For just one frame of Google’s Street View for Charleston Road in Mountain View, we are given a completely unprecedented and unique glimpse inside the operation, as the camera is switched on inside the Street View Batcave.

Just like Batman’s underground lair, this warehouse appears to be the base for the whole operation. Panning around, you’ll find the dimly lit room¹ is filled in every direction with dozens and dozens of fully loaded camera cars, some featuring the older camera-only mounts, and others with the newer 3D laser mounts.

Other than the camera cars, there are several other fascinating things to see here, including this setup up of 9 LCD monitors mounted around a couple of old car seats, which would act like a 3D VR room. Is this for checking cameras? Reviewing recorded material? Or live monitoring of the drivers’ progress?

Also of note around the garage are some support vans, lots of bits of computer junk and, in an image captured immediately outside the building, several mysterious black vehicles.

Thanks to VGT.

The European Space Agency is a collaboration between 18 European states with the simple aim of “exploring space” and yesterday they announced their first new recruits to the Astronaut Corps in more than a decade.

The European Space Agency’s spaceport is Guiana Space Centre, located just off the coast of South America in French Guiana. The location is ideal for space rocket launches due to it being only 500km from the equator, which means the rockets get an extra boost from the rotation of the earth¹.

The focal point of Guiana is the Ariane rocket launcher, a 52m tall tower surrounded by four 90m high lightning rods. The concrete foundation features three “flame trenches” to contain the fire from the launching boosters, and the adjacent water tower delivers 30,000 litres of water a second to cool the launch pad during take off.

The Ariane launcher is used frequently for launching communication satellites and science experiments. Already this year Guiane has launched two Ariane-5 rockets, the most recent of which was just last week, when the Herschel Space Observatory was put into orbit.

In fact, demand for satellite launches at Guiane is so great that the former Ariane-1 launch site has been adapted for launching Vega, the ESA’s new small-size launcher.

Elsewhere on the compound we also find the Booster Engine Test Stand, a 200m long, 60m deep pit where boosters can be safely fired.

There’s plenty more to explore at Guiana, I recommend turning on the Google Earth Community layer to see information about all the different buildings.

The six new recruits to the Astronaut Corps will certainly have their time to explore, as their rigourous training is leading up to a first space journey in 2013 at the earliest.

When Google were recording their recently launched UK and Netherlands Street View imagery, a small team of crack-commandos cosplayers were tasked with leaving behind some highly recognisable British icons for the public to find.

The most famous of these was of course the widely publicised Wally from Where’s Wally, but there were others hidden in the cities, and we think we’ve now rooted them all out!

We start with the famed nanny Mary Poppins, who waves at us from outside Cardiff’s Millennium Centre.

Another literary character, Sherlock Holmes, welcomes you to Cambridge. Sherlock is looking especially feminine today…

Another traditionally male role is the beefeater, the ceremonial guards of London Tower, but outside Birmingham’s Selfridges building we are greeted by a female beefeater.

Hmm, is it just me or do all three of these girls look remarkably similar?

Meanwhile in London, everyone’s favourite bear greets you to top tourist destinations.

Paddington Bear is simultaneously outside the British Museum, Trafalgar square, Portobello Road and (of course) Paddington Station!

Over in The Netherlands, it’s down to Google Street View’s own mascot, Pegman, to hide in the images.

Pegman was following the camera car around with his assistant, who we can from the side angle trying to hide behind him.

Elsewhere, we spot him again after just jumping out of the parked blue van.

Of course we aren’t sure that all the plants have been found… have you seen any unusual characters on your local Street VIew? Let us know in the comments or via Twitter.

This is the Quaranta, probably one of the least likely cars you’d ever expect to find on Street View – as it’s the only one of its kind in existence!

The “Quaranta” (Italian for “Forty”), is the latest concept from Italdesign Giugiaro who specialise in prototyping next-generation cars, and have designed everything from Bugattis and Ferarris to Volkswagen Golfs and Fiat Unos.

It would hardly be a concept car without an airplane-cockpit style seating arrangement, but this one also has a solar-panelled roof and a hybrid engine. The manufacturer claims that it can do 0-60 in around 4 seconds, with a top speed of 155mph. If this is true, it would make the Quaranta the fastest hybrid car in the world.

Of course the Quaranta isn’t just out for a quick spin – immediately behind it we find a whole truck full of production crew and camera-men! Presumably the truck is about to overtake the car to capture some footage, but we can’t tell what they were filming for.

Perhaps there’s one clue however – does anyone else thinks the driver looks a bit like Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond?

There’s tons of detailed pictures of the Quaranta on Flickr or a video about its design (in Italian) on Youtube.

As one of Google Street View cars drove past the Laguna Seca Raceway, it happened to capture a photograph of a race in action.

Aware of its own existence as a fuel-efficient-but-not-exactly-a-racecar Toyota Prius, the anthropomorphized car obviously dreamed of one day being in the Le Mans.

Then all of a sudden, and with some wavy lines down the screen, the dream came true! The Google Street View car was part of the race!

Feeling the wind through its hair as it raced round the track, the car was bolstered by some trackside fans who didn’t spot it as a fraud.

But the dream was on shaky ground, with the car inexplicably being transported back up onto the overbridges as it tried to drive under them.

Eventually though, our plucky camera car took the chequered flag.

Then, awaking from the dream, the street view car went back to the drudgery of capturing pictures of people’s houses.