Newspace

As you’ve likely already heard, North Bergen High School in Hudson County, New Jersey, actually adapted Alien as its school play:

Believe it or not, they’ve received praise from the original Ripley, Sigourney Weaver, and director Ridley Scott!

Additional video below:

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A SpaceX Dragon Capsule docked with the International Space Station, hopefully inaugurating an era when the west can continue its space business without relying on certain problematic countries. The test flight carried no people, only a dummy named, believe it or not, Ripley.

In nerd entertainment news, the year 2020 will not only give us the next Halloween to fall on a Saturday with a full moon¹, it will see a new, animated Scooby-Doo movie, with some notable names doing voices. Mystery, Inc. will join forces with other Hanna-Barbera characters to stop…. Dick Dastardly?

Well, this could be interesting.

Click for a continued blend of science and nerd culture sightings:

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Whatever else is happening in the US, at least money remains available for NASA, and the agencies still intends to return to the moon.

Elsewhere in space, it seems our galaxy is not flat, but rather warped.

That’s some actual space news. Some SF and pop-culture related Nerd News appears below.

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Okay, I hate to post an entry promoting a commercial, especially a Wal-Mart commercial, but the company dropped an ad for their Grocery Pickup Service during the Golden Globe Awards, which features a number of classic genre cars, and a handful of the related characters. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a good deal of fun.

Another year comes to its conclusion! Back in ’84, Isaac Asimov made some predictions for our coming year. Like all good futurists and SF writers, he got a few things right and others…. Well…. He foresaw in broad strokes where the computer/information age was heading, but he was a tad optimistic with regards to our future presence in space.

Not that we’re not involved in space.

Dr. Brian May’s just-released tribute to New Horizons

If you think you might have to travel a bit to get to wherever you’re going for New Year’s Eve, consider: just as 2019 gets underway, NASA’s New Horizons will pass the Kuiper Belt object, 2014 MU69 aka Ultima Thule.

Click for more, including some top science stories, a blue day in NYC, a strange defense for a fallen geek star, and some recent cosplay video.

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Sure, I planned to post my video of the 2018 Forest City Comicon, but then this past week also turned out to be full of science-related stories. From ancient life forms to raving octopodes to…. Spock’s actual home planet? We have a news round-up below.

And more video of events, of course.

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This remarkable short film Scavenger from Raphael Rogers on Vimeo has been posted as a “proof of concept” for a feature. Whether or not it gets made, we have these visuals to enjoy.

Actual space news, and some recent con cosplay, appear below (along with a sneak preview of Halloween, not for the weak of heart):

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The planet Mars will pass closer to Earth tonight than it has been since 2003, or will be again until 2287 (though it will pass close-ish in 2020).

Meanwhile, on Earth, Actor Topher Grace has edited The Hobbit into the two-hour film it probably should have been, to much online applause.

See both while you can.

For fun, below: the recent Aquaman trailer and an amusing fan revision of it:

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Okay, it has some serious limitations and the price tag is a tad hefty, but Richard Browning’s outfit is the closest we’ve come to a real life Iron Man suit, and you can have one, if you can spare the cash.

True, the suit is not a brand new item (you may have read about the prototype last year) but its more impressive flight-capacity and hypothetical availability appear to be.

I’ll have to get back to you with brief footage of my foray (as a spectator!) into second-tier “Pro Wrestling” later this summer. Meanwhile, we have a range of posts from around the net: new rocket engines, the Tsar’s space program, a Homestar Runner boardgame, a new Buffy, and video reports from San Diego:

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