Month: September 2016

Enlarge (credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images)

The absence of a 4K Blu-ray player inside the new PlayStation 4 Pro is due to a lack of consumer demand, according PlayStation boss Andrew House. Support cannot be patched in via a firmware update at a later date, either, he confirmed.

"Our feeling is that while physical media continues to be a big part of the games business, we see a trend on video towards streaming," House told the Guardian. "Certainly with our user base, it's the second biggest use case for people's time on the system so we place more emphasis on that area."

Notably, Microsoft's recently released Xbox One S—which retails for the same price as the PS4 Slim—does feature a 4K Blu-ray drive, as well as support for HDR (high dynamic range) content.

Enlarge / George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu, discusses the ridiculous "Ultimate Fantasy" production in an interview. (credit: Larry Nemecek)

Even by modern convention standards, it sounds crazy. It wasn't just a Star Trek convention. Not just a Star Trek convention with nearly the entire Next Generation cast present, either. It was a Star Trek convention with a "multi-media extravaganza," a laser show, and live musical performances all on a custom-made constantly slowly-rotating stage built like the Starfleet uniform badge insignia with a captain’s chair right in the middle.

As Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was being released, that's exactly what was planned for "Ultimate Fantasy" in Houston, Texas at the Shamrock Hilton Convention Center and the adjacent Summit Arena in June 1982. The show was advertised all over Starlog and TV Guide. Huge billboards went up across the Houston area, and some organizers really believed that fans would come from overseas to see this four-hour live show.

There was only one problem: no one came.

MICHOUD, La.—Dating back to before the United States gained its independence, a succession of Royal French soldiers, merchants, and eclectic art dealers struggled to squeeze money from plantations covering the steamy swamplands of southern Louisiana. Some grew sugar. Others trapped muskrat.

Mobilization came during World War II, when the US military eyed the open land and easy access to the Gulf of Mexico. With no use for muskrat, the Department of Defense built a massive factory to produce C-46 cargo planes and military tank engines. After the war, as America sought to assert its superiority in space, NASA took control of the Michoud Assembly Facility and its cavernous interior to manufacture the mighty Saturn rockets that would deliver a dozen Americans to the Moon. NASA famously built its space shuttle external tanks here—more than 130 of them.

Today, NASA still builds in Michoud, assembling the core stage of its massive Space Launch System rocket. But unlike the Cold War-era race to the Moon or the space shuttle heyday, Michoud no longer has exclusive domain over US rocketry. Private competitors are building them faster and cheaper in places like Decatur, Alabama; Hawthorne, California; and Kent, Washington.