Blue Origin today unveiled a video demonstrating takeoff and landing procedures for its New Glenn rocket. Feel like you’ve seen this act before?
You’re not alone; the process looks very similar to the maneuvers performed by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on its trips to space. The short presentation shows the rocket lifting off, delivering a payload to orbit and touching back down on an oceanic barge. From the neat flip the rocket performs on the way down to the barge landing, Blue Origins appe
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A project attempting to grow potatoes in Mars-like conditions has reported positive preliminary results.
Based in Lima, Peru, the International Potato Center (CIP) is dedicated to collecting and altering potato varieties found around the world. The CIP began as an effort to alleviate global hunger by introducing special strains of the hardy vegetable to places with arid soils and harsh environments. As researchers have begun experimenting with earthly technologies in a bid to extend our r
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Here’s a gallery of still images from a launch video of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.
Blue Origin
Blue Origin will assemble the New Glenn rocket at a large facility the company is building at Kennedy Space Center.
Blue Origin
Here, New Glenn is being lifted.
Blue Origin
Aerodynamic strakes are shown wiggling.
Blue Origin
New Glenn will take flight from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 36.
Blue Origin
Smoke! Fire!
Blue Origin
And here’s a view of the large Blue Origin assembly facility at the Cape. Oh, and a launch.
Blue Origin
Stage separation!
Blue Origin
The first stage falls back to Earth.
Blue Origin
A single engine burns to slow its descent.
Blue Origin
It’s another company with another barge.
Blue Origin
There are six landing legs. The vehicle can tolerate the failure of one and still land.
Blue Origin
After months of speculation, Blue Origin finally released more details about its New Glenn rocket on Tuesday. The 82-meter-tall rocket will have the capacity to lift 45 tons to low Earth orbit and an impressive 13 tons to geostationary transfer orbit. The two-stage rocket should be ready for its maiden flight by the end of 2019, company founder Jeff Bezos said.
New Glenn, named for the first US astronaut to orbit Earth, John Glenn, will also have a fully reusable first stage. In addition to remarks by Bezos at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington, Blue Origin released a video showing the rocket’s return to Earth. It will employ aerodynamic strakes for maneuvering during the return and will land on a barge. It is designed for up to 100 reuses. The rocket’s return looks similar to that of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but New Glenn is a larger and considerably more powerful booster.
Were it flying today, New Glenn would in fact be the most powerful rocket on Earth. However, other large boosters are also under development that will likely fly first. SpaceX is building the Falcon Heavy, which will have the capacity to deliver 53 tons to low Earth orbit, and NASA is developing the Space Launch System with a 70-ton capacity.
Today’s announcement, therefore, marks the beginning of a golden era of heavy-lift booster development. During the next few years, these three rockets will be competing on performance, price, and reliability. In addition to large satellite launches, they will also potentially enable NASA’s deep-space exploration plans—including lunar exploration—and potentially missions to Mars. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX anticipate much lower operating costs than the government rocket, and both will be pursuing reusability. But as ever in the rocket business, it’s one thing to show a video rendering a future launch. It’s another thing to reach the launch pad, fly, and reuse.
During his talk on Tuesday, Bezos expressed confidence in the prospects for New Glenn, saying the company has learned important lessons from the development of its New Shepard rocket and spacecraft, which has already demonstrated low-cost reusability and could begin suborbital tourism flights as early as next year. “This is what is making it possible for us to build an orbital vehicle,” he said. “The orbital vehicle is 100 percent informed by all of the lessons that we learned in the course of the New Shepard program, so it’s very directly relevant.”
The two- and three-stage variants of New Glenn will be larger than any rocket in existence.
Blue Origin
Some critics have dinged Blue Origin for its initial focus on space tourism, saying the company isn’t really serious about space exploration. But such criticism is misguided, Bezos said, noting that in the past, entertainment has been a driver for important innovation. “There are historical cases where entertainment turns out to be a driver of technologies that then become very practical and utilitarian for other things,” he said, citing the early use of aviation for barnstorming, and GPUs originally developed for PC gaming now employed in machine learning.
Whatever one thinks of New Shepard and its brief suborbital hops, however, there can be little question that New Glenn is a serious rocket. The booster already has a customer, too—Eutelsat has contracted with Blue Origin for a geostationary satellite launch. Moreover, New Glenn is also, as Bezos repeated Tuesday, “the smallest orbital rocket Blue Origin will ever build.” In the future, even larger boosters are coming, such as the previously teased New Armstrong rocket. The tech mogul has recently said that lunar exploration is the next logical step for human activity in space.
Ahead of a 2010 decision by federal regulators to legalize mobile phone jailbreaking, Apple had cautioned US Copyright Office officials that doing so would have “potentially catastrophic” (PDF) consequences because hackers wielding jailbroken iPhones might take down the nation’s mobile phone networks.
Clearly, Apple’s scare tactics were designed to protect its own business model—as jailbroken phones can bypass Apple’ App Store and get apps elsewhere.
Apple is now taking a page out of that anti-jailbreaking campaign in a bid to scuttle a so-called “right to repair” law (PDF) in Nebraska, where its Legislature is scheduled to debate the measure Thursday. Eight states, including Nebraska, are considering right to repair laws that would require companies, whether they are in the tech sector or not, to make their service manuals, diagnostic tools, and parts available to consumers and repair shops—and not just select suppliers. That type of legislation is also being floated in Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Wyoming. These bills threaten to cut into corporations’ profits for their selected repair outlets.
Nebraska Sen Lydia Brasch, who sponsored the legislation, said Apple lobbyist Steve Kester told her that passage of the measure would make Nebraska “the mecca for bad actors.” Brasch also told Motherboard that Kester informed her that approving the bill “would make it very easy for hackers to relocate to Nebraska.” Apple did not respond for comment but also cautioned that there were safety risks surrounding lithium-ion batteries.
Tractor maker John Deere is also opposing the measure. According to John Deere’s licensing agreement, customers cannot even review the software running the tractor, including “any Software, data files, documentation, engine calibration tables, proprietary data messages, and controller area network (CAN) data messages.” That licensing model exists even though federal regulators issued new Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemptions in 2015 authorizing the public to tinker with software in vehicles for “good faith security research” and for “lawful modification.”
Meanwhile, Brasch said her bill, known as LB 67, was needed.
“If LB 67 passes, Nebraska will be the first state to pass this legislation, and it would have a domino effect nationwide,” she said. “This legislation will positively impact all consumers, of all ages and income levels, by adding competition to the electronic repair market, and by paving the way for more innovation. I did not realize how important this legislation is nationally until Apple sent lobbyists to my office to oppose it.”
The Repair Association and Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, recently told federal regulators that the time was ripe for federal rules to give the public the right to repair, because “software is embedded in everything.” The legal system, they said, “is extremely broken,” as Americans need “to regain the right to repair their devices.”
Even without Apple’s lobbying, Wiens has criticized the gadget maker, claiming the company has “done everything they can” to put repair guys out of business by, among other things, building hardware that is hard to repair.
Republican senators yesterday introduced legislation that would overturn new privacy rules for Internet service providers. If the Federal Communications Commission rules are eliminated, ISPs would not have to get consumers’ explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other third parties.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 23 Republican co-sponsors introduced the resolution yesterday. The measure would use lawmakers’ power under the Congressional Review Act to ensure that the FCC rulemaking “shall have no force or effect.”
Flake’s announcement said he’s trying to “protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation.” Flake also said that the resolution “empowers consumers to make informed choices on if and how their data can be shared,” but did not explain how it will achieve that.
Flake called the FCC’s privacy rulemaking “midnight regulation,” even though it was approved by the commission in October 2016, before the presidential election, after a months-long rulemaking process.
“The FCC’s midnight regulation does nothing to protect consumer privacy,” Flake said. “It is unnecessary, confusing and adds yet another innovation-stifling regulation to the Internet.” Flake’s announcement also said that the FCC-imposed “restrictions have the potential to negatively impact consumers and the future of Internet innovation.”
Opt-in rule and other requirements
The privacy order had several major components. The requirement to get the opt-in consent of consumers before sharing information covered geo-location data, financial and health information, children’s information, Social Security numbers, Web browsing history, app usage history, and the content of communications. This requirement is supposed to take effect on December 4, 2017.
The rulemaking had a data security component that required ISPs to take “reasonable” steps to protect customers’ information from theft and data breaches. This was supposed to take effect on March 2, but the FCC under newly appointed Chairman Ajit Pai halted the rule’s implementation. Another set of requirements related to data breach notifications is scheduled to take effect on June 2.
Flake’s resolution would prevent all of those requirements from being implemented. He said that this “is the first step toward restoring the [Federal Trade Commission’s] light-touch, consumer-friendly approach.” Giving the FTC authority over Internet service providers would require further FCC or Congressional action, because the FTC is not allowed to regulate common carriers, a designation currently applied to ISPs.
Flake’s co-sponsors are US Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Â Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Dan Sullivan (R-Ark.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).
Democratic senators support consumer privacy protections
US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) blasted Flake’s proposal.
“If this [resolution] is passed, neither the FCC nor the FTC will have clear authority when it comes to how Internet service providers protect consumers’ data privacy and security,” Schatz said in a statement issued yesterday. “Regardless of politics, allowing ISPs to operate in a rule-free zone without any government oversight is reckless.”
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) offered similar criticism. “Big broadband barons and their Republican allies want to turn the telecommunications marketplace into a Wild West where consumers are held captive with no defense against abusive invasions of their privacy by internet service providers,†Markey said. “Consumers will have no ability to stop Internet service providers from invading their privacy and selling sensitive information about their health, finances, and children to advertisers, insurers, data brokers or others who can profit off of this personal information, all without their affirmative consent.”
Netflix To Trial “Choose Your Own Adventure†Branching Storylines
Netflix is reportedly working on a “choose your own adventure†style feature with branching endings. It will test the concept with an upcoming kids’ show before moving on to more complex uses of the technology.
The reports come from the Daily Mail newspaper, quoting both an unnamed source and Netflix chief Reed Hastings.
The newspaper gives the examples of viewers deciding whether an Orange Is The New Black characters joins a gang, or even whether Princess Margaret gets married in historical drama The Crown. However, it doesn’t appear this is anything more than the newspaper itself coming up with ideas and the report notes Netflix didn’t say whether or not it would apply interactivity to existing shows (which would seem highly unlikely.)
Instead the technology will debut in a children’s show later this year “based on an established character.†If that works, Netflix will not only extend it to adult shows, but may experiment with more complicated implementations such as non-chronological stories.
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