Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transportation – Page 402

In-car satnav systems and mobile mapping apps have made it much easier to travel from one place to another without getting lost, but a new innovation promises to help fix a remaining pain point – getting in the right lane at intersections.

Today’s mapping apps aren’t always much help if you’re at an unfamiliar intersection and aren’t sure exactly where on the road your car is supposed to be: the apps often don’t have the detail or the knowledge to warn you in good time about changing lanes.

The system developed by researchers at MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute uses satellite imagery to augment existing mapping data, but the smart part is applying artificial intelligence to work out the layout of roads hidden by trees and buildings.

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The Airbus-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been closed up inside the payload fairing of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in preparation for liftoff from Cape Canaveral in February on a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA.

Technicians inside the Astrotech payload processing facility encapsulated the Solar Orbiter spacecraft — designed with thermal shielding to protect against the heat of the sun — inside the Atlas 5’s payload fairing Jan. 20. The spacecraft inside the Atlas 5 rocket’s 4-meter-diameter (13.1-foot) aerodynamic nose shroud will soon travel to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility, where crane will hoist the payload package atop the launcher.

Valued at nearly $1.7 billion, the Solar Orbiter mission will travel closer to the sun than Mercury, where it will join NASA’s Parker Solar Probe for tandem observations of the solar wind and giant solar eruptions that can affect communications and electrical grids on Earth, plus satellite operations.

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It’s pretty difficult to believe it at this point, but there are still groups of Tesla critics who insist that Gigafactory 3 is not really fully operational. A central part of this thesis is the allegation that Gigafactory 3 does not have a stamping press, which means that Tesla’s China team is only assembling cars in the Shanghai-based factory using pre-stamped panels from Fremont.

A recently released video from Tesla China has just decimated these allegations in a subtle but definitive manner. The clip was short, less than 30 seconds long, but it showed a busy stamping press operating in Gigafactory 3. The video was released in China, and shared on Twitter by Tesla enthusiast @JayinShanghai.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzsteGTpbLQ

For all its pure-electric acceleration and range and its ability to shapeshift, the Hypersport motorcycle shown off last week at CES by Vancouver, Canada-based Damon Motorcycles matters for just one thing: It’s the first chopper swathed in active safety systems.

These systems don’t take control, not even in anticipation of a crash, as they do in many advanced driver assistance systems in cars. They leave a motorcyclist fully in command while offering the benefit of an extra pair of eyes.

Why drape high tech “rubber padding” over the motorcycle world? Because that’s where the danger is: Motorcyclists are 27 times more likely to die in a crash than are passengers in cars.

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Here’s the Hummer HX electric SUV/truck. It’s envisioned as being able to compete with and beat the Tesla Cybertruck, but can Hummer really make a comeback?

The Hummer HX is a two-door off-road concept compact SUV that was revealed at the 2008 North American International Auto Show by General Motors. It has now resurfaced as the possible design direction GM will take with the upcoming electric Hummer.

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