Rape Trap Like Snow Crash 'Dentata'
South Aftrican inventor Sonette Ehlers has invented an anti-rape device similar to one mentioned in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. (re: Neal Stephenson)

HAL-5 Robot Suit
"Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future," said Yoshiyuki Sankai, inventor of the HAL-5 robotic suit. (re: Robert Heinlein)

NYC Heliostats And Star Wars Orbital Mirrors
Three heliostats in New York City will provide much needed light in the planned Teardrop Park South. The park likes in the shadow of three skyscrapers. (re: Theodore Sturgeon)

Micro Spacecraft To Explore Planets
NASA and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, CA are preparing to flight test 'micro spacecraft' as early as 2006. Robert Silverberg gave a pretty good description in 1969. (re: Robert Silverberg)

Breathe Like A Fish Thanks To Alan Bodner
Alan Izhar-Bodner, an Israeli inventor, has developed a way for divers to breathe underwater without cumbersome oxygen tanks. His apparatus makes use of the air that is dissolved in water, just like fish do. (re: Various)

Chinese 'Seed Satellite'
China will launch the first satellite designed specifically for seed-breeding in space. The project includes satellite research and development, mechanism research and simulation tests, as well as the launch and recovery of the satellite itself. (re: Gregory Benford)

QinetIQ First Automatic Shipboard Landing Of STOVL Craft
QinetIQ experimental VAAC craft with 'Autoland' technology succeeded in the first fully automatic landing of a short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft on a ship. (re: Various)

Traversable Wormholes And Time Machines May Not Be Usable
According to a new paper by physics researchers by Roman Buniy and Stephen Hsu, traversable wormholes and time machines cannot be both stable and predictable. (re: Jack Williamson)

Jack Vance's Incredibly Thin Solar Sail
Jack Vance guessed the thickness of an ultralight solar sail propulsion system Alliant Techsystems and NASA have recently tested. (re: Jack Vance)

Sky Billboards In Fact And Fiction
The Federal Aviation Administration intends to amend its regulations; the FAA wants to make sure it can enforce a law that prohibits "obtrusive" advertising in zero gravity. (re: Jules Verne)

Making A Living From Space Junk
In an unusual act of generosity, the Soviet space program has been showering valuable metal scraps on the villages surrounding the Plesetsk Cosmodrome for more than forty years. (re: George Lucas)

Scientists Succeed At (Cryogenically Enhanced Magneto-Archimedes) Levitation
Scientists at the University of Nottingham have succeeded in (Cryogenically-Enhanced-Magneto-Archimedes) levitating some of the heaviest elements in nature, including lead and platinum. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Dubai World Island Earth
Al Nakheel Properties are working on a Dubai island project that will consist of between 250 and 300 islands shaped like the continents of the world - The Dubai World Islands. (re: Larry Niven)

Self-Replicating Modular Robots
Cornell scientists have been working on machines that replicate themselves. Their strategy is to use small modules that attach to each other with electromagnets. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Product RFID Tags Now Play Jingles
A computer science student from Durlach in Germany has worked out a way to store a tune on the radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags now attached to many consumer goods. (re: Greg Bear)

Mars Telecommunication Orbiter - Interplanetary Broadband
Lockheed Martin Space Systems is expected to land a $500 million contract to build the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter, intended by NASA to pioneer the use of lasers in planet-to-planet communication (re: George O. Smith)