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Category: government – Page 174

Set to give a keynote speech on October 3rd at 2018’s International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Hans Koenigsmann – SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability – attended an impromptu talk one day prior, titled “From the University of Bremen to SpaceX”.

Speaking before a small audience, the University of Bremen graduate and fourth employee to join SpaceX discussed his opinions of Falcon Heavy, BFR, and more, frankly relating how SpaceX intentionally chose to build Falcon Heavy on its own, going so far as to turn down funding reportedly offered by one or more US government agencies.

Hopefully a sign of things to come for his 09:20 UTC, Oct. 3 keynote, titled “Reusability: The Key to Reliability and Affordability”, Hans’ precursor talk centered around the circuitous path that led him from University of Bremen to SpaceX, humorously describing how he “got bored of airplanes pretty quickly” after becoming an aerospace engineer. He quickly turned to space, hopping between a number of German smallsat projects that eventually led him to settle in the U.S. after flying there and back “at least 25 times”.

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DJI now has the US government’s permission to authorize drone flights in controlled airspace near airports.

The FAA has approved DJI as part of its Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) program. The agency rigorously tested and validated DJI’s technology capabilities before giving its stamp of approval.

DJI was one of 9 companies that were just newly authorized. The other eight are Aeronyde, Airbus, AiRXOS, Altitude Angel, Converge, KittyHawk, UASidekick, and Unifly.

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Berners-Lee believes Solid will resonate with the global community of developers, hackers, and internet activists who bristle over corporate and government control of the web. “Developers have always had a certain amount of revolutionary spirit,” he observes. Circumventing government spies or corporate overlords may be the initial lure of Solid, but the bigger draw will be something even more appealing to hackers: freedom. In the centralized web, data is kept in silos–controlled by the companies that build them, like Facebook and Google. In the decentralized web, there are no silos.

With an ambitious decentralized platform, the father of the web hopes it’s game on for corporate tech giants like Facebook and Google.

[Photo: Flickr user gdsteam].

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems a spinout from MIT has received additional funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures (which investment from billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, Mukesh Ambani, and Richard Branson).

Commonwealth Fusion Systems will use new superconducting materials to make far stronger magnets for a smaller Tokamak fusion system. The planned fusion experiment, called Sparc, is set to be far smaller – about 1/65th of the volume – than that of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, an international collaboration.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ portfolio company @CFS_energy is building on decades of government-funded research to accelerate the path toward clean, limitless commercial fusion energy. #cleanenergy https://www.cfs.energy/

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Can Tesla survive without Elon Musk? If he is banned from CEO or director positions or being a board member what will the impact to SpaceX be?

Tesla without Elon Musk at the wheel? To many of the electric car maker’s customers and investors that would be unthinkable. But that’s what government securities regulators now want to see.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a federal court to oust Musk as Tesla’s chairman and CEO, alleging he committed securities fraud with false statements about plans to take the company private.

The agency says in a complaint filed Thursday that Musk falsely claimed in an Aug. 7 statement on Twitter that funding had been secured for Tesla Inc. to go private at $420 per share, a substantial premium over the stock price at the time.

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Just how valuable is that stretch of space between Earth and the moon’s orbit? Might this celestial real estate become hot property as an extension of military arenas in low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, and geosynchronous orbit?

Given forecasts of 21st-century activity on and around the moon by both private and government entities, could this be an economic area of development that needs protection in sthe years and decades to come? [In Photos: President Donald Trump and NASA].

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The new digital communications policy (NDCP) 2018, approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday, looks too good to believe. It has promised to create an additional four million jobs in five years and reskill another one million people in new-age skills and sectors such as 5G LTE and artificial intelligence. Six lakh villages will be connected which will eventually lead to creating jobs and several earning avenues such as managing WiFi hotspots and laying optical fibre, among others. The policy will give an impetus to the job market.

NDCP is bound to create a massive infrastructure and help the debt-ridden telecom sector emerge from its current turbulence. The policy document envisages the reduction in levies and ease of doing business, and this will help restore the financial health of the long-bleeding sector. The focus will be on the proliferation of telecom services and facilitating low-cost financing. The government’s ambitious plan of Digital India will get a booster shot. Thanks to the promise of 50 Mbps speed in the broadband connection, the consumer will be the ultimate beneficiary.

Plans are afoot to reform the licensing and regulatory regime to facilitate investments and innovation, besides promoting ease of doing business. The success of the policy will depend on the execution of the policy.

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I began my life as an activist academic in 1979 when the Western Australian government closed the Fremantle railway, saying buses would be better. Patronage immediately fell by 30% and I ran a four-year campaign to save the railway. We won. I have been writing books and running campaigns ever since on why trains and trams are better than buses. But I have changed my mind. The technology has changed, and I think it will end the need for new light rail.

“Trackless trams” are based on technology created in Europe and China by taking innovations from high-speed and putting them in a bus.

I went to China to check out the CRRC trackless tram (they call it autonomous rail transit, or ART). I came back convinced it’s a transformative transit technology.

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When you think about the amount of time we spend behind the wheel today, whether in congestion or helping friends and family getting to and forth, being able to spend this time on other activities whilst on the move opens up a whole host of possibilities.

But not only will we have more free time, driverless cars also promise to make our roads safer and make our journeys faster.

Driverless cars are set to arrive on UK roads by 2021 according to the government and are predicted to change the face of personal mobility forever. Looking past the obvious benefits, Select Car Leasing have looked into the less predictable consequences of driverless cars.

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