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17 www.hplusmagazine.com The Technology: NASA's lCROSS spacecraft, which blasted off in the general direction of the Moon this June, with a mission to confirm the presence of ice in the Moon's shadowy polar regions. The PanIc: lCROSS will investigate the Moon, not by landing on it, but by doing something rather more spectacular: smashing a projectile into the Moon's polar region, and then analyzing the resulting debris plume. Scientists predict that the plume will even be visible from Earth, with a reasonably sized amateur telescope. When lCROSS launched, there were a number of reports about how NASA was "bombing the Moon" in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. Conspiracy theorists even claim that it's a ploy by the government to antagonize a secret alien base on the far side. The RealITy: NASA's "missile" isn't a bomb, an explosive, a nuke, or indeed anything special at all — it's just an old, burnt-out rocket stage without any fuel left. It's tiny compared to the Moon: the rocket stage weighs around two tons, while the Moon weighs in at a slightly heftier 73,477,000,000,000,000,000 tons. And, while it is a violation of international law to put nuclear weapons in space, there's no law against crashing a spacecraft into a celestial body. It's been standard practice for almost fifty years, from the early days of space exploration in the 1960s, to last June, when Japan's Kaguya probe ended its life with a bang. The Technology: Cyclone Power Technologies' "Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot," or EATR, a steam-powered robot developed under a grant from the Pentagon and intended for use by the military. The PanIc: Engineers hope that EATR will be able to power itself for months at a time by roaming around the battlefield autonomously and consuming "organic matter" to feed its engine. Once the machine is released, it will chomp up everything in its path —- plants, animals, even the bodies of fallen soldiers. It will relentlessly consume to sate its insatiable thirst for fuel. It even comes with a chainsaw, perhaps to help it slice us up into more manageable pieces, before it feasts upon our flesh? The RealITy: After the rumors started making their way around the Internet, EATR's designers stepped in to clarify: the "flesh-eating robot" will consume vegetable matter only, and it comes equipped with a suite of sensors and computers to help it determine whether the things it comes across are animal, vegetable or neither. After all, desecration of the dead is against the laws of war and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway. There are a lot more bushes to feast upon than human bodies. #2 #1 BomBing the moon flesh eating roBots Exploding iPods http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/55962 Robot attacks Swedish factory worker http://www.thelocal.se/19120.html Sexting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting Bombing the Moon http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasas-mission-to-bomb-the-moon- 2009-06 http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/air-space/crashing-moon The "Flesh Eating Robot" http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/19/robots-research resources Thomas McCabe is a mathematics student at Yale University and a research associate at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. the panic: once the machine is released, it will chomp up everything in its path — plants, animals, even the bodies of fallen soldiers. IMAgE COURTESy Of ROBOTIC TECHnOLOgy InC. by roaming around the battlefield autonomously and consuming "organic matter" to feed its engine. Once the machine is released, it will chomp up everything in its path —- plants, animals, even the bodies of fallen soldiers. It will relentlessly consume to sate its insatiable thirst for fuel. It even comes with a chainsaw, perhaps to help it slice us up into more manageable pieces, before it feasts upon our flesh? The Real designers stepped in to clarify: the "flesh-eating robot" will consume vegetable matter only, and it comes equipped with a suite of sensors and computers to help it determine whether the things it comes across are animal, vegetable or neither. After all, desecration of the dead is against the laws of war and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway. even the bodies of fallen soldiers. CROSS spacecraft, which blasted off in the general direction of the Moon this June, with a mission to confirm the he panic: machine is released, it will t machine is released, it will