconds after all five engines go to full thrust, the first Saturn V rocket begins to lift from the launchpad, taking the unmanned Apollo 4 check-out module into space.
NASA‘s Ares 1 rocket may be facing another large technological hurdle before it can take part in the future lunar missions: it’s apparently in danger of banging into its own launch tower if the wind is up. Actually, the wind needs only be a gentle-sounding 20kph from the south-east to cause problems, and it’s all to do with how the rocket’s solid fuel motor causes it to “hop” on ignition, before it powers upwards.
Development of NASA’s Ares Moon rockets continues apace, despite criticisms from an team designing an alternative. Now NASA engineers have announced how they’re going to deal with a potentially serious vibration problem in the crew-launched Ares I: springs.
newVideoPlayer("/constellation2_gizmodo.flv", 478, 290,""); The NASA 2009 Astronaut Candidate Class recruitment–for the first mission to the Moon in four decades–may be over, but if you didn’t send your résumé, don’t worry: you can still be a space couch potato and look at the pretty images and videos, like this newly-released NASA simulation showing how the whole thing is going to work.
Alienware’s iconic cases might have the X-Files fanboy segment of the gaming desktop market still swooning, but Asus is refreshing it with a little more evil styling for its first gaming PC that looks more like a Decepticon’s head. It almost looks like it’ll open up and tell you in a booming robot voice how hard you suck when you get your face rocked in UT3.
