The company SpaceX has been developing and launching rockets for a few years. But it was only today that the company launched its first commercial payload into orbit:

The launching was the first of three financed by NASA under its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, an initiative intended to encourage development of private-sector rockets to deliver cargo to the International Space Station after the space shuttle is retired next year.

SpaceX has a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA to provide 12 cargo flights to the station for delivery of more than 44,000 pounds of equipment and supplies. The contract may be expanded to cover additional flights, boosting its value to some $3.1 billion.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: SpaceX

GetLoFi built a functional six-string electric guitar from a NES console. You can view a video of it being played (as a musical instrument) at the link.

Link via Nerdcore

Previously: Nintendo Famicom Guitar

A man emigrated from London to New Zealand. Shortly after arriving, he was ticked for speeding. He recognized the police officer as Constable Andy Flitton, who had ticketed him for speeding in London two years before. Flitton, too, had just immigrated to New Zealand:

"He asked if I had worked in London," Constable Flitton said. "I said, 'yes'.

"He asked if I used to operate the laser gun on the A5 in north London. I said, 'yes'.

"And he said, 'I thought it was you. You gave me my last speeding ticket there two years ago'.

"The minute he said it, I remembered the whole thing," Constable Flitton told the New Zealand Herald.

"We both just had a laugh."

The man told Constable Flitton he had been in New Zealand for less than two weeks and was still looking for a place to live.

Link | Photo by Flickr user 111 Emergency used under Creative Commons license

Kaylene Kau is a recent graduate of the industrial design program at the University of Washington. She built a prosthetic arm. But instead of trying to replicate the functions of a human hand, she built a functional tentacle.

Link via DVICE

Etsy seller Will Hollman turns old road signs and license plates into decorative fruit bowls. The legs are made from carriage bolts and the entire assembly is coated with metal lacquer.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist's Website

For several months, the #wookieeleaks tag on Twitter has been the source of many unveiled secrets in the Star Wars universe. Lately, the activity has greatly increased. blastr has a list of some of the juiciest revelations that have come out.

Twitter Link via blastr

Architects Andreas Claus Schnetzer and Pils Gregor designed "Slumtube" -- an affordable house built out of discarded shipping pallets and insulated with clay and straw. It's designed to be comfortable in the widely-varying temperatures of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Link via io9 | Photo: Inhabitat

(Video Link)

Marc, an engineer who lives in Miami, built a pneumatic sliding door for his home. It was inspired by the sliding doors on Star Trek: The Next Generation. An air compressor engages two 16-inch pistons to slide the door along a track. At the link, you can view detailed photos showing how Marc built it.

Link via Great White Snark

Douglas Allen Smith, Jr. petitioned the State of Oregon to change his name. His new name will be Captain Awesome. Pictured above is how he currently signs his name. Smith is quite consistent, signing his name the same way all four times that the single-page document requires. Presumably his new signature will be even more awesome.

Link

Pictured above is a map of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Most of it is within the borders of Wyoming, but northern and western slivers lie within Montana and Idaho. University of Michigan law professor Brian C. Kalt has written a paper about why the piece within Idaho is the perfect place to commit a crime. Dan Lewis summarizes:

Let's say you, heaven forbid, are charged with a crime. The Constitution itself (Article III, Section 2 for those who wish to look it up) requires that the "Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed." Pretty straight forward. The 6th Amendment requires that the jury must be "of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." Again, pretty clear. The only confusing part, unless you're a lawyer, is probably the term "district."

The U.S. Federal Courts are divided into zones called "districts" which correlate almost perfectly with states themselves. Connecticut has one district: the District of Connecticut. New York has four, using ordinal directions, e.g. "Southern District of New York" which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, and six counties in the state. Wyoming has one, as well, which includes the entire state -- and, in addition, the parts of Yellowstone National Park which are in Idaho and Montana. And that's where the perfect crime scene appears.

So that crime you're charged with? Imagine you committed it in the part of Yellowstone which is actually in Idaho. Where would your jury come from? It would have to be from the state (Idaho) and district (the District of Wyoming) in which the crime was commited -- in other words, from that same part of Yellowstone which is in Idaho. The population of that area?

Zero.

Link via Dan Lewis | Legal Article | Image: USGS

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John Kestner and other MIT students designed the Proverbial Wallet. It provides tactile feedback about the state of the user's finances. Whenever there's a bank transaction, it vibrates. As the user's bank account grows, it swells. As money is depleted, it compresses. A hinge tightens as the user approaches a financial goal, discouraging further spending.

Link via Gizmodo

Jalapeño peppers rate about 2,500 to 5,000 on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness. The new Naga Viper, however, measures 1,359,000 Scovilles. It was developed by researchers at Warwick University in Britain who crossed the hottest peppers in the world. The Naga Viper is so hot that it's actually dangerous to eat:

"It's painful to eat," Fowler told the Daily Mail. "It's hot enough to strip paint." Indeed, the Daily Mail reports that defense researchers are already investigating the pepper's potential uses as a weapon.

But Fowler -- who makes customers sign a waiver declaring that they're of sound mind and body before trying a Naga Viper-based curry -- insists that consuming the fiery chili does the body good.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: Cascade News

(Video Link)

Did the movie Inception make sense to you? Me neither. But this video by YouTube user weikang helps. It shows the four different dream levels in the story simultaneously, rather than flipping back and forth between them as the movie does.

via Urlesque

Instructables user sdudley created a frame for his Dremel rotary tool that makes it an effective, if tiny, table saw. He's provided a stencil that you can print out and use as a guide when cutting the wood.

Link via Make

(Video Link)

Until recently, robots have been unable to replace human workers at the task of deboning meat due to the differences between individual pieces of meat. But the HAMDAS-R built by Mayekawa Electric can now debone ham effectively:

HAMDAS-R has made it possible to automate the processing of irregularly shaped, soft foods like meat. Until now, the use of robots for food processing hasn't progressed very much. That's because it's necessary to mechanize the techniques of skilled workers, and it's hard to mechanize tasks that rely on human hands. Another problem was that the cleaning and hygiene requirements of food processing plants made it difficult to introduce robots into such an environment. Until now, very little progress had been made in that regard, but HAMDAS-R enables those requirements to be met. So we hope this robot will expand the possibilities for automating the processing of irregularly shaped, soft types of food.

Nom Nom Nom.

http://www.diginfo.tv/2010/12/06/10-0250-f-en.php via Popular Science