Gadgetory

welcome to the crave pastime Eric Mack in Taos New Mexico which is in the Milky Way galaxy somewhere in a solar system around a big ball of fire and i'm joined by kelsey adams Bonnie Burton Jeff Sparkman Stephen Beecham at the scene at studio in san francisco and michelle starr all the way from Australia was very appropriate surname and she's up very early tonight or this morning I don't even know what it it's fun 5am there yeah yay well and looking perky and bright-eyed I'm very impressed and in case you have noticed today's crave test is all about space this summer's been great for space for watching here from Earth we've had dazzling meteor showers and super moons and Hollywood of course has been raking in big bucks with a movie about a tree a raccoon and a fat boy who guard the galaxy and their tech today lon must oh that's an Elan mother love rosters in actual space exploration but to kick things off there's a deep-space mission that's were being run out of Europe right now that's the most fascinating to me at the moment that's the Rosetta mission which launched I think almost like 10 years ago and it's basically a spacecraft that's got a little probe on it and it has rendezvous with a comet somewhere on the edges of the solar system and it's preparing to send its little probe which is called feel a down to the surface so into drill itself in to the comment you can see some pictures of it there and it has the comet has a crazy Russian name that I can't pronounce or remember but the lander will actually drill itself they and then hitch a ride on that comet with Rosetta kinda you know riding alongside and they're going to go around the Sun this is like a crazy awesome space mission that we haven't heard that much about I guess perhaps because it's out of Europe and and not NASA this time around and my American Geographic edumacation tells me that Australia is part of Europe i believe so so what is that we don't wanna go you guys I thought that video was Australian I'm like it looks just like a satellite oh I've actually heard that it is United States education at work out her safe have a desert place hey Michelle tell us is there's a there's gotta be a space station occupied by Australian astronauts to right we don't actually have a space program Oh crowdfund that okay yeah um no I don't know why I've never had one actually but um we've just had a lot of budget cuts announced to science funding over here anyway so not likely anytime soon you know I'm the Rosetta there yeah it looks like it oh you mean in Australia I thought you met those guys right there that's in Europe all right well I'll throw it out to anyone why haven't you guys been tracking this what do you think ah I have not been tracking I'm just now learning about it but I I will track it now cuz I love stuff like this and I love that when we learned about other countries that actually are doing stuff because I mean I think when you live in the United States you're just you think NASA's it you don't realize there's all these other countries with space programs and and that there are doing some pretty crazy and exciting stuff so I'm excited to learn more about this so what's the goal of attaching it to the comet what's that gonna accomplish I think the news i did a comment yeah yeah i mean what to study the actual composition of it and to see on how it breaks down because you basically like a big rock of a chunk of rock and ice that was going to go around the the sun and you know slowly melt away part of it and so i think to actually see that process up close and all these things you know kind of help figure out you know how the universe was formed how the solar system our galaxy was formed that's kind of always the one of the goals of this kind of research and then I know and I suppose it will inform future apocalyptic apocalyptic movies where yeah they don't do research that's silly though when I bring up my story I will bring up a plot that I think Michael Bay if you're watching this is your movie so I'll wait there you go stay tuned I can't wait to learn I don't wait till the real science stories done before i talk about my science stuff cuz mines never really that scientific so yay we'll get we'll get through all this this real sighs yeah yeah so Rosetta you know it's currently the craft is currently they're scanning and studying the entire exterior of this comet trying to figure out the best place to land the lander which should be happening later this fall and we'll definitely be covering the on CNN and crave so keep an eye out for that but I want to get to the really fascinating stuff that we've been covering on crave about space recently and michelle has this awesome piece that's up right now on crave and you know if there's one truism that we know about space it's that in that void no one can hear you scream and that's because it's an airless vacuum of course with nothing for the vibrations the cause sound to travel through so therefore there's no sound in space but that doesn't mean that there's no way for us to actually hear space at least that's what I've learned from Michelle's fascinating piece it's about sound data from space and and how we've been gathering it and what we've gathered up in recent decades I'm Michelle you want to kind of take over and explain your story for us okay so we have a bunch of probes out there and they have instruments like plasma wave detectors that they use to just sort of measure different sort of areas of space the plasma the gases that you know the particles that are out there and they send back a waveform information which they can then sort of convert into sound so it's not actually a sound but it sounds pretty cool anyway it's it's a molecules reacting to different things in the you know in out in space right its molecules reacting and bouncing off each other that we're hearing right yeah well we have some pretty much dumb there's also solar winds and solar flares and there's this really cool one called the dawn chorus which is like particles hitting the magnetosphere above it so it sounds like birds chirping I have a hammer actually yeah it sounds like frogs yeah frogs and a face and knew it that's actually soothing it is really put it look it's like whales I think yeah kind of like really high-pitched wails better hi strong moon I can't wait till a fixed win remixes at give the Saturn one there that one's a lot less oh yeah the second one is amazing Saturn I have Voyager let me see what I have here I have Voyager and wait what is this no this is the plasma which one is a Saturn one yeah wow that's great and you don't have to pay ASCAP fees Yeah right and that's great that that's real that's not like you know some crazy Moog or something yeah that's totally like 60 synthesizers yeah well there was like a whole genre of music that does space T sound music based on this stuff I know in the 90s and during college radio there were quite a few oh yeah because I played it all but I remember this and then if you if you go online you can listen to a lot of space themed type stuff like think drone zone has that on some FM and stuff like that so there's a lot of people that like want to take all these sounds and then put them on online radio and then remix him I really was joking about a fixed win but he doesn't LM squarepusher did a whole album it's not just like this you never no never no that's where musicians get their inspiration this from space I wanted to clarify for someone who left a comment on this article that yes we understand that there isn't actually sound in space but Michelle explains I quite clearly this is sort of a translation of that information so that we can experience it as sound it's kind of like plotting something as a graph but much prettier yeah did yeah it's in the same way in the same way we don't hear radio waves you know flying through the air at all times but then when you you know digitally or analog we take them in and translate it into sound right so yeah that's exactly what it's like yeah mr. I love the movie Forbidden Planet you want to talk about that you mentioned that in your article oh yes i was listening to these noises and thinking like it really reminded me of that film because you know I've loved that film who use and using years so um I did a bit of reading about it and you know obviously they had never heard any recordings from space what they used to do was um it was a Louie and BB Baron and they would make the music together he would make the the circuits and she would do the actual composition so she'd go through the tape that they would make from Louise instruments and then she cut them up and put the sounds together and yeah the idea was just to find the sounds that sounded like nothing else on earth and apparently that ends up sounding rather much like space so cool I love that hey yes we're here block yeah that's what I would imagine a plan that's like a dishwasher dishwasher in space where's the ocean are the ocean yeah now somebody's gonna appear standing in the middle of that ah better be a robot wave ain't gonna be Chris Cornell with his guitar help his guitar I listened to several bands in the 90s that sounded exactly like that i'm pretty sure happy to I'm having a nostalgia moment that's like I need to pick up all my vinyl from this from the 90s of space down so well that's one I think it was I remember when mondo 2000 the magazine had just come out and they did a whole profile on space music me composers and it was that's when I first learned about it so yeah elder the internet speaking now 90s fun Bonnie tell us what Abraham Lincoln was really like oh he was such a hipster that beard was totally fake by the way anyway we're getting off tangent this is why we need to okay Stan throwback serious news cuz i've got some non AC seriously news later what well so definitely check out Michelle's piece it's up on the one crave right now uh what is it called the spooky sounds of space yeah the headliner spooky sounds of space look forward on cnet com / crave there's more videos to listen to and watch there it's super awesome and also I would suggest to people want to comment in that article of their favorite maybe favorite composers that you space music that might be kind of a cool discussion to start on that article because I know there's a lot of musicians out there that like these space music so I don't know just putting it out there Squarepusher my favorite yay alright so moving on to space games why not um so I Chelsea a little bit about this game extrasolar that you've been looking into and that you're working on a post about for crave as well yeah I'm obsessed with extra solar and the only reason they haven't posted about it yet is that I really do it justice but first i want to give a quick shout out to superhero a workout if that's okay beatcha oh yeah hit it Oh superhero workout trying to make us exercise heart is in suit and ready for calibration yeah once the a pilot time to power up get that generator singing ok to return the volume down so this supposedly comes out today for iOS and later and fall for android these are the people who make zombies run oh ok I'm getting some weird feedback my voice I don't know if you I think it's some skype thing ok good um so these people are really good at making games that hook in your imagination and that feeling of smugness I mean pride you get when you work out convincing you that you're you're really helping people you're not just getting fit you're a hero and so Zombies Run is really good for that and it looks like superhero a workout is gonna be like that too but I'm on Android so I'm gonna have to wait four months to find out myself but if you're on iOS go find out so wait does it come with radioactive powers cuz that's really how those superheroes good shape the superhero they're thinking of is Iron Man it's not oh so you to die first mmmn about that so your heart has to explode cuz that happens to me at the gym I would personally love the Wonder Woman work out with that you know that bullets and bracelets and they're running but but this is a more of an Ironman type on ok this is obviously a perfect way to Train astronauts amid budget cuts or is it Australia non-existent space program yeah Michelle this is how you start all your astronaut training is through this and by the way I never liked the zombies or anything because if you watch Walking Dead you know the how most of the time they survive is they just push fatter more out of shape people in the way of the zombies so they can get away well I have found the people who are big zombie fishing autos I don't love the game the way I do for me as a non-zombie person it's the best thing ever in a big fan cuz I me to survive anything is just hang out with people in worse shape than you yeah you don't have my faster yeah I don't know how it was fine job I don't know anybody in worse shape than me ha what clearly Walking Dead zombies did not have superhero work out but the zombies in World War Z did yeah they can run up walls touche oh I could do that Tuesday obviously you've done the work out no no I'm on Android I don't have any choice supposed to come out today um can we tell my extrasolar now because o it and weird i running out of time okay um me too all right do a lot XO planetary Research Institute today's leader in propulsion technology communication I like it's kind of like Disneyland like Star Tours so this is just giving you some background for the concept of the game it's the idea is your you get to pilot like a Mars rover but it's not on Mars it's on some recently discovered faraway planet and a private organization is sending Rovers there and citizen scientists like you get to pilot a rover around it and take photos um could you yeah I was checking out the photos and really cool yeah i linked you to some could you put this out now I forget the trailer in or the trailer let's move on no time I'm really we're not gonna die it's okay if you slow down kinda freaking me out a little bit i just i love this game more than a game is there a plot twist like you know it turns out the private organization is secretly trying to you know blow off the planet or exploit its resources or something well that would be cool as soon as you start in the program you get contacted by a hacker who tells you that they think that there's some kind of conspiracy with aliens and spoiler I'm just gonna tell you there's some kind of conspiracy with aliens the whole game takes place in a browser window um so you're not actually getting phone calls to your home phone you don't have to pick that stuff out of your own email it is contained which some people object to but i think is nice and so you watch this story unfolding by listening to voice messages by quote-unquote decrypting documents um things like that but the the main the main thing you do in the game is you schedule moves to your over by just dragging some crosshairs it's very simple and then every time you're over stops on this planet it takes another photo the map that you use is actually satellite footage of the planet so you can see real it's really cool anyway um and and then you tag things that look interesting which is something you do in real stuff like NASA that's the projects like solar zoo you tag something that looks interesting the data goes back to the lab there's this is all happening in real time so there's a break in between when you take photos and after you send info to the lab there's a break while they analyze it and then they tell you what you found and so you're kind of helping scientists figure out how life works on this planet that's your goal you didn't know there was a conspiracy the conspiracy is kind of a side note to me but um it all comes together and it's what I love about it that I really want to get across is you actually it asks very little of you you actually do very little um but you know you can only do a few moves a day and they're very simple but somehow that creates this huge sense of investment I mean I remember this one night when I couldn't sleep I was lying in bed in the dark knowing that my Rover at that moment was also in the dark climbing climbing a slope you know on the alien planet to take photos bioluminescent plants and that Rover is so far away and it's never coming home but those pictures are going to the next day when I sign in the picture is going to be there for me you know and it's it really gives you this illusion that is really wonderful so extrasolar is what it's called it's by lazy eight studios and they're kind of struggling right now I think to to get attention and and get more more users so they can come out with seasons two and three season oh I should explain it's free it's a completely free game that you can play in your browser but you can pay to speed a few things up and if you're impatient by nature you're gonna do that um I've got some family and hooked on it now at this point too so we're all just like how you're starting a space cult on this yeah this is great you're like our way to your l ron hubbard and they have a great thing about it is it's basically the glamour of science without the work you know i love that i love it if you're like me and you miss you miss studying science in school but you just you didn't devote your life to that you know now you're out you're not doing science anymore but you kind of miss it you think it's really cool you like to read about science in a shallow cut away right so playing this game is like you get to participate in the most amazing scientific discovery of our time it love it while doing hardly anything actually that's awesome you know yeah so I wrote up a little blurb here I'm just gonna read it to you I won't pretend makita I'd recommend it to anyone who likes space maps remote control toys pretty pictures conspiracy theory is a pistol ettore narrative speculative biology and anything that lets you feel smart hostile allowing you to be extremely lazy with a short attention span just like small that you don't describe the 1990s right there extrasolar look it up that's cool yeah extrasolar duck and it's all in the browser is there aren't any other platforms um no it's cool you can look at it on your phone they've actually done some special rendering to make sure the photos look really great on your phone but it's hard to UM actually tagged things so you can't rover when you're in line at DMV you can look at you can like check it out and look at it particularly few have a tablet you're definitely a business but um it's yeah it's mostly meant to be played on desktop and oh and you can download all the photos as high res wallpapers it's oh yeah those are awesome oh my god you seen a couple of guys are such an evangelist I love this I'm a fan excited Kelsey you is great I'm gonna talk about stuff I don't like so um unlike me so yeah browser-based um you can ask to be notified whenever something new happens in the game you can have that sent to your real life email or you can tell it not to do that so it's completely up to you whether you want it to impinge on your life like that cool Yeah right okay cool I've been trying to figure out what this reminds me of it seems like there's several games from the past but yes I can't miss yeah there's a dock that came up yeah yeah but so I don't know Vidya it's particularly the pho crowdsourcing thing that yeah I don't know I like this it's like I feel like if we ever reboot last starfighter this is what the plot is gonna be mmm just saying I'm always thinking movie plots sorry people yeah all right can we talk about my superfluous space news please please this weekend three right outside news oh so I should you want to you hello kitty your first year NASA dad yeah okay so hello kitty uh this is one of those stories that came across my hey I love hello kitty I love space and it's a story about how they want to celebrate hello kitty's anniversary in Japan and I think it's the 40th as well as getting kids excited about satellites I have a weird feedback so if you hear me like with feedback that's just extra space II just pretended to be in space yeah anyway so you can send a message i think now till I think September I'm not sure it says in the article that I wrote that you can send us all these messages for Hello Kitty to who's trapped in space by the way this is the saddest video i've ever seen and i don't know i think those are messages sending to her to transmit in space and all I keep thinking is an alien race is going to see this they're gonna think earth is nothing but cute cartoon cats and they're going to invade and kill us all that's what I think when I see this video this musical we play this music is sad it looks like she's trapped in like she's the last thing on earth and she can't get home like this is like a sad little movie that should be made an indie movie about hello kitty dying in space alone with her teddy bear good kitty yeah but you can i oh so long cat yeah goodbye kitty i love it Oh Jeff we don't room that's my job it also reminds me miss right but you can send messages and they'll pick up one message a day to transmit through the satellite in Japan and it can be an English or can be in Japanese but I just keep thinking up this is how we all die as aliens find this message and think we're defenseless cats and they just come get us and then the other story I wrote was the dad who built the NASA simulator for his two sons he had already built a mission control desk which I reported earlier in the year but this is to tie in to the mission control desk because he has two sons so of course they each need something so one of the sons can play in the simulator as an astronaut and has all the buttons and bells and whistles and video and all this great stuff and it explains in the video how he built everything it's um it's one of those things to where it's gonna make you hate your dad because your dad didn't build this for you so my job is a great cook okay yeah so if you get a dad that didn't build this don't blame him just if you have kids now it's up to you to make this fo x no pressure so no picture but now it's up to you like to make this and Jeff Highsmith is ruining dad's for everybody else because he's the best dad in the world cuz he'd built this amazing simulator yeah he's making did he do a how to on this because yeah there's a how-to yep there's a link by link to in the article it's from Make Magazine that's a full how to and there's a video that kind of speeds through it and he shows you all the little things that he did by me he's got like video from NASA of the Apollo space mission so his kids can reenact Apollo space mission with all the problems that they had and there's like even in fact he used to have more kids yeah I feel like we should ship this dad to Australia to start the NASA of Australia because I think we could just hand to build all of it cuz he's already made this all these simulators I feel like he's he's gonna be the guy that saves us when the aliens attack has the Hello Kitty messages does he have a job because this looks like a tickle yeah I feel I feel like he's one of those dads that never sleeps stay home yeah like he's making all bad look bad anyway if you want to check it out or if you want to make it yourself or if you live by yourself like me and you just kind of want to have this in your living room to hang out in then I hollyrock it's so cool yeah he's got all the sound file that look all the bells and whistles oh my god don't rock it sound like I'm waiting for his next video for make to be that he actually built a spaceship that's going to space with him and his kids now Bonnie this has a motorcycle helmet audio system robot arm and yeah I go pieces there's the robot arms so they can actually do payload deliveries all that stuff look at that look at video the great irony of this is that it took him so much time to build it that he had to sacrifice three months worth of time no I think he's the kind of dad that has his kids help him build things like they probably all know how to make all this look his kids like you're freaking out you can hear the squealing of joy cuz waste dump physically will it sound happy to see their dad again well no wait don't elation Ryan please dump is a toilet sound so every time they flick it they call it mr. thirsty because that's what the astronauts all the toilets mr. thirsty I know it's great that's also what they called it in space the videos and the controller for the arm yeah look at that I know we should probably stop playing this video so we all stop feeling insecure about our crafts look at that hey I drew pictures with my daughter yeah something right something i really recommend the welcoming yeah oh yeah yeah come on Jeff oh uh so there's this welcome mat it this is a real long discussion here I saw a welcome mat online that I wanted to get and it happened to be space related so I figured I'd mention it there's a link in the doctor is I actually want this thing yeah only 15 bucks I know right what's I'm think again ones messed up ya thinkin uh I just I hadn't told my mom just get me gift cards cuz that's pretty much all i love it see that's so much more cheerful than the psycho shower curtain right yeah i just feel like that's that's the learned something from that as opposed to baby training everyone to be serial killers maybe space is more and then I can feel inadequate when I realize that my feet are smaller Oh Polly is wearing a big moon yeah well who wears moon boots in the shower anymore oh this is a welcome mat not a shower man oh I mean I dinner technically it could be a shower man the second no I'm sorry I thought it was like that kind of a towel that you put right underneath by your bath when you come out of shower think you get on that I own all space stuff yeah well have you seen their shower set that's a Star Trek transporter oh yeah guys only it's got the curtain and the Roger look at me shower Star Trek yeah joe within the home something google it google shower and Star Trek see what images we get careless Lee I wouldn't mind that board games all thinking stuff yeah I'm not seeing a shower so yeah I think not has to send us everything cuz we mentioned I think we I think we have somebody to hit up as a possible sponsoring oh yeah I know did you see it even as we also call you yeah that's rare day yeah yeah oh my gods brilliant not awesome that's great curtain and if you're late for work he can just say it's Scotty's fault yep that's brilliant I love that yeh think eek so yeah I'm glad we did specie stuff that was factual and also shower related I really feel like I'm some astronaut ice cream ready but I know well you actually have some right did you bring it no may have I do want to ask astronauts if they actually eat that stuff in space or if we've been lied to this whole time just because someone made that by accident and they just called it astronaut ice cream cuz I usually eat it they totally do because the other astronaut stuff is terrible yeah that's road ice cream I don't know next time I mean a nap next time I see Buzz Aldrin I'm gonna ask him about that cuz I'm not gonna ask him about the moon landing cuz he always gets asked about that I'm gonna ask about hey does that ice cream thing for real hey with a favorite tank flavor trainrider Amanda Kooser comments that she has that doormat oh okay so great great minds thinking alike there yeah excellent did we rave did we adore do we cover all the way do we cover all the space news we were supposed to do today I think we have we did we did we working on any other spacey stuff on our way out the door here i am actually gonna see if I can do an interview with someone from NASA about questions they never get asked like yeah and I I think that that's something that we need to cover and I only have a couple contacts at NASA so I just want to bug them so I'm gonna see if they'll do crave interview of bizarre questions that aren't necessarily factually stimulating for anyone studying space but just curiosity type stuff no commentary yeah oh and remember for those of you use I have tea tea tea if I love stick this then that it's an automation um sort of service for free that you can use um they just recently got a space channel that combines info from NASA and some other sources that I haven't heard of and it'll tell you things like you know you can can have it pushing notification when the season changes on Mars or every time the ISS post an update it's um it's eating up a lot of data on my phone right now because it's so fascinating oh you might want to check that out oh and I did want to mention i think steady was down for a while cuz all the wildfires so again hello kitty messages may be the way we contacted well said he's slacking off go ahead and go over the hello kitty page but i would appreciate if people comment on the article of what messages they would like to send keep it clean but yeah i would like to not make it being about me but you know troll messages hello kitty doesn't like trolls more yeah i'd like to see mission again before we go cuz she's just really exciting and it's 5am there so everyone should I'm so touched we tend to join us yeah and you forgot to show your cat when we were talking about hello kitty I feel like that was the perfect moment to show your cat but your cat probably knew that he left yeah cats she got that's for you really quickly before we go I want to give a quick shout out for folks to look for my tote wet sprocket interview also it's pretty probably the only toad the wet sprocket content on cnet if you search for that and the actual interview the lead singer he talks quite a bit about space stuff he actually did a solo album called secrets of the new explorers it's a privatized space exploration themed concept album and i highly recommend that you check it out and if you join the space elevator consortium you will get a free copy of it and they're having their conference next week in Seattle so that's all the space elevator news you needed to know but that happens really crazy their songs about like space elevators and solar flares and privatized space travel so anyway just be nice this really is a 90s podcast Eric also did a post about what it was like interviewing this guy from which I learned that Eric actually loves the lead singer of Toad the Wet Sprocket almost as much as I love extrasolar oh I love totally know what I saw them live in the 90s and I loved him it was never a fan that I saw him live and I was like I'm a fan yeah I think I saw them with bare naked ladies or something I love that band yeah to which broca's great good for them i'm glad that they're doing Spacey stuff to their back yes um so yeah that's the crave cast for today thanks everyone for joining us we'll do it again next month thanks to michelle starr again for joining us all the way from Australia and for Bonnie Burton Kelsey Adams Jeff Sparkman and Steven Beecham I'm Eric Mack cnet com / crave is the place to go for Spacey news and more we'll see you next time