Would you believe that the most exciting, future-busting technology of 2014 was a system created more than a decade ago, scarcely improved upon since, and only deployed at the end of the past year?

Oh, and did we mention that it didn't end up working very well?

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft spent more than 10 years chasing down Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko before releasing a 200-pound, robotic landing craft called Philae in mid-November. As planned, Philae descended towards the comet at a speed of about 3 feet per second before landing at its carefully selected destination, where it was supposed to drive ice screws and harpoons into the surface to anchor itself.

That didn't wind up happening. In fact, it all went terribly wrong.

Philae bounced twice before finally landing and staying put at a different, much less optimal location on the comet. The probe's mission, to send back scientific data from the surface for up to six weeks, lasted just 64 hours. After Philae's primary battery drained, it turned out there was inadequate sunlight at the accidental landing site to power up a second rechargeable battery via solar panels.

Not the most awe-inspiring display of humankind's technological acumen, right? Are you kidding? We landed a spacecraft on a friggin' comet!

This is not to understate NASA's accomplishment in colliding an impactor with Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 as part of its own historic Deep Impact mission. But the Rosetta mission, though the landing was not ideal, points us down a path many in the space exploration community believe will occupy our attention and potentially bear tremendous rewards in the decades to come.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that when you're looking for the coolest, most science-fictiony tech out there, it's not always a shiny new gadget or even something that's very new at all. In space, for example, we sometimes have to wait months and even years to see if technology crafted months and years earlier even works at all. Consider the years of work that has gone into designing NASA's next-generation, long-range crew capsule, Orion, which only undertook its first uncrewed test flight in early December.

So with that in mind, let's look at some more futuristic technology we can expect to see a lot more of in the months and years to come.


3. Intel's Core M Chips It's taken a while for Intel to challenge ARM with a full-throttled x86 chip possessing low enough power and temperature thresholds to enable fanless tablet and laptop designs. With its 14-nanometer "Broadwell" architecture , Intel finally got the power draw and heat levels down and the new Core M line is the first fruit of that accomplishment. There are already several Core M-based devices on the market and you can bank on a whole lot more arriving in 2015.

6. Cheap, Printable Prosthetics Earlier this year, our hearts were lifted when Kansas teen Mason Wilde used a 3D printer to craft a prosthetic "Robohand" for his young friend, 9-year-old Matthew, who was born without fingers on his right hand. Traditional prosthetics can cost upwards of $40,000, but volunteers with groups like E-Nable are now helping other kids with similar conditions, using as little as $45 in materials to craft 3D-printed hands that work via cables and an integrated tensioning system. But it gets even better. We may soon have much more complex, 3D-printable prosthetics using powered-up servo motors instead of simple cabling systems. To wit, Open Bionics won the $200,000 second prize at Intel's recent Make it Wearable competition for its 3D-printable robotic hand for amputeesthe startup says it aims to bring costs for such a prosthesis down to just $2,000.

7. SpaceX's Reusable Rocket In just a few years, SpaceX has gone from testing a reusable rocket design, dubbed Grasshopper , to installing key Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) functionality in the Falcon 9 rockets used for official missions like cargo runs to the International Space Station (ISS). In July, the private space firm managed to guide the Falcon 9's first stage to a "soft" ocean landing after the launch of six ORBCOMM OG2 satellites from Cape Canaveral, Fla. on July 14. The key to making its VTVL launch vehicle reusable is to accomplish a guided set down on land, and while SpaceX has set a pretty ambitious timeline for making that happen as part of an official mission, we think it may not happen for a few more years yet.

8. Wearable Drones The winner of the $500,000 grand prize at Intel's Make It Wearable contest, Nixie has designed a drone aircraft which folds up its copter arms and is worn like a watch on your wrist when not in use. It could be some time before the rather rough-looking prototype is ready for primetime. But the Nixie, which can take photos and video in "boomerang" or "follow me" mode, points us toward a future where drones become truly mobile even when they're not buzzing around in the sky.

11. Soft Exosuits Edge of Tomorrow and Elysium. Early-stage development of "soft" exosuits promises something very differenta much subtler muscular enhancement system which could be worn unobtrusively. Researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, recently awarded $2.9 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and There's already been a lot of work done to create powered exoskeletons to assist soldiers carrying heavy loads or even help people suffering from severe spine injuries to walk again. Many of these early efforts are certainly cool-looking, but they're bulky and very mechanistic think of the fearsome contraptions shown in films likeand. Early-stage development of "soft" exosuits promises something very differenta much subtler muscular enhancement system which could be worn unobtrusively. Researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, recently awarded $2.9 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and aim to create a smart suit which can "be worn comfortably under clothing and could enable soldiers to walk longer distances, keep fatigue at bay, and minimize the risk of injury when carrying heavy loads." Wyss researchers also say "[a]lternative versions of the suit could eventually assist those with limited mobility as well."

12. Haptic Holograms The holodeck from Star Trek may be arriving sooner than we think. The next big breakthrough in virtual reality could be "haptic holograms," a technology using sound waves to make virtual objects feel real to human users. Researchers at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom use a Leap Motion sensor to detect the location of a user's hand then project the feel of three-dimensional objects like spheres and pyramids by means of "high-frequency sound waves emitted by an array of tiny speakers [which] create the sensation of touching an invisible, floating object," according to New Scientist. Adding touch to the imaginary world of increasingly advanced visual and aural replication technology would begin to complete the futurist vision of all-encompassing VR that is indistinguishable from actual reality. And we can't wait for it to happen.

13. The Navy's Laser Cannon The United States Navy may have delivered 2014's most holy-crap-Star-Wars-is-real moment at the very end of the year. What else can we say about the impressive demonstration of a working laser weapon aboard the Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) vessel, the USS Ponce, which showed the laser blowing up small boats and even a drone aircraft? The Navy has now approved the combat use of its laser weapons system, or LaWS, in the Persian Gulf. All very nice, but when will get an ion cannon?

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