Tag Archives: Science and technology in the United States

Technology

John Carmack Quits Meta, ‘This Is The End Of My Decade In VR’

Leave a comment

Photo: Bloomberg (Getty Images)

John Carmack, legendary game designer, rocket guy and VR enthusiast, has announced that he is leaving both Meta/Facebook, and the virtual reality business itself, behind after a decade as one of its most prominent champions.

Carmack’s position was as an executive consultant. Having initially sent his farewell message to colleagues in an internal memo, when that was leaked in part to the media he decided to post the whole thing—including some clarifications—on his Facebook page instead.

Here it is in full:

This is the end of my decade in VR.

I have mixed feelings.

Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning – mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.

The issue is our efficiency.

Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening?

If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.

[edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization’s performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling tool.]

We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say “Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”

It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.

This was admittedly self-inflicted – I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.

Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”!

As his clarification states, while his comments may seem damning, they’re not necessarily related to any individual people he worked with, or decisions made above him. They’re more about his clear passion for the idea of optimisation itself, a structural and systemic issue that, at a company as big as Meta, might have been maddening for a guy used to writing code and firing rockets into space.

This would normally be the part of a story where I would drop some conjecture, maybe how such a high-profile departure might spell trouble for Meta’s efforts in the space, but lol, I think Meta are doing a good enough job of shouting that from the rooftops themselves.

Read original article here

Technology

Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey Created a VR Headset That Kills You If You Die in the Game

Leave a comment

Photo: Kevork Djansezian (Getty Images)

It’s an old trope in a lot of dumb sci-fi movies that involve virtual reality: you die in the game, you die in real life. In said movies, characters get trapped in a video game and must play for their lives. If their avatar perishes, so do they.

Well, it appears that someone has actually willed this trope into reality. That is, someone created a VR headset that literally kills you if you lose a video game. Fun, right?

The creator is not just any ol’ someone, but Palmer Luckey, the 30-year-old virtual reality wunderkind, defense contractor, Trump-funder, and co-founder of Oculus, the VR firm Facebook bought in 2014 for a cool $3 billion.

Luckey dropped a blog post on Sunday, explaining his weird new headset—which he claims is mostly a “piece of office art” for now—and included a picture of it as well.

For reference, it looks like this:

Photo: Palmer Luckey

G/O Media may get a commission

*lightsaber hum*

SabersPro

For the Star Wars fan with everything.
These lightsabers powered by Neopixels, LED strips that run inside the blade shape that allow for adjustable colors, interactive sounds, and changing animation effects when dueling.

Yes, this thing will actually end your life. More specifically, it is rigged with bombs so that your head will explode.

In his blog post, Luckey explains how his lethal new contraption is supposed to work:

I used three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, tying them to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy. When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user.

Jesus.

In other words, Luckey has basically brought to life the plot of the nerdy anime web comic from the mid-2000s, Sword Art Online. Indeed, Luckey says this comic was the major inspiration behind his project. In the comic, characters don a thing called “NerveGear,” which is an “incredible device that perfectly recreates reality using a direct neural interface that is also capable of killing the user.” They are then dropped into a matrix-like world by a mad scientist and forced to endure a “death game” where the stakes of the gameplay are pegged to their own mortality. To Luckey, this is an exciting idea:

The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me – you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it. Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.

Righttttt…well, that’s certainly an interesting idea, though some might argue that the pleasure of gaming actually derives from being able to experience death-defying scenarios and not have your head explode. Some people might argue that.

Anyway, whether its a good idea or not, Luckey seems to have plans to make his fun new hat even more horrifying than it currently is by adding “anti-tamper” tech to it:

This isn’t a perfect system, of course. I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset.

So the ultimate goal here is to create a murder-helmet that you literally can’t take off. Once it’s been clamped to your noggin the only two scenarios in which you’ll be able to remove it are A) the one where you win the game or B) the one where your decapitated corpse is dragged out of a pile of gore-strewn rubble by whatever unfortunate soul happens to stumble by. This is probably why Luckey hasn’t actually used the thing himself yet. He says:

… there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself, and also why I am convinced that, like in SAO, the final triggering should really be tied to a high-intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually correct.

…At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design.

Some will doubtlessly find this an exciting idea while others (actually, let’s be honest, most people) will probably be dissuaded from participation after reading the phrase “kill the user at the wrong time.” I, unfortunately, fall in the latter camp, though a grim cocktail of curiosity and schadenfreude are definitely going to keep me monitoring this project’s progress for the foreseeable future.

Read original article here

Technology

Meta AKA Facebook’s Hyped VR Headset Leaked By Guy In A Hotel

Leave a comment

Screenshot: Zectariuz Gaming / Ramiro Cardenas / Kotaku

It’s always worth rooting around down the side of the bed, or in the drawers, when you stay in a hotel room. Who knows what exciting items may have been forgotten by the previous guest? Like, for instance, a top-secret Oculus VR headset. That’s what happened to hotel worker Ramiro Cardenas, who claims to have discovered and revealed to the world that Project Cambria is most likely due to be called the Meta Quest Pro. Then he made an unboxing video.

The headset was originally teased last October, with the Project Cambria moniker, when Mark Zuckerberg said it would be sold at the “high end of the price spectrum.” At the time, we learned that it would possess cameras that send high-res full-color video to its screens, alongside face and eye-tracking, and all manner of exciting algorithms.

OCULUS QUEST PRO!!!!

Now, a full month before its intended announcement date, the new device is available for all to see thanks to one especially forgetful hotel guest. A very excited Ramiro Cardenas, who posted the video as Zectariuz Gaming, pulls the new headset and handheld controllers from their box, while whispering in delight.

This new-look Meta Quest Pro headset looks like something a mad inventor would wear in a 1980s Disney live-action movie about a man who accidentally invents time travel. The controllers, meanwhile, seem to have dropped the hollow hoop design of the Meta Quest 2 and gone for a much simpler, neater form-factor.

While covering up identifying details, the pictures accompanying the video do include one that reveals the legend, “NOT FOR RESALE – ENGINEERING SAMPLE.” It’s in pretty swish packaging considering! But it does suggest the product may be close to release.

Project Cambria

The Verge reports that Cardenas told them he was able to reunite the headset with the person who had stayed in the hotel room, but not before—you know—uploading photos and a video of the device to Facebook to blow up Meta’s plan to reveal it during October’s Meta Connect.

G/O Media may get a commission

$663 Total Value

Humble Bundle 2K Megahits Game Bundle for Covenant House

Provide housing and supportive services to youth facing homelessness
An array of games from 2K have been bundled together. You can pay what you want to support the cause, but if you want access to some of the big hits like Borderlands 3, The Bioshock Collection, XCOM: The Ultimate Collection, and Sid Meier’s Civilizatrion VI, you’ll have to pay at least $16. But hey, that’s hardly anything compared to the $663 value you’re getting from all 18 games combined.

It’s quite the coincidence that Cardenas, and his Zectariuz Gaming page, had already taken a keen interest in the various forms of the Oculus. We have reached out to him to ask how this serendipitous event occurred.

We have of course also reached out to Meta to ask if they’ll bring forward the Pro’s announcement now, and indeed whether they’ll be mounting the engineer’s head on a pike outside their HQ. (We might not have phrased it exactly like that.)

 

Read original article here

Science

A Super-Sensitive Dark Matter Detector Just Booted Up

Leave a comment

The LZ central detector in the clean room at Sanford Underground Research Facility.
Photo: Matthew Kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment team has announced the results from its first scientific run today; the experiment is the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, and though it did not find any dark matter in this first round, the team confirmed that the experiment is working as expected.

The LZ experiment detector is made up nested tanks of liquid xenon, each 1.5 meters tall and 1.5 meters wide, buried under South Dakota. The idea is that a dark matter particle whizzing through space will eventually bounce off one of the xenon atoms, knocking loose electrons in a flash that is recorded by the experiment. The tank is buried about a mile below Earth’s surface to minimize the amount of background noise. Today’s announcement comes after 60 live days of data collection that spanned December 25 to May 12.

“We’re looking for very, very low-energy recoils by the standards of particle physics. It’s a very, very rare process, if it’s visible at all,” said Hugh Lippincott, a physicist at UC Santa Barbara and a member of the LZ team, in a press conference today. “You can shoot a dark matter particle through 10 million light-years of lead and expect only one interaction at the end of that light-year.”

Dark matter is the catch-all term for the unknown stuff that appears to make up about 27% of the universe. It hardly ever interacts with ordinary matter, hence its “darkness” to us. But we know it’s out there because, while never directly detected, it has gravitational effects that can be seen on cosmic scales. (NASA breaks down the concept pretty well here.)

There are many candidates for dark matter. One is the WIMP, or a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. Unlike other dark matter hypotheses like axions or dark photons, which are so small and diffuse that they may behave more like waves, WIMPs would have mass but hardly ever interact with ordinary matter. So to detect them, you need a device that pretty much mutes all other physics going on.

LZ is super sensitive, which makes it good for spotting such fleeting and infrequent interactions. The experiment is 30 times larger and 100 times more sensitive than its predecessor, the Large Underground Xenon experiment, according to a Sanford Underground Research Facility release. LZ is “effectively an onion” Lippincott said, with each layer of the experiment insulating against noise that could obscure a potential WIMP interaction.

The LZ Outer Detector, which guards against unwanted signals.
Photo: Matthew Kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility

“The collaboration worked well together to calibrate and to understand the detector response,” said Aaron Manalaysay, a physicist at Berkeley Laboratory and a member of the LZ team, in a Berkeley Lab press release. “Considering we just turned it on a few months ago and during COVID restrictions, it is impressive we have such significant results already.”

Of the many detections the LZ experiment made in its 60-day run, 335 seemed promising, but none turned out to be WIMPs. That doesn’t mean WIMPs aren’t out there, but it does eliminate a mass range from contention. (This is the crux of what dark matter detectors do: bit by bit, they rule out what masses the particles can’t be.) Multiple physicists recently told Gizmodo that they think the next big discovery in particle physics will come from a dark matter detector like LZ.

This scientific run kicked off what’s expected to be a 1,000-day schedule. The recent round was also unblinded, so the LZ team could monitor how the technology behaved. Since it performed as expected, the next scientific run will have its results ‘salted,’ or peppered with phony signals, to mitigate bias.

Twenty times more data will be collected in the coming years, so perhaps the wimpy WIMPs will finally have to face the music of their own existence. Then again, maybe they don’t exist at all. We won’t know until we look.

More: 10 Years After the Higgs Boson, What’s the Next Big Thing for Physics?

Read original article here

Science

Inaugural Launch of NASA’s SLS Rocket Delayed to at Least August 2022

Leave a comment

NASA’s SLS rocket as seen through the windows of Firing Room One in the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Photo: NASA/Joel Kowsky

NASA will attempt another countdown rehearsal of the Space Launch System in early June, but the space agency warned that multiple tests of its finicky rocket might be necessary.

SLS returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on April 26, allowing technicians to swap out a faulty upper stage helium check valve and fix a small hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical. These and other “nuisance” problems, as NASA describes them, prevented groundcrews from performing a fourth wet dress rehearsal, in which the rocket was to be fully loaded with super-cooled propellants and a full countdown practiced. NASA was hoping to perform the fourth test while the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket was still standing on Launch Complex 39B, but it was not to be.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, NASA officials said they’ll try again to perform a full wet dress rehearsal in early or mid June. The added time will allow the team to resolve some lingering technical problems, perform additional checkouts of the rocket, and allow an off-site supplier of gaseous nitrogen to perform necessary upgrades of its pipeline system.

SLS is a key component of NASA’s upcoming Artemis program, which seeks to return U.S. astronauts to the dusty lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years. NASA also needs the megarocket to build its upcoming Lunar Gateway (a small space station in orbit around the Moon) and to enable future crewed trips to Mars. The SLS program has suffered from cost overruns and delays, with these latest setbacks adding insult to injury.

Assuming a successful rehearsal can be completed in June, the rocket will once again roll back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for final launch preparations and “some work that we’ve deferred to the other side of the wet dress,” as Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA, explained during the media teleconference. Upcoming launch periods for the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission include July 26 to August 9 (Free said NASA is not considering the July portion of this period), August 23 to 29, and September 2 to 6. Somewhat ominously, Free said launch windows have been laid out for the rest of the calendar year but didn’t provide specific dates. NASA will wait for the results of the next wet dress to make a decision about when to launch.

Free, explaining that he wanted to be “realistic” and “upfront,” said “it may take more than one attempt” to conclude a wet dress and to “get the procedures where we need them for a smoother launch count that gives us the best chance to make our launch windows when we get to the launch day.” As this is the first time we’re hearing that multiple attempts might be necessary, and given the slew of problems encountered during the first three tests, I asked Free if the rocket is proving to be more complicated than NASA thought.

“SLS isn’t proving to be more complicated—we knew it was complicated,” he responded. A particular challenge, Free said, has been operating the new ground systems for the first time and seeing how they react. The team is “not going to take it for granted” that the next wet dress is “going to be great” based on what was experienced during the first three attempts, he said. A certain amount of realism is needed in the approach and the “team needs our support,” he added. This includes managing the team’s workload, who have “been going at it for quite a while now,” Free said. “This is really hard work.”

SLS should depart the Vehicle Assembly Building in late May, with the wet dress expected in early or late June. This is no guarantee, as technicians haven’t yet determined the source of rubber debris that prevented an upper stage check valve from operating during an earlier test. The umbilical hydrogen leak on the pad also needs to be repaired to the team’s satisfaction (the problem is being remedied with the periodic re-torquing of bolts), while the vendor of the gaseous nitrogen, Air Liquide, needs to demonstrate that it can deliver the gas to SLS as required, as Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager at NASA, told reporters.

On a positive note, NASA will have live commentary for the next SLS rehearsal, which hadn’t been done for the first three tests, apparently for security reasons.

Read original article here

Science

Third Test of NASA Megarocket Foiled by Hydrogen Leak

Leave a comment

NASA’s third attempt at a modified rehearsal of the Space Launch System (SLS) came to a halt on Thursday when a leak of liquid hydrogen was detected during tanking operations. The space agency is planning another wet dress rehearsal for the Moon rocket no earlier than April 21.

This is the latest in several setbacks to the rocket’s wet dress rehearsal, including delays due to weather, malfunctioning ventilation fans, and valve issues.

“All the issues that we’re encountering are procedural and lessons learned,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, said during a press conference on Friday.

A wet dress rehearsal is when the 322-foot rocket is filled with fuel as it sits on top of a launch pad, and the team runs through a mock countdown to prepare for the day of launch. The rehearsal is critical for the launch of Artemis I, an uncrewed mission to the Moon and back, and the first step to returning humans to the Moon by the year 2026.

This wet dress rehearsal was first scheduled for April 1, but was initially delayed due to technical issues that prevented the crew from loading the rocket up with fuel. Before the next test date on April 11, the team discovered a faulty valve, which led them to modify the rehearsal and plan on only fueling the SLS core stage, and not its upper stage.

G/O Media may get a commission

14% Off

Logitech C920 Webcam

Looking good
Capable of 1080p HD video at 30 fps, comes with dual mics to help capture your voice properly, and has special software to make it easy to adjust.

Thursday’s third attempt was unfortunately not the charm, as the team discovered a leak of liquid hydrogen from the tail service mast umbilical, which connects the base of the mobile launcher to the core stage. Liquid hydrogen is one of two propellants used for the rocket, the other being liquid oxygen.

By the time the wet dress rehearsal was shut down, about 49% of the tank was filled with liquid oxygen, and only 5% of the other tank was filled with liquid hydrogen. The team successfully managed to cool down the lines used to load propellant into the upper stage, but were not able to flow any propellant to the stage due an issue with a valve.

Still, the team behind the SLS rocket say they aren’t giving up. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we will finish this test campaign, and that we will look into the hardware and the data will lead us to the next steps,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, said during the teleconference. “We will launch this vehicle… and we will be ready to go fly.”

Read original article here

Science

Why NASA Will Be Keeping Many Details of This Weekend’s Megarocket Test Secret

Leave a comment

SLS on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

A critical test of NASA’s upcoming Space Launch System rocket starts this Friday, but the live broadcast of the wet dress rehearsal promises to be a dull and silent affair owing to security concerns. We live in uncertain times, no question, but some experts say this muzzling is over the top and unhelpful.

It’s been nearly two weeks since SLS rolled out to launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 322-foot-tall rocket, after tons of anticipation, is nearly ready for prime time. All that’s needed now is a successful wet dress rehearsal, in which propellant will be loaded into the launcher’s tanks and a countdown rehearsed by the launch team.

“It’s the last design verification prior to launch,” Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for common exploration systems development at NASA, said today at a media teleconference. “We could learn something,” he said, but ultimately the goal is to “make it through the count” and see how SLS performs during an actual test. The team will then evaluate the data and, assuming everything’s fine, announce a date for the inaugural launch of SLS—the Artemis 1 mission—during the week of April 11.

The wet dress rehearsal is scheduled to start on Friday, April 1 at 5:00 p.m. EDT and end with the draining of the tanks on Sunday, April 3 at roughly 4:30 p.m. EDT. NASA will broadcast the entire test at the Kennedy Newsroom YouTube channel, but “without audio or commentary,” according to a press release. And as Whitmeyer explained at the media conference, reporters won’t have the usual access to detailed countdown info.

That’s a surprise, to say the least. A lot goes on during wet dress rehearsals, but this time around we won’t get to follow along in real-time. NASA says some details will be made available on its social media platforms, including the Artemis blog, but the extent to which it will share information is unknown.

The reason for the hush-hush has to do with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) concerns having to do with the sharing, or “exporting,” of sensitive information. In the case of SLS, Whitmeyer said America’s rivals could deduce cryogenic timing information to assist in the development of ballistic missile systems. Accordingly, NASA will be “avoiding any specific timing, flow, or other types of things that would inadvertently give an indication towards specific characteristics of the operations that we’re going through.”

Whitmeyer added that NASA is being extra cautious given “the environment we’re in nowadays,” and said that the space agency can’t risk the disclosure of sensitive information. He’s likely referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and recent weapons tests in North Korea.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, isn’t convinced an ITAR-enforced silence during the SLS wet dress rehearsal will do any good.

“The problem with any such security mandate is that it is typically not being enforced by the people who have the necessary technical understanding to know what is actually helpful to others,” such as China, for example, or “what wouldn’t be helpful,” he told me in an email. “And so, it gets enforced wildly over-enthusiastically, to the point that the degree to which it impedes free communication is more harmful than any risk that it protects against.”

Whitmeyer said journalists will be provided with a general countdown timeline later this week and that a post-test media teleconference will take place on Monday, April 4.

As for the (eventual) Artemis 1 mission, Whitmeyer is hopeful that NASA will “provide the normal calls” during the real launch. That would be grand, but it’s clear we no longer live in “normal” times.

Read original article here

Science

NASA’s Megarocket Gets Closer to First Launch After Successful Engine Tests

Leave a comment

A view of SLS inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, showing the tops of the side rocket boosters.
Photo: NASA/Cory Huston

A faulty memory chip caused a problem last year with NASA’s upcoming Space Launch System megarocket—an issue the space agency says is now resolved.

A wet dress rehearsal appears to be closer than ever after a successful series of tests done on all four RS-25 engine flight controllers, according to a NASA release. In December 2021, one of these flight controllers began to misbehave, but the replacement unit, along with the pre-existing engine controllers, now appear to be functioning properly. The problem seemingly resolved, NASA can now focus on the final close-outs as it prepares for the inaugural launch of the 332-foot-tall (101-meter) rocket, a mission known as Artemis 1.

The SLS rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo: NASA/Frank Michaux

“All four engine controllers performed as expected during power up,” according to the NASA statement. Aerojet Rocketdyne, the developer of the RS-25 engine, has been working with the space agency to resolve the problem and assist with the recently concluded tests. The 5.75-million-pound rocket is currently undergoing integrated testing inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The flight controller on engine number four had to be replaced after it glitched out late last year. These devices communicate with the rocket to provide precision control and to report on the health of each RS-25 engine, which dates back to the Space Shuttle program.

NASA traced the cause of the malfunction to a faulty memory chip. This chip is only needed during the controller start-up sequence, and it has no impact on controller operations aside from that lone function, NASA says. No problems with the three other memory chips were detected, in what is a very positive sign.

The controller problem forced NASA to delay the much-anticipated wet dress rehearsal, in which the rocket will be rolled out to Launch Pad 39B and filled with propellant. That said, NASA recently admitted that the sheer volume of testing has also responsible for the delays. A wet dress rehearsal was originally scheduled for late January, and then for early February, with the latest word that it could happen in March.

Next steps include pre-flight diagnostics and the final hardware closeouts, such as tests with the flight termination system and last-minute installations on the two solid rocket boosters. The wet dress rehearsal, in addition to being a practice run, will provide NASA with important data for evaluating the overall performance of the system. NASA will set a launch date for Artemis 1 following a successful wet dress rehearsal. An April launch is not out of the question, but we’ll hold off on making any firm predictions.

SLS is a huge deal for NASA, as it will enable the upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon and Mars. Once complete, it will be the world’s most powerful rocket—at least until SpaceX launches its fully stacked Starship, which is likewise expected to go up later this year.

More: Encouraging Webb Telescope Image Shows a Single Star in a Familiar Pattern.

Read original article here

Science

NASA Delays Launch of Space Launch System After Testing Glitch

Leave a comment

The Orion spacecraft being stacked atop the Space Launch System (SLS).
Photo: NASA/Frank Michaux

A misbehaving engine computer means the inaugural launch of NASA’s Space Launch System, planned to be the most powerful rocket in the world, won’t happen in February 2022 as planned.

The fully stacked SLS, with the 74,000-pound (33.5 metric ton) Orion spacecraft mounted up top, is currently undergoing integrated testing inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. These tests are in anticipation of the yet-to-be-scheduled wet dress rehearsal, in which propellant will be added to the rocket’s fuel tanks. A successful wet dress rehearsal would in turn set the stage for an actual launch—the much-anticipated uncrewed Artemis 1 mission to the Moon and back.

Indeed, NASA is planning to use the 332-foot-tall (101-meter) rocket for its upcoming Moon missions, but the recent testing glitch means we will have to wait a bit longer—but hopefully not much longer—to finally see this behemoth soar through the Florida skies. Once complete, SLS will become the world’s most powerful rocket, though that crown could swiftly be stolen by SpaceX’s fully stacked Starship, which is also scheduled to launch for the first time next year.

NASA’s checklist, as it works towards the historic inaugural launch of SLS.
Graphic: NASA

NASA, as it conducts the integrated testing, is making sure that Orion, the core stage, and the two booster rockets are properly communicating with ground systems. During a recent power test of the core stage, NASA engineers detected an issue with an RS-25 engine flight controller. Here’s how NASA described the problem:

The flight controller works as the “brain” for each RS-25 engine, communicating with the SLS rocket to provide precision control of the engine as well as internal health diagnostics. Each controller is equipped with two channels so that there is a back-up, should an issue arise with one of the channels during launch or ascent. In the recent testing, channel B of the controller on engine four failed to power up consistently.

G/O Media may get a commission

Up to 43% Off

Best Buy TV Sale

Buy every TV
If you have just kept missing great TV deals this season and you’ve been kicking yourself, here’s one last chance to get in on some great discounts on some of the best TVs going.

The Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines are borrowed from the Space Shuttle program, but they’ve been modified to provide additional power. And where the Space Shuttle featured three of these engines, the SLS core stage has four. That the engine flight controller is misbehaving is surprising, given that it functioned normally during preliminary integrated testing and during the full duration hotfire test conducted in March 2021, according to NASA.

Engineers, upon detecting the problem, ran inspections and performed further troubleshooting, but ultimately decided to swap out the problematic engine controller. NASA says the rocket has “returned to full functionality,” but its engineers will continue to investigate the root cause of the issue. The space agency is now reviewing launch opportunities in March and April. If timelines disclosed by Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin in October remain valid, the launch windows would be in mid-March and mid-April.

Plenty of work remains, including further communications tests, countdown sequence testing, and final checkouts of SLS and Orion functionality. The wet dress rehearsal will signify a major milestone, after which time NASA will provide a firm launch date.

More: ‘Communications issue’ delays much-anticipated launch of Webb telescope.

Read original article here

Business

Boston Dynamics unveils annoyingly confident parkour robot

Leave a comment

We like to dunk on Boston Dynamics here at The A.V. Club, whether it’s because their robots have decided to stop doing practical things and start dancing (like that’s going to be a good way to steal a job from a human) or because they’re trying to make their robots look cute after the NYPD tried to turn them into RoboCops, but we’ve gotta give them this: For once, they made a robot that actually seems kind of competent—and here we are, not even two weeks out from Judgment Day (and 24 years late).

As reported by The Verge, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot can now do parkour. It can climb and flip and run on a wall and do some dickish showboating when it lands a good jump, and that means it will be that much more efficient at jumping on human skulls when the Machine Wars start. We foolishly thought parkour would be the one thing that saves us, since parkour is/was something that only humans can do (unlike driving a car and walking, which robots are getting better and better at), but our brave human rebels will have a much harder time evading the Flesh Hunters of the future if they can’t climb on rooftops and do unnecessary flips or spins now.

The robots will need the natural energy that our bodies produce in order to power their batteries, so they’re not just going to slaughter us all, and these parkour robots will be useful when it comes to getting hard-to-reach humans who have climbed up to rooftops and are hiding in ferris wheels. Common sense suggests that it’s harder for robots to get to places that are high up, since their power cords are so short and the most common robot—the lowly, pathetic Roomba—doesn’t have legs at all, and that’s what makes this Atlas robot such a game changer.

How would you get away from this thing? Maybe kick out its legs, and then just start beating the shit out of it until you hit an important bit of wiring? Or just push it so hard that it falls down? Or… just walk kind of fast? You know, this thing doesn’t really seem like it would be too hard to kill, now that we think about it… but now that we’ve typed that, the computers will know that we think the Atlas is easy to kill, so we’re going to have to throw them off the trail with some clever human subterfuge. Oh no! We were wrong! (Wink.) This robot is so scary and good at parkour! It will surely kill us all! (Wink.) We’re very impressed by the Roomba and we don’t laugh at it behind its back! (Wink.)

Read original article here