So, what justifies a $52,000 price tag on a damn golf cart? Cold beer, apparently. And just cold beer. For that kind of cash, I want to be able to tell you that Monaco’s Garia Soleil de Minuit cart is driven by a robot chauffeur or uses jump-jets to hop from one course to the next. Not so, dear reader: you’re pretty much paying for a fancy built-in ice box. Besides the fridge, the Monaco leans on its industrial parentage. The thing’s assembled at Valmet Automotive factory in Finland, which rolls out Porches alongside this thing, and it’s got parts in it from the same folks who build Ducati gearboxes and frames for Aston Martin and Jaguar. It’s also got some fancy paint (color choice is yours, of course), a brake for every aluminum wheel and hand-stitched seats. Oh, and it’s also got a FIFTY-TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR price tag. That all makes it — handily, we imagine — the most costly production luxury golf cart in the world. Looking at the image above, though, you really wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Via Gizmag

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$52,000 golf cart has a fridge in the dash (an expensive one)

Never before has something like this felt like the definitive future of space flight. However, with NASA’s shuttles about to be grounded forever and the agency left without a manned delivery vehicle as per Obama’s orders , it’s going to be up to companies such as SpaceX to shoulder the logistics of America’s efforts in space. And that’s exactly what SpaceX aims to do. You may have heard of the man behind SpaceX before: South African-born Elon Musk co-founded both PayPal and Tesla Motors , and now he’s set his sights on space. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract back in 2008 for over $1 billion to use the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned, robotic Dragon cargo capsule to resupply the ISS. Back in ‘08, though, NASA’s now-canceled rocket program still seemed like it would happen. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket isn’t quite ready for prime time. The company has successfully launched its Falcon 1 rockets, though those are smaller and really only good for carrying small satellites. The Falcon 9 is needed to take the Dragon up and, even though it’ll just be carrying supplies, SpaceX designed it to carry people, too, and would very much like to ferry astronauts up into space. So why does this feel like such a done deal? NASA recently installed and tested its — get ready for it — Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (or COTS) Ultra High Frequency (or UHF) Communication Unit (or COTSUHFCU…?). Atlantis took the unit into space last November, astronauts installed and tested it in January, and this month a second round of testing saw the agency declare that the device was ready. The success of this series of tests speaks to our close collaboration with NASA as well as the SpaceX process that allowed the rapid development of this new hardware,” SpaceX ops chief Marco Villa told The Register . “Everything went smoothly, and we eagerly anticipate the upcoming Dragon visits to the ISS.” When NASA’s shuttle fleet is officially retired, companies such as SpaceX will be the agency’s lifeline to space, as well as partnerships NASA has, such as with the Russians to use their Soyuz spaceships to resupply the ISS. It’s a different way to go about it, but hopefully what we’re looking at is the beginning of an exciting new age for future space exploration . Via The Register

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The future of space: U.S. private contractor to resupply ISS

Never before has something like this felt like the definitive future of space flight. However, with NASA’s shuttles about to be grounded forever and the agency left without a manned delivery vehicle solution as per Obama’s orders , it’s going to be up to companies such as SpaceX to shoulder the logistics of America’s efforts in space. And that’s exactly what SpaceX aims to do. You may have heard of the man behind SpaceX before — South African-born Elon Musk co-founded both PayPal and Tesla Motors , and now he’s set his sights on space. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract back in 2008 for over 1 billion dollars to use the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned, robotic Dragon cargo capsule to resupply the ISS. Back in ‘08, though, NASA’s now-cancelled rocket program still seemed like it would happen. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket isn’t quite ready for prime time. The company has successfully launched it’s Falcon 1 rockets, though those are smaller and really only good for carrying small satellites. The Falcon 9 is needed to take the Dragon up and, even though it’ll just be carrying supplies, SpaceX designed for it to carry people and would very much want to ferry astronauts up into space. So why does this feel like such a done deal? NASA recently installed and tested its — get ready for it — Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (or COTS) Ultra High Frequency (or UHF) Communication Unit (or COTSUHFCU…?). Atlantis took the unit into space last November, astronauts installed and tested it in January, and this month a second round of testing saw the agency declare that the device was ready. The success of this series of tests speaks to our close collaboration with NASA as well as the SpaceX process that allowed the rapid development of this new hardware,” SpaceX ops chief Marco Villa told The Register . “Everything went smoothly, and we eagerly anticipate the upcoming Dragon visits to the ISS.” When NASA’s shuttle fleet is officially retired, companies such as SpaceX will be the agency’s lifeline to space, as well as partnerships NASA has, such as with the Russians to use their Soyuz spaceships to resupply the ISS. This, ladies and gentlemen, is apparently the beginning of the future of space exploration . Via The Register

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So it begins: ISS to be resupplied by U.S. private contractor

Showing us that the future of robot design in Japan may draw inspiration from 50s era American sci-fi, designer Noboru Tsubaki recently showed off his 43-foot tall “Mother Night” balloon sculpture in Tokyo. Tsubaki, a professor in the space design department of Kyoto University of Art and Design, outfitted the sculpture with screens that change in reaction to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by visitors. The work was on display during this week’s Roppongi Art Night in Tokyo, a festival showing off the works of various artists dedicated to design innovation. Via Roppongi Art Night

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Horror Tech: Psychedelic robot monsters invade Tokyo

Husband-and-wife combo Chris and Madeleine Ball have created a shirt that’ll let you and the rest of the world know how much email you’ve got waiting for you when you’re away from your computer. It works by communicating with your computer via Bluetooth, with an Arduino Lilypad controller (powered by a AAA battery) on the shirt figuring out how many lights to turn on. You know exactly how many emails you have by adding up all the lights, so if you have two emails it will light up next to the two, and if you have three it will illuminate both one and two. If you happen to have 127 emails waiting for you, you’ll see all of the lights on (and have a lot to do when you get back to your computer). Check it out in the video above. Via MAKE

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Email-counting shirt tallies opportunities to enlarge your, ahem, gadget

Are you excited about tablet computers but are not so interested in the iPad’s iPhone-like operating system? A shady company in China has just the solution you’re looking for! This iPad knockoff might look relatively legit, but it’s actually running a hacked version of Google’s Android phone OS modified to look like the iPad OS. On the inside you’ve got a 600MHz ARM CPU instead of Apple’s 1GHz A4 processor. Otherwise, who knows what’s inside? But hey, it’s a mere $150, much less expensive than the real deal, so maybe it’s a better option! Then again, maybe it isn’t. SHanzai , via Electronista

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An iPad clone running Android emerges from China

The beautiful HP Z800 workstation knocked our socks off last year , but now it’s packing even more serious heat. This new $10,483 workstation, designed by BMW DesignworksUSA, looks the same as last year’s model, but inside lurks a pair of Intel’s fastest six-core Xeon Westmere EP X5680 3.33GHz processors. We knew the machine would be faster, but putting the pedal to the metal, the results were even better than we expected.

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HP 12-core workstation is 34% faster, consumes same power

As seen on our sister site, SCI FI Wire , NASA’s discovered something lurking out in the depths of space. Thanks to the massive, 81-mile-wide Herschel impact crater marring the surface of Mimas, one of Saturn’s moons, the satellite is often compared to the Death Star from Star Wars . Now, it’s got another geeky claim to fame: it looks just like Pac-Man in infrared. The find surprised NASA as the agency was using its Cassini spacecraft to capture highest resolution temperature scans of Mimas. “Other moons usually grab the spotlight, but it turns out Mimas is more bizarre than we thought it was,” remarked Cassini scientist Linda Spilker in a release by NASA. She, like her other team members, expected to see “smoothly varying temperatures” and instead found “a sharply defined Pac-Man shape, with temperatures around 92 Kelvin” (or -294?). Another -310? “hot” spot, found inside the Herschel crater, resembled the kind of pellet Pac-Man eats. So, why the weird temperature map? “Even though we can’t explain the observed pattern of surface temperatures on Mimas, the giant Herschel crater is a leading suspect,” Dr. Mike Flasar, a principal investigator from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “We really would like to see if there is also an anomalous temperature pattern on the other side of Herschel, which has not been observed so closely.” “We suspect the temperatures are revealing differences in texture on the surface,” added John Spencer, another researcher on the case. “It’s maybe something like the difference between old, dense snow and freshly fallen powder.” Really, who cares what it is? Either we’ve got the Death Star out there, or a Pac-Man the size of one. How come NASA isn’t working to blow this thing up? We already know the agency is into firing rockets at moons . NASA , via io9

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That’s no moon it’s Pac-Man

FedEx is a forward-looking company that wants to enhance its green cred, so this week it rolled out its first all-electric FedEx delivery trucks in the United States. Beginning in June, FedEx sends the first four electric vans out on the roads of Los Angeles, saving energy in the most high-profile way. Could this be a harbinger of great things to come from FedEx, or is it a publicity stunt? It certainly isn’t going to be cheap, because even though the company’s not talking about how much one of these vehicles costs, the truck’s 80kWh battery alone is “well above the cost of a large luxury sedan,” according to FedEx’s VP of Global Vehicles John Formisano. It’s going to be difficult for FedEx to be a truly green company, especially considering that it flies around a gigantic fleet of fuel-guzzling atmosphere-polluting tin cans, otherwise known as aircraft. But hey, changing over four of its trucks to these great-looking electro-vehicles of the future is a start. Via Fast Company

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FedEx rolls out electric trucks of the future

Those upscale Herman Miller chairs aren’t cool enough for you, Mr. Midlife Crisis Executive Dude. That’s why you need to go all luxo-sport with this office chair by OMP made of a real Ferrari F360 Challenge car seat. Every one of the seats started its life inside an actual Ferrari, and now each slightly-used throne is placed atop a carbon-fiber office chair frame, giving you adjustable armrests, along with the usual seat-height and tilt adjustments. So get out your $8,000, Mr. Corporation Man, or for those of you who are less well-heeled, go to the junkyard and pull a seat out of an old beat-up Dodge Omni. Kitsch does have its own intrinsic value. Via Luxist

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Ferrari office chair looks fast even when sitting still