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Eloking writes:
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has been a long time coming. The successor to its Falcon 9 and the vehicle hoped to carry humans to Mars, this booster will be one of the most powerful ever. And we've just gotten our best look at it yet, with CEO Elon Musk tweeting out photos of an almost complete Falcon 9 Heavy in the hangar ahead of a planned maiden launch next month.
The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 first stages rolled into one, with a second stage sat atop the middle one. The nine engine cores in each first stage work together to provide thrust equal to eighteen 747 aircraft, making it the most powerful rocket currently in operation and the most powerful since the Saturn V rocket last lifted off in 1973.
In a series of tweets, Musk revealed that when the Falcon Heavy does lift off for the first time, it will do so from the same pad used by the Saturn V rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Musk has said recently that the Falcon Heavy will carry his own cherry-red Tesla Roadster as its first payload, but as an earlier tweet professing his love for floors has shown, it's not always easy to tell how serious he is about such matters.
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Eloking writes:
At an event in San Francisco, Microsoft Operating Systems Group Technical Fellow and HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman outlined the future of Windows Mixed Reality, which Redmond seems to believe is the future of computing.
Whether or not it is remains to be seen, but either way, there will be no shortage of Windows Mixed Reality headsets this holiday season, with perhaps the most compelling option coming from Samsung.
The $500 Samsung HMD Odyssey sports dual AMOLED eye displays, complete with a 110-degree field of view (FoV). This could potentially make a huge difference in the quality of the Windows Mixed Reality experience for two reasons. First, AMOLED displays can generate deeper blacks and more vibrant colors than your average OLED or LCD screen. Second, all other Windows Mixed Reality headsets we've seen have a 95-degree FoV. The Samsung headset will be more immersive because there will be less dead space in your peripheral vision. The headset is expected to be available on November 6, 2017, and it comes with motion controllers.
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Eloking writes:
Elon Musk is demonstrating how one should not land an orbital rocket booster: the video, currently trending on YouTube, is essentially a blooper reel of SpaceX rocket tests that went explosive. While the company has more or less perfected launching Falcon 9 rockets, it is still working hard on recovering as much of the multi-million-dollar system as possible.
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Eloking writes:
Take-Two Interactive has purchased physics-based space simulation Kerbal Space Program, according to announcements from publisher Take-Two and developer Squad.
“We have been impressed with Kerbal Space Program since its launch, and we are committed to grow this unique experience while continuing to support its passionate community,” said Michael Worosz, senior vice president, head of corporate development and independent publishing at Take-Two, in a release. “We view Kerbal Space Program as a new, long-term franchise that adds a well-respected and beloved IP to Take-Two’s portfolio as we continue to explore opportunities across the independent development landscape.”
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Eloking writes:
A Google algorithm has narrowly beaten the world’s best player in the ancient Chinese board game of Go, reaffirming the arrival of what its developers say is a groundbreaking new form of artificial intelligence.
AlphaGo took the first of three scheduled games against the brash 19-year-old Chinese world number one Ke Jie, who after the match anointed the program as the new “Go god”.
AlphaGo stunned the Go community and futurists a year ago when it trounced South Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol four games to one. That marked the first time a computer program had beaten a top player in a full contest and was hailed as a landmark for artificial intelligence.
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Eloking writes:
New Mexico-based ARCA Space Corporation has announced that it is developing the world's first Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) launch vehicle that can deliver both a small payload and itself into low Earth orbit, at a cost of about US$1 million per launch. Dubbed the Haas 2CA after the 16th century rocket pioneer Conrad Haas, the new booster uses a linear aerospike engine instead of conventional bell-shaped rocket engines to do away with multiple stages.
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Eloking writes:
After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX’s drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9’s relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company’s live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. “It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight,” he said.
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Eloking writes:
The U.S. conducted 210 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962, with multiple cameras capturing each event at around 2,400 frames per second. But in the decades since, around 10,000 of these films sat idle, scattered across the country in high-security vaults. Not only were they gathering dust, the film material itself was slowly decomposing, bringing the data they contained to the brink of being lost forever.
For the past five years, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) weapon physicist Greg Spriggs and a crack team of film experts, archivists and software developers have been on a mission to hunt down, scan, reanalyze and declassify these decomposing films. The goals are to preserve the films' content before it's lost forever, and provide better data to the post-testing-era scientists who use computer codes to help certify that the aging U.S. nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective. To date, the team has located around 6,500 of the estimated 10,000 films created during atmospheric testing. Around 4,200 films have been scanned, 400 to 500 have been reanalyzed and around 750 have been declassified. An initial set of these declassified films — tests conducted by LLNL — were published today in an LLNL YouTube playlist (link is external).
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Eloking writes:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Twitter account lit up today with a message all too familiar to many indie devs: Mr. Trudeau has made a video game, and he'd like everyone to play it.
It was a cute bit of promotion for Hour of Code, the computer science education event masterminded every year by the Code.org nonprofit. While the Hour of Code websites hosts one-hour tutorials (in 45 languages) for coding all sorts of simple applications, game developers may appreciate that the lion's share appear to be game projects, like the one Trudeau modified into a sort of hockey-themed Breakout variant.
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Eloking writes:
In a great example of a low-cost research solution that could deliver big results, University of Michigan scientists have created a window for lithium-based batteries in order to film them as they charge and discharge.
The future of lithium-ion batteries is limited, says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta, because the chemistry cannot be pushed much further than it already has. Next-generation lithium cells will likely use lithium air and lithium sulfur chemistries. One of the big hurdles to be overcome in making these batteries practical is dendrites — tiny branch-like structures of lithium that form on the electrodes.
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Eloking writes:
Grumpy Cat is not pleased, yet. Her owners have asked a California federal court to issue a $600,000 judgment against a coffee maker which allegedly exploited their copyrights. In addition, they want damages for trademark and contract breach, and a ban on the company in question from selling any associated Grumpy Cat merchandise.
grumpcatThere are dozens of celebrity cats on the Internet, but Grumpy Cat probably tops them all.
The cat’s owners have made millions thanks to their pet’s unique facial expression, which turned her into an overnight Internet star.
Part of this revenue comes from successful merchandise lines, including the Grumpy Cat “Grumppuccino” iced coffee beverage, sold by the California company Grenade Beverage.
The company licensed the copyright and trademarks to sell the iced coffee, but is otherwise not affiliated with the cat and its owners. Initially this partnership went well, but after the coffee maker started to sell other “Grumpy Cat” products, things turned bad.
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Eloking writes:
Action cameras have been strapped to dogs, chainsaw-wielding drones and everything in between, but there's a new benchmark for homegrown heroes and their action-cam videos courtesy of UP Aerospace. Having strapped a GoPro HERO 4 to the outside of its SpaceLoft-10 sounding rocket, the company launched it into the thermosphere, gathering some footage that's simply out of this world along the way.
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Eloking writes:
SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space this afternoon, but — as expected — failed to land the vehicle on a drone ship at sea afterward. CEO Elon Musk said the rocket "landed hard" on the drone ship. The mission requirements made a successful landing unlikely.
This was SpaceX's fourth attempt to land the Falcon 9 post-launch on an autonomous drone ship floating in the ocean. All of the previous sea landings failed too, though the third attempt came very close. The company had low hopes of a successful landing from the start of this mission, since the rocket had to send a heavy satellite into a high orbit. That requires a lot of fuel for the launch itself, so there wasn't much fuel left for the rocket's return to Earth and powered landing.
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Eloking writes:
Scientists have created a new method of tackling tumors by combining three strands of microRNA. The gel-based treatment was tested on laboratory mice, with the results showing it to be hugely more effective than existing treatments such as chemotherapy.
The study focused on the use of microRNA – more than 1,000 short strands of RNA that help fine-tune gene expression. When not working properly, strands of microRNA can cause diseases including cancers, making them an important area of study.
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Eloking writes:
Apple’s iPad tablet ushered in the modern tablet era when it was introduced in 2010, and it’s dominated tablet sales ever since. iPad sales have stagnated recently, but nevertheless Apple has maintained its lead in overall tablet market share. WinBeta received an early version of an upcoming report, “1010data Facts for Ecom Insights, January 2014 – October 2015” by the 101data Ecom Insights Panel, however, that indicates all of that might be changing as Microsoft assumes the mantle of best-selling tablet maker in terms of online sales in October.
