No rocket ever launched by a team of college students has reached outer space. Last year, a group at the University of Southern California set what they believe to be the altitude record for such an endeavor, when its Fathom II booster ascended to a height of 44km above the Earth’s surface. This mark easily eclipsed prior records set by other ambitious college rocket organizations, including the Delft University of Technology and the University of Stuttgart.
While impressive, 44km is still not all that close to outer space. Outer space is generally accepted to begin at the Kármán line, a 100km high arbitrary boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space. And ultimately, this altitude is where college students want to go.
Now, the Space Enterprise group at the University of California-Berkeley says it plans to launch a rocket beyond the Kármán line by July 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of human landings on the Moon. So far the group has raised $30,000 through crowdfunding sources and intends to spend about $150,000 developing the Eureka-1 booster.
A race to 100km
Jiayong Li, a Berkeley undergrad and member of Space Enterprise group, said he and other students have taken inspiration from commercial space developments driving down the cost of launch. “What if a student team took ideas that other people were using and developed a rocket that was bare bones, cheaper, and more efficient, and got us to space?” Li toldMotherboard.
That’s easy to say but harder to do. But the Berkeley students have a plan. Their proposed Eureka-1 rocket will stand 7 meters tall, with a diameter of 40cm. It will be powered by a single, liquid-propellant “Ascella” engine capable of delivering 2,700 pounds of thrust. The Berkeley group anticipates that its rocket will have the capacity to deliver a payload up to 5kg to an altitude of 135km. Perhaps, if the effort is successful, the Berkeley group will even start a small commercial service to deliver commercial payloads into space.
But they’ve got to get to space first, and among the college ranks there is a lot of competition. The USC group, named the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, has a head start. And it, too, has ambitions to launch the world’s first entirely student-designed and built rocket past the Kármán line—and recover it, too.
Supreme Court Declines To Take DACA Case, Leaving It In Place For Now
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Six-year-old Sophie Cruz speaks during a rally in front of the Supreme Court next to her father Raul Cruz and supporter Jose Antonio Vargas in 2016.
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Six-year-old Sophie Cruz speaks during a rally in front of the Supreme Court next to her father Raul Cruz and supporter Jose Antonio Vargas in 2016.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a setback over the DACA program, which shields hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
The court declined to take up a key case dealing with the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – for now.
The high court said a court of appeals should hear the case first.
The Trump administration tried to skip the 9th Circuit and go directly to the Supreme Court. (The 9th Circuit is fairly liberal.)
Earlier this year, a lower court blocked the government from ending the DACA program.
Trump had wanted to start ending the DACA protections in March for people brought to the U.S. as children and living in the country illegally.
A Rookie Player Is Helping His League of Legends Team Win Again
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SK Telecom T1 was on a slippery slope after the 2017 Worlds. But in a matter of weeks, the South Korean League of Legends squad has improved from 1-5 to 4-5, working its way back up the standings thanks to the help of a talented-as-hell rookie jungler.
Waze Still Provides the Fastest Driving Directions
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If you want to get to your destination fast, then you’re possibly better off using Google Maps or Waze over Apple Maps. Waze if you truly want the “fastest” option.
DHL exec figures Tesla Semi would pay itself off within two years
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The numbers behind Tesla Inc’s long-distance Semi electric trucks are close to making sense for haulers looking at a shift away from diesel that may save them tens of thousands of dollars a year, according to an executive with DHL. Jim Monkmeyer, president, Transportation at DHL Supply Chain, was among the first to order the trucks Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk’s company is expected to begin churning out in 2019.
Monkmeyer says the 10 trucks ordered are a test run and that he is still years away from switching the majority of his fleet of trucks to electric. But he is taking heed of a major shift away from diesel and the money it could save DHL. He says he could potentially pay off the difference between the purchase price of a Tesla Semi and a traditional diesel truck in less than two years, thanks to savings on maintenance and fuel.
“We are estimating that we could have pay back within a year-and-a-half based on energy usage as well as lower maintenance cost,” Monkmeyer told Reuters in an interview from his office in Columbus, Ohio.
“The maintenance savings can be enormous as well. Just because the engines are much simpler in terms of the number of parts and the complexities of the parts.”
The payback benefit is one of the keys to the success of the new generation of electric trucks and DHL, a unit of Germany’s Deutsche Post, has a history in the area, having already introduced 5,000 of its own electric “scooter” vans for local deliveries. The two-year timeline also chimes with assurances being given by Daimler AG’s van unit to customers interested in its forthcoming electric Sprinter van that the total cost of ownership will be the same as the cost to own and operate a conventional van over a few years.
COMMON THREADS
Monkmeyer says he does not expect to buy just Tesla electric trucks, but the in-depth discussions on price and feasibility that DHL is running on the trucks are in line with several small and large international haulers who spoke to Reuters.
A truck runs around 65,000-100,000 miles a year, and Tesla has promised a 20-percent saving on the per-mile operating costs truckers pay now, estimating its new Semi will cost $1.26 per mile compared to what it says are industry standards of around $1.51 for diesel trucks. Analysts, however, say the figures continue to evolve; the $1.51 cost assumes prices for diesel fuel and that fuel economy costs remain static. They also say fuel efficiency for diesel trucks is expected to advance further, with a compounding improvement in the high single digits by 2020, potentially limiting the cost savings advantage suggested by Tesla.
“The problem is they (Tesla) are aiming at a moving target, and even with that the electric (trucks) would be lower cost (in terms of operation) but it wouldn’t be quite as big a difference,” Jefferies analyst Stephen Volkmann said.
Monkmeyer says the company is still mapping out costs, but believes the two trucks already look like they will be “close enough” to make the switch feasible. Still, he says larger concerns loom around Tesla’s charging infrastructure and how haulers plan to switch from pumps in depots to swift “megacharging” of electric vehicles.
“The biggest issue is going to be how is that grid provided and how is it supported and how quickly can we get a network out there for use nationwide, throughout North America, throughout the world,” he says.
“That’s a big question mark. So that to me would be one limiting factor.” (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Writing by Patrick Graham; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Last year’s gaming controversy has turned into this year’s legislative battleground. Fans were outraged when Star Wars: Battlefront II launched with buyable loot boxes that unbalanced multiplayer combat, and other games like Need For Speed: Paybackand Destiny 2 had their own pay-to-win controversies. Eventually, loot boxes unsettled enough constituents to rile their representatives. Legislators in Hawaii, Washington and Illinois have introduced bills to either study loot boxes or restrict access to young players, but how effective will they be? What else can lawmakers do?
Hawaii state Rep. Chris Lee, a gamer himself (he favors the Battlefield series and Rockstar Games’ oeuvre), believes there’s plenty to do. The Democrat introduced four bills last month: Two (one introduced to state House and one to the Senate) would restrict loot boxes in Hawaii to those older than 21, while another pair would force companies to disclose the odds of winning potential game items. It’s not the strongest rebuke of the games industry he and his co-authors could have made, Lee told Engadget, but it’s a step in the right direction — and it will spur conversation.
The gaming industry has been challenged by legislators before. In the 1980s and ’90s, lawmakers panicked that the violence, drugs and sexuality in gaming was affecting youth. To avoid government regulation, the industry formed the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which warded off legislative oversight. But this time around, the issue isn’t moral corruption — it’s whether these particular reward mechanisms are merely gambling in disguise, and if so, should they be in games kids can play? Bills are very public statements, and those proposed by Lee and other state lawmakers have cast doubt on the future of loot boxes as they exist now.
The ESRB has staunchly maintained that loot boxes aren’t gambling:
"While there’s an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player unfortunately receives something they don’t want). We think of it as a similar principle to collectible card games: Sometimes you’ll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you’ve had your eye on for a while. But other times you’ll end up with a pack of cards you already have," the ESRB toldKotaku late last year. We reached out to the ESRB for comment on the recently-proposed bills and didn’t receive a response at the time of writing.
Legislation isn’t the only tool lawmakers can use to effect change: Last week, US Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, wrote a public letter to the ESRB urging it to take the loot-box issue more seriously, especially because children can easily access games with these mechanisms. Otherwise, as Hawaii’s Lee noted, connecting with different groups to raise awareness could provoke a response by, in this case, the gaming industry. His office has started talking with concerned lawmakers, community leaders, medical institutes, schools and other interested parties across the country.
Still, nothing captures America’s attention like potential new laws.
Bills proposed by other state lawmakers earlier this year have focused on whether loot-box mechanisms are gambling. Washington state Sen. Kevin Ranker, a Democrat, introduced one last month asking the state’s gambling commission to decide whether loot boxes qualify as games of chance. Separately, two Indiana state senators introduced a bill commissioning a study to determine the same, though it was effectively buried when it didn’t get a committee hearing.
Given that players often buy loot boxes with real money and receive randomized assortments of in-game items, there’s a case for considering this mechanism as gambling. If states decided they were, loot boxes would likely fall within the jurisdiction of statewide gambling commissions and be regulated just like any other pay-to-play game of chance.
The gaming industry has good reason to stamp out any loot box-gambling connection: Once states decide to regulate them as such, game studios will have to comply with each law and statute. They would have to switch off features for players in some regions and ensure compliance lest they run afoul of state authorities. This may be a big issue for titans of the industry like Activision-Blizzard, which has centralized loot boxes in many of its AAA games (Call of Duty: WWII, Destiny 2, Overwatch, Hearthstone) to drive up revenue. Smaller studios that can’t afford legal counsel but include loot boxes could suffer more if they violate state laws, according to Marc Whipple, an intellectual-property lawyer who frequently advises video-game companies.
"There’s an old saying, ‘You may not be interested in politics, but politics are interested in you.’ The same thing applies here: You may not be interested in gambling regulation, but gambling regulators are interested in you," Whipple said in an interview with Engadget.
"Because gambling is seen as a privilege, not a right, if the gambling regulators believe that you are in their jurisdiction, if they have jurisdiction over you, they can do a lot of things to you that a lot of people probably don’t understand are possible … up to and including declaring your product an unlawful gambling device and issuing a warrant for your arrest," Whipple said.
He should know — he worked as legal counsel for Incredible Technologies, the company behind Golden Tee Golf, a popular cabinet game that let players participate in online tournaments for cash prizes. To operate in myriad bars nationwide, the game had to obey each state’s gambling laws. In some cases, cabinets would have features removed to comply with particular statutes.
Game studios notoriously hide their loot boxes’ odds of winning specific items. (We can guess at Overwatch‘s loot-drop percentages because Chinese law forced them to be revealed last year, though Blizzard managed to hide them a month later through a loophole).
Without pointing any fingers at anybody in the games industry, Whipple said, if you made a video slot machine and put it in a casino with the same kind of pay table used in most loot-box systems, "you would go to prison." In other words, the odds in Vegas are better — because state law requires them to be.
It’s easy to get sucked into the ‘is it gambling?’ debate. But instead, Hawaii’s Lee aimed his bills at safeguarding kids and ensuring that everyone knows what they’re really paying for by requiring transparency in odds. It’s where he sees the argument going — not continuing to debate whether loot boxes are gambling, but asking departments of health and consumer-protection agencies about the consequences and impacts of loot boxes. Because game studios don’t release data about loot-box sales and use, we only have anecdotes about when individuals suffer from these mechanisms — and they are often tragic.
"There’s no question that for a portion of the population, there is vulnerability. And for an even larger portion of the population, there is risk of exploitation by algorithms specifically designed with no transparency and, increasingly, to take advantage of players based upon their actions that they’re not even aware of. When you think of it like that, it’s a very dangerous moment," said Lee.
It’s dangerous because it’s an industry that knows what it’s doing. Lee explains: "It has employed psychologists and mental-health experts to use these mechanisms specifically to exploit human psychology as much as possible. … If the industry continues to deny or pretend that there’s a problem here, it will find itself ultimately in court in the same way that tobacco companies and oil companies denied the information that they knew all along."
Considering the dysfunction in Washington, it’s doubtful that legislation on the issue will come from Congress in the near future. To date, the only member who has publicly acted over concern for loot boxes is New Hampshire’s Hassan.
"Sen. Hassan has already sent a letter to ESRB raising concerns about the harm loot boxes could have on young gamers and called on nominees to the Federal Trade Commission to commit to looking into the issue of loot boxes, which all four nominees agreed to do," Eric Mee, Hassan’s deputy press secretary, told Engadget. "The senator is cautiously encouraged by the ESRB’s initial statement, but if the ESRB’s response is inadequate, she will work with her colleagues and consumers to consider additional steps."
Mee told Engadget it’s too early to speculate whether there will be a congressional push for hearings or legislation. State legislatures are addressing loot boxes ahead of Congress because there are simply more lawmakers across the country than in Washington. They also have more room to tackle issues that hit closer to home, like questionable mechanisms in video games. Given that state lawmakers operate on different timelines for their legislative seasons, Lee believes other states may introduce their own bills later this year. His office has been talking with lawmakers from 30 other states who may be interested in doing so. Some are starting to collect data through their departments of health and other organizations but "because nobody but the industry has the data at this time, it might take a little bit to get there," he said.
The one bright spot? Lee believes loot boxes are one of the rare issues that could inspire bipartisan support because it concerns a broad swath of constituents, from mental-health and education communities to parents and soccer moms. The issue might even expand beyond gaming: Without intervention, what’s to stop other industries from adopting their own chance-based content boxes?
Lee elaborates: "Imagine that model without any sort of oversight or regulation move into every aspect not only of gaming but of online services in general. Rather than a subscription to Spotify or buying a song through Apple, you can buy loot boxes full of albums. But you really aren’t going to know what you might get."
