SpaceX was attempting to fly its “Starship” prototype rocket in its first short flight of more than a few feet off the ground on Wednesday.
The parcel carrier said Tuesday it had applied to the Federal Aviation Administration for certification of drone flights through the company’s recently formed subsidiary called UPS Flight Forward Inc.
The certification if approved, would allow drone flights beyond an operator’s visual line of sight, at night and without limit to the number of drones or operators in command, the company said. Such flights are highly restricted in the U.S.
The FAA is working out the regulatory framework to govern commercial uses of unmanned aircraft, which has been generally restricted to flights below 400 feet and within sight of an operator on the ground.
Click on photo to start video.
Android, Robot, Replicant… Dutch actor Rutger Hauer has died at the age of 75. sad Note: As in Blade Runner he dies in the year 2019.
This new tech is the product of Neuralink, a company that Elon founded in 2016 with a goal of creating an implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) and yes, it is as crazy as it sounds.
He stated that the initial goal with this is to enable people with quadriplegia (paralysis) to control a smartphone or computer with just their thoughts. But anyone that knows the entrepreneur knows that he intends to go bigger than that.
His vision also consists of giving humans the ability to “merge” with AI and therefore give them superhuman intelligence. This is what may then seem like an objective that is too hype to be an actual plan for new technology development.
Images from The Planetary Society’s spacecraft confirm the solar sails deployed on 23 June 2019 at 11:47 PDT (18:47 UTC).
SpaceX has come a long way. After being shocked by the absence of NASA’s concrete plans for a manned mission to Mars in the early 2000s, Elon Musk, the well-known entrepreneur and engineer, founded SpaceX in order to establish affordable access to space.
After spending a couple of years on designing, building and testing the first privately developed orbital rockets, the fourth launch of the Falcon 1 rocket into orbit was successful, marking the dawn of private space transportation. With its proven capabilities, SpaceX was awarded a substantial contract from NASA for supply missions to the International Space Station, providing the funding for a rapid development of new launch vehicles.
According to scientists, the ancient lake bed at Gale Crater on Mars is the perfect place to look for ancient habitability.
Microsoft and Google companies want to be central to the development of the thinking machine.
The decision by Microsoft to invest $1 billion in OpenAI, a company jointly founded by Elon Musk, brings closer the time when machines threaten to replace humans in any tasks that humans do today.
OpenAI, which was founded just four years ago, has pioneered a range of technologies which have pushed the frontiers of massive data processing in defiance of the physical and computer capabilities that governed such developments for generations.
Continue reading “Microsoft, Google and the Artificial Intelligence Race” »
Death is inevitable, says Michael Shermer. So why sweat it? Over 100 billion people have died before us, so maybe our fear of death is making our lives worse.
With its 2½-inch wing span, the Wallace’s giant bee is known as the largest bee on earth. But for decades, experts had feared it had gone extinct.
