Space Legos!

mfarver writes "The Air Force is seeking research proposals for Space Legos. Now you can have your childhood fantasies of playing with blocks and getting paid for it. Actually, its not a bad concept, standarized components that can be "plugged" together in space for different functions."

Comments

Say It With Me...

[GTRacer]

...space legos

Space Lego Blocks, dammit!

GTRacer
- Looking for a 953...

Bloom County

[Midnight Warrior]

Didn't Berke Breathed have Opus spend millions of dollars in tax-payer money during the Reagan initiated "Star Wars" program only to deliver a Lego based defense strategy?

-2 point for non-originality.

Re:Bloom County

[Micro$will]

There was also a joke in the BSD fortune program that made a reference to a "Lego Carpet Bomb", which when deployed, would scatter millions of pieces of tiny plastic bits that hurt like hell when you stepped on them.

Re:Bloom County

[seanellis]

Initial testing was done by Olver Wendell Jones with legos (sic), but in the end they just sewed the bills together into a kind of giant net.

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[Tumbleweed]

> The plural is Lego.

No, the plural is BeoLego! Or LegoWulf. Either way is good.

Now, imagine a MindStorm of these! :)

Accuracy

[tsa]

We tried to build a machine from Lego in our research group a few years ago, when Mindstorm had just hit the shelves, but we found the accuracy of the movement was quite bad. So it can only be used for a limited range of experiments. On the other hand, it is very cheap compared to custom-build machines and therefore certainly worth taking a look at.

Re:Accuracy

[Smidge204]

Indeed. I've made several robots out of legos (not even mindstorm sets - just plain old Technic sets, motors salvaged from old coputer hardware, an old PC, and a good dollop of hot melt glue ;) )

The gears and other components are certintly NOT indended for accuracy by any stretch of the imagination. But they are fairly cheap, robust (except for those little 8-tooth gears...) and easy to assemble into just about anything you need.

I even built a joystick out of legos once. There was a bit of play in it, but not too much. What really killed it was the lack of a self-centering mechanism. You really go all over the place in an energetic game of Descent!
=Smidge=

Re:Accuracy

[Gyl]

From the article: The Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate is soliciting information and follow-up discussions to support research and development of concepts for rapid-prototyping of space systems based on a kind of space "LEGO_TM". These "LEGOS", also referred to as "protosats", would be a (hopefully small) family of building blocks, from which any complex structure could be built, in this case the skeletal structures of spacecraft. The protosats could, for example, be panels that contain automatic mechanisms for engaging connections when two panels are placed together. The panels could contain wiring resources, computing blocks, etc. that when put together form a superset.

RTA!

A good idea?

[MacEnvy]

Doesn't this sounds a lot like how the Replicators got started on Stargate SG-1? Believe me, we don't need any damn replictors ...

My motto is, if the Asgard can't do it, I shouldn't attempt it.

Re:A good idea?

[Psion]

"So as long as they reject proposals by women, we should be ok."

Uh...Jack? Maybe you should take a look at the information under "Contracting Officer":

Jayne Faris, Contracting Officer, Phone 505 846 5935, Fax 505 846 7049, Email Jayne.Faris@Kirtland.af.mil

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[psyconaut]

That was nearly funny ;-)

-psy

aaa

[magsymp]

Space Legos + Slashdot =

Millenium Falcon and bad jokes

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[Tumbleweed]

Yeah, too bad there's no moderation option for 'nearly funny'.

Kinda like 'mostly harmless'.

This and that...

[neglige]

Hmmmm...

You might want to build some of this like that. Lego all the way.

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[psyconaut]

You're still my hero, Timothy ;-)

It's the Borg!

[Ydna]

From the website:

In this example, five or more modules, each with processors, are connected together, forming a collective. When one module is removed, the "collective" senses the removal and adjusts accordingly.

Next thing you know, we'll build this thing and send it off to the delta quadrant for further development.

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[Tumbleweed]

> You're still my hero, Timothy ;-)

Yeah, I seem to be quite the sexy bitch lately - weird.

Maybe if I had a Slashdot shirt with my karma rating on it, that'd happen in real life, too?

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[psyconaut]

Ummmm....my point was "Legos" was wrong. We didn't really need your Copy&Paste to clarify that the company capitalizes their name.

And, in reality, it's LeGo....even if the company won't admit it...the name of the company comes from the Danish words "Leg Godt" which mean "Play Good".

-psy

Yes! thank you!

[bad_fx]

Troll? WTH? Take a look at this quote from lego.com:

If the LEGO trademark is used at all, it should always be used as an adjective, not as a noun. For example, say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGO BRICKS". Never say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGOs".

from here. "Legos" makes no sense, dangit. How and why did people even start saying "legos"? The blocks/parts aren't legos! They're called LEGO blocks or blocks of LEGO or LEGO bricks or LEGO pieces... See, there's so many damn choices, why do people insist on legos? Gah! When I wuz a kid we knew what to call LEGO.

Interesting idea...

[WoTG]

Although, I thought they did a lot of this already? Don't folks recycle software and module designs as much as possible when designing new satellites now?

Re: Lego, no Legos!

[neonstz]

And, in reality, it's LeGo....even if the company won't admit it...the name of the company comes from the Danish words "Leg Godt" which mean "Play Good".

If the company won't admit it, why do they mention it on their webpages?

Why do people insist on getting the plural wrong?

[Andy_R]

There is no such word as "Legos", just as there is no such word as "sheeps". The correct word to use is simply Lego.

I'm sure that everyone who has ever read a slashdot story about lego must know this by now, so why are people still getting it wrong? Obstinacy? Stupidity? Or maybe posters (and the US Air Force) just think they are right and the Lego company are wrong about this?

Re:Why do people insist on getting the plural wron

[Eevee]

The real question is which is the wrong pluralization. Why do we accept "sheep" as a plural form, but not "car"? Would it not be better to have a single method, rather than have to depend on memorizing multiple methods and exceptions.

Especially sheep. With the fading of agrarian life do we really need special plurals for sheep, oxen, or geese? (Although I do realize some slashdotters have a certain amount of emotional attachment to sheep...)

Re:Why do people insist on getting the plural wron

[srn_test]

Isn't it just USians who say this? Here in Australia everyone I knoew refers to the product as "Lego".

Re:Yes! thank you!

[Lord_Dweomer]

Ask any kid who has a Lego product what the pieces are called, and he will say "Lego's". Not "lego bricks", not "lego blocks". Frankly, kids don't really care about the correct usage of a term.

The AF Gets It

[chaoticset]

Most of the barriers to this goal are: (1) wiring harnesses, (2) software, (3) human fallibility, and (4) closed, proprietary "standards".

Hmmm...I'm guessing Microsoft's bids on this will fall on deaf ears...

Well,

[bad_fx]

Ask any kid who has a Lego product what the pieces are called, and he will say "Lego's". Not "lego bricks", not "lego blocks". Frankly, kids don't really care about the correct usage of a term.

*Heh, decides not to get pedantic over "Lego's" (Lego is?) vs Legos* (Muahahaha - fear my grammar nazism)

Maybe it's just 'cause I don't live in the US, but seriously when I was a kid, none of us called them legos (IIRC). Perhaps it's just another of your weird Americanisms :P When refering to them in plural it was still lego. For example:

"When I was a kid I had lots of lego", not "lots of legos."

or

"When I was a kid I played with lego a lot", not "I played with legos a lot."

See, you don't even have to say the blocks or the s. It's actually shorter not to. And for this story they could have said "space lego". I don't really care what kids call it, but we here at Slashdot (though we're all kids at heart) are mostly adults, I would think, so how about getting it right, hmm?

Re:Well,

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Maybe it's just 'cause I don't live in the US, but seriously when I was a kid, none of us called them legos (IIRC). Perhaps it's just another of your weird Americanisms :P When refering to them in plural it was still lego. "

Definitely a nationality issue. Where are you from that the singular is Lego and not Legos?

Re:Well,

[bad_fx]

South Africa.

PS: Sorry, I didn't mean singular, maybe I confused the issue by saying "still" - Neither lego nor legos makes sense for a single piece.

Re:Why do people insist on getting the plural wron

[iamhassi]

I dunno, the words "PICK UP YOUR LEGOS!" still echo in my ears twenty years later.

What do you call more than one Lego? Lego bricks? Maybe it's just a US thing, but in the US more than one Lego is refered to as "Legos", and considering how many times "legos" has been used on slashdot I'd say using the word "legos" is a slashdot thing too.

When on slashdot, do as the slashdotters do.