Well, what about all the other stars that do *not* show this behavior?
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It’s a scouting mission. I wonder how much this will cost since this is not a sample return.
Asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries (DSI) has announced the first commercial mission to a near-Earth asteroid, with launch planned by the end of the decade.
Deep Space Industries has announced its plans to fly the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission. A spacecraft known as “Prospector-1” will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, investigate the object and determine its value as a source of space resources. This mission will be an important step in the company’s longer term plans to harvest and supply in-space resources to support the growing space economy.
Seagate has just announced a whopping 60 TB solid-state-drive, the largest SSD yet with that sort of capacity. Unfortunately, the SSD is only meant for businesses, released as an addition to Seagate’s data center portfolio. With four times the capacity of the next leading SSD, this massive hard drive could hold up to 12,000 DVD movies or even a whopping 400 million photos. Just sit back and think about how ridiculous an amount of data that really is.
The drive was created with quick accessibility in mind, and its flexibile artchitecture means it’ll be simple for data centers to grow from 60TB to accommodate 100TB or more of data in the future, all using the same form factor.
The 60TB SAS SSD is only available right now for demonstration, though it will officially make its debut some time in 2017. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know exactly what the drive itself will look like, though given the fact that it’s just a SSD, I can’t imagine it’ll look especially wild.
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Gone are the days for US Tech on quick and easy money — China is making the US Tech face the realities of being relevant or being replaced. My suggestion for folks like Apple, Microsoft, FB take a chapter from Alphabet’s playbook and focus on those technologies that truly revolutionize the technology landscape, multiple industries, etc. Stop throwing money at gadgets and easy replicated apps and services. Let China own it because eventually they will. Focus on things like biocomputing, QC, space, etc. Because anything copied multiple times and quickly means it is easily replaced by the next cheaper and better gadget.
The recent Uber acquisition drama in China has given a new twist to the country’s technology sector.
Domestic tech companies are straining at the leash to go global while also defending their home markets from foreign competitors.
Even before the Didi/Uber battle unfolded, China’s tech firms were making waves. The global industry has been anxiously watching to see if the Chinese behemoths play a big part in the mergers and acquisitions game as they look to gulp down foreign companies. Home-grown giants such as Alibaba, and Tencent with its WeChat platform, have expanded across several countries although they still have a long road to travel before making worldwide impact.
Finally a trailer for this!
And it looks like it’s been worth the wait!
The first trailer from Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the Ted Chiang short story Story Of Your Life is finally here. It looks like an Oscar contender wrapped in a high-concept blockbuster package, which is a way to say it looks great.
And honestly, even if this isn’t an Alien Structure of some kind, it won’t be long before we DO spot some form of alien mega-structure somewhere in this galaxy of ours. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that we ALREADY have, but mistook it for a natural structure of some kind.
The leading natural explanation for the ‘alien megastructure’ star has been discredited, leaving ET as a viable possibility.
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Bebionic Photo
Posted in cyborgs, transhumanism
Prospector-1™
Posted in robotics/AI, space travel
1™, the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission, will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid to determine its value as a source of space resources. The destination asteroid will be chosen from a group of top candidates selected by the world renowned team of asteroid experts at Deep Space Industries.
Once the spacecraft arrives at the asteroid, the autonomous spacecraft will map the surface and subsurface, taking visual and infrared imagery and mapping overall water content. With the initial science campaign complete, Prospector-1 will use its water thrusters to gently touch down on the asteroid, measuring the target’s geophysical characteristics.
Prospector-1 is a small spacecraft that strikes the ideal balance between cost and performance. In addition to radiation-tolerant payloads and avionics, all DSI spacecraft notably use the Comet line of water propulsion systems, which expel superheated water vapor to generate thrust. Water will be the first asteroid mining product, so using water as propellant will provide future DSI spacecraft with the ability to refuel in space.
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