Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a little-known fact that Jedi Knights and Native Americans share something in common. Namely, they use every part of the animals they kill. What you didn’t know about The Empire Strikes Back was that after Luke hacked off the hungry Wampa’s arm, he kept it.

I’m sure you’re curious exactly what Luke did with a furry, severed Wampa arm. He used it to scrape the ice off the windows of his Snowspeeder between missions on Hoth. Now you can follow in Luke’s footsteps thanks to ThinkGeek with the really cool Star Wars Wampa Ice Scraper Mitt.

The mitt is really designed for scraping ice too with a fuzzy glove to keep your hand nice and toasty while you scrape. The glove section of the mitt is machine washable and it has a nice 3 x 4-inch ice scraper in the palm. The Wampa Arm Ice Scraper will be available in early October for $24.99(USD).

It’s safe to say that many of you out there for fans of the Star Wars franchise, no matter how you feel about the newer film trilogy. Star Wars Celebration has been held eight times around the country with some international events since the very first one in 1999 to celebrate the pending launch of Star Wars Episode I. Star Wars Celebration is a fan gathering where insiders from the films and fans come together to talk about the franchise and dress up.

The last Star Wars Celebration was held in 2008 and this month Star Wars Celebration VI will be held in Orlando Florida on August 22 through the 23rd. If you’re unable to travel to Orlando Florida but want to know what’s going on at the event Sirius XM satellite radio has announced that it will be airing a limited run channel that broadcasts live from the Star Wars Celebration VI show.

Star Wars Celebration Radio will launch on Thursday, August 23 at 6 PM Eastern time. It will continue to air through Monday, August 27 at 3 AM Eastern time on Sirius channel 123 and XM channel 142. Fans who use the Sirius XM Internet Radio App on smartphones and other mobile devices will be able to listen on channel 770.

Star Wars Celebration Radio will air interviews with cast members of the Star Wars films as well as insiders and key players from behind-the-scenes who contributed to the series. Listeners will also be able to hear live panel discussions from the event throughout the weekend along with commentary from celebrity fans and attendees of the show. The station will also air an interview with George Lucas conducted by Senator Bill Bradley for a special edition of his American Voices program.

Sirius XM to offer Star Wars Celebration Radio for a limited time is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This afternoon the folks responsible for the NASA mission at their Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California announced that they’d begun to move forward on wheels. The Curiosity rover landed less than a month ago on the planet, it being another of NASA’s successful landings in what’s expected to be a long line of Mars explorations. The rover was announced today to have rolled forward about 15 feet before rotating its wheels 120 degrees and advancing another 8 feet in a new direction.

For the science fiction lovers amongst us there’s also the announcement made today that this mission’s managers have decided name the landing site “Bradbury Landing” in honor of the late writer. Ray Bradbury passed away this June and would have been 92 today, the day of this history next step in the NASA mission. Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters, made their intent clear today.

“We have truly extended our reach and touched another planet. Today would have been Ray Bradbury’s 92nd birthday, but he’s already reached immortality with the 100s of short stories he’s written and nearly 50 books. His books have truly inspired us. The Martian Chronicles have inspired our curiosity and opened our minds to the possibility of life on Mars. In his honor, we declared the place that Curiosity touched down to be forever known as Bradbury Landing.” – Meyer

Have a peek at the news conference given where the declaration was made and the team became the first in the universe to rove about the planet Mars.

Inside that conference you’ll see old footage – also included below – of Ray Bradbury reciting his poem “If only we had been taller” at an event at Caltech on the eve of the craft Mariner 9 heading to Mars in 1971. This event is epic as well, with his words containing the power to launch our ships of the future – proof is all around us!

[via NASA]

Curiosity becomes First roving machine on Mars is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Stephen King is one of the most celebrated modern authors in the world. He has a huge number of books, movies, and TV shows to his credit. King is typically thought of as a horror writer, but some of my favorite stories King has ever written don’t necessarily fit the traditional horror genre.

Some of my favorite books from King are The Dark Tower series that follows gunslinger Roland Deschain. This series of books has been optioned for a movie and a TV show tie in, but fans of the franchise will be saddened to hear that things are looking bad for The Dark Tower right now. Warner Bros. has officially passed on developing an adaptation of the book series for the big screen and for TV.

Sadly, Warner Bros. taking a pass comes after Universal Pictures passed on it last year. The curious thing is that the project had a serious names attached to it, with Ron Howard attached to direct at least the first part of the series and set to oversee the entire project. Russell Crowe was also said to be interested in playing the gunslinger. The project would have had a movie trilogy with a limited run TV shows that would tie content between the three movies. I’ll add this project right next to the Halo live-action movie on my list of the best movies that never were.

[via ComingSoon]

If Darth Vader were a Xenomorph, man, that would be one heck of a scary movie. Scarier than all of the Alien movies combined. Behold the evilness right here before your very eyes. Thomas Spanos from the ‘As You Wish Project‘ created this mashup of Lord Vader and a Xenomorph into one cool helmet.

It even features Vader’s lightsaber as the secondary alien mouth. It’s called the HRG Trooper, named after artist H.R.Giger who designed the original Alien. It is terrifying and awesome.

If Ripley saw this thing she would have just run out of an airlock. You can’t fight something this awesome and insane. You just can’t win against Vader as an alien.

[via Obvious Winner]