Initially reported in The Canberra Times and now being reported on internationally, Canberra resident Baz has built a full sized Battlestar Galactica model Viper.

Indie developer S2 Games has announced a new sci-fi survival sim with a YouTube trailer, Lost Away.

Visually it seems to draw inspiration from Avatar. The creature featured in the trailer sports Avatar like wavy tentacles, there's lots of night-time bioluminescence and a smattering of floating rocks.

Space.com report that the civilian crew of the September SpaceX flight aboard Dragon have been awarded special company flight wings.

These are distinct from official Federal Aviation Authority wings.

The wings are a stylized dragon and have each crew member's name, call sign and mission role inscribed on the back.

NASA recently selected four volunteers for participation in a simulated trip to the Mars moon Phobos.

Lauren Cornell, Monique Garcia, Christopher Roberts, and Madelyne Willis.

The simulation has already commenced (October 1) and will run for 45 days ending on November 15.

It is one of a series of 15 missions being conducted by NASA's Human Research Program to help prepare people for long duration space missions.

cnet reports that scientists have calculated the likely precious metal content of an asteroid in Earth's vicinity to be $11.65 trillion (US).

It may contain more metal than all of Earth's current reserves.

This puts the billions of dollars being poured into commercial space development into perspective.

While not immediately spacey, obviously out-of-the-ground agricultural technology has enormous applications for travelling and or living in space. Or living on bodies without atmospheres like the moon or Mars.

Bloomberg reports that the first vertical farming startup is about to be listed on the US NASDAQ. Boring.

But there are some fascinating comparison statistics to traditional farming and the technological advances being made in this field.

Looper, seemingly independently of the actor in question, report that Disney's flop John Carter ruined star Taylor Kitsch's then blooming career.

Probaby an accurate claim.

Films are the culmination of often years of planning, writing, filming and post production but viewers only see the actors and tend to associate excellence or lack thereof with them, the franchise or maybe studio.

Stars of flops often fade away into obscurity.

Spaceflight Now reports that William Shatner will fly into space on October 12 on Blue Origin's New Shephard. This will be its second passenger flight.

He won't be the first actor in space. Russian actress Yulia Peresild will be on her way to the ISS with a film director this Tuesday.

According to James McAvoy of Dune and X-Men fame, Claudia Black of Farscape, Stargate and The Nevers fame, reckons that sci-fi is bonkers. James agrees.

So reports Slashfilm when he was asked if he had any advice for Timothee Chalomet of new Dune fame: