Remember the times you would stare at the biggest LEGO display sets in the toy store wishing you could persuade your parents to buy you one? But like the most of us, you probably had to settle for one of the smaller boxes below $30. The good news is, it is not too late.
The LEGO Ideas ISS (International Space Station) was revealed as a build-ready, in-store, consumer-ready set this week. This build was made on the micro-level, which means it's got a pair of 2 astronaut microfigures that'll live in the base of the set near its user-built stand. This system is both incredibly detailed and surprisingly simple - an instant classic, for sure.
This week the European Space Agency's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) took off on a Vega rocket. This takeoff sequence was done at the European Spaceport in French Guiana on Wednesday (February 11th) at 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT). This craft was a prototype for a reusable orbiter, prepared to move passengers into space in the future. Below you'll be able to watch this spacecraft take off successfully, heading 340 km into space not long after its initial launch earlier this morning. This system precedes a program called PRIDE: Program for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator for Europe.
Back in September, SpaceX posted a short video showing a glimpse of its reusable rocket, the Grasshopper. The company has released a new video of the rocket, this time sending it to its latest record of 131 feet. While not quite the two miles that was hinted, it was still an impressive distance. Check out the video of it after the jump.
The folks at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH have shown off a brand new network-attached storage system by the name of OMNINAS KD20. This NAS is the first in its product range and is aimed directly at small offices, workgroups, and home use. You'll have 2-bays of storage power with solid aluminum and white plastic surrounding the whole construct. Both of the hot-swappable drive bays are able to work with up to 4TB 3.5" hard disks and SSDs.
Shuttle has announced the debut of a new graphics card in its slim computing solutions. The company has crammed an AMD GPU inside its new XS35GTA V3 SFF machine, and the XS35V3 gets integrated Intel graphics. Both computers retain their silent fanless designs. One of the two new models has an integrated GPU, and the other has discrete graphics.
Shuttle has branched out from its usual fare of small-form-factor PCs to jump into the network-attached storage (NAS) and personal cloud market, with the OMNINAS KD20 making its debut at Computex this week. A compact two-bay backup, file sharing and media serving box, the KD20 can handle up to 8TB across a pair of 3.5-inch SATA drives and comes with apps for various mobile platforms for grabbing your content while on the go.
Compact PC manufacturer Shuttle has outed its latest barebones computer, the Shuttle XPC SZ68R5, featuring Intel's Z68 high-performance chipset along with SSD caching for super-fast boot times and app loading. The 33 x 21.5 x 19 cm chassis can accommodate up to 32GB of DDR3 memory, Core i3/i5/i7 processors and up to four add-on cards, since it has slots for PCIe-x16-2.0, PCIe-x4-2.0, Mini-PCIe-x1-2.0 and mSATA. HTPC duty is made easier thanks to both HDMI and DVI-I ports.
Shuttle has outed its latest barebones PC, the XH61 and if you've been eyeing the Mac mini but need an optical drive and native Windows then the 7cm-high desktop is worth a glance. The XH61 packs an LGA1155 socket motherboard with two RAM slots - for up to 16GB of DDR3 memory - four SATA 3 Gbit/s ports and room for both a 2.5-inch drive and slimline DVD or Blu-ray drive into a 24.2 x 20 x 7.3 cm enclosure, ideal for HTPC or desktop duties.
Shuttle has been around for years and years with some really cool small form factor computers that allow users to save space on their desktop and still use the normal monitor they already have. The latest computer in the SFF series from Shuttle is called the H3 6700P and this machine is aimed at professional users.
Shuttle has unveiled an interesting and very compact new mini PC in Europe called the XG41. The machine is a barebones computer meaning you will need to add some hardware like memory, CPU, and storage to get the machine to operate. Shuttle is famous for its very small and compact computers and the XG41 certainly goes with the compact theme taking up 3-liters of volume on a shelf. The machine measures 24.2cm D x 20cm W x 7.3cm H and it has plenty of connectivity despite the small size.