NASA Announces First Astronaut Crews to Fly on Boeing and SpaceX Spaceships

https://www.space.com/41368-first-spacex-boeing-commercial-crew-astronauts.html


HOUSTON — After years of vehicle development and building anticipation, NASA has now put the crew in commercial crew spacecraft.


The space agency on Friday (Aug. 3) announced nine men and women who will launch on the first crewed test flights and missions of new commercial spacecraft built and operated by The Boeing Company and SpaceX.


The eight active NASA astronauts and one former astronaut-turned-corporate crew member will launch on Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2019. The missions will mark the first crewed launches from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle program seven years ago. [Crew Dragon and Starliner: A Look at the Coming Astronaut Taxis]

NASA revealed the first astronauts that will fly on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on Aug. 3, 2018 at Johnson Space Center in Houston. From left: Suni Williams, Josh Cassada, Eric Boe, Nicole Mann, Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Bob Behnken, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover

Credit: NASA TV


The commercial crew members took to the stage during an event led by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.


NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, 48, and Douglas Hurley, 51, will fly together as SpaceX’s first Dragon crew. Veterans of two spaceflights each, Behnken and Hurley will lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A — the same Florida launch pad where the space shuttle left Earth for the last time in July 2011 with Hurley as pilot.


NASA astronauts Eric Boe, 53, and Nicole Mann, 41, will join the commander of that same final space shuttle mission, former astronaut and now Boeing executive Christopher Ferguson, 56, as the crew of the Starliner test flight, launching atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.


Ferguson, who has been involved from the start in the Starliner’s development, flew three shuttle missions as a NASA astronaut. Boe piloted two shuttle flights. This will be Mann’s first launch, having joined the astronaut corps in 2013.


Behnken, Hurley, Boe and Mann are NASA’s first astronauts to be named to the test flights of new U.S. spacecraft since the March 1978 announcement of the space shuttle’s first orbital flight test crews. Ferguson will become the first former NASA astronaut to return to orbit as a company’s crew member when he flies.


Prior to their maiden crewed missions, both Boeing and SpaceX plan uncrewed test flights in late 2018 or early 2019. Both companies will also conduct abort system test flights to ensure the astronauts can safely escape should their rockets go awry.


In addition to naming the crews of the test flights, NASA also announced on Friday the four astronauts who will fly aboard the first operational Starliner and Dragon missions to the space station. Both vehicles were developed in cooperation with NASA to deliver crew members to and from the orbiting laboratory.


Josh Cassada, 45, will fly with Sunita (“Suni”) Williams, 52, aboard NASA’s first contracted Starliner mission. It will be Cassada’s first spaceflight. Williams previously logged 321 days in orbit on two stays aboard the space station, most recently returning to Earth in 2012.


Victor Glover, 42, and Michael Hopkins, 49, will fly on the first operational mission of SpaceX’s crewed Dragon. It will be Glover’s first time in space. Hopkins logged 166 days aboard the space station in 2014.


The two pairs of NASA crewmates will fly to the station with Russian cosmonauts and international astronauts to be announced at a later date. Between the end of the space shuttle program and the start of commercial crew operations, NASA’s crew members have and are continuing to launch to the space station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.


Behnken, Boe, Hurley and Williams were named in 2015 as NASA’s “commercial crew cadre” and have been working with Boeing and SpaceX on the development of the spacecraft and the simulators that will be used to train astronauts to fly. The two companies have also developed new spacesuits, modified their launch pads and established mission control teams to support the upcoming flights.


With the start of four-person commercial missions, the International Space Station crew is slated to grow by one to a seven-person residency in order to maximize the science that can be conducted on board. Boeing’s and SpaceX’s commercial spacecraft may also open the space station — and more broadly, Earth orbit — to more privately-funded visitors and spaceflight participants from countries that do not have their own domestic crewed spacecraft and rockets.


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via Space.com https://www.space.com

August 3, 2018 at 10:45AM

New Bridge In Vietnam Looks Like Its Supported By Two Giant Stone Hands

http://geekologie.com/2018/08/new-bridge-in-vietnam-looks-like-its-sup.php

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This is the recently completed Cau Vang (‘Golden Bridge’) outside of Da Nang in Vietnam. The 150-meter footbridge sits some 1,400-meters above sea level and offers panoramic views of the Ba Na hills below. Oh, and it also looks like it’s being supported by two giant stone hands. That’s pretty cool. Granted those aren’t two hands I’d want to play the hand-slap game (aka slapsies) with, but I’d feel awful if I broke another stone giant’s knuckles. Back me up, rock bro from The Neverending Story! "The name’s Rock Biter." Listen: unless you can bring Artax back nobody cares.
Keep going for several more shots and a video.
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Photos via NewsExaminer
Thanks to v and Laura F, who agree that stone giant missed out on a perfect opportunity to win The Circle Game.

via Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://geekologie.com/

August 3, 2018 at 10:33AM

Ex-NASA Engineer Builds The Perfect Rock-Skipping Robot

http://geekologie.com/2018/08/ex-nasa-engineer-builds-the-perfect-rock.php

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This is a video of ex-NASA engineer and inventor Mark Rober using the engineering design process to build and adjust a robot (arguably not actually a robot) that can skip the perfect rock (and clay disk). I wonder if it’s as good at skipping rocks as I was at skipping school, LOL. I have a lot of regret. Basically, the key to the best skip are as follows:

1) Rock angle of 20 degrees
2) Rock PATH angle of 20 degrees
3) Spin the rock as much as possible
4) Choose a rock that is flat on the bottom and as heavy as possible for you to still get to your max arm speed.

Admittedly, I’ve been doing it wrong. I thought you wanted to throw almost parallel to the water (a lot of times I even wade into the water above my knees), but you actually want to throw the rock down at the water at around 20-degrees. That was news to me. Everything else I already knew because I’m semi-pro. With this information I might finally be able to go pro-pro. "You just threw a rock backwards and broke a window." Nobody saw that. "I did." Remember how Piggy dies in Lord Of The Flies? "I didn’t see anything." *places hand on your head like it’s a throne’s armrest* I didn’t think you did. Now dive in there and go get me all my best rocks back.
Keep going for the video.

via Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://geekologie.com/

August 3, 2018 at 11:22AM

‘Fortnite’ will skip the Play Store for its Android release

https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/03/fortnite-skip-play-store-android-release/

After Fortnite came out for iOS in April and Switch in June, there was only one leading platform it hadn’t come out on. Soon, that will be rectified: The wildly successful battle royale game will be available on Android sometime this summer. But you won’t find it in the Play Store — instead, you’ll have to visit the Fortnite website to grab the launcher, which will download the game.

"On open platforms like PC, Mac, and Android, Epic’s goal is to bring its games directly to customers. We believe gamers will benefit from competition among software sources on Android. Competition among services gives consumers lots of great choices and enables the best to succeed based on merit," Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told TechCrunch over email.

But that also means Epic won’t have to pay out the 30 percent cut Google takes out of in-app purchases from software downloaded from the Play Store. That’s reasonable for consoles, but not for open platforms like Android, according to Sweeney.

"There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30 per cent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service," he told GamesIndustry.biz.

This would sound like a studio grumbling about having to pay out more profits if Epic hadn’t halved the cut it takes from companies on its own Unreal Engine Marketplace — and retroactively paid out old sales under the new split. Plus, since they’ve launched on every other platform, they have a better idea what it takes to publish on different devices than other studios. Young players might find it troublesome to hunt down the game outside the Play Store, but Fortnite is probably big enough that most probably won’t have too much trouble grabbing it off its website.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Android Police

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

August 3, 2018 at 11:24AM

A Service that Lets You Use Windows 10 on Any Computer or Phone Is Going Nationwide

https://gizmodo.com/a-service-that-lets-you-use-windows-10-on-any-computer-1828079779

Back at CES in January, French company Blade seemed to promise the moon. For a monthly fee, the company would give users access to a high-end Windows 10 machine, with the latest CPU from Intel and a beefy Nvidia 1080 GPU built in. The computer would be housed at a server farm, which means as long as you had an…

Read more…

via Lifehacker https://lifehacker.com

August 3, 2018 at 10:23AM

Sennheiser’s Memory Mic can record audio from afar

https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/02/sennheiser-memory-mic/

Sennheiser has released a Bluetooth mic that gives you a way to make sure your video comes with crisp sounds — even if you’re recording from afar. It says its new device called Memory Mic can record "broadcast quality" audio even if you’re shooting the video from a distance with a phone. Say, when you’re recording your kid on her first bike ride, when you want to shoot a video of a musician that captures the whole stage or if you’re shooting a cooking show for YouTube. The device initially connects to your phone via Bluetooth, but it can apparently continue recording even if you go out of range.

Your phone’s built-in mic will still pick up ambient sounds for a more accurate representation of your recording conditions, which is great if you want to relive particular moments. The Memory Mic can record and store up to four hours of audio, and its accompanying app will automatically sync it with the video you take. It’s now available from Sennheiser’s website and various retailers for $200.

Source: Sennheiser Memory Mic

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

August 2, 2018 at 10:12PM

Original Star Wars movies blocked from Disney streaming until 2024

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1352853


A little under a year ago, news broke that Disney was planning its own streaming service for a 2019 launch. The logic from Disney’s perspective is hard to avoid: why let someone else get rich streaming its content? Between Disney’s vast back catalog of animated features plus the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, it’s got a lot of greatest hits, after all. A month later it was therefore no surprise when it revealed it would not renew a deal with Netflix that has allowed the latter to stream some of the biggest blockbusters of the decade.

But there’s a snag to this plan, as is often the case when intellectual property is at stake. On Thursday afternoon, Bloomberg reported that in 2016, when Disney sold the TV broadcast rights for the original Star Wars films to Turner Broadcasting, it also sold it the streaming rights. Until 2024. And the AT&T-owned broadcaster has no desire to give them back early—at least not at a price that the House of Mouse considers palatable.

That’s somewhat of a blow for Disney. The Star Wars franchise features heavily in what we know so far about its plans for the streaming service, with live action and animated series already in the works. But for the first five years of its existence, it won’t be able to stream any of the first six Star Wars films themselves.

I wonder, shortly after signing that contract with Turner, did anyone in the Disney boardroom realize they had a bad feeling about this?

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

August 3, 2018 at 08:50AM