This story of VR astronaut training begins, like many others, on Reddit. On February 26th, 2015, the developers of the indie VR title Earthlight unveiled the first prominent screenshots of their game, which blew away audiences due to sheer attention to detail. Overnight, the post became a sensation, and although we didn’t know it yet, the poster woke up the following morning to Reddit PMs from NASA laboratories. To the sufficiently well-versed in U.S. federal agencies, this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Primitive Virtual Reality has been used by the U.S. Military and NASA for literal decades. While the earliest forms of their simulations were,
BBC is moving into the Virtual Reality in a big way. British broadcaster is known for its approach to documentaries which put rivals to shame, and VR is looking to be the same – contracting REWIND to develop a Vitual Reality experience. However, this experience wasn’t a clear outsource move. Rather, REWIND worked with BBC Science, BBC Learning and BBC Digital Storytelling in order ot create a 15 minute experience delivered to Steam VR i.e. HTC Vive (and OSVR). REWIND used Unreal Engine 4 to its full extend, and you will need a high-end computer in order to enjoy BBC Space in its fly glory. As the
Hot on the heels of Boeing unveiling its human transport capsule dubbed CST-100 Starliner, SpaceX unveiled its final take on the Crew Dragon capsule, which is scheduled to take first manned flights in 2017, in what will be return of United States of America to spacefaring nations, something the country wasn’t able to do since they retired the venerable Space Shuttle. In the video below, you can see the bespoke Dragon capsule, which can transport up to five people the the ISS, and what SpaceX hopes to be one of first steps to move us from LEO (Lower Earth Orbit) to other planets, especially Mars:
The U.S. government has upheld NASA’s contracts with Boeing and SpaceX to build ‘space taxis’ to fly astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017.
Move over MakerBot. Another company’s 3D printer will be looking down on you from the International Space Station (ISS). A small startup, or up start company if you prefer, that came out of Singularity University Graduate Studies Program got NASA’s attention. The result is a 3D printer whirling around in space ready to meet its final tests aboard the space craft. Speakers on the CES 2014 panel The Future of 3D printing never predicted this momentous event. Made In Space, founded less than five years ago, boosted by more than half a million dollars from a Small Business Innovation Research grant from NASA, has achieved its goal