Sad news today: Leonard Nimoy has passed away at the age of 83. Nimoy was many things—an actor, a poet, a singer of hobbit songs, and someone who understood what it was like to be alienated. At Popular Science, we, like many others, will remember him best as the science officer in Star Trek. In 1967, we expounded upon why the show was the “first good television science fiction.” You can read the full article below. To the man who helped transform sci-fi we say, Go in peace.
Minecraft has become home to any number of experiments in the can-do spirit, everything from a huge model of the U.S.S. Enterprise to working hard drives and computers. The latest venture, created by a German man, is a massive working iPhone, which you can interact with by jumping and running on a “touchscreen.”
The year 2245 is just too distant - we should build and commission a real USS Enterprise right now, cracking the champagne across her hull within 20 years, according to an enterprising engineer. The gigantic ship would use ion propulsion, powered by a 1.5-gigawatt nuclear reactor, and could reach Mars in three months and the moon in three days. Its 500-metre-diameter, magnetically suspended gravity wheel spinning at 2 RPM would provide 1G of gravity, and the thing looks just like the "Star Trek" ship of lore.
