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Get a sneak peek at Intellectual Ventures’ lab

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The hallway leading from the lobby to Intellectual Ventures’ lab has a ceiling dotted with lights that encode passages from Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. (Credit: Intellectual Ventures)

BELLEVUE, Wash. – It’s tough enough to move a laboratory to new digs, but when you add in a world-class kitchen and a state-of-the-art machine shop, you get a sense of the challenge that Intellectual Ventures faced when it had to uproot its Bellevue lab to make way for a light-rail station.

The solution? Today, the invention factory started up by pioneering Microsoft researcher Nathan Myhrvold has its lab in a nondescript 87,000-square-foot building on Eastgate Way, just around the corner and down the street from the main corporate offices.

The exterior may look dull, but the interior is anything but. As the researchers at Intellectual Ventures’ lab make their rounds, they walk past a Rocketdyne H-1 rocket engine saved from the Apollo program … a Tesla coil that can shoot Frankenstein-like sparks in time with a soundtrack … and a working full-scale model of Charles Babbage’s 19th-century Difference Engine.

Get the full story and pictures on GeekWire.

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Museum of Flight offers VR tours inside planes

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Visitors to Seattle’s Museum of Flight can use smartphones equipped with VR glasses to look into the interior of historic airplanes. (Credit: Microsoft via YouTube)

It’s not easy to crawl through the guts of a World War II bomber, but a new virtual reality project from Microsoft and Seattle’s Museum of Flight turns it into a snap on a screen.

The Aviation Pavilion Virtual Tour is actually a series of VR tours, highlighting interior views of planes ranging from the B-17F Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress to Boeing’s 737 and 747 jets.

“For the first time, visitors – both on site as well as remotely – will be able to ‘step inside’ the cockpits and interiors of these carefully preserved artifacts through high-fidelity 360-degree virtual tours,” the museum says.

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Commercial spaceflight group sets new course

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During SpaceX’s Seattle announcement about an internet satellite network in January 2015, the company’s logo lit up Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. (GeekWire photo)

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation set the stage for new leadership as well as new initiatives during its meeting in Seattle this week, says the industry group’s president.

CSF President Eric Stallmer told GeekWire that the meeting signaled the Emerald City’s rising status amid a rising wave of entrepreneurship focused on the space frontier.

“Seattle has really become a hub city for commercial space activity,” he said, “so it’s really a no-brainer for us to come here. … I foresee more companies developing and coming up to Seattle.”

Those companies will follow in the footsteps of ventures such as Blue Origin (founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos), Vulcan Aerospace (funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), Planetary Resources (which counts Google execs and Virgin billionaire Richard Branson among its founding investors) and Spaceflight Industries (backed by Allen’s Vulcan Capital and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, among others).

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SpaceX’s Elon Musk: Fireball poses huge puzzle

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A video stream from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida shows smoke rising from a SpaceX launch pad blast. (Credit: NASA)

SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says the launch-pad explosion that resulted in the loss of a Falcon 9 rocket and its satellite payload last week stands as the most puzzling failure he’s faced since he started up the company.

In a series of post-midnight tweets, Musk said it’s possible that something hit the rocket to cause the fireball.

He put out the call for any recordings of the event – and said he was particularly interested in an explosive sound that preceded the main fireball by just a few seconds. “May come from rocket or something else,” he wrote.

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OSIRIS-REx begins round-trip flight to asteroid

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An Atlas 5 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, sending NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe into space. (Credit: Joel Kowsky / NASA)

NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx probe today on America’s first mission to snag samples from a near-Earth asteroid and bring them back to Earth – and added a Star Trek twist.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, tricked out with a single solid rocket booster, sent up the car-sized spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 7:05 p.m. ET (4:05 p.m. PT) today. Crowds gathered around the launch site to watch, and myriads more kept an eye on NASA TV’s video stream.

As NASA launch commentator Mike Curie announced OSIRIS-REx’s liftoff, he gave a nod to the “Star Trek” TV saga, which made its U.S. premiere 50 years ago today.

“Its seven-year mission: to boldly go to the asteroid Bennu and back,” said Curie, echoing the show’s traditional intro.

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Second SpaceShipTwo gets off the ground

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The SpaceShipTwo rocket plane known as VSS Unity and its WhiteKnightTwo mothership are seen from below. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

Virgin Galactic sent its second SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, VSS Unity, into the air for the first time today – tucked securely beneath its WhiteKnightTwo mothership for the entire three-hour-plus flight.

The captive-carry test flight, conducted from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, came nearly two years after the fatal breakup of the first SpaceShipTwo during a flight test in October 2014. One of the test pilots, Michael Alsbury, died in that accident. The other pilot, Pete Siebold, was seriously injured.

It took months to investigate the accident, which was attributed to a variety of design and training shortcomings as well as pilot error. It took much longer to complete construction of VSS Unity, which incorporates design changes based on findings from the investigation.

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Next test should destroy Blue Origin’s booster

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Artwork shows Blue Origin’s crew capsule firing its escape rocket motor. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown the same rocket booster to outer space and back four times over the past year – but the fifth trip, planned for October, will be that booster’s last.

“Our next flight is going to be dramatic, no matter how it ends,” Bezos said in an email.

Bezos said the uncrewed flight will serve as a test of the New Shepard suborbital spaceship’s escape system.

About 45 seconds after New Shepard launches from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site, the capsule that’s designed for cargo and crew will separate from the booster. This will happen at an altitude of 16,000 feet, at a point in the ascent known as “max-Q,” or maximum dynamic pressure, when the spacecraft’s structure comes under maximum stress.

If the test proceeds according to plan, the capsule’s “pusher” rocket motor will fire for two seconds, propelling the capsule away from the booster. Parachutes will deploy to slow down the capsule’s descent, and the capsule will be recovered safe and sound.

The booster will have a rougher time, which Bezos is bummed about.

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Star Trek at 50: How saga inspired a generation

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An exhibit at Seattle’s EMP museum features costumes and props from 50 years of “Star Trek” shows, including the bridge from the original Starship Enterprise set. (Credit: Brady Harvey / EMP Museum)

Fifty years after “Star Trek” made its debut, the science-fiction saga’s biggest legacy may well be its inspirational impact on millions of scientists and engineers, writers and fans over the decades.

Humanity hasn’t yet invented the starships and transporters that are commonplace in the TV shows and movies, but we do have plenty of people who are exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and laying plans to boldly go where no one has gone before.

We asked a variety of space-savvy luminaries to reflect on the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek,” which is being celebrated today at Seattle’s EMP Museum.

Check out the reflections on GeekWire.

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Facebook beams ‘likes’ into Star Trek universe

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Facebook’s reaction emojis take on a Star Trek look for fans today. (Credit: Facebook)

Do you love “Live Long and Prosper”? Then you’ll probably be reacting to Facebook posts with Star Trek icons today.

The social-media giant morphed its usual lineup of like, love, haha, wow, sad and angry emojis to reflect a Trek vibe, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the “Star Trek” TV show’s U.S. premiere.

The thumbs-up for “Like” adds a Starfleet sparkle. “Love” has been turned into a Vulcan salute, the “Haha” face has a Captain Kirk hairdo, “Wow” gets the Spock treatment, “Sad” looks like Geordi La Forge from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and “Angry” has the furrowed brow of a Klingon.

“We wanted to mark this fun, nostalgic moment and help the passionate community of Star Trek fans celebrate in some unique ways on Facebook,” Lindsey Shepard, marketing lead for Facebook Messenger, said in a Medium post explaining the shift.

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How ‘Star Trek’ explored social frontiers

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Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk (played by Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner) embrace in a controversial episode of “Star Trek.” (Courtesy of CBS Television Studios)

Fifty years ago, “Star Trek” pushed the frontiers of technology with 23rd-century smartphones – also known as communicators – but the TV show pushed social and political frontiers as well.

“While the original premise of the show may have been, ‘Let’s just have some adventures with a spaceship,’ very quickly it became social commentary as well,” screenwriter David Gerrold observes in “Building Star Trek,” a Smithsonian Channel documentary about the show and its legacy.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the “Star Trek” premiere, we’re listing five ways in which the show’s scripts – and its creator, Gene Roddenberry – went where few 1960s-era TV sagas had gone before.

Get the top 5 on GeekWire.