Their new Larson Scanner Kit—which requires soldering—only costs $US13, and it is a lot more energy efficient that the original, released three years ago. That means that the battery and your nightmares will also last a lot longer. [Larson Scanner Kit via Evil Mad Scientist]

Verna Rockets has a full debrief on its own builds, complete with links to several sites with parts and instructions. You’ll find everything you need to build a flying model rocket that looks like a Recon Viper, the U.S.S. Enterprise, even The Black Hole Space Probe from “The Black Hole”

Confession: I always get psyched by rocket kits. Have any pics of your own launches that you’d like to share? [Verna Rockets via Hobby Media]

During the episode in which the humans and the Cylons discover the wasted Earth, they come across the remains of its civilization. One of the things they found was a “2000-year-old, ancient Cylon.” That was the phrase in the script, which was used by VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel and chief model maker Pierre Drolet to create the Cylon you see above.

Like Ralph McQuarrie did for Darth Vader, the pair took inspiration on classic samurai armour designs. The result was what you can see above, which clearly came way too close to the Dark Lord’s helmet. So close that they took a couple of layers out of the helmet, to make it look like the skull on the right, which is the model that finally ended up in the actual shot:

Beautiful design either way, although I liked the full helmet better. I don’t care it looked like Vader’s, specially when McQuarrie also did art for Battlestar Galactica (some of it is under these lines.) [Darth Mojo—Thanks Alice]

Intended to be a bit less intense than BSG’s post-apocalyptic doom and gloom, Virtuality is about 12 astronauts on Man’s first starship, the Phaeton. They’re on a 10-year journey (feeling confident, aren’t we Mr. Moore?) and will kill the time by plugging in to their own customised virtual reality worlds—a sort of holodeck meets the Matrix. That killing of time seems to be the focus of the show.

Our sister site io9 has been covering Virtuality quite a bit over the last year from inception to production, so they’re a good resource if you’d like to read more about the pilot and potential new program. [io9]

* Wait, another promising sci-fi pilot is coming to Fox? Never mind, it’s doomed.

725.35 meters. A whoppumental 2,379.75 feet. That’s how big the new super-sized Enterprise is. Here you can see it compared against the Battlestar Galactica, the good old Enterprise, the Blockade Runner, and the ISS.

Click on this image to see the full picture.

When JJ Abrams said that he wanted to put some Star Wars into Star Trek, apparently it also applied to the scale of spaceships (and matching viewscreens.) And while the new Enterprise doesn’t even reach half of the 1,600 meters—that’s a mile long—of an Imperial Star Destroyer, it’s still amazingly big compared to the 288 meters of the old Enterprise. Maybe now you would be able to take down a Star Destroyer with a couple of these.

The battle I would really want to see now, however, is not the old Star Trek vs Star Wars (we already know who would win that one.) No, you know what I want to see.

Yes, Starbuck vs Uhura. In a chocolate pudding pit.

Maybe Galactica vs Enterprise too, but that’s a distant second. [Thanks to David B. from Bad Robot Productions]

The first episode of Caprica premiered last night (did you buy it on DVD or iTunes?), so if you like what you saw, Zune has a 90-minute Q&A session for you on April 28.

Who’s on the panel?
· Magda Apanowicz (Lacy Rand, “Caprica”)
· David Eick (Executive Producer)
· Jane Espenson (Executive Producer)
· Tricia Helfer (Number Six, “Battlestar Galactica”)
· Paula Malcomson (Amanda Greystone, “Caprica”)
· Ronald D. Moore (Executive Producer),
· Esai Morales (Joseph Adama, “Caprica”),
· Grace Park (Sharon/Athena/Boomer, “Battlestar Galactica”)
· Eric Stoltz (Daniel Greystone, “Caprica”)
· Alessandra Torressani (Zoe Greystone, “Caprica”)

Did you like it? I didn’t have a chance to watch it yet, so I’ve no idea if it’s as good as Battlestar Galactica. Then again, I thought the miniseries was slow and dull, but really got into it starting from the first episode of the series proper.

Calling all Battlestar Galactica nerds: Looking for a new mode of transportation? If you’ve got a buttload of cash—and no dignity—you can have your very own used, full-sized Raptor on May 8.

The Raptor was previously being sold on eBay, but with an ending price of $US28,100 after 43 bids, the auction never reached the reserve price. So to those of you who are comfortably masked by the invisible cloak we call online shopping, it’s time to come out of hiding: you’ll actually have to show your face to take this sweet ride home. NBC/Universal is now looking to get rid of the Raptor—as well as a full-sized Mark VII Viper and other various BSG props—via “live” auction in Pasadena, CA. [eBay auction via hplus via boingboing]

According to the script, each person’s consciousness only takes 300MB. Do you believe it? Does this make you want to watch the series more or less? [io9]