Yikes! SpaceX’s new Starship exploded after a test flight in a remote corner of Texas. The Starship SN8 is claimed to be the rocket ship that could carry people to Mars in as little as six years. Well, it seems that the spacecraft needs a lot more work after the test flight’s catastrophic end: 

The entire flight – as dramatic and flashy as it gets, even by SpaceX standards – lasted six minutes and 42 seconds and was broadcast live on its website. Repeated delays over the past week and a last-second engine abort Tuesday heightened the excitement among space fans.

Musk called it a “successful ascent” and said the body flaps precisely guided the rocket to the landing point. The fuel tank pressure was low, however, when the engines reignited for touchdown, which caused Starship to come down too fast.

“But we got all the data we needed!” he tweeted.

Image via The Guardian 

Let's go four decades back in time, back the set of the best Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back. Good Morning America premiered almost seven minutes of footage from the film set, from the difficult filming of the ice planet Hoth to lightsaber training.

A majority of the clips are being seen publicly for the first time, and include many lighthearted moments shot during production featuring lead actors Mark Hamill (Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Harrison Ford (Han Solo).

In 1979, cameras captured Hamill and the crew on location in Finse, Norway,—doubling as the planet Hoth— during a major snowstorm that hampered the production. Wearing a blue crew jacket with a name tag that reads “HEY YOU," Hamill jokingly invents the Tautaun Dance, named after the planet’s furry lizards.

“Three steps like this, and then you fall over,” Hamill says with a laugh.

-via The Mary Sue

By the time the Christmas season of 1918 rolled around, the influenza pandemic had raged around the US for months. Cases were going down in some areas, up in others. How could people keep the Christmas spirit and still stay safe? Kenneth C. Davis, who wrote a book about the pandemic, More Deadly than War, gives us a look at Christmas 1918. As now, there was little federal oversight, and local public safety regulations varied widely.  

Davis says San Francisco took it quite seriously, implementing a strong mask mandate in the fall as well as measures that’d be described today as social distancing. After cases rose sharply in mid-October, the city locked down harshly; the measures worked to keep the flu at bay and, a month later, the city reopened and dropped the mask mandate. But the flu was not done with the city yet. Come Christmastime, Davis says, the cases were again on the rise, and residents, having finally escaped from the pandemic shutdown, were not eager to go back.

“San Francisco wanted to institute the mask rule again but people resisted,” he says.

In other places, people decried the cancellation of church services for the holiday, and store owners were desperate to stay open and make sales. So really, things were not all that different in 1918. And 675,000 Americans died of the flu. Read about the pandemic Christmas of 1918 at Smithsonian.

Well, at least you get both options, right? With  GOAT STORY’s ARCO, convenience is now at your kitchen counter- and not only that, the 2-in-1 coffee grinder also looks aesthetically pleasing as well! The ARCO allows users to grind their precious coffee beans either automatically or by hand, as Hypebae details: 

 Arriving in a sleek, minimal design, ARCO maintains the quality of the coffee with aluminum casing. With a total of 120 settings, it produces different types of grinds for all kinds of drinks ranging from espresso and ibrik, to French press and cold brew.

Take a closer look at how ARCO works in the video down below. You can head over to Kickstarter to back the campaign and get your hands on the machine with pre-order prices starting at $299 USD.

Image via Hypebae 

Comedy Show that will have you on the floor in laughter! The best of the best in comedy shows online! Get a front row seat now to Episode 5: "Taking a Chance".

Video

It is common for a store to try to make you buy stuff from it. After all, it is a store and that is its job. And then there’s this store which discourages you from buying any stuff that it sells. Talk about unique.

That, or it’s just reverse psychology.

Well, what do you think?

Image via Engrish.com

I know from watching Murder, She Wrote that the best thing you can do for yourself is not be related to Jessica Fletcher. But what if you have instead found yourself inside an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel? The rules are different. You have to adapt to avoid being murdered. Mystery novelist Maureen Johnson is here to help. At Crime Reads, she explains which people and places to avoid when you venture into a quaint English village:

The vicar

See previous note about the village church. When you see the vicar, run. If you are not dead yet, the vicar is obliged to kill you.

The newest resident in town

They don’t know the Old Ways yet and refuse to learn. They want to open up a Coolspa in that twee Grade Two-listed thatched cottage. They’re talking to you because no one else will talk to them. They’ll be a popsicle soon enough. Shun.

Anyone who leaves a voice mail

Do not leave voice mails if you are in a murder mystery town. It means you Know Something. Don’t leave them. Don’t hang around people who do.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Pixabay

Love Hultén, an "audiovisual artist" from Sweden makes amazingly amusing and interesting machines. His most recent invention, which is sadly not up for mass production in time for Christmas shopping, is the VOC-25. It's a vocal synthesizer with 25 chattering teeth, one per key on the keyboard. It's inspired by a similar work by famous roboticist Simone Giertz.

-via The Awesomer

Did you know that the simple game we played as kids is now officially a professional sport? I didn’t know until I saw this video! World Chase Tag was able to turn a classic kids game into a real professional sporting event, complete with a specific set of rules and mechanics. It’s pretty cool, too! Would you participate in this sport? 

Prudence Staite is a master chocolatier. She can make seemingly anything out of chocolate (and other foods) and does so with an artistic flair.

YouTuber Technomoan, who explores antique audio equipment, bought a Christmas music record from Staite's Etsy shop. It's literally made of Belgian dark chocolate and is completely edible. The sound quality is . . . well, not as good as a vinyl record, but remarkably strong for chocolate.

You can watch a longer version of Technamoan's video here.

-via The Awesomer

We were all impressed when, last month, redditor kelvin214 neatly arranged 518 blocks on top of one. Now he's blown away his own record with 1,002. There's no glue or other adhesives at work--just ordinary wizardry.

Here's a time lapse video of the erection process. At the 1:33 mark, having completed his work, the Jenga master brings it all crashing down.

-via Geekologie

In the olden days, before Amazon Prime, people still had daily deliveries to their homes. In the United States, this often consisted of a daily drop off of fresh milk. The milk could be left at one's front door. But to hide bottles from casual thievery and make the milk easier to grab while still inside the house, some homes had milk doors. These were cabinets built into the outside wallk, accessible through doors on each side.

They weren't locked, but, as Rain Noe of Core77 points out, they represent a similar approach to the delivery lockers that some people use to prevent "porch pirates" from making off with their property.

Perhaps, in the future, homes will have built-in delivery lockers to support this new instant delivery lifestyle.

Photo: Downtowngal

Anna Chojnicka, an artist in London, went into lockdown with the rest of her city last spring. She needed to be creative, so she began bruising bananas. She uses a stylus to lightly and precisely press into ripe bananas, bruising the skin. Every day, she makes a new banana image, some of which display amazing detail and shading.

Janelle Shane can generate the weirdest things with artificial intelligence. As 2020 draws to a close, readers have suggested that she train a neural network on the year's headlines and see if the algorithm can come up with anything to compare. I mean, you have to admit that the news this year was unusually unusual. These are examples of real-world headlines.

Mysterious alien-like monolith discovered in Utah desert
What you need to know about ‘murder hornets’
The Mystery of The Platypus Deepens With The Discovery of Its Biofluorescent Fur
Famous Vienna hotel turns to drive-in cake

So Shane took up the challenge, although she admits that she tends to read more news about the natural world, so that may affect the type of headlines generated. She probably just avoided political news. Still, the results are spectacular.

Swarming bears are given deadly slingshots by Russian hunters
Good news / Bad news about crows in Burlington schools
When Killer Orchids Attack: How the Deadly Corpse Orchid Is Turning Up in U.S. Backyards
Massive radioactive sinkhole continues to grow in Russia
Why scientists believe the 'Killer Raccoons of the Pacific Northwest’ are responsible for this kill
Lycoperdons, the tiny deadly puffballs, are on the march again
From deep in the Earth, darkness “boils” to the surface
A sassy tardigrade previews new Doctor Who

That's just the beginning. Read more 2020 headlines generated by artificial intelligence at AI Weirdness. -via Fark

A Dutch team of aerospace engineers led by Henk Hesselink argue that future airports should be built with circular runways rather than linear ones. This would give pilots flexibility during variable weather conditions and allow for an easier traffic flow. In 2017, Hesselink spoke to International Airport Review about these advantages:

This runway is a circle, that has no limitations on where to take-off or land on this circle. This makes it possible to fly in from or out to any direction. The size of the circle is pretty large, its diameter is 3.5 kilometres. Total length of the runway therefore is 10 km. This means that passengers during take-off or landing will not feel like they are in a roller coaster, a maximum of 1.2g forces will be experienced, similar to a train on a curved track. A typical landing only requires a part of the runway with a limited curve.

Current airports operate runways with fixed directions, so a limited number of directions is available for take-off and landing. During a storm, the capacity of the runway is limited because of this. This fixed direction also means that some communities experience more noise than others.

At the Endless Runway, aircraft have the possibility to land anywhere on the circle. This gives the possibility to find always at least one point where there is no crosswind and only headwind. This means that the airport can operate a sustainable capacity.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Netherlands Aerospace Center