I Art You

As usual Tech Travel week is once again bringing you the latest and greatest in tech travel news, this week has been another big one. While many of the attractions listed this week are things you actually can not go, we feel they still fall right into the category of tech travel tourism. Confused? That’s ok read on and all will be revealed.

The first item is a bit of sad news for Trekkie travelers, the Star Trek Mecca “Star Treck Experience” in Las Vegas has closed. The museum/rides was housed in the Hilton hotel, but the company was looking at bringing a more profitable attraction in for some time now. They must have found something new to go in there because the Star Trek attraction is out the streets looking for a new location. Source

Next up is some serious American ingenuity, although you can not necessarily visit these sites as a tourists these locations represent the future. Technology progressing in front of your eyes, now that is something to take note of in your tech travels.

The U.S.’s largest solar plant is located in sunny Nevada. Created by Solar One ACCIONA’s plant produces enough energy to power over 14,000 homes annually.

Next up is Space Port America, picture an airport, but instead of catching a flight to some other world city you take a trip to space. This is the concept that is being put into reality Las Cruces, New Mexio. Home to Virgin Galactic and a number of other small space tourism companies the project is poised to make New Mexico the world’s hub for space tourism.

After talking about Space travel, regular old ground transportation may sound a little boring. However, one company that’s developing some new train technology could revolutionize train travel in the United States. American Maglev is pushing magnetic levitation tech for use in urban transportation systems. They claim their methods are much cheaper then traditional Maglev trains. They are currently constructing a test track in Georgia, United States.

Another busy week for tech travel news. Considering the controversy in the US elections about million dollar planitariums its only fitting we bring you news of the most expensive planetarium on earth! Also on tap today are massive solar fields in Nevada, and the closure of a beloved tech attraction in Vegas.

First of is a new hotel in Malibu offering all the amenities of a geeks dream home. Order room service on your ipod, surf the net via wi-fi, or watch some youtube videos on your big screen TV. Truly a hotel for the technologist in you, the best part is that the Malibu hotel is only a trial and a LA software company is looking to role these out nation wide. Source

Further abroad in the land of the rising sun you can now visit Thanko’s flagship store in Tokyo. Thanko is most famous for its campy usb creations, from heated slippers to sushi usb, use the map, and with a bit of luck you should be in USB heaven soon.

San Fransisco is home to the worlds most advanced planetarium, the Morison Planitarium will blow you away, three stories tall and $20 million dollars, is it worth it? You decide, as for the political news you can view the much debated Chicago planetarium here.

For the final instalation, check out this cool sci-fi style tower from the Czech Republic. Although the tower itself is cool the really neat part is when you catch site of the aliean like creatures climbing up and down the sides of it..the most sci-fi modern are in the world!

Be sure to tune in next week for the weekly technology travel round up.

Researchers in England have finished work on the first ever video game museum/archive. Although the industry is only 46 years old the researchers want to make sure they avoid losing historic artifacts by not acting early enough to preserve them. Besides games the museum will include game artwork, advertisements, and other relevant artifacts.

The archive was formed by academics at Nottingham Trent University, in cooperation with the National Media Museum in Bradford. The archive will, in fact, be located at the National Media Museum, and managed by Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play. Interestingly, along with games and consoles, the archive will also include a wide swath of game-related media, such as advertising campaigns, artwork, and “the communities that sustain them”

Source

Ever wonder what the deepest hole every dug was? OK well maybe you never have thought about it, but it is interesting to know nevertheless.  During the cold war the Soviets decided to dig a hole as deep as the possibly could, given their geographic location digging a hole to China would have been out of the question. They started digging their hole in a remote mining community named Pechenga, the goal was to beat an American scientific team to something called the ‘Mohorovicic Discontinuity’ (Moho), the heavily disputed boundry between the earths crust and magma filled mantle. The Russians continued to dig for over fifteen years eventually reaching a depth of 40,226 ft, the current world record.

Star City is Russia’s own Cape Canaveral, all of Russia’s cosmonauts where trained in this once secretive facility. These days the center is more open and can even be visited as a tourist (for aprox $500), or if you have deeper pockets you can follow in the foot steps of the worlds first space tourists who trained for their flights to the ISS at Star City.

Richard Garriott a video game designer is the next space tourist to fork over the $30 million dollar ticket price to take a ride on a Russian rocket and spend a week and a half on the ISS. Before he can leave Garriott must spend eight months training at Star City. Wired has written a great article about him along with some fantastic photos of the facility.

NetworkWorld ran a slide show on Valentines day showing their list of the Ten Best Places To Take A Techie On A Date. The list was very interesting, there were some obvious items such as the Kennedy Space Center, but there was also a large number of places I have not heard of before. From the Space Camp center in Alaska to the Sony experience center in New York the list was very educational and informative for Techie’s and those who want to date them. Heres the top ten,

1) Denver’s Wings Over the Rockies Museum

2) U.S. Space & Rocket Center (Huntsville, Ala.)

3) New York’s Sony Wonder Technology Lab

4) Seattle’s Experience Music Project

5) Cape Canaveral’s Kennedy Space Center

6) Orlando’s DisneyQuest Indoor Interactive Theme Park

7) Los Angeles’s Universal Studios Hollywood

Cambridge’s MIT Museum

9) Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute Science Museum

10) San Francisco’s Exploratorium
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