SpaceX Targets May 5th for Dragon Pad-Abort Test

As reported by Florida Today: SpaceX as soon as May 5 will shoot a Dragon capsule from a Cape Canaveral in a test of a key safety system needed for astronaut launches in the next two or three years.

The so-called "pad abort" test will launch a prototype crew spacecraft from a stand at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40, simulating a launch pad emergency.

The Dragon will fire SuperDraco thrusters designed to enable the capsule and its crew to escape from a rocket failing on the pad or during flight.

"The ability to abort from a launch or pad emergency and safely carry crew members out of harm's way is a critical element for NASA's next generation of crew spacecraft," NASA said in a statement.

The brief test plans to loft the unmanned capsule upward until it deploys parachutes and splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the test. NASA TV also will air a media briefing previewing the test with SpaceX and NASA representatives. 

The ability to abort from a launch or pad emergency and safely carry crew members out of harm's way is a critical element for NASA's next generation of crew spacecraft. SpaceX will perform the test under its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA, but can use the data gathered during the development flight as it continues on the path to certification. Under a separate Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, NASA's Commercial Crew Program will certify SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Falcon 9 rocket, ground and mission operations systems to fly crews to and from the International Space Station.

The Dragon capsule test unit will fire SuperDraco thrusters to blast off from a truss mimicking a Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad, then deploy three main parachutes and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean approximately one mile offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
The test rig includes a capsule with hundreds of sensors to measure pressures, loads, temperatures and other data during the flight test, which is expected to last about one minute.

SpaceX officials have said a crash test dummy is inside the capsule for the pad abort flight.

The human-rated Dragon capsule — a redesigned version of of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft — will ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station beginning in 2017. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to $2.6 billion in September to complete development of the Crew Dragon spaceship and fly up to six operational crew rotation missions to the space station.

NASA also tapped Boeing to finish testing of its CST-100 space capsule, giving the space agency redundant means to transport astronauts into low Earth orbit and end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz capsules for the job.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft’s eight side-mounted SuperDraco thrusters each generate about 16,000 pounds of thrust to carry crews away from danger during launch. SpaceX says the engines can also slow down the capsule during landing, eventually allowing the craft to accomplish propulsive pinpoint touchdowns like a helicopter.

Dragon Opens for Business with New Science

From NASA blogs: NASA astronauts Terry Virts and Scott Kelly opened the hatches and floated into the new SpaceX Dragon space freighter Saturday morning, beginning five weeks of cargo transfers. The sixth Dragon cargo mission for NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract delivered a wide variety of crew supplies and science gear to support dozens of new and ongoing microgravity experiments.

The crew unloaded new Rodent Research gear that will allow scientists to study the effects of microgravity on biological mechanisms in mice. Results may promote the development of new drugs tackling the effects of aging and disease on Earth.

A pair of new POLAR science freezers were unloaded from Dragon. The freezers store science samples at -80° C and allow the transport of those samples back to Earth.

Blood pressure checks and vision testing were on the schedule Monday as part of the Ocular Health study which observes the effects of long-term spaceflight on crew members. A trio of cosmonauts looked at cardiac activity in space and studied the radiation emitted from Russian spacecraft propulsion systems.

Chevrolet FNR Autonomous Car Concept

As reported by Cool Material: The automotive concept allows for considerable interpretation. Some concepts are only a short time away from production and some are much more. The Chevrolet FNR Concept is definitely the latter—it’s an imaginative hypothesis of what future vehicles could be. Making its grand introduction at Auto Shanghai, the FNR was also designed to commemorate Chevrolet’s ten year anniversary in China. The self-driving or autonomous FNR features “dragon-fly” doors, 180-degree swiveling front seats, and iris recognition for the driver. Turning each wheel is a magnetic and hubless electric motor, but don’t worry about plugging it in as wireless charging is standard.

Pilot: US Government Claims Of Plane Wi-Fi Hacking Wrong And Irresponsible

As reported by Forbes: The US government released a report yesterday warning of security threats facing modern aircraft, leading to stories from major publications claiming in-flght Wi-Fi could be hacked to take control of a passenger plane. But according to Dr Phil Polstra, a qualified pilot and professor of digital forensics at Bloomsburg University, the report contained much erroneous information.

Polstra believes the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report was put together by people who didn’t understand how modern aircraft actually work. He took umbrage with the claims that as airplanes are increasingly connected to the internet, the control systems on planes are in danger of being remotely compromised. He told FORBES over email that the avionics networks, which deal with flight controls and coordination, were simply not connected to the internet like Wi-Fi services. “To imply this is irresponsible.”

Whilst modern aircraft do use standardised internet connections over ethernet and IP addresses sending data to one another, there is no real threat to passenger safety from sky-high Wi-Fi hacks. “To imply that because IP is used for in-flight WiFi and also on the avionics networks means that you can automatically take over the avionics network makes about as much sense as saying you can take over the jet engines because they breath air like the passengers and there is no air gap between passengers who touch the plane and the engines which are attached to the plane,” Polstra said.

The GAO report, based largely on interviews with security experts , also indicated “if the cabin systems connect to the cockpit avionics systems (e.g., share the same physical wiring harness or router) and use the same networking platform, in this case IP, a user could subvert the firewall and access the cockpit avionics system from the cabin”. Polstra said that’s a big “if” and isn’t how current in-flight networks actually work.

“The information passed on to the inflight entertainment system is via something called a NED (Network Extension Device). This device is not a router. This is a device that must be programmed to pass certain information to the entertainment system (aircraft position, etc.).
“This is a one-way communication. Even if someone were able to send information back toward the avionics, they aren’t listening for information from the in-flight entertainment systems… Since the computer doesn’t try and read information on those wires it is not likely to be useful to an attacker.”

The GAO was “deceptive” in its depictions of airliner networks, such as in the image above, he added. “Just because the cabin has wireless and ground communication is also wireless doesn’t mean the systems are ‘connected’.”

The media reports warning of Wi-Fi attacks were also odd – there was no clear mention of anything related to Wi-Fi in the whole GAO document.

There have been some cases, however, where networks have not been properly segmented, potentially leaving open vulnerabilities. Seven years ago, it emerged the flight control and infotainment networks on Boeing 787 aircraft were connected, with only a firewall blocking malicious traffic between the two. If that’s still the case, then there’s at least something to worry about.

Elon Musk Nearly Sold Tesla to Google Two Years Ago

As reported by The Verge: In March of 2013, Tesla was in a dire situation: the company was nearly bankrupt, its electric vehicles failing to connect with buyers. But according to a new report from Bloomberg today, Elon Musk had a contingency plan: cash out with Google.

MUSK WANTED EIGHT MORE YEARS WITH THE COMPANY

As Tesla was on the downward slope, Elon Musk turned to his friend Larry Page, suggesting Google buy the company, plus $5 billion in factory expenses. It's unclear what the exact offer was, but as Bloomberg points out, Tesla was worth $6 billion at the time. Musk also reportedly asked Page to guarantee him either another eight years running the company, or enough time to produce a third-generation, mainstream electric car.

The talks, according to Bloomberg, were far along.  Page reportedly "accepted the overall proposal and shook on the deal."  Lawyers spent the next few weeks hammering out details, but it never quite closed.

As we know, the deal never went anywhere. Tesla turned around from the edge of bankruptcy. The company ended up posting a profit in the next few weeks, and even paid back its debts to the Department of Energy. Musk reportedly broke off the deal with Google soon after.

Apple was also rumored to be interested in buying Tesla last year, a deal with a very different tenor than the reported Google buyout. With the news that Apple is working on a car, that speculation has intensified, with investors suggesting Apple would have to pay $75 billion for the car maker.

Here’s What Happens When Your Tesla is Smarter Than You

As reported by The Verge: Dragging your feet through the parched gravel along the side of Nevada's Route 93, relentless sun burning your face, empty gas canister in hand. It's every driver's nightmare: getting stranded somewhere. On electric vehicles, that fear is amplified by the fact that you are no longer reliant on gas stations, which are just about everywhere, but on charging stations. And there just aren't as many of those — at least not yet. Electric car owners knew this was the deal when they signed up. They also knew that driving the kinds of distances they were used to with multiple tanks of gas would require a little more work on something with batteries.

Tesla had an ambitious plan to solve this problem on its cars by swapping depleted batteries from its Model S sedan out with charged ones in just one minute. That's a good idea, but one that's still being tested. A tweet from Tesla co-founder Elon Musk last month also suggested that the feature might be more for commercial drivers than civilians:

So in the meantime the company has attempted to combat the range anxiety problem with software that both keeps you from being stupid, and — more importantly — does not require you to be smart.

A new update that started going out to Model S owners at the end of March has two features designed to figure out how far you can go before your battery is drained. The first is a simple warning that will let you know when you're headed outside the range of known charging stations. The other is a trip planner that will strategically route you through Tesla's network of Superchargers. I came away impressed with how well the trip planner worked, but I also got an interesting lesson in how much extra driving can be involved if you want to stay inside Tesla's charger network. (I couldn't test the range warning because I was working with a full battery in the heart of San Francisco, a place rich with charging stations.)For fun, I plugged in a route to Walt Disney World in Florida, a multi-day trip from my starting point in Northern California. The Model S's navigation system took a few seconds to churn through the trip before serving up a route that would have had me driving through 27 different charging stations and venturing as far north as Wisconsin (more than 1,000 miles north of my destination). Plotting the same course into Google Maps (which Tesla uses), the same trip in a gasoline vehicle would normally take me through the Texas panhandle. Assume I planned to follow the Supercharger route, and stop for about half an hour to top up at each of those stations, and we're talking an extra 1,500 or so miles, which easily adds up to an extra full day of driving.

THIS ISN'T JUST FOR WORST-CASE SCENARIOS

But that same route and others like it are destined to change as time goes on. In the US, Tesla has 419 charging stations with 2,305 Superchargers, with plans to open up more both domestically and abroad in the next two years. This year alone may change the California to Florida scenario with charging stations set to open in New Mexico, Texas, and Mississippi. You can already see the difference just a few more stations make when plotting a journey from San Francisco to New York, which resembles less of a wild tour of America, and more of what you'd do in a car running off gasoline.This new tool isn't just for my worst-case scenario road trip, though; it's also for shorter weekend trips and basic commuting with a car that may not be fully charged. Meanwhile, the range assurance feature has you covered when you haven't set a destination in the navigation system, which is more likely on shorter, impromptu trips. It alerts you when you're about to go too far from a known charging location, which helps you decide whether to keep pushing ahead (if you're going to a house where you can plug in, for instance) or turn around.

There's also the inevitability that these types of features — the ones that keep humans from making mistakes — could end up as nothing more than a brief footnote along the path to autonomous cars, which Tesla is feverishly working on. Taking the thinking out of driving in return for safety and convenience is the main goal of that project, and Tesla has already promised the first taste of that in an update coming to its vehicles this summer that will effectively self-park in selected spots and drive for you on highways. The step beyond that — the one where you can take a nap on your way to work or enjoy a movie with your kids — is Tesla's future, as long as Elon Musk gets his way. In the meantime, the company may have already turned dead batteries into a thing of the past.

Prototype Navy Drones Swarm their Targets

As reported by Engadget: The days of enormous, singular UAVs directly controlled by remote pilots may be coming to an end. Over the last few years, there's been a lot work towards developing smaller drones capable of autonomously coordinating their actions, much like insects do. Now, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is taking these lessons and applying them to military uses, such as its new LOCUST (Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology) program. It utilizes a rocket tube launcher filled with lightweight, self-guided Coyote UAVs that team up and overwhelm enemy aircraft like honey bees defending their hive.

Using a bunch of smaller, coordinated drones rather than a single big one offers a number of advantages to the military. For one, replacing even hundreds of disposable drones is way less expensive than losing a $16 million MQ-9 Reaper. Plus, having the drones coordinate among themselves reduces the need for on-location operators. The LOCUST program will of course still ultimately be controlled by humans, but they'll perform a supervisory role rather than actually piloting the UAVs.

The LOCUST program successfully completed a series of initial test launches last month. Up next: a "2016 ship-based demonstration of 30 rapidly launched autonomous, swarming UAVs," ONR program manager Lee Mastroianni said in a statement. And over the next decade or so, the ONR hopes to deeply integrate these highly-autonomous UAV systems like this into numerous naval platforms -- from small ships and tactical vehicles to aircraft and even other, bigger drones.