Astronomers have detected evidence of a handful of the likely thousands of light-gobbling objects in the middle of the galaxy.
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The plan to launch the module into space, and take reservations from customers for multimillion-dollar trips, was announced today at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, Calif.
Orion Span says its hotel habitat, dubbed Aurora Station, will be about the size of a large private jet’s cabin, with 5,650 cubic feet of pressurized space. It’ll accommodate up to six residents at a time, including two professional crew members.
The flight plan calls for the module to be launched into a 200-mile-high orbit in late 2021, and host its first guests in 2022.
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Virgin Galactic’s tourist-carrying spaceplane has taken a step closer to entering service after its chemical rocket engine was fired for the first time in the skies over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. With test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Dave Mackay at the controls, the 60-ft-long (18 m) SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity pegged the speedometer at Mach 1.87 (1,424 mph, 2,290 km/h) within 30 seconds of igniting its engine.
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Yosemite Valley will close to the public Friday ahead of a powerful storm that could bring flooding to the area, officials said.
Visitors were asked to leave by 5 p.m. and all overnight reservations were canceled through Saturday night, according to Yosemite National Park officials who say the storm may cause “significant impacts.”
After the storm passes, authorities will assess road and facility conditions to determine when Yosemite Valley, home to many of the park’s picturesque waterfalls and cliffs, can reopen.
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“Be very, very afraid. As this extraordinary book reveals, we are fast sailing into an era in which big life-and-death decisions in war will be made not by men…and women, but by artificial intelligence” — @stavridisj’s review of @paul_scharre upcoming book Pre-order yours now:
A Pentagon defense expert and former U.S. Army Ranger explores what it would mean to give machines authority over the ultimate decision of life or death.
What happens when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Or when a weapon that can hunt its own targets is hacked? Although it sounds like science fiction, the technology already exists to create weapons that can attack targets without human input. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in emerging weapons technologies, draws on deep research and firsthand experience to explore how these next-generation weapons are changing warfare.
Scharre’s far-ranging investigation examines the emergence of autonomous weapons, the movement to ban them, and the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. He spotlights artificial intelligence in military technology, spanning decades of innovation from German noise-seeking Wren torpedoes in World War II―antecedents of today’s homing missiles―to autonomous cyber weapons, submarine-hunting robot ships, and robot tank armies. Through interviews with defense experts, ethicists, psychologists, and activists, Scharre surveys what challenges might face “centaur warfighters” on future battlefields, which will combine human and machine cognition. We’ve made tremendous technological progress in the past few decades, but we have also glimpsed the terrifying mishaps that can result from complex automated systems―such as when advanced F-22 fighter jets experienced a computer meltdown the first time they flew over the International Date Line.
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The Google Lunar Xprize, a decade-long competition to put a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, may have come to an anticlimactic end but organizers aren’t conceding defeat just yet. They have today announced plans to re-launch the competition, though with no current sponsor to speak of teams could be competing for bragging rights only.
Launched in 2007, the Google Lunar XPrize tasked competing teams with getting a privately funded spacecraft to the Moon before having it travel 500 m (1,640 ft) and transmit HD video and images back to Earth. It offered up US$30 million in prizes, though these went unclaimed as organizers finally pulled the pin in January following several deadline extensions.
Google had funded the original Lunar XPrize but will be taking no part in the relaunched competition, which means that no cash is currently up for grabs. XPrize is now seeking a new title sponsor for the competition, who would get naming rights and be responsible for offering up prize money for the winners.
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‘Nightmare Bacteria’ Hits Washington
Posted in futurism
