Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight
An evening pause: Performed live during his “First Farewell Tour.”
Hat tip Danae.
Tag: commercial
Hackers demonstrate they can remotely take over moving vehicle
Does this make you feel safer? In a demonstration of the vulnerability of modern cars that are linked to the internet, two hackers took over the operation of an unmodified moving Jeep Cherokee.
A pair of Missouri-based hackers have put on an extraordinary demonstration by logging into a Jeep Cherokee remotely, while it was being driven by a Wired reporter Andy Greenberg, and systematically taking over the car’s functionality. First, they hit him with cold air through the air-con system, then they blasted Kanye West through the stereo at full volume, rendering the volume knob completely useless. They flashed up a picture of themselves on the car’s console and set the windscreen wipers going full blast, squirting cleaning fluid onto the windscreen and making it difficult to see.
But these were just warmups to the main event – next, they took over the engine and shut it off completely, leaving the driver powerless and coasting on the freeway as traffic flashed past around him. Then, once he was off the highway, they showed how they could completely disable the brakes, and take over the steering of the car – only at slow speeds and in reverse, but they’re working on unlocking new abilities every day.
This suggests to me that linking any car directly to the internet is probably a very bad idea.
Japan wants you to name Hayabusa-2’s target asteroid!
Japan’s space agency JAXA is now accepting proposals from the public to name the target asteroid of its Hayabusa-2 sample return mission.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Prelude and Yodel
An evening pause:
Falcon Heavy first test flight delayed again
In the heat of competition: The first test flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has been pushed back from the end of this year until April 2016.
This isn’t surprising after the June 28 launch failure. They have to get the Falcon 9 up and running before they can consider launching the first Falcon Heavy.
Another successful engine test for India
The competition heats up: ISRO has successfully completed another long duration firing of its home-built high-thrust cyrogenic rocket engines.
Before its planned flight late in 2016, they will do more engine burns, this time while simulating conditions at high altitude.
Judy Garland – Somewhere over the rainbow
An evening pause: I posted this performance back on November 23, 2010, had forgotten, and found it again by accident. It bears another viewing. As noted at the youtube link,
Judy Garland only performed “Over The Rainbow” twice during her many television appearances, which spanned 14 years. She performed it on her first TV Special, “Ford Star Jubilee” in the episode called “The Judy Garland Special” in 1955, and sang it to her children on The Christmas Edition of her weekly TV show “The Judy Garland Show” (1963).
Here Judy is dressed up [in the first special] as the tramp character she played when doing a duet with Fred Astaire in the film ‘Easter Parade’.
Watch. It shows why she was both a great singer and a great actress.
SpaceX pinpoints likely cause of Falcon 9 failure
The investigation into the failure of the Falcon 9 launch June 28 now thinks the cause was a failed strut in the upper stage.
The struts are 2 feet long and about an inch thick at its thickest. SpaceX does not make the struts, a supplier does. From now on, each one will be individually checked, Musk said, and the design and material may be altered for added strength. The struts are designed to handle 10,000 pounds of force at liftoff; at the time of the accident, they would have been seeing only 2,000 pounds of force. A failure at such a low threshold is “pretty crazy,” Musk said. The strut most likely failed at its attachment point, he added.
Another change: Beginning with its next launch, each Dragon cargo carrier will be equipped with software for deploying its parachutes. The Dragon destroyed last month, along with an estimated $110 million worth of NASA equipment and supplies, would have survived if the parachutes normally used for descent at mission’s end could have been activated, Musk said.
The investigation is still not finalized, but is likely close to completion.
Internet tycoon commits $100 million to alien life search
Russian internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner has given SETI $100 million for a ten year project to accelerate their effort to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Understanding why SETI needs private funding is important:
SETI has been going on since 1960, when radio telescopes became sensitive enough to detect signals from another planet if it was broadcasting signals similar to those which our civilization does. Researchers developed devices that could monitor millions of frequencies at once for any signal that looked at all different from that produced by astronomical objects or the natural background. At first funded by universities and NASA, public funding for SETI was axed by Congress in the early 1990s. Since then, the nonprofit SETI League has received funding of a few million dollars a year from private donors.
Congress correctly cut the funds because it isn’t really the business of the federal government to search for alien life. Some taxpayers really don’t want their money used for that purpose, and they should have the right to say no. Instead, Congress essentially told SETI to do it right: Get private funding from people who want the research done. The work will be done more efficiently for less, and no one will be required to contribute who doesn’t want to.
Milner’s contribution now is the biggest donation yet, and suggests that interest in this research is building culturally.
Baikonur Cosmodrome to open for tourists
The competition heats up: Faced with the possibility that the Russians might eventually end their lease arrangement combined with a desire to make money, Kazakhstan is now planning to make the historic Baikonur spaceport available to tourists.
Why they haven’t done this years ago is baffling. But then, this is Russia and Kazakhstan, not the U.S.
Tim Weisberg – Margarita
An evening pause: For those who like modern soft jazz.
Hat tip Danae.
Angara to fly commercially by 2017
The competition heats up: Russia’s new rocket Angara will be available for commercial flights by 2017, according to International Launch Services (ILS.
The link also gives a good history of Angara’s development.