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When "SpaceCamp" landed in theaters in June 1986, it should have been the ultimate wish-fulfillment movie, as if "The Goonies" had cashed in their hard-earned pirate treasure in return for a spin in an actual Space Shuttle. It boasted a bigger budget than "Top Gun", a cast of up-and-coming young stars — including a future Oscar-winner — and a score by Hollywood's most famous composer. Twentieth Century Fox had bet big on a blockbuster hit, but a real-life tragedy four months earlier ensured the film was doomed to be an also-ran at the box office. The real-life Space Camp at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was a dream destination for any kid with an interest in science, math, and space exploration — the ultimate trip for tweens and teens with a passion for science and technology. (Image credit: 20th Century Fox)The brainchild of original Space & Rocket Center director Edward O Buckbee and Apollo rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, the facility opened in 1982. It has since welcomed over a million wannabes through its doors, including Elon Musk, Chelsea Clinton, and several attendees who went on to become actual astronauts.Patrick Bailey, who wrote the original "SpaceCamp" story, got the idea from his wife, who'd spotted a news story about the camp while working as a researcher on American variety show "That's Incredible!" He developed the idea alongside Buckbee, and the duo successfully pitched the project to producer Leonard Goldberg, who'd had a major hit with "WarGames" a few years earlier. (It's easy to see why Goldberg saw the potential in SpaceCamp, seeing as WarGames was based on a similar scenario of ordinary kids being thrown into a dangerous and improbable situation.)(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)NASA also approved the script, and — rather surprisingly — wasn’t put off by the fact that the whole plot revolved around a colossal screw-up on the launchpad. The film focuses on a quintet of bickering camp attendees as they try out various training simulators, and learn — repeatedly and exhaustingly — the value of teamwork. It's all set to be a standard, barely postcard-worthy week away from home, until a totally implausible sequence of events sees them blasting off into orbit (with a single instructor to look after them) on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. First, 12-year-old Max persuades management that he should be allowed into Big Kid camp, even though he's too young. Then he befriends a sentient, but worryingly glitchy, robot janitor named Jinx, who wants to make "Star Wars"-obsessed Max's dream of going into space a reality. (Image credit: 20th Century Fox)Jinx's scheme gets a convenient helping hand when NASA — for the benefit of the plot — allows the kids to sit in an actual shuttle during an actual engine test. That questionable decision gives Jinx all the window he needs to initiate a "thermal curtain failure" in one of the solid rocket boosters, leaving mission control no choice but to blast the kids into space.Once the initial excitement of weightlessness has worn off, the kids realize the true extent of their predicament. While instructor Andie is a qualified astronaut who'd been patiently waiting for her first mission, it turns out that the unprepared Shuttle wasn't rigged for long-range radio communications. And — shock horror! — there isn't enough oxygen to get them to their re-entry window for landing at Edwards Air Force Base. Suddenly, these rookie kids are forced into roles real-life astronauts spend years training for, going on spacewalks and landing state-of-the-art spacecraft as if it's as straightforward as playing a video game. (Image credit: 20th Century Fox)But as ridiculous as the premise is, it's kept grounded by an extremely likable ensemble, one of Hollywood's most impressive examples of pre-fame casting. While Lea Thompson (Kathryn) and Larry B Scott (Rudy) were familiar from "Back to the Future" and "Revenge of the Nerds", respectively, Tate Donovan (Kevin), Kelly Preston (Tish), and — perhaps, most notably — future Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (then known as Leaf) were all playing their first major movie roles. And even though they broadly correspond to the jock/brain/princess archetypes you'd find in a John Hughes movie, the movie makes an effort to defy expectations of the era. Tish, for example, is — despite her valley girl persona — super-smart and has an eidetic memory. More experienced heads were provided by Kate Capshaw (fresh off "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom") as astronaut Andie Bergstrom, and Tom Skerritt ("Alien", "Top Gun") as her moonwalking husband, Zach. "Lost" fans should also look out for a young Terry O'Quinn (John Locke) in mission control. (Image credit: 20th Century Fox)Both the cast and director Harry Winer have spoken of the camaraderie on set, which was probably a good thing given the unexpected length of the production. "After the first day of filming, we were already 10 days behind schedule," Thompson recalled in a 2012 interview with AV Club. "And it kind of kept on that way. It was supposed to be a three-month shoot, and it ended up taking six. We had t-shirts printed up that said, '"SpaceCamp": It’s Not Just a Movie, It’s a Career'. Oh, actually, instead of 'SpaceCamp', it actually said 'SpaceCramp!'"The biggest name in the production, however, went unseen, as the legendary John Williams (who's always had a soft spot for kids' films; see also "Home Alone" and "Harry Potter") composed the soundtrack. While he resisted the temptation to add in a few bars from a galaxy far, far away during "SpaceCamp"'s many nods to "Star Wars", the score is unmistakably one of his.(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)"There's a reason why anyone who's a legend is a legend," Winer said in an interview with AL.com back in 2022. "John Williams is the most gratifying and rewarding creative collaboration I've had in my entire career. He would analyze a story and consider when there was a need for silence. He understood your creative intentions and found a way in a very poetic medium of music to interpret and enhance your vision. It was literally remarkable.""SpaceCamp" was all set for a prime summer release slot when disaster struck in January 1986. After the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off, killing all seven crewmembers on board, a lighthearted movie about five kids accidentally heading into orbit suddenly seemed rather less appealing. The space shuttle Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28, 1986 with a crew of seven astronauts aboard. An accident 73 seconds after liftoff claimed the lives of all seven and destroyed the vehicle. (Image credit: BOB PEARSON/AFP via Getty Images)Many questioned whether it should have been released at all, but Fox decided to press ahead. Winer even wondered if the public might even find the film cathartic, "because after such a tragedy, people would need to cling to the hope the film represented. And needless to say, I was totally wrong," he said later. "They saw it as a source of jeopardy, of disappointment, of tragedy, rather than hope. No one went to see 'SpaceCamp', so then I felt like I had failed miserably."Not helped by scathing reviews — "Would anyone like this movie?" asked legendary critic Roger Ebert. "Juvenile space nuts, maybe. But they'd be too sophisticated."Forty years on, it remains a decent, if unspectacular, family movie, but "SpaceCamp" barely made back half of its production budget in theaters. It was the very definition of a Hollywood flop, but it still left its mark. (Image credit: 20th Century Fox)Interest in the film reportedly doubled attendance at the real-life Space Camp, and there’s anecdotal evidence that the movie encouraged kids to pursue careers in science. In more recent years, there's even been talk of a remake, though its current status is unknown. "I've had a lot of people come up to me and say that they became physicists or inventors, because of how much they loved [Space Camp] and how much it inspired them," said Thompson. "That was really sweet and something I never really expected.""SpaceCamp" is currently unavailable to stream and download from any major service (though there is a disappointingly low-res version on YouTube). There is also a Blu-ray release, but it's hard to find and expensive.

SpaceX launched 24 more of its Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on Sunday (June 28), continuing to expand its broadband internet relay network.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the new batch (Group 17-40) launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff took place at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT or 9:09 a.m. PDT local time).The Starlink satellites reached orbit about 9 minutes after leaving the ground and were on track to be deployed by the Falcon 9 upper stage about an hour later.The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen after landing on its four legs atop the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Sunday, June 28, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)Previous Booster B1088 missionsNROL-126 | Transporter-12 | SPHEREx | NROL-57 | 12 Starlink missionsThe rocket's first stage (Booster 1088) completed its 17th flight, touching down on the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" positioned in the Pacific Ocean.The 24 satellites increased the total number of active relays in the Starlink network to more than 10,700, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The Starlink service provides access to the internet to people around the world, as well to in-flight wifi and cell-to-satellite service providers.Sunday's launch was SpaceX's 75th Falcon 9 mission in 2026.

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they've stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.This experience is far from an isolated one. According to Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report, 69% of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.Globally, 40% report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It's the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.Wired for bad newsLong before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened.The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.This is the foundation of what psychologists call the negativity bias, one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science. Across decades of research, the human mind has been shown to weigh negative information more heavily than positive, attend to it faster and remember it longer.A predator nearby mattered more than a beautiful sunset. The cost of missing a real threat was death, while the cost of overreacting was a few minutes of wasted vigilance. The asymmetry made this bias adaptive.Here is the problem: the human brain has not changed since then. We are the same species as we were thousands of years ago. What's changed is the size of the world it's asked to scan for threats.News fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It is the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate. (Image credit: pzAxe via Getty Images)Scanning the whole worldFor most of human history, the threats our nervous system processed were local. A neighbouring tribe. A drought. The illness of a child we personally knew. Information about distant places would barely arrive, and if it did, it was mainly irrelevant.In 2026, the same neurological system is being asked to absorb a war in one region, a financial shock in another, a climate disaster in a third and a violent crime in a fourth, all before lunchtime.A study published in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour examined more than 105,000 real news headlines viewed nearly six million times. Each additional negative word increased click-through rates, while positive words had the opposite effect.It's crucial to recognize the tactics meant to exploit our negative biases and create cognitive distance (Image credit: cbies/Shutterstock.com)Recent studies suggest people around the world demonstrate measurably stronger physiological responses to negative news than to positive news. The body is reacting before the mind has decided whether the threat is relevant.Some researchers have introduced a clinical framework for what happens in this instance called Problematic News Consumption (PNC) — a pattern of news engagement that results in preoccupation, dysregulation and disruption to daily functioning. In their 2022 study, the researchers found that 17% of American adults qualified as having severe levels of PNC. Among that group, 61% reported feeling unwell quite a bit or very much, compared with 6% of those who didn't.For minority populations, news fatigue may be even more consequential.Repeatedly witnessing harm directed at our own groups, even when we're not the immediate target, can have a significant psychological impact on people from the same group affiliation. For racialized communities, such as immigrants, the cognitive load could be even heavier, and the option to simply stop watching is much harder to exercise when the news is about their country of origin.Looking away is not the fixWhat's the solution to news fatigue? Well, it's not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens.Many adults already cite the spread of misleading information as a major source of stress. Withdrawing from accurate, trustworthy information only deepens the problem. We're wired to pay more attention to bad news, and that kind of content will find its way to us one way or another.The fix is to manage the consumption and the sources.Several approaches can help manage news fatigue and protect mental health. Containing news consumption to defined windows of time reduces the sense of being overwhelmed. Choosing depth over volume also matters: one carefully reported long-form article will inform you better than bursts of random, unreliable and emotionally loaded posts on Instagram.There is also value in distinguishing between information and action — research on perceived control and stress consistently shows that the gap between awareness and agency is one of the strongest predictors of psychological distress. Identifying what you can actually do about what you read in the news, however small, regulates that response.Finally, be wary of "rage bait" — intentionally provocative messages or content designed to boost engagement on social media platforms by eliciting negative reactions. Recognizing that certain content creators want to provoke rather than reflect reality creates useful cognitive distance.The news will not become less "heavy." But our relationship with it can become more deliberate. Our brains were not built for this scale of input. They were, however, built to learn to adapt.This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We rendered the new Hyundai IONIQ V in full N attire. Ioniq 6 N already offers a 641 hp template to borrow. A patented fake manual could add a real clutch pedal. When Hyundai pulled the wraps off its China-exclusive (for now) IONIQ V at Auto China 2026, the reaction was immediate, and most of it came down to the way it looks. Low-slung proportions and sharp angular surfacing that reads more Sant Agata than Seoul. Then you get to the spec sheet and find a single motor making 225 hp, which is a lot less drama than the bodywork suggests. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("0f7e3106-c4d6-4db4-8135-c508879a76f8"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("82503191-e1d1-435a-874f-9c78a2a54a2f"); } }); That gap between how it looks and how it moves invites one obvious thought: what would happen if Hyundai s N division got hold of it? Sure, there s no evidence to suggest such a model is being considered, yet the company has demonstrated with the Ioniq 5 and 6 N that it knows how to inject driver appeal into electric vehicles. Read: Hyundai s 2027 Elantra Is Bigger, Sharper, And Barely Recognizable Stretch the logic a little and the IONIQ V N starts to look like the spiritual successor to the Elantra N, only with the full weight of Hyundai s current EV tech behind it. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform === "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("ea4d4b5a-f8e5-4d5d-9d9a-53a3b956b6cd"); } else{ adpushup.triggerAd("44c0a4dc-e25b-4ba5-ac64-2c510461b92a"); } }); A Wicked Wedge Illustrations Josh Byrnes / Carscoops Our exclusive rendering imagines the IONIQ V in full N attire while preserving the dramatic, wedge-shaped aesthetic of the standard model. At the front, the aggressive fascia gains a deep splitter, larger cooling intakes and red accents seen on other N products. Also: BMW s i3 Sedan Divided The Internet, So We Drew The i4 Coupe Instead At 4.9 meters (193 inches), the Prius-on-steroids profile remains one of its defining features, with its heavily raked windscreen and fastback look. Larger wheels, performance brakes, subtle side skirts and lowered ride height help sharpen its stance. Out back, a more functional diffuser, discreet spoiler, and N-specific taillight elements help complete the transformation. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("bb7964e9-07de-4b06-a83e-ead35079d53c"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("9b1169d9-7a89-4971-a77f-1397f7588751"); } }); High Tech Cockpit The standard Ioniq V s interior. As with the exterior, the standard car s cabin would carry the concept s aesthetic into production largely intact. A 27-inch 4K panoramic display commands center stage, backed by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 processor, customizable performance graphics, track-focused telemetry, and an AI-powered voice assistant. Future Cars: Hyundai s Venue-Sized Bayon Could Get A 140-HP Hybrid America Won t Other goodies would include an advanced head-up display with a lap-timer, Level 2 semi-autonomous highway driving, heavily bolstered sports seats with illuminated N logos, a sports steering wheel with N mode presets, and acres of Alcantara trim. var adpushup = window.adpushup = window.adpushup || {que:[]}; adpushup.que.push(function() { if (adpushup.config.platform !== "DESKTOP"){ adpushup.triggerAd("b25ecba7-3bbb-4ea7-a3a8-dbea91695c07"); } else { adpushup.triggerAd("e46c436a-adeb-4b5e-a2c7-56bc36561c10"); } }); Performance to Stun Based on Hyundai s 800-volt E-GMP architecture, the IONIQ V N could utilize the same dual-motor, all-wheel-drive powertrain from the Ioniq 6 N, which in that application generates north of 601 hp (448 kW) or 641 hp in N Grin boost mode. Also a possibility is the use of Hyundai s recently patented electronic manual transmission. This setup expands on the automaker s e-Shift technology by employing a gated shifter with six speeds (plus reverse), a clutch pedal, and software-controlled gear simulation to recreate a manual driving experience. Underneath, the chassis would get stiffer springs with adaptive damping, larger anti-roll bars, sharper torque vectoring, and upgraded brakes to keep the powertrain honest. Amped Alternatives The regular 2027 Ioniq V is expected to go on sale in China later this year. If Hyundai ever greenlights an IONIQ V N, such a model would face off against Tesla s Model 3 Performance, Polestar 4 Performance Pack, MG IM5 Performance, BYD Seal Performance, Xpeng P7 Ultra, and BMW i3. The standard car is widely expected to go global eventually, albeit not in the US, where Chinese cars are effectively blocked. If it does, the smart money says it ll land with more performance than the Chinese-market version makes today. Would you rather this over the Ioniq 6? Let us know in the comments below. Illustrations Josh Byrnes / Carscoops