As reported by ABC News: NASA awarded contracts today to Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, signaling the agency's return to manned spaceflight after the end of the space shuttle program. "This is the fulfillment of the commitment President Obama made to return human space flight launches to U.S. soil and end our reliance on the Russians," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said. The winning designs will end U.S. dependence on the Russian Soyuz for transportation back and forth to the International Space Station. The announcement came after an expensive and ferocious competition to determine which companies would be tasked with building the next era of spacecraft. Boeing’s contract could have a value of $4.2 billion while SpaceX’s deal is valued at $2.6 billion, according to Kathy Lueders, the program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Lueders said having two contracts will help NASA make sure it stays on track to meet its 2017 goal of manned spaceflights. The Commercial Crew Program was designed by NASA to replace the retired space shuttle, which was the workhorse of the agency's space program for over 30 years. Boeing has invested in the CST 100 capsule, which would launch on an Atlas V rocket -- almost a turnkey proposition for NASA when you consider the company’s history in aerospace.
SpaceX has the advantage of already launching cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station and hopes to parlay that experience into a human version of its Dragon spacecraft. Lueders said each company will be paid on the performance of key milestones. The biggest one: Boeing and SpaceX will have to successfully make manned flights to the International Space Station, where they will have to demonstrate their ability to deliver cargo, dock and then return safely to Earth.
As reported by The Verge: Did you run this morning? Maybe you'll go for a jog after work. If you're looking to improve your speeds, you should imagine a robotic cheetah bearing down upon you. It's not as far fetched as it may seem. After several years of work, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced today that their prototype robotic cheetah can now run free under its own power, without cables or wires attached. Ostensibly designed with futuristic search-and-rescue missions in mind and funded by the military (DARPA, of course), the robot cheetah has been updated with a new "bounding" algorithm that precisely controls the amount of force each foot exerts when it hits the ground. The cheetah recently took a test run through a field on campus, achieving speeds up to 10 miles per hour and controlled jumps over obstacles taller than a foot high (30 centimeters).
Researchers at MIT's Biomimetics Robotics Lab (that is, a lab dedicated to robots that mimic biological organisms) say that the robot will soon be able to reach speeds of up to 30-miles-per-hour, exceeding the record running speeds of the world's fastest human, Usain Bolt (27.79 miles-per-hour). MIT's robot cheetah is not the first animal-inspired robotic quadruped to run free and into the darkest corner of our psyches. We saw even faster speeds a year ago from the WildCat robot from Boston Dynamics (a company that was founded by former MIT researchers and has since been acquired by Google). The fact that there are now several predatory feline-inspired robots on the prowl may be great for science, but they're not doing anything for our sleep cycles.
As reported by Motor Authority: Earlier this week, General Motors Company announced it will launch a Cadillac model for the 2017 model year that will be capable of driving autonomously in certain situations. Of course, many other automakers are planning similar technology, including the new kid on the block, Tesla Motors. Speaking with Japan’s Nikkei daily, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his company was developing its own self-driving technology and expects to have it ready in about three years, roughly when the new Model 3 sedan is scheduled to arrive. The Model 3 will have a starting price of about $35,000 and be capable of driving at least 200 miles on a single charge. Like rival systems, such as the one promised by GM as well as the Steering Assist system already offered by Mercedes-Benz, Tesla’s self-driving technology will only work in limited situations initially, such as in traffic jams or for highway driving. Eventually, though, Tesla expects to offer a car that is fully autonomous. "Full auto-pilot capability is going to happen, probably, in the five- or six-year time frame," Musk told the newspaper. "I think in the long term, all Tesla cars will have auto-pilot capability." During the same interview, Musk hinted at a future collaboration with auto giant Toyota in the area of electric car technology. As a deal to supply battery packs for the Toyota RAV4 EV draws to a close, Musk said the two firms could work on a similar project over the next few years.
As reported by 3DPrint: When it comes to 3D printing, new breakthroughs and new achievements are being realized almost on a daily basis. From 3D printable human tissue, to a 3D printed life-size castle, and now a 3D printed automobile, the technology never ceases to amaze. This week, at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago, Arizona-based automobile manufacturer Local Motors stole the show. Over the six day span of the IMTS, the company managed to 3D print, and assemble an entire automobile, called the ‘Strati’, live in front of spectators. Although the Strati is not the first ever car to be 3D printed, the advancements made by Local Motor with help from Cincinnati Inc, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have produced a vehicle in days rather than months. Last year, engineer Jim Kor designed the Urbee 2 3D printed car. The vehicle which weighed about half of what a typical automobile would weigh, was as strong as steel. What sets Local Motors’ ‘Strati’ 3D printed car apart from the likes of the Urbee 2, is the fact that they managed to print and construct the entire vehicle in just six days, whereas the Urbee 2 took 2500 print hours to complete.
This breakthrough was made possible by a machine produced by Cincinnati Inc., in cooperation with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine is
capable of printing at speeds unheard of on traditional 3D printers. It
is unbelievably able to lay down up to 40 pounds of carbon infused ABS
plastic per hour, with precise accuracy. After an exciting six days of
printing, in front of a live audience, the vehicle is finally complete.
The only question that remained was, ‘Does it drive?” As you can see by some of the Vine clips we have posted within this article,
it most certainly does! The car, which features just 40 parts, drove out
of McCormick Place in Chicago just moments ago. As to what Local Motors
plans to do next with the Strati 3D printed car, now that the vehicle
has been printed and drives like a charm, they will seek to launch
production-level 3D printed vehicles for sale to the public in the
coming months.
This is certainly a big step for all companies involved, as well as
the 3D printing industry in general. Let us know your thoughts on this
amazing accomplishment in the Local Motors 3D printed car forum thread on 3DPB.com.
As reported by Bloomberg: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing Co. (BA) are contending for more than $3 billion in funding to resume U.S. manned spaceflight with the first commercial venture to fly humans into orbit.
The contract to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017 in so-called space taxis would end U.S. reliance on Russian rockets since the space shuttle was retired three years ago. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration set a deadline to announce the award this month.
For Musk, winning would be a pivotal step toward his dream of colonizing Mars, while a Boeing victory would extend its half-century history with the U.S. space program. A third rival, Sierra Nevada Corp., offers a winged, shuttle-type vehicle as it seeks to expand beyond supplying rockets for sub-orbital tourist trips on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
“Boeing is the safe choice, SpaceX is the exciting choice and Sierra Nevada the interesting choice,” Loren Thompson, an analyst with Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based research group, said in a phone interview.
NASA is charting a new direction 45 years after sending humans to the Moon, looking to private industry for missions near Earth, such as commuting to and from the space station. Commercial operators would develop space tourism while the space agency focuses on distant trips to Mars or asteroids.
Funding History Boeing and SpaceX probably have the leading concepts, based on the funding NASA provided to refine their designs, and a split contract may be more likely than a winner-take-all decision, said Brian Friel, a government contracts analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence in Washington. “The odds are higher for a joint award,” Friel said in a telephone interview. NASA has said it might select more than one winner.
Boeing’s proposed CST-100 capsule received $480 million under NASA funding awarded in 2012, compared with $400 million for SpaceX’s Dragon V2 capsule and $219.5 million for Sierra Nevada’s orbiter. Blue Origin, a concept backed by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, received no funding and continues to hone its design, according to NASA’s website.
Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman, declined to comment on the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, as the program is formally known.
While both SpaceX and Boeing have designed reusable capsules seating as many as seven people, their business strategies -- and technology -- couldn’t be more different. Startup Culture
Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who shook up the auto industry with Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)’s battery-powered cars, nurtures a Silicon Valley startup culture at SpaceX. In 11 years, the Hawthorne, California-based company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has earned a reputation for setting audacious goals while evolving from making rockets to becoming the first private cargo hauler to the space station.
The commercial crew contract is a steppingstone to making humanity into a “multiplanetary species,” starting with Mars, according to Musk, who said that desire is one of the reasons he backed off an earlier plan to pursue an initial public offering.
“The reason I haven’t taken SpaceX public is the goals of SpaceX are very long-term, which is to establish a city on Mars,” Musk, 43, told reporters at a Sept. 8 briefing in Tokyo.
Musk declined via e-mail this week to discuss SpaceX’s chances or assess his competitors. The Dragon V2 spacecraft is designed to return to Earth and land vertically under its own power on a launch pad, a break with years of NASA practice of relying on parachutes to cushion an ocean landing.
No ‘Moonshots’ Boeing, the world’s biggest aerospace company, is focused on shareholder value, disciplined execution and avoiding oversize bets on technology leaps that Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney terms “moonshots.” Boeing’s entry is the only one of the contestants to have met all of the design and integration milestones on the deadlines set by NASA, while SpaceX and Sierra Nevada requested extensions. That should win the aerospace giant points with NASA, said Thompson, whose research group has done work for Boeing and Sierra Nevada.
While the Boeing vehicle’s exterior echoes the Apollo lunar capsules of the 1960s, its interior embodies another McNerney tenet of sharing technology across product lines. The spacecraft borrows the “Sky Interior” lighting Boeing created for its jetliners and seating developed for the 787 Dreamliner cockpit. It would still use parachute recovery. Space History
“We’ve had this great advantage of reaching across different parts of our company for areas of innovation,” Kelly Kaplan, a spokeswoman for Boeing’s space exploration unit, said in a phone interview. As to putting humans in space, “We’ve been doing it for 50 years.”
Sierra Nevada is no stranger to U.S. contract competitions or spaceflight. Besides making rockets for Branson’s planned venture for quick hops into space, the Sparks, Nevada-based manufacturer launches commercial satellites and was chosen in 2013 to provide light-attack planes for Afghanistan’s military.
Unlike the other entrants, Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser would land like an airplane on any military runway big enough for a narrow-body jet. The orbiter is the only craft nimble enough to repair satellites, among the capabilities that have drawn interest from 21 countries and earned it the nickname SUV, for “space utility vehicle,” Mark Sirangelo, who heads Sierra Nevada’s space systems division, said in a phone interview.
“If Sierra Nevada were to win, it would be because of that design,” said Friel, the Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.
Shared Award A shared Boeing-SpaceX award as envisioned by Friel would match NASA’s use of both SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) to take cargo to the space station.
Funding two ventures may raise development costs while also fostering competition and giving NASA an alternative if one vehicle encounters technical difficulties, said Marco Caceres, director of space studies with Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant.
Congressional opposition to a similar arrangement for the crew contract has waned as the fraying U.S.-Russia relationship focuses attention on NASA’s dependence on Soyuz rockets to put astronauts into orbit, Caceres said in a telephone interview.
“The Russians have done NASA a favor in terms of funding,” Caceres said.
As reported by Bloomberg: Two solar storms forecast to strike Earth starting tonight may degrade global position satellite devices and radio transmissions. The first and smaller of the two coronal mass ejections will arrive later today, Thomas Berger, director of the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center, said in a conference call with reporters. The second one should hit by midday New York time. “Current forecasting of these events is tricky, so we cannot forecast down to the hour,” Berger said. Although neither ejection would be considered a major event, scientists are watching closely because they came so close together from the same area, Berger said. Besides the expected effects on GPS data and radio transmissions, they may create an aurora display across the northern U.S. The geomagnetic storms touched off by the solar action will be strongest tomorrow into this weekend, Berger said. The storms will be G2 or G3 on the center’s five-step scale for geomagnetic events, with G5 the strongest. The coronal ejections both erupted out of a sunspot complex that also produced two flares this week, Berger said. The spots are big magnetic storms on the sun that darken its surface and can be seen from Earth. Magnetic Field “Essentially the sun just shot out a magnet and it is about to interact with another magnet, Earth’s magnet,” said William Murtagh, program coordinator at the center in Boulder, Colorado. Earth’s magnetic field will start fluctuating when the material from the sun arrives, according the center’s website. Large solar events can prompt aircraft to divert from polar routes because of increased radiation, although that isn’t expected to happen this time. In addition to measuring geomagnetic storms, the space weather center classifies radiation effects of solar events on a similar five-step scale. The current radiation impacts are rated at S1. An S3 or higher is needed to divert airline traffic, Murtagh said. Berger said U.S. electric power grid operators should be able to handle these events. There also isn’t a concern for electronics on the ground. The storms won’t match the power of a storm recorded in 1859 by British astronomer Richard Carrington now known as the Carrington Event. It electrified telegraph lines, shocking operators, and created an aurora seen in Cuba and Hawaii, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration website. Another large storm in 2012 missed Earth, Berger said. Both the Carrington Event and the 2012 storm took about 17 hours to travel from the sun to the earth, Berger said. These two eruptions are taking 40 to 50 hours. The second eruption is more powerful and is catching up to the first, Berger said. Current models say they won’t arrive together.
As reported by Ars Technica: Motorists popped for texting-while-driving violations in Long Island
could be mandated to temporarily disable their mobile phones the next
time they take to the road. That's according to Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice,
who says she is moving to mandate that either hardware be installed or
apps be activated that disable the mobile phone while behind the wheel.
The district attorney likened the texter's punishment to drunk drivers
who sometimes are required to breathe into a device before turning on
the ignition. "Like ignition interlock devices, transdermal alcohol monitoring
ankle bracelets, and personal breath testing instruments, DA Rice
believes that available technologies must be employed in criminal
sentences to change behavior and save lives. The cost of each of these
devices would be borne by the offender," the prosecutor said in a press
release. She said she hasn't chosen any technology, yet:
Hardware and software solutions that block texting during
driving are currently produced by various manufacturers and software
developers, and are constantly under development. The DA’s office does
not endorse any particular company and is in the process of reviewing
specific solutions based on their features and services. Critical
features include security measures to make the solutions tamper-proof,
and data integrity measures to ensure accurate reporting to courts, law
enforcement, parents, and guardians.
Rice's announcement came nearly a week after a Facebook-surfing
driver rear-ended a car at 85 mph, killing an 89-year-old
great-grandmother. The 20-year-old motorist is being charged with negligent homicide.
Newsday said Rice has already brought 82 texting-while-driving cases.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said about 20
percent of motorists text or send e-mail while driving. And Rice noted
that Web surfing while driving is at least as dangerous as drunk
driving. "Research suggests
that driving while texting can be as dangerous as driving while drunk,
and even more pervasive, especially among young people,” Rice said.
“It’s well established that the practice robs people of their lives and
futures. Tackling this problem will require a concerted effort by
numerous sectors of commerce and government." Across the country, 44 states ban text messaging for drivers. At least 12 states bar drivers from using mobile phones at all.
The announcement came after an expensive and ferocious competition to determine which companies would be tasked with building the next era of spacecraft.
Boeing has invested in the CST 100 capsule, which would launch on an Atlas V rocket -- almost a turnkey proposition for NASA when you consider the company’s history in aerospace.
