Saturn V.II Build—Day 153
B-Basic Body (continued)After a much longer than anticipated break, I am finally resuming the construction of the 1/100 Saturn V.II rocket.
Since my last post:
-Posters and prints were silkscreened
-Hundreds of packages were sent all over the planet
-There is a…
Last year Paul Sahre ran the Saturn V Relaunch project. As part of it, he’s been running this project blog, where he shows you how to build your own rocket.
Bacteriography, the method of creating photographs out of bacteria.
Zachary Copfer has been experimenting with the medium ever since he invented it while getting his masters. He’s now preparing a show of bacteriography to exhibit at Art Prize in September.
10… 9… 8…
Final Frontier Design’s civilian space suit is 90% complete. The team hopes to begin testing at the end of the month and build at least four suits this summer. Lookin’ sharp!
DIY space race?
“Have you ever dreamed of having your own spacecraft?” An inspiring piece in The Verge on the grassroots space race and the pioneering work of several Kickstarter creators.
The stars on a shoestring: amateur astronauts ignite a grassroots space race
Inside an old storage warehouse in an abandoned shipyard in Copenhagen, Kristian von Bengston and Peter Madsen have been building a one-man rocket ship they intend to send on a 15-minute, parabolic trip to the edge of space and back.
Von Bengston and Madsen’s non-profit, private space agency is called Copenhagen Suborbitals, and is probably the most extreme do-it-yourself project in the world. Von Bengston is an aerospace scientist and former NASA contractor. Madsen is an engineer who founded a DIY collective that built three submarines as a hobby.
Copenhagen Suborbitals has no government grants, no investors, and no academic affiliation. Instead, they’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from ordinary people around the world who donated in exchange for a part of their dream.
Peek into the future.
A documentary exploration of new media creativity, Clouds uses new 3D technology to share interviews in a videogame-like environment.
Presented as a database of tagged interviews, viewers can navigate through the project in every direction by simply typing in a question or search term. This future-minded portrait of the digital arts community is our Project of the Day.
Bird brain.
Aero is a 3D bird game that teaches the physics of flight while soaring across beautiful tropical landscapes.
Created by nonprofit development studio GameDesk and Bill Nye the Science Guy, this educational game is our Project of the Day.
Stay fly with Bill Nye.
The Science Guy wants to teach you a thing or two about flight.
Created with nonprofit development studio GameDesk, Aero is a 3D bird game that teaches the physics of flight while soaring across beautiful tropical landscapes.
Backers can help make this educational game a reality and bring home a bow tie hand-picked by Mr. Nye himself. Feeling good and looking good? Sounds pretty fly.
Spectrometers in progress.
The DIY Spectrometry Kit turns a smartphone into a mobile material analysis lab.
After successfully funding the kits just two months ago, creator Jeffrey Yoo Warren has already launched a full-scale assembly operation, which kicked off with the delivery of 800+ pounds of aluminum conduit boxes earlier this week.
The finished spectrometers look beautiful and seem to work like a charm — and rewards should be out the door on time.
How to make a dinosaur head.
We’ve been following Tyler Keillor, a sculptor who specializes in skull and flesh reconstructions, since he launched his project to create an authoritative full-body reconstruction of Dryptosaurus.
Seeing as we never thought about the men and women who tirelessly work to accurately reproduce an extinct species, it’s been fascinating to watch Tyler prepare for such a massive undertaking. It’s been even more wonderful seeing his work as it comes together, as you can see above.
Desert blooms.
Tenement is a collective formed by three young Brooklyn artists with a shared obsession.
After experimenting with collaborations in a variety of formats, the trio fell for the collodion tintype process of 19th-century portraiture, and an archaic love affair was born.
Tenement just launched a new Kickstarter project to fund a documentary expedition, traveling witha team of ecologists to survey the Mojave desert. In a nod to pioneering American naturalists such as George Englemann and Charles Wright, Tenement will make beautiful and evocative images to illustrate the ecologists’ field notes, bringing art and science together in a series of dispatches from the desert.
HOLO Magazine
Kickstarter project to fund publishing of premium-quality Arts + Tech magazine, by the people behind the excellent Creative Applications site:
HOLO is a new magazine that explores the convergence of art, science and technology, brought to you by the team at CreativeApplications.Net (CAN). An extension to one of the most authoritative art and technology blogs, HOLO is dedicated to rich, detailed stories that demand time and attention. With HOLO we are committed to telling these stories – attentively and expertly – in a patient, spacious medium that does them justice.
Published twice per year, each issue of HOLO will be comprised of 150-200 pages and provide intimate views into fascinating studios, workshops, galleries and institutions around the world, seen through the eyes of stellar photographers and talented writers. The pace, depth and sensibility of print allows us to invest heavily in each story, and craft months of research, travels and conversations into nuanced portraits you won’t find anywhere else. In addition to extensive artist features, each issue will contextualize current trends and topics in visual essays, sweeping surveys, theory, opinion and experimental formats big and small. Each issue’s carefully curated cast of interdisciplinary artists, scientists, technologists and toolmakers will help us map exciting new territory that doesn’t need to be covered faster, but captured better.
You can find out more at the project’s Kickstarter page here
A little squirrelly.
This past spring, an enterprising team of writers, designers, students, researchers, and rodent enthusiasts gathered to perform the first squirrel census of Inman Park.
Part statistical survey, part storytelling experiment, the undertaking culminated in the Inman Park Squirrel Census Data Presentation & Spectacle — a veritable smorgasbord of squirrel-centric science.
Now the team is creating visualizations of the census data and turning to Kickstarter to help fund the project. Want to get your hands on the most lovingly detailed depiction of Atlanta’s squirrel abundance ever made? Then become a backer, Ranger Rick — the Inman Park Squirrel Census is our Project of the Day.
It is rocket science.
HyperV Technologies Corp. is a small team of scientists working to build a plasma accelerator for jet propulsion. “Say what,” you ask? Let us explain.
Plasma accelerators allow for low-cost, fuel-efficient space travel. The boys behind HyperV have already constructed a functioning single-shot plasma accelerator, but in order for this machine to be functional for space travel, they’ll need to transform it into a repetitively pulsed, continuously operable, compact plasma thruster.
They’re on their way to infinity and beyond, but they’re making a pit-stop as our Project of the Day. Give them a little boost and they’ll blast off.
Shock and awe: a young museum attendee is floored by the work of paleoartist Tyler Keillor.
Robotboat Mark IV is a fully autonomous robot sailboat that needs no fuel, and can sail itself across the ocean in order to collect and bring back data on the condition of our oceans. The machine is durable, cheap, and quick, allowing for the mass accumulation of valuable information that can be used in determining the future of our world’s arguably most valuable resource: water. It’ll be able to measure oil leaks, monitor coral reefs, keep tabs on boundary currents, check up on icebergs, and even more — all with just a little bit of programming. Can you imagine? The future is now! And it’s also our Project of the Day.
