Theo Jansen's Strandbeest (2m:38s)

Theo Jansen's strandbeest straddle the line between kentic sculpture and robotics. Powered by the sea breeze in Holland, they are majestic marvels of engineering and inspiration.

LINKS GOOD ON 2011-09-17

The Great Robot Race (52m:34s)

This video follows contestants in the 2004 DARPAG Grand Challenge as they prepare for race day. The thing is, the racers are robots.

LINKS GOOD ON 2011-08-28

The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego (2m:57s)

Constructed between 100 and 150 BC, the Antikythera mechanism is one of the world's oldest known computers. Designed to calculate astronomical events, its purpose remained a mystery for decades following its discovery in a shipwrek off of the Greek island of Antikythera in the early 1900s. In the above video (The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego), from Small Mammal on Vimeo, John Pavlus follows the construction of a working replica made from Lego.

LINKS GOOD ON 2011-08-28

MARS Dead or Alive (46m:07s)

This video follows the creation and use of NASA's semi-autonomous Mars rovers--Spirit and Opportunity. I remember watching this hours after Spirit's January 3, 2004 landing on MARS. It was wonderfully exciting, watching the project's history then immediately seeing the first images back from the surface. Every NASA mission should be shadowed by such a talented film crew.

This episode is one of two. The second, Welcome to Mars, can also be found on Hulu.

LINKS GOOD ON 2011-08-28

TED Talk by Spacecraft Designer Burt Rutan (2006) (20m:17s)

Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites won the Ansari X Prize by building a sub-orbital honest to goodness spacecraft. I've long been skeptical of space tourism. Something about the Soviet model leaves a bad taste in my mouth, a little like millionaires paying to ride on an aircraft carrier during wartime. The X prize and Rutan's vision, however, strike me as different. They aren't the bastardization of scientific exploration but the independent birth of entrepreneurial and adventurous spirit. In this clip, Rutan shares his vision for the future of space flight, and the sky's the limit.

Rutan's brainchild, SpaceShipOne, is a spectacular feat of engineering, a spacecraft built out of fabric and glue!

LINKS GOOD ON 2011-08-28

K'nex Mechanical Adding Machine (3m:10s)

Occasionally I worry that the integrated circuit will be the undoing of childhood tinkering. Just look at how hard it is to work on your own car these days. "Infernal computers!" Then I see something like this, and I'm immediately reminded why childhood is sooo cool. It's an excellent mechanical, macroscopic, and home-made example of what our computers do everyday. Score one for the tinkerers, and well done kwilliam2.

This DIY adder is only one product of a thoroughly charming community, building mechanical analogs of what are now mostly digital devices. Here's a cool Lego adder.