They are secret. They are kinetic. They are made of rubberised rocket fuel. And they fire up destroying absolutely everything they come across, bouncing through bunkers, filling buildings with extremely hot flames, obliterating everyone and anything inside with fierce heat. The Pentagon officially calls them "kinetic fireball incendiaries". Other people call them kinetic rocket fire balls, and the way they work make them absolutely terrifying weapons.

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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.

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This is ESA's video unveiling of its Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, a test-bed for a next-generation reentry pod. The IXV is due to rocket aloft on Europe's new small Vega launcher in 2012 and test out a range of systems for a "proper" future vehicle. Ditching the simplicity and limitations of the now old-fashioned conical-pod-with-heat-shield design, it's a lifting-body shape with a thermal protection system somewhat like the Shuttle's. The wingless pod is steered by aerodynamic body flaps with reaction jets as backup and for orbital maneuvers, and when it's low and slow enough it'll pop a 'chute and plop into the Pacific. And it'll do it all autonomously. Clever stuff. [ESA via Slashdot]

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50 years ago this month NASA rocketed into existence, and to celebrate this fact NASA-TV is streaming its special retrospective show "50 Years of Exploration: The Golden Anniversary of NASA" in HD format today at 1pm and 8pm EDT (and again tomorrow at 10am and 2pm). Check it out: it's presented by none other than Neil Armstrong, and it'll remind you how frickin' astonishing the achievements of the Agency are, despite its recent rockety woes. [NASA-TV]

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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.

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John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace has won the $US350,000 Level One X-Prize Lunar Lander Challenge. As this video shows, their spaceship blasted off the designated area, got up to 150 feet, and then hovered for 90 seconds at that altitude to land with absolute precision on a pad 150 feet away. And they did it twice. Armadillo was also the first one to try the $US1.65 million Level Two challenge, but unfortunately crashed badly on that attempt, as the next video shows:

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Britain's Minister of Science Lord Drayson is announcing today the commencement of the Bloodhound rocket car project, which will propel current land speed record-holder and RAF Pilot Andy Green to speed of over 1600kph. This is another step in the sporadically intense fight for the fastest car in the world, but the Minister has a half-hilarious, half-reasonable excuse for it: it'll get British students interested in taking advanced science classes. Nobody really cares about stuff like that because, well, 1600kph.

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The NY Times TierneyLab blog recently had a great post on a 1952 concept sketch for a "Moon Rocket," which recently sold for $US132,000 in an auction. Created by famed astrophysicist Wernher von Braun (mentioned in the movie October Sky like 3,269,728 times), the sphere-happy concept called for the spacecraft to be powered by 30 rocket motors, shortwave radio antenna and a solar mirror which could vaporise mercury, in turn powering a turbo generator to the tune of 35kW.

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Seems like rockets are in the news a lot recently, and now South Korea has joined in by unveiling its first space launch vehicle, cunningly named the KSLV-1. Looking pretty much like rockets do, it'll be capable of putting Korea's first satellite—a "Science and Technology" one—into orbit, and the 7.7m-long upper stage has just been completed by Korea's own Aerospace Research Institute. Sure, the 25.8m main stage is actually Russian, but it'll still represent quite an achievement when it goes aloft. Sadly this won't be until April-June next year due to technical cooperation problems with Russia. [FarEastGizmos]

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"BALLS 17 is a venue for projects that should NOT be flown publicly due to safety and legal restrictions. This may include, but is not limited to, LARGE rockets, complex staging or clustering, metal rockets, self designed and/or fabricated rocket motors and new technologies being developed or proven."

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