iGo's three new products, the Power Smart Tower, Power Smart Wall and Laptop Charger, detect when a plugged-in device isn't being used and then shut off the power being drawn from the wall—which could equal huge energy savings.

The Power Smart Tower has four of these Green outlets, four normal outlets (in case you have stuff that needs to draw power all the time) and two USB jacks, and will run $80. Its little brother, the Power Smart Wall, is meant to be wall-mounted, and has half the number of outlets and no USB jacks. It'll retail for $30 (this one is pretty tempting to me personally—seems fairly priced and a nice easy way to save some power). Finally, the diminutive laptop charger, helpfully named Laptop Charger, only charges your computer when it actually needs it, and offers an additional plug for a mobile device. That one'll run you $100. All three products are available now from iGo's site. [Krunker via Ubergizmo]

Wish you could touch, sniff, or lick something you see online? This concept will eventually make that wish come true as it spits out a scented flavor strip while you slip your hand inside the device to cop a feel.

I know I can't be the only one thinking that this device, dubbed Sense, would be used in combination with some not-so-safe-for-work websites, but it's absolutely brilliant even if you skip those applications.

Basically the device would recreate temperature, roughness, softness, hardness, and pressure in order to let you "touch" whatever's on your screen, while a special "smell and flavor-ink micro-printer" would print out lil' wax strips which melt on your tongue for a flavor and scent-filled finish.

I don't think I could see myself using this thing on a regular basis, if it ever gets made, but there would definitely be some potential for a few hours of amusement and virtual boob-squeezing. And maybe something less productive, too. [Design Blog]

Rainn Wilson, best known for playing Dwight Schrute on The Office, shot a 140-second film using a Nikon D5000 as part of his participation in the Nikon Film Festival. He talked with us about directing, pancakes and solar-powered deer-meat grinders.

Rainn is one of three judges in the inaugural Twitter-themed Nikon Festival, in which people submit 140-second videos in the hopes of winning a $100,000 prize. Here's Rainn's own video—not a contest entry, naturally—which he made using just an entry-level DSLR:

In your 140-second film, you scatter pancakes on the ground in the shape of an eye, taunt a rocking horse, and play yourself in ping-pong. Were you worried about making a film that's such transparent Oscar-bait?

I was, I was a little bit. You know, there's kind of a formula for winning an Oscar and I pretty much followed it to a tee. The only things I left out were someone dying of a debilitating illness and a lot of, like, tracking shots at an airport.

You're an actor, writer and Twitterer, so it seems like this festival is a pretty good fit—but what about this particular festival most appealed to you?

One thing I'm all for, in all seriousness, is, in this age of minutia, where anyone can post their domes on their websites or on YouTube, where digital cameras take high-def video, is to democratize the filmmaking art. Instead of filmmaking being this realm of people who went to top film schools and knew the right people, now it's open to everyone. All you need is a camera that you can buy at your local Best Buy, a good idea and some visual talent for storytelling, and you can win a real prize.

Hypothetical question: What would you say is a reasonable amount of money to slip a judge in, say, a digital short film festival, to ensure a win? Purely hypothetical, remember.

I can guarantee anyone a win for $99,000. You could walk away with $1,000. American. Just slip me 99 grand and it's yours.

You've achieved pretty amazing success in the past few years, with a breakout role on a hit sitcom, the leading role in a movie, and a bunch of memorable cameos. Were you upset when MTV chose iJustine over you to be the official Twitter correspondent of the 2009 Video Music Awards?

Upset is the understatement of the century. I was devastated. My world was rocked. I have more Twitter followers, I'm better known, and I have a MUCH better body.

Your spirituality-discussion website is called SoulPancake, and pancakes are also featured in your 140-second film. What can you tell us about your relationship with pancakes?

You know, I'm trying to get over a primal wound. When I was a child, I was raped by a pancake.

My followup question was if you had any favorite pancake recipes you want to share, but now it seems like kind of a sore topic.

Yeah, very sore. But I'd have to go with the walnut-cranberry.

That's a good one.

Pumpkin. Lemon.

So…

Caramel... Pancakes.

Your 140-second film is really well shot and fun to look at—did you direct it yourself?

I directed it in collaboration with a friend of mine, Joshua Homnick. We've collaborated on a bunch of things; we're actually working on a new media project for Microsoft Zune and Xbox. [Joshua is] a great filmmaker, photographer, and editor; I couldn't have done it without him.

Are you interested in maybe directing an episode of The Office, like Steve Carell did?

Yeah. John Krasinski directs one in the spring and supposedly I'll be directing one pretty soon. So get ready for that. I'm gonna put Carell through his paces. I'm gonna be like, "Man, uh-uh, not good enough. Not funny enough. Try again, make me laugh. Cut! What are you thinking, Carell? Come on, magic man, show me what you got!"

Do you think Dwight would read Gizmodo? I ask because it sometimes seems like some of our commenters are channeling him.

Dwight would definitely be on Gizmodo, but he'd be the guy on the comment board who always writes "first." He'd always be in a race to write first. He'd be "The First Guy."

After seeing the joy that Dwight took in his Christmas present this year, a nutcracker he built himself, I'm curious: What would Dwight's favorite gadgets be? Are any of them from this century?

That's an excellent question. I think Dwight would enjoy updating industrial gadgets from the last century for the modern world. For instance, he might have, like, a deer sausage grinder, but solar powered.

Remember the girl whose MacBook was turned into Swiss cheese while she was traveling through Tel Aviv? There's a happy ending, according to this interview, as she's being reimbursed for her damaged laptop. Let's just hope she stops behaving suspiciously.

These leaks supposedly show AT&T's very first Android phone, either called Backflip or Enzo. Aside from the odd backwards hinge, it looks mostly like a smaller, crappier Cliq—not exactly what we expected, given their stance on Android.

This phone is smaller than the Cliq, with only a 3.1-inch, 320x480 resolution, a 528MHz Qualcomm proc, and 512MB of ROM and 256MB of RAM. It'll bring the expected array of connections (Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth), along with the same Blur brand of Android initiated by the Cliq, but those specs are pretty standard—downright unimpressive, really. The only interesting part is the unusual keyboard, which flips out backwards so the keyboard is exposed even when the handset is closed. That keyboard, by the way, is a full QWERTY with what appears to be an optical trackpad.

AT&T is the last of the major carriers to bring an Android phone to market, and if this is indeed their first one, we've got to admit to being puzzled. Each of the other carriers' first Android phones were the top of the line at the time (G1 on T-Mobile, HTC Hero on Sprint, and Droid on Verizon), so we're really wondering why AT&T would launch Android with such a, well, lackluster-looking device. Of course, this is all total speculation, so we'll reserve judgment, but it's definitely something to ponder. [Phandroid via Electronista]

Courting controversy, Danish designer Magnhild Disington has created a range of USB sticks covered in real fur, because without fur they're "neutral in appearance and lack emotional appeal." Err...okaay.

Trying to make a point, but failing somewhere in the execution of it, Disington uses leftover pieces of fur which would normally have been thrown away, to cover the USB sticks. This, she says:

"provide unique character and sensory experiences which create emotional value within the physical product."

Still no kitten ear USB sticks, though. [Magnhild Disington via Core77]

Joseph Shoer is a Ph.D. candidate in aerospace engineering, studying how modular spacecraft could be assembled, and hoping that they will be the telescopes and human exploration vehicles of the future, and not for crushing the dreams of Martian colonists.

I had a discussion recently with friends about the various depictions of space combat in science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. We have the fighter-plane engagements of Star Wars, the subdued, two-dimensional naval combat in Star Trek, the Newtonian planes of Battlestar Galactica, the staggeringly furious energy exchanges of the combat wasps in Peter Hamilton's books, and the use of antimatter rocket engines themselves as weapons in other sci-fi. But suppose we get out there, go terraform Mars, and the Martian colonists actually revolt. Or suppose we encounter hostile aliens. How would space combat actually go?

First, let me point out something that Ender's Game got right and something it got wrong. What it got right is the essentially three-dimensional nature of space combat, and how that would be fundamentally different from land, sea, and air combat. In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics – not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets' orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we'll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window. At any given point in time, there are only so many routes from here to Mars that will leave our imperialist forces enough fuel and energy to put down the colonists' revolt. So, it would actually make sense to build space defense platforms in certain orbits, to point high-power radar-reflection surveillance satellites at certain empty reaches of space, or even to mine parts of the void. It also means that strategy is not as hopeless when we finally get to the Bugger homeworld: the enemy ships will be concentrated into certain orbits, leaving some avenues of attack guarded and some open. (Of course, once our ships maneuver towards those unguarded orbits, they will be easily observed – and potentially countered.)

Now, Let's Talk Technology

First, pending a major development in propulsion technology, combat spacecraft would likely get around the same way the Apollo spacecraft went to the Moon and back: with orbit changes effected by discrete main-engine burns. The only other major option is a propulsion system like ion engines or solar sails, which produce a very low amount of thrust over a very long time. However, the greater speed from burning a chemical, nuclear, or antimatter rocket in a single maneuver is likely a better tactical option. One implication of rocket propulsion is that there will be relatively long periods during which Newtonian physics govern the motions of dogfighting spacecraft, punctuated by relatively short periods of maneuvering. Another is that combat in orbit would be very different from combat in "deep space," which is what you probably think of as how space combat should be – where a spacecraft thrusts one way, and then keeps going that way forever. No, around a planet, the tactical advantage in a battle would be determined by orbit dynamics: which ship is in a lower (and faster) orbit than which; who has a circular orbit and who has gone for an ellipse; relative rendezvous trajectories that look like winding spirals rather than straight lines.

Second, there are only a few ways to maneuver the attitude of a spacecraft around – to point it in a new direction. The fast ways to do that are to fire an off-center thruster or to tilt a gyroscope around to generate a torque. Attitude maneuvers would be critical to point the main engine of a space fighter to set up for a burn, or to point the weapons systems at an enemy. Either way, concealing the attitude maneuvers of the space fighter would be important to gain a tactical advantage. So I think gyroscopes ("CMGs," in the spacecraft lingo) would be a better way to go – they could invisibly live entirely within the space fighter hull, and wouldn't need to be mounted on any long booms (which would increase the radar, visible, and physical cross-section of the fighter) to get the most torque on the craft. With some big CMGs, a spacecraft could flip end-for-end in a matter of seconds or less. If you come upon a starfighter with some big, spherical bulbs near the midsection, they are probably whopping big CMGs and the thing will be able to point its guns at you wherever you go. To mitigate some of the directionality of things like weapons fire and thruster burns, space fighters would probably have weapons and engines mounted at various points around their hull; but a culture interested in efficiently mass-producing space warships would probably be concerned about manufacturing so many precision parts for a relatively fragile vessel, and the craft would likely only have one main engine rather than, say, four equal tetrahedral engines.

How About Weapons?

We have to consider just how you might damage a spacecraft to put it out of action.

Explosions are basically a waste of energy in space. On the ground, these are devastating because of the shock wave that goes along with them. But in the vacuum of space, an explosion just creates some tenuous, expanding gases that would be easily dissipated by a hull. No, to damage spacecraft systems, you can't hit them with gas unless it's really, really concentrated and energetic. So unless you want to just wait till your enemy is close enough that you can point your engines at him, the best bets for ranged weapons are kinetic impactors and radiation.

A kinetic impactor is basically just a slug that goes really fast and hits the enemy fighter, tearing through the hull, damaging delicate systems with vibrations, throwing gyroscopes out of alignment so that they spin into their enclosures and explode into shards, puncturing tanks of fuel and other consumables, or directly killing the pilot and crew. You know…bullets. But it sounds much more technical and science-fictiony to say "mass driver" or "kinetic lance" or something of the sort. Of course, the simplest way to implement this sort of weapon in space is just as some kind of machine gun or cannon. Those will work in space (ask the Soviets, they tested a cannon on their first Salyut space station), and the shells will do plenty of damage if they hit anything. However, space is filled mostly with empty space, and hitting the enemy ships might be a challenge. Furthermore, if the impactors are too large, the enemy could counter them by firing their own point-defense slugs and knocking the shells out of line. Therefore, I contend that the most effective kinetic space weapons would be either flak shells or actively thrusting, guided missiles. The flak shells would explode into a hail of fragmented shards, able to tear through un-armored systems of many craft at once without the shell directly hitting its target, or able to strike a target even after it tries to evade with a last-minute engine burn. The missiles would be a bit different from the missiles we are used to on Earth, which must continuously thrust to sustain flight. In space, such a weapon would rapidly exhaust its fuel and simply become a dummy shell. No, a space missile would either be fired as an unguided projectile and power up its engine after drifting most of the way to its target, or it would fire its engine in sporadic, short bursts. A definite downside to kinetic weapons on a starfighter is that they would impart momentum to the fighter or change its mass properties. Very large cannons or missiles might therefore be impractical, unless the fighter can quickly compensate for what is essentially a large rocket firing. Even that compensation might give the enemy just the window he needs…

Radiation-based weapons that burn out the electronics of a spacecraft sound exotic, but are still potentially achievable. This would be the attraction of nuclear weapons in space: not the explosion, which would affect just about nothing, but the burst of energetic particles and the ensuing electromagnetic storm. Still, such a burst would have to be either pretty close to the target vessel to scramble its systems, or it would have to be made directional in some way, to focus the gamma-ray and zinging-proton blast. But while we're talking about focused energy weapons, lets just go with a tool that we already use to cut sheet metal on Earth: lasers. In space, laser light will travel almost forever without dissipating from diffraction. Given a large enough power supply, lasers could be used at range to slice up enemy warships. The key phrase there, though, is "given a large enough power supply." Power is hard to come by in the space business. So, expect space laser weapons to take one of three forms: small lasers designed not to destroy, but to blind and confuse enemy sensors; medium-sized lasers that would be fired infrequently and aimed to melt specific vulnerable points on enemy space fighters, like antennae, gimbals, and maneuvering thrusters; and large lasers pumped by the discharge from a large capacitor or similar energy storage device to cut a physical slice into the enemy craft wherever they hit. Such a large weapon would likely only be fired at the very beginning of a battle, because the commander of a ship with such a weapon would not want to keep his capacitor charged when it might unexpectedly blow its energy all at once once he's in the thick of things.

Deflector shields like those in fiction are not possible at present, but it would still make sense to armor combat spacecraft to a limited extent. The spaceframes of the fighters would likely be designed solely for the space environment; the actual ships would be launched within the payload fairings of a rocket or assembled in space. If launched from the ground, armor must be minimized to reduce the launch weight of the spacecraft. But if built and launched in space, it would make sense to plate over vital systems of the vehicle. Thick armor would prevent flak or small lasers from piercing delicate components, and might mitigate a direct strike from a kinetic impactor or heavy cutting laser. However, the more heavily armored and massive a space fighter is, the more thrust it will take to maneuver in orbit and the more energy it will take to spin in place. (Here's where computer games get space combat all wrong: the mass of a huge space cruiser would not place an upper limit on the speed of a vehicle, but it would reduce the acceleration a given engine could produce compared to the same engine on a less massive vehicle.)

I'm assuming that we'd have some intrepid members of the United Earth Space Force crewing these combat vessels. Or, at least, crewing some of them – robotic drone fighters would be a tremendous boon to space soldiers, but the communication lag between planets and vessels in orbit would make the split-second judgments of humans necessary at times. (Until we perfect AIs… but if we're giving them the space fighters from the beginning, we deserve the robot uprising we'll get.) The crews will hardly be sitting around nice conference-room command bridges with no seat belts; nor will they be standing upright in slate-gray console pits with glowing glass displays all over. It's not even a good idea for them to have windows, which would be vulnerable to flak and could give the crew an intense sense of disorientation as the spacecraft maneuvers, and could give them tremendous trouble adapting to rapid changes in light levels as the ship rotates near a planet or star. No, they should be strapped into secure couches and centrally located in the most protected part of the spacecraft. They should also be in full pressure suits, and the interior cabin of the spacecraft should already be evacuated – to prevent fires, or any secondary damage if all the atmosphere rushes out a hull breach. This also reduces the need for escape pods. Camera views from the exterior of the ship and graphical representations of the tactical situation would then be projected directly onto helmet faceplates.

Now, for the final word, let's say the United Earth Space Force defeats the Martian rebels in orbit. What do we do to hit them on the ground? Well, strategic weapons from space are easy: kinetic impactors again. You chuck big ol' spears, aerodynamically shaped so they stay on target and don't burn up in the atmosphere, onto ground targets and watch gravitational potential energy turn into kinetic energy and excavate you a brand-new crater. At some point, though, the imperialist Earthlings probably want to take over the existing infrastructure on Mars. Time to get out the Space Marines!

It's not terribly expensive or difficult, comparatively speaking, to get people from orbit down to a planet surface. You fall. This is the purpose of a space capsule. What's really, really, prohibitively difficult is getting them back up again. So, the victorious orbital forces would have to bring in a transport ship chock full of Space Marines and drop them all at once in little capsules (little because they can only be so big for the atmosphere to effectively brake them, and because you don't want all your Marines perishing in some unfortunate incident). Some orbital forces would remain in place to threaten the ground with bombardment and give the Marines a bit more muscle, but really, the ground-pounders are going to have to be pretty self-sufficient. If they ever want to come back up, they would have to build and/or fuel their own ascent vehicle. (This is the problem facing any NASA Mars efforts, too: getting back up through the Martian atmosphere is much harder than any of the lunar ascents were.)

What Would Combat Spacecraft End Up Looking Like?

There are good arguments to have both large and small spacecraft in the Earth forces. A big spacecraft could have a lot more armor to keep its systems and crew safe, more room for large fuel tanks and electrical power supplies, and larger mass to resist impulses from cannon recoil. However, a smaller craft would be less visible to radar, more maneuverable, and could achieve higher accelerations for constant engine thrust. As with just about any military force, the role of the craft would be tailored to the tactical operations required, so the Space Force would probably include several sizes of craft.

Enemies could come at your ship from any direction in space, which means that you would want to react, strike, and counterattack in any direction. So, you would either have to mount weaponry all around your starfighter, put the weapons on gimbals so that they could rapidly point in any direction, or make the fighter maneuverable enough that it could rapidly point in any direction. Gimbals would be a bad option, because they would introduce points of increased vulnerability, unless they could be very well-armored. I conclude that the big ships would have many weapons, pointed in many directions; the small ships would have a few weapons, with the main weapon systems pointed in one direction.

Maneuverability (angular acceleration) you could achieve with gyroscopes, or by mounting engines or thrusters away from your fighter's center of mass. For the highest levels of maneuverability, the spacecraft should be close to spherical and these engines should be as off-center as possible, which might mean putting thrusters on long booms or struts. The problem with this kind of Firefly-like engine layout is that it becomes very vulnerable. If a fighter can achieve high maneuverability with gyros, those are probably the best option.

So, I think the small fighter craft would be nearly spherical, with a single main engine and a few guns or missiles facing generally forward. They would have gyroscopes and fuel tanks in their shielded centers. It would make sense to build their outer hulls in a faceted manner, to reduce their radar cross-section. Basically, picture a bigger, armored version of the lunar module. The larger warships would also probably be nearly spherical, with a small cluster of main engines facing generally backward and a few smaller engines facing forward or sideways for maneuvering. Cannons, lasers, and missile ports would face outward in many directions. On a large enough space cruiser, it would even be a good idea to put docking ports for the small fighters, so that the fighters don't have to carry as many consumables on board.

I think it's time to sketch some pictures and write some stories!

Space-Wide Peace

I certainly hope we don't get into any space wars. Human nature being what it is, though, and given how scarce a lot of resources really are on the scale of a solar system or a galaxy, I don't think it's out of the question. I would like to think that when we start colonizing other worlds, we will be sufficiently enlightened to do so from on board the Ship of the Imagination, and not as futuristic conquistadores. Still, the part of me that loves science fiction has fun with these thought experiments.

Reprinted with permission from Joseph Shoer. Photo by TG Daily