Hasta La Gadget!

While most of the news about SpaceX has surrounded the Grasshopper lately, the firm has been plugging away at its Falcon rocket, too. This just-launched Falcon 9 (dubbed version 1.1) boasts 60 percent more powerful engines, longer fuel tanks and according to the Global Post, other new features that were designed to boost lift capacity and “simplify operations for commercial service.” To that end, the spacecraft was carrying a science and communications satellite for Canada’s MDA Corp. when it left Earth’s atmosphere. The take-off comes just over five years after the first Falcon’s departure, and its itinerary will take it around both poles. Just remember, for a cool $56.5 million you too can send a Falcon 9 into space.

Filed under: Transportation, Science

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Via: YouTube

Source: SpaceX (YouTube), SpaceX (Twitter)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has discussed the company’s ambitions to build a self-driving car on more than one occasion, and now he’s revealed a bit more about its plans. After reports today about a job listing for an Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Controls Engineer, he spoke to the Financial Times and confirmed the company is working on a form of autopilot in-house. Expressing his opinion that fully autonomous cars may be a bit too difficult to achieve right now, he said Tesla “should be able to do 90 per cent of miles driven within three years.” Other major car companies — Mercedes, GM, Volvo and Continental, just to name a few — have projects for either full or partial car self-control, but they’re still under development for reasons both technical and legal. Also hanging in the balance is Google’s autonomous car project, although from Musk’s statements it appears Tesla has decided to go its own way on the technology. The three year target is an ambitious one, but we’ll put this one somewhere between Iron Man and Hyperloop on the Musk scale.

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: Reuters

Source: FT

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Elon Musk is into transportation, whether it’s an electric car or a spaceship. Today, he detailed a plan to revolutionize a portion of public transit. It’s called the Hyperloop, and it’s meant to get folks from SF to LA (or any two cities less than 900 miles apart) in 30 minutes seated in aluminum pods that are hurtled to and fro at 800 miles an hour in a pair of steel tubes. To keep things safe, pods will be spaced five miles apart so that they can stop without running into each other, which means a total of 70 pods could operate simultaneously.

Of course, the real question is how to get the pods moving at those speeds? One main issue with such transport is wind resistance (and associated friction) that increases as the speed of the pods inside the tube escalate. Naturally, one could operate the tubes in a complete vacuum to eliminate the problem, but keeping such a system free of air would be difficult over such long distances. Instead, the proposed Hyperloop system works as a low air pressure environment that is easily maintained with standard commercial compressors. Additionally, “an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel” is there to relieve what air does build up at the front. This compressor fan would also generate an air bearing around the pod to keep it suspended in the middle of the tube, much as an air hockey table suspends a plastic puck. As for power? Well, that comes from external linear electric motors positioned every 70 miles to keep the pods humming along at subsonic speeds.

Filed under: Transportation, Science

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Source: SpaceX

We’ve been watching as the SpaceX Grasshopper’s leap has grown higher and higher with each successive launch (and landing!), and the rocket’s flights never fail to impress. The reusable spacecraft’s latest test is no exception: this time, the ‘hopper sailed past its previous 840 feet record, stopping at 1,066 feet. According to the company, the launch had a “more precise” landing thanks to new sensors that measure distance between the ground and the vessel. It shows. The touch-down is both noticeably smoother than previous efforts and drama free compared to Russia’s explosive incident in Kazakhstan. The private spaceflight company’s latest video is after the break — do yourself a favor and watch it in HD.

Filed under: Science

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Source: SpaceX (YouTube)