This week we spend the update trying to breathe in the vacuum of space.

Some people call them space taxis

Last week I wrote about Tesla’s planned “autonomous vehicles”. Well Elon Musk is not only the founder of Tesla. He’s also the CEO and chief designer of SpaceX, a private company set up to “revolutionize space technology”.

In 2010, SpaceX sent a spacecraft into low-Earth orbit and in 2012 its Dragon craft attached to the International Space Station. It’s since made regular trips to the ISS on resupply missions. And a couple of weeks ago, NASA announced that in 2017, SpaceX will be flying astronauts as well. Boeing has also been awarded a contract to be a taxi to the stars.

For the past few years, since the retirement of the U.S. Space Shuttle program, all astronauts headed to the ISS have traveled on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Having private companies take care of getting astronauts into orbit around the Earth frees up NASA to tackle the mission to Mars, wrote administrator Charles Bolden.

Spaceships I have known

Ever wanted to know how big Captain Kirk’s Enterprise really was? How about Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon? For over a year, artist Dirk Loechel has been working on a massive work that encompasses nearly all the spacecraft from science fiction and pop culture. To scale.

The Starship Size Comparison Chart includes ships from TV, movies, board and video games, and novels. It would take days to track down all the references.

Loechel recently added the International Space Station to the chart as a real-world comparison.

In your living room, everyone can hear you scream

Yesterday, the latest video game attempting to capitalize on the Aliens brand was released. Alien: Isolation (PS3, PS4, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One) was developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. And while last year’s Aliens: Colonial Marines wasn’t worth playing, Isolation does an amazing job of capturing the primal, claustrophobic fear of Ridley Scott’s original 1979 film.

In Isolation you play as Amanda Ripley, who is investigating the disappearance of her mother, Ellen (played by Sigourney Weaver in the films). The game takes place on the space station, Sevastopol, and Amanda is trying to find the flight recorder of the Nostromo. There’s only one alien in the game, but it’s smart, and unpredictable, and has great hearing. You never know when it’s going to appear, and when it does there’s no fighting it. You either find a way to escape or you die.

Moon landing conspiracy theory to rest

In case anyone still believes that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax, NVIDIA, which designs and manufactures graphics cards for use in computers, was able to use the new technology developed for its new GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 cards, to establish, once and for all, that the photographs taken during that mission are consistent with having been taken on the moon.

NVIDIA also used the new graphics cards to power a massive 4K display, bigger than five thousand 30-inch displays.