Keep on truckin’, Elon.
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Category: sustainability – Page 543
Over the past few months, I was part of a study funded by the United Launch Alliance and supported by a large group of technologists to determine if we can mine water on the Moon and turn it into rocket fuel, and to do it economically. The final report can be downloaded here.
Why Mine Water on the Moon?
The lunar water would be launched off the Moon and delivered to a “gas station” in Earth orbit. This propellant depot will use solar energy to turn the water into rocket fuel. Then, space tugs can refill their tanks so they can repeatedly boost spacecraft from Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) (where the launch rocket throws them) into Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) where they can begin operating.
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Starman has put a lot of miles on his Tesla Roadster in the last nine months.
The red electric car and its spacesuit-clad mannequin driver, which launched on the maiden mission of SpaceX’s huge Falcon Heavy rocket in February, have made it beyond the orbit of Mars, company representatives said Friday night (Nov. 2).
“Starman’s current location. Next stop, the restaurant at the end of the universe,” SpaceX posted on Twitter Friday, along with an orbit diagram. [Epic SpaceX Road Trip Photos: Starman Rides a Tesla Roadster in Space].
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SpaceX’s Starman and cherry red Tesla Roadster have traveled beyond Mars. SpaceX shared a diagram of the car once driven by the aerospace manufacturer’s CEO Elon Musk indicating it has now reached beyond the Red Planet.
Sharing Starman’s current position in a diagram to Twitter, SpaceX also tweeted a nod to Douglas Adams’ seminal work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is beloved by Musk. (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe refers to the second book in the series.) The dash of the Roadster itself even has a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide, as Space.com notes the words “Don’t Panic” on its control panel also appeared on a cover of the novel.
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To be fair to Tesla, this problem isn’t unique to the company. Most emergency braking systems on the market today won’t stop for stationary objects at freeway speeds. These systems are not sophisticated enough to distinguish a stationary object on the road from one that’s next to or above the road. So to make the problem easier to handle, the cars may just ignore stationary objects, assuming that the driver will steer around them.
Florida man says Tesla oversold Autopilot’s capabilities.
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Florida has lagged in renewable energy use, but declining solar costs are set to change that.
- By John Fialka, E&E News on November 2, 2018
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Tesla owners will soon be able to drive their cars with their phones, Elon Musk said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday via Twitter that an upcoming software update will allow Tesla owners to drive their cars with their phones in some situations.
“Car will drive to your phone location & follow you like a pet if you hold down summon button on Tesla app,” Musk said.
“Also, you’ll be able to drive it from your phone remotely like a big RC car if in line of sight,” he added.
One of the main methods of producing hydrogen for fuel cells is to use artificial photosynthesis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but these devices still suffer from some efficiency issues. Now a new hybrid device may be able to recover some of the energy that would otherwise go to waste, by producing both hydrogen and electricity.
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KhalifaSat, the first-ever Emirati-manufactured satellite successfully launched into space from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre on October 29.
As well as KhalifaSat, the H-2A rocket also launched carrying Japan’s environment satellite, GoSat-2.
KhalifaSat is an Earth observation satellite set to monitor environmental changes, such as the effects of global warming in the North and South Poles.
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