China has unveiled the design of a new reusable shuttle to take cargo to and from the country’s space station.
The Haolong space shuttle is being developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). It is one of two winning projects stemming from a call for proposals from China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, to develop low-cost cargo spacecraft.
China currently uses its robotic Tianzhou spacecraft to send cargo to the Tiangong space station. But, taking a leaf out of NASA’s book to encourage commercial resupply options for the International Space Station, CMSA wanted new, low-cost ideas that can also return experiments and other cargo to Earth, unlike the Tianzhou, which burns up on reentry.
A still from an animation detailing the design of China’s planned Haolong cargo shuttle. (Image credit: CCTV+)
Haolong will launch atop of a rocket and land horizontally on Earth on a runway. The space shuttle measures 32.8 feet (10 meters) long and 26.2 feet (8 m) wide, and weighs less than half of the Tianzhou capsule, which has a mass of up to 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms). The winged spacecraft is now in the engineering flight verification phase, meaning its design and systems are under review before being built.
The shuttle’s engineers are already hailing the design. "The Haolong space cargo shuttle is a winged aircraft with an aerodynamic design featuring a large wingspan and a high lift-to-drag ratio," Fang Yuanpeng, chief designer of Haolong, told China Central Television (CCTV). "With a blunt-nosed fuselage and large, swept-back delta wings, it combines the characteristics of both spacecraft and aircraft, allowing it to be launched into orbit by a rocket and land on an airport runway like a plane," he added.
Haolong will dock with Tiangong, allowing astronauts to enter and exit to collect or stow cargo. After completing the cargo transport mission, Haolong will separate from the space station, autonomously deorbit and reenter the atmosphere, and land horizontally on the designated airport runway.
"After inspection, maintenance and repair, it will be able to perform cargo transport missions again," said Fang.
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It is not the only reusable cargo shuttle in development. Private American firm Sierra Space is developing the long-delayed Dream Chaser to send cargo and astronauts to low Earth orbit.
China aims to operate Tiangong for at least a decade, and plans to expand the three-module, T-shaped orbital outpost to six modules. Haolong could play a part in keeping the space station supplied with food, experiments and other cargo.
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Hydrow, a company that makes smart rowing machines, just announced the Core, a new model that eschews monthly subscription fees. The Hydrow Core Rower features the “same award-winning design” as the original Pro Rower, which we said was positioning itself to be “the Peloton of smart rowing machines.”
Obviously, the hook here is that the Core is a one-and-done purchase with no recurring subscription costs. It still comes with an attached display, which lets users “row through stunning destinations.” All told, this machine offers access to 30 self-paced rows through these exotic locales.
Hydrow
The Core Rower supports unlimited users, which is nice, but there is one major caveat. There’s no subscription, so there’s no access to instructor-led workouts, badges, milestones and other premium features. However, customers can add a membership later for all of that stuff. Hydrow charges $44 per month for a subscription. It could be useful to try it out for a month to see if all of those additional bells and whistles are worth it.
The Hydrow Core Rower is available right now and costs $1,995. This is the exact same price as the flagship Pro Rower. The company also recently released a trimmed down version called the Hydrow Wave. This one is smaller and cheaper, clocking in at around $1,700.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/M5DNF2r
In 2008, when GOG.com was launched, it was called Good Old Games. As Steam was on the rise and digital distribution was clearly to become the future of gaming, a Polish company that had just released its first game—a relatively obscure RPG called The Witcher—wanted to get in on the act. The goal was updating and preserving classic gaming, and selling it without any form of DRM. Over the years, GOG seemed to drift away from this origin, and shift its focus to trying to compete as a distribution platform for AAA gaming, going head-to-head with Valve’s behemoth. But today marks a big change.
Starting today, GOG is launching what it’s calling The GOG Preservation Program. It’s a self-aware determination to return to the company’s roots, with a long-term commitment to preserve and maintain classic games for the foreseeable future. There are 100 games currently listed, with a pledge to use the company’s “own resources to maintain games’ compatibility with modern and future systems.” At a time when game preservation is becoming increasingly vital, and on far more people’s minds, this seems like a pretty positive step.
How It Started
16 years ago, the world of PC gaming was very different. In 2008, the number one issue anyone would name when it came to digital games was DRM—digital rights management. These anti-piracy measures were grossly ineffective, doing almost nothing to prevent piracy, but instead causing legitimate customers to have far worse versions of a game—versions that required online checks to launch, refused to be installed on multiple devices, or just flat-out didn’t work properly. GOG arrived right at the peak of players’ fury, and offered a service that sold games that promised there would be none of this. Versions that just downloaded the files to your hard drive, that you could copy and share if you felt compelled to, but would never fail to launch because of an abandoned server, or because you bought a new PC.
At the same time, GOG was releasing games that had been unavailable and unplayable on PC for years. Classic titles that dominated the ‘80s and early ‘90s, that were designed to run on MS-DOS and didn’t know what to do with Windows, were suddenly available again, and were sold DRM-free with scans of the original manuals, and updates that meant they’d run straight from the .exe without issue.
The site became known for restoring lost games, a way to play Wing Commander and Ultima II, King’s Quest and Rise of the Triad. An early deal with Ubisoft to release DRM-free versions of its classic games (an ironic situation, given Ubisoft was at the forefront of crippling DRM in newer games) helped the project gain traction, and by 2014 it had deals with companies like LucasArts to make everything from Star Wars: TIE Fighter to The Secret of Monkey Island available.
How It’s Going
Screenshot: Warner Bros. Interactive
Here’s the thing: there are a bunch of those games—games GOG rescued and restored in 2008, and that are still sold on the site—that no longer work. For whatever reasons, for whatever ambitions, in my view GOG changed its sights, wanted to be selling the big-name AAA titles, and took its eyes off that original purpose.
In 2019, according to a Kotaku story by Jason Schreier, the company was in real trouble. Deep into its push to be a AAA store that competed with Steam, there were lay-offs, at the same time as the company abandoned its so-called Fair Price Package, through which GOG would repay customers who were charged higher fees due to regional price differences. One former employee said at the time that he was told, “we’re dangerously close to being in the red.”
As someone who, throughout the first half of the 2010s, regularly used GOG to find classic games and would frequently check the site to see what new titles had been rescued from the past, I drifted away, too. That the games were DRM-free still felt like a big deal, but the convenience of Steam, the improvements in DRM tech, and the shifting nature of all digital ownership made GOG feel so much less essential. I’d once seen it as the site that let me play classic point-and-click adventures, but now when I looked at it, I just saw the same big-name games that are splashed across every other store.
“The market is different today,” GOG’s senior business development manager, Marcin Paczy?ski, told me by email, when I asked what was driving the decision to refocus. “Most platforms continue to leave these classics behind, or don’t give them the care they deserve, so the games we set out to protect are disappearing again.”
Where It’s Going Next
Screenshot: Madlab Software / GOG
The new moves by the site are giving me great hope. If DRM was the main issue in 2008, games preservation feels like the most vital topic of 2024. As we watch major publishers just wiping older (and even newer) games from existence, while abandoned servers and forgotten consoles make ever-more games we own unplayable, people are getting really riled up. It seems like a very smart move for GOG to step into this space and loudly declare its intentions.
The GOG Preservation Program promises to begin with 100 games, and keep adding to the list, pledging long-term support of all of them. Those currently included have, GOG say, been tested “on the most popular PC configurations,” and “work flawlessly,” but the company encourages its community, which is rather sweetly referred to as “restless,” to keep pestering if updates break things.
The 100 games are an eclectic bunch, with games like Diablo, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Dragon Age: Origins, Roller Coaster Tycoon Deluxe, Fallout, Blade Runner, and Alpha Protocol in the mix. They reach as far back as the ‘80s, and as recent as Mad Max. The criteria for inclusion is that a game needs maintenance, and that GOG can commit to maintaining it themselves. The company aims to have “hundreds of games” stamped with the commitment by the end of 2025.
“It’s a renewed commitment to our mission,” says Paczy?ski, “offering improved, well-supported editions of the classics that defined gaming, while continuing to deliver DRM-free new releases.”
Paczy?ski reiterates the importance of no DRM to GOG, explaining that not having it is vital to preservation. “When you buy a DRM-free game on GOG, you can download and safeguard its offline installer any way you want. DRM-free keeps you out of the reach of platforms’ rules and policies and untethered to some central server suddenly switching off. We still strive to get as many DRM-free titles as possible on GOG, regardless of when they were first released.”
I ask how far ahead the plan goes. What if GOG is zapped by aliens and disappears—what happens to the games it’s preserving without them? “We’re dedicating significant resources and long-term planning to ensure that each game in the program receives continuous updates and care—we know it’s a commitment.” He repeats that the DRM-free nature of the games means the installers survive the site. “Whatever happens to us, ever, your games are always safe.”
“It will stick,” Paczy?ski adds. “Today, we made several bold commitments, so we are truly serious about this. GOG’s reputation is on the line here—we’re all-in on this!”
NASA is concerned SpaceX is prioritizing its mission schedule over safety after a recent ocean landing resulted in the brief hospitalizations of all four astronauts. Former astronaut Kent Rominger admonished the company during an October 31 meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, citing a list of recent problems involving both SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
“Both NASA and SpaceX need to maintain focus on safe Crew Dragon operations and not take any ‘normal’ operations for granted,” said the ASAP committee member on Thursday, as first reported by SpaceNews. Rominger also argued that safety requires increased attention on aging hardware, especially as “the pace of operations increases.”
SpaceX has documented multiple equipment malfunctions and setbacks since at least July when a Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage failed to ignite its second burn, causing it to explode roughly an hour after launch. The uncrewed mission ended a nearly eight-year success streak for the company and grounded launches for roughly two weeks. Similar issues prompted additional mission delays in both August and September.
As Gizmodo notes, the most troubling problem appears to have occurred during SpaceX’s latest International Space Station return mission. After departing the ISS on October 23, the Dragon capsule made its scheduled water landing two days later off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. NASA subsequently confirmed all four Crew-8 astronauts required transport to a nearby hospital for additional medical evaluations “out of an abundance of caution.” Although doctors soon released three crew members to continue their post-flight reconditioning at Johnson Space Center in Houston, one astronaut “in stable condition” was kept overnight at Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola “as a precautionary measure.” To protect their medical privacy, NASA has not confirmed which astronaut required additional observations, or what issue prompted the prolonged hospital stay.
SpaceX has solidified itself in recent years as NASA’s primary private contractor for satellite launches, astronaut transport, ISS cargo deliveries, and other rocketry needs. Although competitors like Blue Origin seek to cut into the company’s industry share, their own setbacks indicate SpaceX will continue to be one of the agency’s primary resources—but only if NASA can continue to trust the private company’s attention to safety. At Thursday’s ASAP meeting, Rominger warned that NASA and SpaceX will need to prevent their increasingly crowded mission schedule from “clouding their judgment.”
Boston Dynamics’ ATLAS robot isn’t just for flashy stunts anymore—it’s rolling up its sleeves and getting down to business! In this new clip, ATLAS shows off its “intelligence” by autonomously moving engine covers from one container to another. Using a machine learning vision model, it detects objects and bins, planning each move in real-time. What’s impressive? ATLAS reacts to unexpected changes, self-correcting any slips or misses on the go. This isn’t just cool tech; it’s a glimpse into the future of robotics in practical jobs!
Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles aren’t just fodder for science fiction or far-out R&D experiments. Cars fueled by hydrogen, like the Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo, are already here, and fuel-cell technology is actively evolving and benefiting from billions of dollars in federal research and infrastructure funding. So then, why are hydrogen cars virtually non-existent on U.S. roads today? What happened?
“The answer is very simple: economics,” Sergey Paltsev, a senior research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative told Popular Science. Politicians and automakers once held up the fuel cell, which turns the chemical energy of hydrogen into electricity to drive an electric motor, as the future of passenger automobiles, but the falling cost of batteries and the upsides of a preexisting fueling infrastructure (see: the electrical grid) have propelled battery-electric cars well into the lead.
“It’s not just the cost of the car,” explained Paltsev, who is also deputy director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy. This is an important point, because in California, low-milage hydrogen cars sell at a steep discount.
A big switch to hydrogen cars would require enormous infrastructure development; the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center shows 55 public hydrogen fueling station locations in the U.S. today, almost exclusively in California, next to more than 68,000 active public electric vehicle charging stations across the country. (Even in California, refueling passenger hydrogen cars can apparently be such a trial that it sparked a July class action suit against Toyota.)
In a separate call with Popular Science, Gregory Keoleian, the co-director of Sustainable Systems and MI Hydrogen at the University of Michigan, paused to double check if automakers are still releasing new hydrogen passenger cars in California. While Honda discontinued its two hydrogen passenger cars available in California in 2021, Toyota and Hyundai continue to produce new hydrogen passenger cars for sale in the state. Along with a desire for precision on professor Keoleian’s part, his pause highlights how attention on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles has shifted from passenger cars in favor of more advantageous applications, including medium- and heavy-duty trucks and aviation.
“Battery-electric vehicles can be problematic when you have problems with range or fueling time,” or heavy loads, Keoleian said. “That’s where hydrogen can play a role with, for example, long-haul trucks.”
When it comes to things like rail and commercial trucks, “your fueling stations are more dispersed. You don’t need the concentration of fueling facilities. You don’t need them on every corner. There’s really an opportunity to decarbonize with hydrogen for those applications,” he explained.
‘Brighter pathways’ for hydrogen passenger cars
“Nothing is going to change next year, or probably not in the next five years, but there are brighter pathways for hydrogen cars,” said Paltsev. For one, if hydrogen turns out to be a “much bigger source of our energy needs in other parts of the economy, like in heavy-duty transportation and industry,” then the fueling and infrastructure challenges are “going to be easier to resolve,” providing “positive spillovers and synergies for hydrogen cars.”
Paltsev noted that the economics of hydrogen cars are already more attractive in some parts of the world than in others—citing, for example, Japan, where electricity costs are high. Several automakers are also still invested in hydrogen fuel-cell passenger cars, as evidenced by a recently announced collaboration between BMW and Toyota; the two say a BMW hydrogen production car will arrive in 2028.
The current impracticalities of hydrogen passenger vehicles in places like the U.S. are additionally not a reason to “just give up” on this particular application of fuel-cell tech, cautioned Paltsev. “We may need it for many other reasons in the future,” he added, citing geopolitical issues as a factor that could disrupt access to raw materials for batteries and make hydrogen cars suddenly more economically viable.
This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
