star wars

Harry Kloor may be the world’s most well-rounded nerd. He is the only person to have earned doctorates in physics and chemistry simultaneously, and he has penned episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. And when NASA asked him for help in improving its image with young people, he drew on both of those experiences. The best way to get kids enthused about outer space, Kloor figured, was to hide their medicine in a bucket of popcorn. Next February, Quantum Quest, a star-studded CGI space adventure that pairs animated protons with real footage from NASA spacecraft, hits theaters. “Many of NASA’s scientists were inspired by Star Trek and Star Wars,” he says. “I want to inspire that kind of passion.” We caught up with Kloor to find out why kids will go nuts for quarks.

Not long from now, in a galaxy that looks surprisingly similar to your garage, you might be the director and star of a scene from Star Wars. And thankfully, George Lucas isn't involved in any way.

The site Star Wars: Uncut has decided to crowd-source a remake of the film by chopping it up into 15-second increments. Using the social video site Vimeo, people can sign up to download one of 472 15-second chunks of Star Wars: A New Hope and re-film it however they choose. Once complete, all 472 Vimeo clips will be stitched together in sequence to re-create the entire film. The results are already rolling in, and they're awesome.

Since January, SpaceX's heavy-payload Falcon 9 launch vehicle has stood 180 feet above Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, undergoing ground-systems tests in the run-up to its first test flight. The reusable Falcon series, named for the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, has nine engines that provide more than a million pounds of thrust. Last September, the smaller, 70-foot-tall Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to orbit the Earth.