Among the many hazards of manned missions to Mars (or pretty much anywhere else beyond LEO) is that of long-term exposure to cosmic rays – radiation isn’t something that the human body copes with well, and it’s a long ride out to the red planet. A research project at NASA has obviously been brainstorming with groups of classic science fiction fans, as they’ve come up with a plan that involves hitching a ride on an asteroid that passes both Earth and Mars, and burrowing the vehicle inside the rock to use it as a radiation shield. It may sound a little crazy, but no more so than a lot of the other ideas that have been suggested, and it has the merit of being a low-tech solution – less things can go wrong, and logistics people like that sort of thing.

We’ve mentioned fabbing here before – the idea of desktop ‘rapid prototyping’ systems that can ‘print’ any three dimensional object, and a proof of concept in the journey toward self-replicating machines. A small team at Cornell University have made available the open source plans for just such a device, so that anyone who is interested (and can afford to stump up for the parts) can get their own version and start experimenting in their own shed or garage. And if that sounds too much like a Cory Doctorow plot for you, you should probably take a look at the people who blogged the Fab@Home site – the RepRap project goes one step further, in that they are trying to create a fabber that can produce functional copies of itself. Eat your heart out, von Neumann.

Travel broadens the mind, so they say. Many people enjoy visiting new places, checking out the sights and sounds and generally soaking up the ambiance. But it can be hard to find the best spots with nothing more than a guidebook and a rudimentary grasp of the lingo, and the same applies to online environments as much as to meatspace. What you need is a clued-up local guide to the synthetic world of your choice – and that’s exactly the service that new startup Synthravels offers to customers. Book early to avoid the busy season…

If you’re anything at all like me, you’re probably wishing fervently you could be at the X-Prize events in Las Cruces, New Mexico this weekend – I’m especially hoping for good results from the space elevator contest. But there is consolation for the geographically and financially challenged in the form of the intarwebs! Thanks to the Google Earth team and Space.com, there’s a whole bundle of excellent Google Earth material available to allow you to explore the site and see the vehicles without having to leave your swivel chair. Okay, so it’s all virtual, but if I can’t experience the games with all five senses in meatspace, this will just have to do.

First teleportation, now this. It’s time to deflate another overblown science story that’s sweeping the net (and the other media) today – ZOMFG! Invisibilty cloak! Now, listen – this is a great scientific advance, and as such deserves to be widely reported, but not as something that it isn’t. This technology will not make you or your car car or anything else invisible to other people, okay? Unless those other people happen to only see in the microwave spectrum instead of the normal light the rest of us use, of course. Sheesh.