With the possibility of commercial space travel becoming a reality in the near future, we are facing some serious safety hurdles before the industry “takes off”. Chief among these issues is something called the Kessler Syndrome. Named after a NASA scientist, it’s a theory that as the space around the planet gets more crowded, collisions are more likely to occur, adding even more debris orbiting the globe. If left unchecked, the amount of junk floating around our planet could theoretically block out the sun, let alone make for safe space travel.

If you have ever seen the movie Wall-E, the Kessler syndrome is presented humorously as a rocket blasts through thousands of satellites on its way out of the atmosphere. In reality, if a space vessel were to collide with any orbital trash, the results would be catastrophic. Swiss scientists don’t want this to happen and have decided to do something about it.

Called CleanSpace One, the project developed by the Swiss EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne) seeks to clean out the area above the Earth by creating a space janitor of sorts. Looking like a long box, CleanSpace One will be able to launch then match the speed and orbital trajectory of its target allowing it to come close enough to latch on to a piece of space junk. From there, it will redirect the piece of debris towards the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to disintegrate due to the high amounts of heat caused by friction. Think of it as a global incinerator for expensive satellites that are no longer used.

While the plan is an admirable one, it does of course have some issues. The cost of actually building and launching a vehicle like this being one of the most voiced concerns. Right now it would cost around $2.5 billion to launch even one CleanSpace vehicle into orbit, let alone the thousands that would be needed. Also, if something goes wrong during the recovery and disposal process it could actually contribute to the problem it’s trying to address. Nevertheless, the Swiss research team says it could have one ready to go in a few years. By then advances in space technology could actually make the plan feasible

Living in a rural area in Missouri, it has been a struggle to get both a mobile phone signal and television reception in my home. I have tried all the different antennas and cell-boosters I can get my hands on, all of them promising to solve my problem and none of them even coming close. I had almost given up hope until I saw a presentation by the CEO of a small Utah-based company called ChamTech at this years “Solve for X” forum.

In eleven minutes, Anthony Sutera shined a bright light into the black hole of connectivity in which we live by demonstrating a new spray-on technology that can turn almost anything into a high-poweredantenna. By high-powered, we mean that this technology can improve the range of a RFID tag from five feet to almost 700 feet. That’s impressive.

The secret behind the technology are the nanocapacitors that are suspended in the paint-like mixture. When they are applied in the right pattern, they are able to both charge and discharge very rapidly, which does away with the heat issue of regular metal or copper antennas. As with any electronic, heat is bad and in this case can interfere with reception. Of course, the technology behind the product is a closely kept secret, but I did get to speak with a rep from the company to confirm that all the claims that Sutera made in the Solve for X forum have been documented and confirmed. Right now the company’s main customer is the US Military, so it’s safe to assume that ChamTech is legit.

The unnamed product is currently not available for consumer purchase, but the company rep I spoke with on the phone mentioned that some big news is coming up in the next two weeks for the company. When I asked about such uses as creating a television antenna out of a large board that was on my roof, the response I got was “I can’t comment on that, but isn’t having a house with large attic space a nice thing?” While not an official confirmation, I am excited about his question because it’s exactly what I had in mind (and I know you did as well) when I first heard about the presentation. One of the other things that the rep was totally clear on is that this isn’t a process of spray-painting an item haphazardly and then magically getting an antenna as a result. There is a process in which it must be applied, one in which they will be working with manufacturers to perfect in the future.

Some other potential applications for the nanoparticle spray is being able to create better antennas for mobile phones, as well as broadband access for vehicles in the form of the painted white lane-stripes that are standard across the country. While we wouldn’t want ChamTech to paint everything in sight and make the world one giant antenna, this has amazing potential for the future.

Do you know anyone who hasn’t played Angry Birds? I’m finding it hard to locate someone that hasn’t, and even harder to find someone who doesn’t recognize the name at least.

Like it or not, Angry Birds is uber-popular with casual gamers, but those who are veteran players may be getting a bit tired of the mechanics in the run up to the launch of Angry Birds Space. Fear not, there is a solution that requires a new skill for playing the game, and it comes courtesy of mbed who specialize in rapid prototyping with microcontrollers.

A company that sells microcontrollers and supporting software is obviously going to come up with a physical addition for the game, and mbed haven’t disappointed. They’ve managed to build a real slingshot that interfaces with the game over a USB connection.

The finished slingshot is recognized by a PC as a mouse. In reality, it takes the input of pulling back the real slingshot using a rubber stretch sensor and translates it into the expected mouse input. The angle of the shot is controlled by an accelerometer and all depends on the angle the slingshot is held at by the player.

The accelerometer and stretch sensors are hooked up to an mbed NXP LPC11U24 board that uses a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 Core. A USB connector is then attached to allow connection with a PC. All supporting code for the project was written in C++.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper slingshot without being handcrafted from a piece of wood. mbed selected an appropriate branch and bored out the insides so as to fit the electronics and USB connector. I think you’ll agree, the finished slingshot certainly looks the part.

The good news is, there’s nothing to stop you making this slingshot for yourself. All the components are widely available and relatively cheap to buy, and mbed have released instructions and code for creating their prototype at the link below.

Read more at mbed

The rise of the consumer-friendly internet has given wings to some really amazing services to help a small business. In some cases, these projects never would have left the ground if it weren’t for services like Etsy, Kickstarter, and Indiegogo. The hobbyist-turned-business-owner has a lot to deal with, in order to keep costs down and still enjoy what it is you were doing as a hobby in the first place. The one constant issue that faces most of these businesses is the need to be an expert photographer. A product on Etsy that was photographed with an old phone isn’t nearly as likely to get as much attention as the product that was shot with a decent camera in a proper lightbox. Cameras are expensive, and using one isn’t always easy. HP hopes that their new TopShot scanners will fill a need here. We tested this tech on their new Laserjet Pro M275 printer.

The TopShot scanner looks a whole lot like a webcam embedded on a plastic arm with some LEDs on either side. The Arm isn’t particularly solid or sturdy feeling, unless it is locked into its fully extended or fully closed positions. The plastic arm has a magnetic latch to hold it down when it is not in use, so there’s less chance for an accident to happen.

When you are ready to take a shot, you simply raise the arm and place your item underneath it, on the white scanning bed. When taking a picture of a 3D object, the TopShot will take three separate pictures, each with a different configuration of the LEDs. The HP software then takes the best of those three shots and can either deliver it to your PC, or print the picture on the laser printer below.

When testing the TopShot’s ability to take pictures of 3D objects, I found that the items could really only fit in a 6 x 6 x 6-inch square underneath the camera in order for a good shot to be taken. If the item was too long or too close to the camera, the images wouldn’t be useful. If your object cast a significant shadow due to its shape, you’ll need to edit the shadow out manually for the shot to be useful.

Despite being designed for 3D items, the TopShot is still a very capable image and document scanner. The lack of a paper feeder means you’ll be moving papers one at a time to scan them, but the document quality and image quality were both very high, and still supported features like saving to PDF. Of the more useful features added to the TopShot was the ability to save an image or document you have scanned straight to Google Docs, allowing you to share something you have scanned almost instantly with a group if you have Docs setup.

As a laserjet printer, the HP M275 did a great job. The touchscreen on the front of the device is a little flimsy, but allows you to quickly connect to a wireless network and start printing immediately after installing the driver CD on your computer. The M275 is a Google Cloud Print device, so if the printer is on a home or work network you can share the printer with anyone through this service, instead of passing around the install CD.

The HP TopShot M275 will run you about $320, which really helps seal this printer into a niche market. It’s more expensive than the average color laser printer, without offering enough functionality to be as useful as a traditional laser printer with a scanner. Plus, it uses four separate toner cartridges, none of which are particularly large. Replacing all of the toner in this machine in one shot will cost you about $70. The TopShot is much cheaper, however, than a nice camera and some photography lessons which would make it great for any small hobby business.