Tim Urban, of Wait But Why, recently received a phone call from Elon Musk’s staff asking if he would like to write about the automotive, aerospace, and solar power industries through personal interviews with Elon Musk and his teams. Tim Urban said yes, and the first three of essays / articles are already posted on his site.
“The Biological Technologies Office (BTO), which opened in April 2014, aims to support extremely ambitious — some say fantastical — technologies ranging from powered exoskeletons for soldiers to brain implants that can control mental disorders. DARPA’s plan for tackling such projects is being carried out in the same frenetic style that has defined the agency’s research in other fields.” Read more
“Instead of treating Amsterdam as complete and starting again elsewhere, the IJburg plan has managed to find more space in a city that thought it had no more left.”
“Living Breakwaters is a comprehensive design for coastal resiliency along the Northeastern Seaboard of the United States and beyond. This approach to climate change adaptation and flood mitigation includes the deployment of innovative, layered ecologically-engineered breakwaters, the strengthening of biodiversity and coastal habitats through “reef streets”, the nurturing and resuscitation of fisheries and historic livelihoods, and deep community engagement through diverse partnerships and innovative educational programs. The transformative educational dimension amplifies impact to the next generation of shoreline stewards while leveraging the expertise of the members of the SCAPE Architecture team, who are making groundbreaking inroads into state and federal agencies, setting new precedents for multi-layered and systemic approaches to infrastructure planning.”
LINK: Governor Cuomo Announces Living Breakwaters Project Launch
- Popular Science
The Air Force’s secret robot space plane is going to try out a new engine. The X-37B has so far spent a total of 1367 days tooling around in Earth’s orbit, doing classified things. Yesterday, the Air Force Research Lab announced that on its fourth flight, the X-37B will come with a new fuel-efficient engine for maneuvering in space. Read more
Adam Rothstein | Motherboard
“In the city of the future, trains would rocket across overhead rails, airplanes would dive from the sky to land on the roof, and skyscrapers would stretch their sinewed limbs into the heavens to feel the hot pulse of radio waves beating across the planet. This artistic, but unbridled enthusiasm was the last century’s first expression of wholesale tech optimism.” Read more
- Press release by our partner ”Risk Evaluation Forum” emphasizing on renewed particle collider risk: http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/newsbg.pdf
- Study concluding that “Mini Black Holes” could be created at planned LHC energies: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-mini-black-holes-lhc-parallel.html
- New paper by Dr. Thomas B. Kerwick on lacking safety argument by CERN: http://vixra.org/abs/1503.0066
By Mark Jackson — SingularityHub
Ever wondered how the technology we use every day came into existence? Sure, an engineer designed it, a manufacturer produced it, and some savvy marketing helped sell you the product, but where did the ideas come from? Many famous inventions and household name technologies originated from research done by physicists, either as byproducts or direct application of their ideas. How does it all happen?
“So as a physicist, what do you actually do?”
Many people outside of academic physics departments often have this question, due to a lack of communication between general public and researchers. Read more
I read all the news about SpaceX’s Falcon 9 latest “failure” to land on an autonomous spaceport drone ship aka barge. I view these as trials to success. Here’s why.
1. Grasshopper Successes: The two videos below show that the early landing trials aka Grasshopper from several heights between 250m and 1,000m.
The lessons here are:
a) Pinpoint landing of a 1st stage rocket is technologically feasible.
b) This 1st stage rocket has to attain zero vertical velocity at a minimum 250m above the barge.
Video of 250m test
Video of 1,000m test
2. Falcon 9 1st stage crash landing — 1st attempt: SpaceX tells us that the failure was due to a hard landing (see video below) but at 0:03 minutes into the video one can see that the 1st stage has substantially tilted before it hit the deck i.e. the 1st stage did not tilt because it hit the deck.
The lessons here:
a) A wobble — a dynamic instability — occurs before landing.
b) The guidance systems are unable to cope with new wobble.
Video of 1st attempt
3. Falcon 9 1st stage crash landing — 2nd attempt: The video of the second attempt (below) confirms that indeed a wobble has been introduced before the stabilization fins are deployed. Further, this deployment exacerbates the wobble, and the guidance systems is unable to handle this exacerbated wobble.
The lessons here:
a) 1st stage vertical velocity needs to be zero by at least 250m above deck.
b) The stabilization fins need to be redesigned to alleviate exacerbation.
c) Like the Space Ship One’s shuttlecock approach, the 1st stage upper fins need to be deployed before the lower fins are.
d) Upgrade the landing guidance system to account for more severe wobbles.
If at a minimum, SpaceX achieves zero velocity at 250m before deployment of landing gear it will be successful. The other recommendations are good to have.
I expect SpaceX to be successful by their 3rd try.