Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 418

SpaceX's Starhopper vehicle was scheduled to conduct its test run today when it had to be canceled due to one of the engines on the hopper malfunctioning.

Starhopper is the single engine version of the SpaceX Starship and is the craft Musk and his team designed to eventually take people around the Moon and Mars. According to the team, the hopper's 150 meter test flight and landing was aborted due to one of the gines on the hopper not igniting. Elon Musk Tweeted and said "Igniters need to be inspected. We will try again tomorrow same time."

Musk then followed up with another tweet explaining the malfunction in more detail, saying "Raptor uses dual redundant torch igniters. Better long-term, but more finicky in development. Appears to be a wiring/connector issue " Another flight schedule hasn't been booked as of yet as the SpaceX team is currently evaluating what is needed to be done before a test flight can commence.

The debate for whether or not artificial intelligence will impact us positively in the future is a debate that has been going for quite some time now. Many scientists have come out for and against artificial intelligence, but what if we were to predict the future of it? and can we?

Dr James Lovelock believes he can and that he can already see the fall of humanity being a result of the artificial intelligence development that would eventually come into cyborgs taking over the entire human race. In Lovelock's most recent publication "Novacene", Lovelock describes that these cyborgs will not meld to human needs and instead replace us as rulers of Earth and convert the planet into their needs.

Lovelock also believes that this will be the natural way of things as its essential that 'knowledge' is passed onto the next stage of intelligent life. "We are now preparing to hand the gift of knowing on to new forms of intelligent beings." This hypothesis is built from Lovelock's belief of their not being any intelligent life located on other planets.

The U.S military has no shortage of classified projects going underway, and some of those projects range out into the depths of space through vehicle or flight tests.

We have recently heard about one of these classified projects, and the news comes from the U.S Air Force regarding their 'X-37B' Space Plane. While this plane's missions are exclusively classified, the U.S Air Force has discussed its achievements in general terms for the public, saying "he primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth".

The space plane recently broke the endurance test record set by the Orbital Test Vehicle 4 (OTV-4). The X-37B launched on the back of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, and now has broken the OTV-4's endurance mark of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes. It seems that the U.S Air Force is attempting to stretch the mission longevity as long as possible, as each of the test flights has lasted much longer than its predecessor. The dimensions for the X-37B are 29 feet long, 9.6 feet tall and a wing span of about 15 feet.

The largest bust of fentanyl might have just taken place by the Mexican government, with local media reporting that a major fentanyl bust just went down in the Mexican port city of Lázaro Cárdenas in the state of Michoacán.

The bust was absolutely huge, with local media reporting that the Mexican government announced they had seized 25 tons (23,368 kilograms, or 51,517 pounds) of fentanyl. The origin was Shanghai, China with the gigantic fentanyl shipment headed to Culiacán, Sinaloa which is where the Sinaloa Cartel is based.

Mexican authorities found the fentanyl inside of a container of a Danish flagged vessel, which saw its cargo manifest listing the contents of the cargo as Calcium Chloride. Well, that was a lie - it was reportedly fentanyl, with authorities taking a small sampling to a "specialized laboratory of Mexican Customs and the substance later tested positive for fentanyl" reports Breitbart.

Kentucky Fried Chicken has just unveiled something I don't think anyone would've predicted when the colonel began his world domination through the secret herbs and spices in 1952 -- meat-free nuggets.

The company is using Beyond Meat, which are plant-based fake meat nuggets -- with KFC testing out the new 'Kentucky Fried Miracle' in Atlanta, Georgia. The thing is that plant-based meat alternatives aren't anything new, but Kentucky Fried Chicken throwing its hat into the ring is a big deal with other giants in Burger King, Carl's Jr, and Del Taco all offering plant-based meats from either Beyond Meats, or their competitor Impossible Foods.

KFC will cook the fake meat in the same fryers used to cook the normal chicken, so it is not absolutely, completely meat-free. It's being cooked in the same oil as the meat, so I guess there will be some form of chicken floating onto the plant-based meat... right?

The world is getting pretty kinky, but I think this new story really tops them all - killer robots that will strangle their partners, is something that is being warned if robotics are not regulated properly.

Doll collector Brick Dollbanger is an "expert" on sex robots, who has warned that a "coding error" could turn your robotic girlfriend into a killer, strangling you in the act. Dollbanger works with sex robot manufacturers Realbotix and Abyss, where he warned: "It scares me to death, it's a machine and it's always going to be a machine".

I didn't quite believe this story when I first read it, so I slid into the world of this Brick Dollbanger, the doll banger. Forbes wrote a piece with a lot of girth on the doll banger in September 2018, referring to him as a "sex robot beta-tester" in an article titled Meet The Man Who Test Drives Sex Robots. So yeah, it's real.

NASA will be hosting a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' (AMA) in a couple of days, this will no doubt spark Flat Earthers rallying to the Reddit board with numerous questions.

If you haven't heard about Reddit 'Ask Me Anything's then you have truly missed out on some of the greatest internet information harvesting events. The 'Ask Me Anything' sub-reddit is one of the most subscribed to Reddits on the platform as celebrities, high-profile businessmen, scientists, influencers and people alike take to the platform to answer community voted questions.

The people that are doing the 'Ask Me Anything' provide credible information for who they claim to be and proceed to answer any which question the community has provided them at their discretion. While you might think that they could go south since its the internet, and the internet can certainly be like the Wild Wild West, these events have actually provided some quite valuable information.

I don't know what would scare me more, seeing a hurricane off in the distance -- or a stealth bomber flying over it and dropping a nuclear bomb inside of it. Yeah, that's what President Trump wants to do.

Axios reports from sources who have heard the president's private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments "that in a meeting between President Trump and top national security and homeland security officials over threats with hurricanes, Trump said: "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?"

Trump continued: "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?"

NASA is in the middle of investigating its first space crime, with American astronaut Anne McClain accessing her partners bank account... from the International Space Station. This could be the first ever crime committed in the silence of space.

McClain is now back on solid ground back here on Earth, where according to her lawyer who spoke with The New York Times, she was only accessing her partners bank account to make sure their family's finances were OK. She wanted to make sure there was enough money to pay for the usual bills, and to care for their son.

Her lawyer added: "She strenuously denies that she did anything improper" and added that she was "totally cooperating".

Astronomers are constantly searching for life elsewhere in the universe and everyday we move closer to answering that big question - are we alone out here?

Scientists have presented new work at the Keynote Lecture at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Congress in Barcelona, claiming that they have located several exoplanets that have the required conditions to harbor life. So does an exoplanet need to harbor life? Firstly, scientists and astronomers are looking for planets that come under the 'habitable zone', which means the planet must have a potential for liquid water oceans and possibly breathable oxygen.

Dr. Stephanie Olson (University of Chicago) presented this new information and says that "NASA's search for life in the Universe is focused on so-called 'habitable zone' planets, which are worlds that have the potential for liquid water oceans. But not all oceans are equally hospitable-and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns."