Plus: Japan’s Space Yacht, Reconfigurable Apartments, the World’s Largest Laser and a Slow-Motion Apollo 11 Takeoff.

The Japanese Space Yacht
Space travel is becoming a more leisurely activity, as Japan prepares to launch the world’s first “space yacht,” a sophisticated vessel that will rely on new energy technology to navigate the stars without consuming large quantities of fuel.

On Tuesday, the Japan Airspace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that its “Ikaros” space yacht will be ready for launch on May 18. The Ikaros is propelled from the pressure of sunlight particles bouncing off a series of kite-shaped sails, Agence France-Presse reports. The sails are flexible, thinner than a human air and equipped with thin-film solar cells to generate electricity from sunlight.

“Solar sails are the technology that realizes space travel without fuel as long as we have sunlight. The availability of electricity would enable us to navigate farther and more effectively in the solar system,” Yuichi Tsuda, space systems expert at JAXA, told AFP.

The 66-foot-long sail, which costs an estimated $16 million, will be wrapped around the space yacht on liftoff and will unfurl once the vehicle exits Earth’s atmosphere, according to Bloomberg News. The developers hope the solar sail technology will be used to replace less-flexible solar panel systems in future space missions, and U.S. and Russian space agencies are already exploring ways to harness the new technology.

Tech Addiction Worse than We Thought
Ever felt like you wouldn’t be able to live without your smartphone or daily access to media and communications technology? Well, new research shows that the “crackberry” effect may be real, as people deprived of their gadgets may undergo withdrawal symptoms similar to those of drug addiction.

A recent study from the University of Maryland’s International Center for Media and the Public Agenda found that some people are not only unwilling, but “functionally unable” to be without the media links to which they’re accustomed. The study deprived 200 college students of all media interaction, meaning no cell phones, texting, internet access, chatting programs, Facebook or Twitter.

After only 24 hours of being disconnected, researchers discovered that many of their subjects “showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links,” Reuters reports.

“We were surprised by how many students admitted that they were ‘incredibly addicted’ to media,” project director Susan Moeller, said in the university’s news report on the study. “Going without media meant, in their world, going without their friends and family.”

The full findings of the study, entitled “24 Hours: Unplugged,” include nearly 400 pages of personal accounts from the subjects.

But college students aren’t the only ones capable of suffering from tech withdrawal. A survey earlier this month from business phone company RingCentral found that among professionals, having a smartphone was tied with “intimate relations” as the number one thing they could not live without. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said their smartphone was their primary business phone and the majority said they were more addicted to smartphones than to morning coffee.

Thinking Outside the Shoebox
For those city-dwellers among us, we know all too well that space is a highly sought commodity. After getting creative with under-the-bed storage, stuffing closets to the gills and adorning the walls with shelves, there’s only so much else we can do: or so we thought.

Architect Gary Chang, of Hong Kong’s Edge Design Institute, has found an inventive way to make the most of his 344-square-foot apartment. With ingenious moveable walls, complete with fold-out furniture, a wet-bar, book shelves and a functioning bathroom, Chang has engineered a way to transform his apartment into 24 different rooms. Check out the video below:

World’s Largest Laser to Be Used for Nuclear Fusion
If you’re done worrying about the possible earth-shattering effects of the Large Hadron Collider, get ready for more mega-scale experiments: scientists at the world’s largest laser are preparing to set off a nuclear reaction so intense it will rival the energy generated by a small star.

Located in California, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a laser the size of three football fields and with a 1.8 megajoule energy capacity. This summer scientists plan to direct its enormous beam at a single point the size of a thumbtack in order to produce a controlled fusion reaction, CNN Labs reports. The resulting reaction will be hotter than the center of the sun and exert more pressure than 100 billion atmospheres.

“In some sense, you have a small hydrogen bomb going off. It’s of course not dangerous because it’s smaller than the head of a pin, but it could eventually be the prototype for a working fusion reactor,” science blog Big Think explains.

Although nuclear fusion has long been more sci-fi than science, NIF researchers hope that their experiment will pave the way for the development of nuclear fusion energy sources that might replace existing methods of power generation.

“There’s no danger to the public,” Lynda Seaver, a spokesperson for the project, told CNN. “The [worst possible] mishap is, it doesn’t work.” However, if it does work, Seaver added, it will be “something you’re going to tell your grandchildren about. You were here when they were about to get fusion ignition.”

Apollo 11 Takeoff in Slow-Mo
A space shuttle launch is always a sight to behold, but the entire thing happens so quickly it can be hard for viewers to identify precisely what’s happening. Thanks to footage recently released by Spacecraft Films, we can now watch an up-close, slow-motion clip of the Apollo 11 launch, the first manned mission to the moon.

Here’s a video showing the historic event in slow speed, complete with audio commentary explaining every step of the process:

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend, folks.