As reported by The Verge: Remember when Elon Musk saidTesla was working on a car charger "that automatically moves out from the wall and connects like a solid metal snake. For realz"? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. It doesn't really matter because now you can see a prototype in action,for realz —and on a "stuff of nightmares" scale of 1 to 10, it's about a 6.5.
To be clear, I'm not saying this isn't impressive — an automated system that can plug itself into a Model S is impressive. It's also, to be sure, very creepy — especially in the slow but deliberate way it twists itself to make a connection. "Solid metal snake" is indeed the best descriptor I can imagine, Elon. Thanks a lot.
As reported by The Guardian: Elon Musk’s third electric car will be delivered to customers in the US after three years of delay, with over 20,000 pre-orders
Tesla’s much delayed electric sports utility vehicle is due to finally reach customers, starting in September, Elon Musk has announced.
The Model X was originally unveiled in 2012 alongside the first deliveries of the Model S sedan and was expected to go into production in 2013. Musk announced two subsequent delays as the company struggled to meet demand for the Model S and the motoring company’s expansion plans.
The Model X has a higher ride height, all-wheel drive and can seat up to seven, making it the largest vehicle available from Tesla Motors. More than 20,000 people have already paid a $5,000 deposit to reserve one of the new models. Pricing is expected to be similar to the Model S, which starts at $69,900 or about £50,000 in the UK.
Musk confirmed that the company’s Model X car configurator would be available online in the next three weeks and that customers will start receiving new cars by 30 September.
The Roadster, Tesla’s first car, the Model S, and now the Model X, are being used to pave the way for Tesla’s Model 3, which is Musk’s vision of a mass market
“The goal at Tesla is to produce a mass-market electric car, but we can only get there one step at a time by selling the Roadster and now the Model S to fund the mass market,” said Musk at the UK launch of the Model S.
The Model 3’s design is expected to be unveiled in the first quarter of next year and delivered to customers by the end of 2017, priced beginning around $35,000 or £25,000.
Tesla also said it expects to ship a further 12,000 vehicles in the third quarter of this year, 2,000 up on the first quarter, matching the second quarter and up 60% year-on-year.
The image sequence offers an unprecedented look at the relationship between the two planetary objects, and also gives a detailed look at the rarely seen far side of the Moon.
AN UNBELIEVABLE LOOK AT OUR MOON IN ORBIT
The resulting GIF is so amazing that it's almost unbelievable, but the images are completely real. The whole sequence was taken by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (or "EPIC," a wonderfully appropriate acronym) on the DSCOVR satellite that was launched in February.
If you're wondering why it looks so different from the famous "Earthrise" photo, that's because DSCOVR is located one million miles from Earth. The far side of the Moon, where Earthrise was taken from, is roughly 240,000 miles away. How's that for cosmic perspective?
As reported by CNN: A pivotal network of satellites doesn't properly guard its communication, making devices back on Earth susceptible to hacking, according to new research.
Lots of companies -- everything ranging from overseas shipping containers to oil drilling rigs -- use location data beamed from GPS trackers to ensure that equipment never goes off course.
But Colby Moore, a researcher with cybersecurity firm Synack, has found that it's easy to crack Globalstar's satellite network. This is a company that bills itself as "the world's most modern satellite network."
GPS trackers beam data to satellites, which send them back to base stations on Earth. Using cheap hardware and small planes, Colby successfully intercepted and decoded data -- none of which was encrypted.
He also found that there are no safeguards to check that data is shared only between real trackers and base stations. With that access, Moore was able to decode the transmissions and create fake GPS data.
The result? High-tech thieves could steal a freight truck full of precious cargo without setting off alarms. Rescuers responding to a sinking cruise ship could be redirected far away from the actual wreckage.
Aviation is especially at risk. Lots of planes transmit their location using Globalstar's system, especially now that the organization that collects pilots' flight plans, Lockheed Martin (LMT) Flight Service, signed a deal with the satellite company in June.
A spokesman for Lockheed Martin did not respond to a request for comment.
A hacker's faked plane GPS signals could cause chaos at an airport that expects a plane to land -- but can't spot anything on radar.
Moore will present his findings at the Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas next week.
Globalstar (GSAT) did not acknowledge the flaw -- or say whether it plans to actually start encrypting its communication.
"This type of situation has never been an issue to date," said company representative Allison Hoffman. Globalstar said it would know if its systems were under attack. But this hack doesn't technically attack Globalstar's systems -- it only fools them.This is an artist's depiction of Globalstar satellites launched in 2010.
In today's world, lack of encryption with sensitive communication is unacceptable. Encryption is required in all electronic banking, and it's expected in email, texting, and even casual Web browsing.
Globalstar's problem could be a result of old technology. The company had already launched 40 satellites into space by late 1999, when encryption was an afterthought. Plus, encryption adds to the size of data being transmitted -- and in space, bandwidth is expensive, especially 20 years ago.
Moore said the only fix would be to add security features to new devices on Earth. But there are currently 649,000 Globalstar customers with devices whose software will be difficult -- or impossible -- to upgrade.
(Note: The original article describes the Globalstar system as a "network of GPS satellites", which is incorrect. Globalstar satellites are communication satellites, which in turn sometimes include GPS location information about their users. Nevertheless, the hacking claims, including the GPS data carried in the messages, could be well founded.)
As reported by The Daily Beast: Aerospace giant Boeing just snagged a $6.6-million contract to design a cheap, reusable spaceplane for the U.S. military. The idea: to equip America’s space forces with an airplane-like vehicle that can fly to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere and quickly boost small satellites into orbit, and then land, refuel, load up another satellite, andtake off again within 24 hours.
The so-called XS-1 program—short for “eXperimental Spaceplane 1”—isn’t a space weapon. Instead, it’s a sort of defense against space weapons—specifically, the growing fleets of killer spacecraft and satellite-destroying rockets that China and Russia are deploying.
U.S. military planners fully expect that, in any future conflict between major world powers, Earth’s orbit will become a battleground as laser-armed satellites stalk each other across orbital planes and ground- and ship-launched rockets lance into space to smash enemy spacecraft.
The country that can recover fastest from the initial orbital carnage stands to dominate space, the ultimate high ground in any high-tech battle. “In an era of declining budgets and adversaries’ evolving capabilities, quick, affordable, and routine access to space is increasingly critical for both national and economic security,” DARPA stated in a press release.
That’s where the XS-1 comes in. DARPA wants the new spaceplane to be able to boost a two-ton satellite into space every day for 10 days straight for less than $5 million per flight.
That’s a hell of a lot faster, and cheaper, than today’s launches, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take years of planning. XS-1 could “create a new paradigm for more routine, responsive and affordable space operations,” according to DARPA.
Three XS-1s carrying a single satellite per trip and working at max speed could, in theory, replenish practically the Pentagon’s entire satellite constellation in a couple of weeks—and faster if each spaceplane carries more than one satellite at a time.
Of course, that assumes that contractors can build fresh spacecraft fast enough to keep up with the XS-1s’ busy launch schedules. To that end, the military is also working hard on simpler, smaller satellites that it can produce quickly and cheaply.
Conceptually, the robotic XS-1 is elegant in its simplicity. It’s basically just a high- and fast-flying drone that can lend a single-stage rocket speed and altitude, making it easier for the rocket (and its satellite payload) to escape Earth’s gravity.
“Our design would allow the autonomous booster to carry the second stage and payload to high altitude and deploy them into space,” Will Hampton, Boeing’s XS-1 program manager, said in a company press release. “The booster would then return to Earth, where it could be quickly prepared for the next flight by applying operation and maintenance principles similar to modern aircraft.”
In effect, the XS-1 replaces the biggest, priciest main stage of a single-use rocket, while saving money by being reusable. You buy the XS-1 once and use it over and over, paying only for fuel and spare parts for each flight.
Boeing’s concept art depicts a cigar-shaped airframe featuring a bulbous nose, tiny wings, and big engine nozzles for a powerful motor. In its basic outline, the XS-1 could wind up looking a lot like a miniature version of the Space Shuttle, which NASA retired in 2011, or a bigger take on the X-37B robotic spaceplanes that Boeing built for the Air Force a few years ago.
The X-37B—the objective of years’ worth of conspiracy theories—is positively diminutive at just 29 feet in length. DARPA has compared the XS-1 to an F-15 fighter, which is 64 feet long.
But the XS-1 wouldn’t just be bigger than today’s tiny spaceplane. While the X-37B features internal cargo bays with hinging doors, the XS-1, by contrast, could carry its payload—a single-stage rocket with a satellite attached—on its back. The X-37B, like the Space Shuttle before it, is an orbiter that boosts into space atop a rocket. In function, the XS-1 is more akin to the rocket than the orbiter—and only to the rocket’s initial stage, as it would only ever climb to a height of 70 miles or so, still within the atmosphere.
Which is not to say the XS-1 is any less sophisticated than the Space Shuttle and X-37B are. What the government is asking the XS-1 to do is hard. Especially doing it safely and cheaply. To give its payload the energy it needs to escape gravity, the XS-1 will need to accelerate to Mach 10—“hypersonic” speed.
By comparison, aerospace mogul Richard Branson’s SpaceShipTwo, a rocket-powered suborbital spaceplane that could also fly nearly 70 miles high, topped out at Mach 2 before its fatal crash in October 2014. No fewer than half of the hypersonic drones that the Pentagon has tested in recent years have also crashed. (And those have only gone Mach 4 or 5.) Russia and China have had even less luck developing aircraft that can withstand the stresses of hypersonic flight. “The work is not easy,” Boris Obnosov, then the head of Russia’s missile programs, said of his country’s high-Mach efforts in 2013.
Boeing beat out two other companies to snag the recent XS-1 contract. Starting in the summer of 2014, Masten Space Systems and Northrop Grumman had also drawn up XS-1 blueprints. DARPA awarded the three firms $4 million apiece to do that preliminary design work. But Boeing’s success building X-37Bs for the Air Force apparently helped the Chicago-based planemaker win the follow-on contract.
And it didn’t hurt that Boeing enlisted Washington State-based rocket start-up Blue Origin to help with the XS-1’s motor. Founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin is working on reusable space rockets that take off and land vertically. It appears Boeing wants to modify Blue Origin’s BE-4 to power the XS-1. Capable of producing more than half a million pounds of thrust, the BE-4 is amonster of an engine.
The next step for Boeing is to complete its XS-1 design and test its basic technologies—all before August 2016. DARPA wants an XS-1 prototype to perform a realistic trial mission no later than 2019. After that, the Pentagon could decide to build XS-1s for regular use.
It’s not clear how much the spaceplanes might cost. The two X-37Bs set the government back around a billion dollars apiece.
A billion bucks or more per XS-1 might seem like a lot, but it’s a small part of what the United States spends in space every year. Counting NASA’s $18-billion budget, the roughly $8 billion the Pentagon drops on rockets and satellites plus space spending by private companies, America invests $40 billion a year in orbit, more than the rest of the world combined. The United States’ more than 400 satellites and spaceplanes represent nearly half the world’s active spacecraft.
“The U.S. has much more invested in space and depends on it for communications, economic and military dimensions much more than everyone else,” said Dr. Laura Grego, a space expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
And that investment is fragile because satellites are fragile, Grego wrote in a recent blog post. “The truth is that it is much easier to attack [satellites] than to defend them.”
With its spaceplanes, maneuvering satellites, and surface-launched missiles, the United States is by far the world leader when it comes to destroying orbiting spacecraft, but that offensive capability doesn’t actually do much to protect America’s own satellites from rival space weapons.
In 2007, China blasted one of its own defunct satellites with a rocket, proving it could do the same to another country’s spacecraft. And over the past 18 months, Russia has sneaked three small, highly-maneuverable spacecraft into low orbit aboard rockets carrying communications satellites. “There’s some possibility it’s an anti-satellite system,” said Anatoly Zack, a space historian who closely tracks Russian activity in orbit. Equipped with lasers or explosives, the nimble little spacecraft could sneak up on and disable American satellites.
And if that happens, the Pentagon will have to scramble to restore its orbital infrastructure. XS-1s could take off every 24 hours, boosting a fresh satellite—or many satellites—into orbit at the apogee of each flight. To cut down on the time and money it takes to build new spacecraft, in 2007 the Pentagon established a new “Operationally Responsive Space” organization, now headquartered at an Air Force base in New Mexico.
ORS spends roughly $100 million a year designing comparatively inexpensive satellites—and helping other military organizations do the same. In November 2013, ORS launched a Minotaur rocket from Virginia containing a record-setting29 satellites in its nose cone. Each of the small “CubeSat” spacecraft, named for their four-inches-cubed dimensions, weighed just three pounds and cost no more than $100,000.
“Take the same microprocessors, GPS units, cameras, modems and radio equipment that we use in smartphones and put them in a satellite body instead,” wrote Maj. Ethan Mattox, a U.S. Special Operations Command space official. “Add the appropriate software, boost it into orbit and voila—you’ve built a satellite tailored for a specific mission fast and cheap.” Sure, a CubeSat lasts only three or four years, but even with such a short lifespan, the tiny satellites are a still a bargain compared to billion-dollar spacecraft that last much longer.
Combine CubeSats with XS-1s and you’ve got a great way of putting satellites into orbit quickly and cheaply, preserving America’s foothold in space even if an enemy is shooting down spacecraft. It’s not for no reason that Jess Sponable, DARPA’s XS-1 program manager, called the spaceplane a “game-changer.” (PDF)
As reported by Green Car Reports: It's not just the cars made by electric-car startup Tesla Motors, or the fact that it's the first new automaker in decades that appears to have a serious chance of long-term success.
The Silicon Valley company is also viewed as a potential disruptor of established players.
In just three years, the Tesla Model S has emerged to become a legitimate competitor to traditional luxury cars from companies that have been around for more than a century.
Not to mention that Tesla's direct-sales model is viewed as a dire threat by traditional franchised auto dealers, who have launched armies of lobbyists to make Tesla direct sales illegal in as many states as possible.
Now a new article suggests that Tesla might eventually take down a much bigger target.
Speculation about whether Tesla could mean the end for hydrocarbon vehicle fuels was the cover story in a recent issue of oil-industry trade magazine Alberta Oil (via Charged EVs).
The cover shows a Model S emerging from a black background, with the headline "Hell On Wheels."
In the article, author Max Fawcett argues that the Model S could be one of the "most dangerous" cars ever made--in terms of its impact on the oil industry.
That's because, by his reckoning, the Tesla sedan has managed to do something that no other electric car has done: "become an object of desire."
Fawcett interviewed Quartz journalist Steve LeVine, author of The Powerhouse, a book on the development of electric-car batteries.
Widening the scope beyond Tesla, LeVine said that improved batteries are more or less inevitable, and that they will dramatically increase demand for electric cars.
He notes that breakthroughs in battery technology don't have to come from carmakers. Electronics manufacturers and other related industries could contribute to the push as well.
And LeVine notes that batteries could be paired with other energy sources--such as hydrogen fuel cells or supercapacitors--to increase the range and performance of zero-emission vehicles.
He predicts the electric-car battery industry could be worth as much as $100 billion by 2030.
That would lead to a major drop in oil consumption, a scenario the oil industry may well not be prepared for.
As reported by NPR: For years, Google has had eyes in neighborhoods across the world: Google Street View cars armed with cameras, lasers, and GPS devices to filter "360-degree panoramic views" and "locations on all seven continents" to Google Maps.
Now, on top of having eyes, Google's got a nose. It has partnered with Aclima, a company that designs environmental sensor networks, to equip some Google Street View cars with equipment that allows them to track air pollution in real time. The technology will allow the cars to monitor levels of several pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).
A Google technician installing Aclima sensors onto a Street View car.
"We are for the first time able to really take a city scale snapshot of pollution," Aclima CEO Davida Herzl told NPR. "The existing way that we understand air quality in cities is through government-mandated monitoring stations. But those monitoring stations are sparsely distributed in cities. So we understand kind of what's happening at a regional level, but we don't really understand how pollution moves through a city, how it differs block by block, street by street. ... You can think of it like a photograph with a few pixels. With the partnership with Google, we're now able to fill in those pixels."
The sensor devices, or "mini-mobile labs" as Herzl calls them, fit in the back of the Google Street View cars, and the air samples make it to those sensors from a hole in one of the car windows, through a series of tubes "that look like a jumbo straw." The cars also have small anemometers on the outside that can track temperature and wind flow, among other meteorologic measurements. "It's kind of like we've given the cars a nose," Herzl says.
Google says it's been working with Aclima for years, previously on devices to track pollution within Google buildings. And, Google began working with the Environmental Defense Fund last year, to start tracking methane pollution from underground pipelines.
Google's rendering of how pollution-sensor equipped Google Street View cars "see the air."Aclima
Google says the kind of data Aclima's sensors gather on Google Street View cars could have multiple uses.
"If you're a mother of an asthmatic child you could plan your day using this kind of information," Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google's lead on the Aclima partnership, told NPR. "If you're a local government, you could look at this kind of information and say, 'What and where can me make some changes on a small scale to have some good impact?' And if you're a scientist you can obviously use this kind of data for models and to help supplement the data that you're already collecting."
The pollution data gathered is being stored in the cloud by Google, and Aclima has already begun sifting through some of that data and publishing some of their findings. Tuxen-Bettman says that right now, Google isn't publishing any of the data itself, but one day, it might. "In the future, yes, Google Earth Engine, Google Earth, and other tools will be used so that all sorts of people can access it [the pollutant data] in different ways." Aclima says its goal is to make the data available to the public as well.
When asked about some of those privacy concerns people might have, Tuxen-Bettman said right now the Google Street View cars equipped with pollution sensors are only taking panoramic views for Google Maps and tracking pollution. "Air quality, right now, that's the only kind of additional experimentation that we're doing [with the Google Street View cars]. Obviously we're exploring what kind of pollutants we could potentially add.
"We understand that a lot of people will have different opinions," she said, "but our intention is that if we provide accurate and useful information about our air, it's gonna do much more good than harm, meaning that the benefits are far going to outweigh any cons. We're excited to finally make the invisible visible."
Whenever there are stories about Google and data, there are questions about just how much data the company is collecting, who can see it, and whether it's being put to good use. You could wonder: If Google Street View cars now have "eyes" and "noses," what else do they have?
Wired previously reported that Google has already come under fire for its Street View cars. A few years ago a Federal Communications Commission document showed that Google Street View cars were collecting Wi-Fi payload data and observing "typical Wi-Fi usage snapshots."
To be clear, I'm not saying this isn't impressive — an automated system that can plug itself into a Model S is impressive. It's also, to be sure, very creepy — especially in the slow but deliberate way it twists itself to make a connection. "Solid metal snake" is indeed the best descriptor I can imagine, Elon. Thanks a lot.
The Model X was originally unveiled in 2012 alongside the first deliveries of the Model S sedan and was expected to go into production in 2013. Musk announced two subsequent delays as the company struggled to meet demand for the Model S and the motoring company’s expansion plans.
U.S. military planners fully expect that, in any future conflict between major world powers, Earth’s orbit will become a battleground as laser-armed satellites stalk each other across orbital planes and ground- and ship-launched rockets lance into space to smash enemy spacecraft.
