Giant Freakin Robot

Elon Musk has done more in his life so far than most can do in a hundred lifetimes. He was an early investor (and, as he’s famously and problematically asserted, a co-founder) in Paypal and Tesla Motor Company, of which he is most definitely CEO. He designed a high-speed rail system called the Hyperloop, which I’m still pulling for, and best of all, he’s CEO of SpaceX, the hottest cargo- and soon people-moving spacecraft company around. How did Musk get to be the rich and famous inventor and tycoon we know today? Well, for one thing, the guy read — a lot.

Musk reportedly had a rough childhood in South Africa — he was runty and too smart for his own good, and kids called him “Muskrat.” So he’d do what a lot of people with rough childhoods (and adulthoods) do — he escaped into fantasy and science fiction. He recently shared a list of the books that have most influenced his life.

Sci-fi is full to overflowing with various new modes of transport, from interstellar ships to teleporters to hoverboards. While many of these are unlikely to become a reality, especially anytime soon (I still have hope that we’ll get a decent hoverboard by the end of this year, after all, Back to the Future 2 promised), one futuristic mass transit system, the Hyperloop, is inching towards us.

Next year, construction is scheduled to begin on the world’s first Hyperloop. While it won’t be able to quite reach the 800 miles per hour that is the ultimate target speed for this kind of technology, the five-mile track in the planned community of Quay Valley, California, this is the biggest step forward for this potential new transport system.

Well this is not good. Beloved Star Trek actor, and general awesome dude, Leonard Nimoy was hospitalized late last week with severe chest pains.

Sources in law enforcement told TMZ that the 83-year-old actor was rushed to UCLA Medical Center last Thursday after his symptoms prompted a 911 call. The paramedics didn’t waste any time dawdling around and got Nimoy to a doctor as quickly as they could.

Do your fingers ever start to go numb just from looking at the amazingly intricate work that some steady-handed artist had the time and dexterity to complete? I had to finish typing that sentence with my nose because these papercraft models are almost too amazing to be real. To kick it off, check out the lunar module from Apollo 13.

You might recall a few years ago when we talked about a beyond genius idea that the organization Singularity & Co. had where they started up a Kickstarter campaign to help save science fiction, in a sense, by bringing out-of-print books back into circulation, among other things. The success that campaign brought has inspired Singularity (not that one) to try it all over again. So if you missed out the first time, you have no excuses now.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye are two of our favorites, so when they get together for some scheme or another, you can bet that it has our complete and total attention. And they’ve got a doozy of a project brewing this time, as they’re about to test their LightSail spacecraft.

The two popular figures in the scientific community, along with their partners at the Planetary Society, announced that they plan to embark on their first test mission in May of this year. Entirely funded by private citizens, the solar sail satellite will be a part of an upcoming launch of an Atlas V rocket.