Posts Tagged ‘crashing’
Alt-week 12.15.12: rivers on Titan, electric handcuffs and crashing into the moon
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Alt-week has a look at the very best science and alternative tech tales from the last seven days.
Area, it’s the last frontier, where no-one can hear you shout in frustration at not understanding who the bad guy of Star Trip: Into Darkness is, as well as where HALF of our stories take spot this week. NASA’s planning to crash satellites into the moon, somebody’s patented an electo-shock handcuff and there’s a river on Titan that you wouldn’t wish to canoe-down. This is alt-week.
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PAL-V Gyrocopter/Car Hybrid Takes Maiden Voyage, Moves One Step Closer To Crashing Somewhere Near You
Author: Tristan Richards
This is the PAL-V (Personal Air and Land Vehicle) ONE, a “car”/gyrocopter hybrid from The Netherlands that’s aimed at revolutionizing personal transport, but will probably only lead to a dramatic increase in gyrocopter related deaths. According to the company, the car can be driven on any road with a standard driver’s license, and requires only a recreational or private pilot’s license (“only 20 – 30 hours of training”) to fly. I…find that terrifying. “You find everything terrifying.” I nailed my apartment door shut and I’m never leaving.
The flying range will be between 350 (220 miles) and 500 km (315 miles), depending on the type, pay load and wind conditions. Driving, a PAL-V will have a range of about 1200 km (750 miles). It runs on gasoline like a conventional car and there will also be versions that use biodiesel or bio-ethanol. It can reach speeds of up to 180 km/h (110 miles/h) both on land and in the air.
On the ground the slim, aerodynamic, 3-wheeled vehicle combines the comfort of a car with the agility of a motorcycle thanks to its patented, cutting-edge, ’tilting’ system. Driving, a PAL-V accelerates like a sports car and drives through curves like a motorcycle.
Flying, a PAL-V is like a standard gyrocopter. It is quieter than helicopters due to the slower rotation of the main rotor. It takes off and lands with low speed, cannot stall, and is very easy to control. This makes a PAL-V one of the safest types of aircraft.
Thanks to its very short take off and landing capability, it is possible to land a PAL-V practically anywhere. For take-off, a strip of 165 meters (540 feet) is enough and it can be either paved or grass.
Unfortunately, with all those safety features, there’s still nothing that prevents you from flying into power lines trying to barnstorm a friend’s house. And then what do you do? “Dangle above the street and get shocked to death?” Exaaaactly.
Hit the jump for several more shots of the lollercopter and a video of its maiden voyage.
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The Gods Must Be Crazy: Pieces Of Research Satellite Will Be Crashing To Earth Soon
Author: Tiffany Shoman
Satellites: they don’t last forever. “WHAT?!?!” Haha — including you, moon! And when they’ve served their purpose they have a couple options, 1) smash into other satellites and cause an even greater mess to drive through on the way to Mars, or 2) try to reenter the atmosphere, then break into a bunch of pieces and take one last jab at the civilization that sent them up there to rot in the first place. The 20-year old Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite? It’s coming down swinging.
Shortly before its 2005 decommissioning, UARS made one final engine burn designed to gradually lower its orbit, and after spiraling down for the last six years (and narrowly missing the ISS on the way), the satellite will be reentering the atmosphere. Like, soon. Probably.
…NASA is tracking UARS very closely, though, and they should know four or five days ahead of time about when it’s going to come down. At that point, they should be able to estimate a 500 mile swath in which the 1,170 pounds (ish) of surviving debris will land. Right now, all they know is that it could be anywhere between 57 degrees north and 57 degrees south of the equator, which covers basically the entire populated planet with the exception of Scandinavia and Sibera.
Oh man, I hope I get hit with a piece. And by me I mean the person standing next to me. Then I will falsify my own report about getting hit with a piece of space-junk, sue NASA for like EIGHTY BILLION SPACE DOLLARS and finally be able to afford the cosmetic surgery I’ve always dreamed of. You hear that, God? FUGLY NO MORE!
Heads up: huge NASA spacecraft coming down somewhere, sometime [dvice]
Thanks to dunc, who claims he got hit with a piece of space-junk a couple years ago but can’t prove it because it’s embedded in his skull and doesn’t have the money to afford surgery. Hey um, dunc? That’s just from when I tried stapling a balloon to your head when you were drunk one night. Forgive me?
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Shock Survey Reveals: People Don’t Like Crashing Gadgets
Author: Matthew Baker
A new survey done by Accenture has revealed that people in the world today are “increasingly frustrated with devices that frequently crash or don’t work as well as expected.” Well blow me down!
It’s no surprise, of course, and the survey could probably have dug a little deeper, but it does reveal a few issues with the way gadgets are going these days. Smartphones and tablets are attempting to do way more than the average user needs them for. Unfortunately, you can’t just say “give me an iPhone, hold the Bluetooth.” The configuration thing is more for PCs, and people want their phone to just work. So it ends up being extra-frustrating when something they just want to do one or two things fails because it was trying to do ten.
This is why I still love my Zune HD. Everyone who uses it finds it pleasant and simple, and although it too tries to do too much (and fails), it’s never failed at its primary purpose: playing music.
Unfortunately, single-purpose devices means you own more things, maintain them, lose them, and so on. The instability and “kitchen sink mentality” is the other side of the convergence and convenience coin.
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Crashing into the Moon
Author: Sriram Reddy
A whole new space race has begun. Over the next decade, the United States… Germany… England… Japan… India… China… Russia… and even a few private companies… have plans to send rockets to explore the moon. They will map the lunar surface… search for clues to its origins… and find out what’s there that humans can use to survive. A Russian mission will send seismic detectors into the soil to monitor moon-quakes… and study the flow of heat from the moon’s core. A Japanese mission will use x-rays to search for rare minerals. An American mission is prospecting for water in the shadowy craters at the Moon’s poles. But governments aren’t the only ones joining this new race to the Moon; With more missions on the drawing boards… – and the chance to actually make money developing space businesses – private ventures are angling to supply launch or human transport services…. And even begin exploiting space resources like energy…materials…and the freedom from gravity itself. Private robotics teams, vying for the 30 million dollar Google Lunar X-Prize, are designing, building and planning to launch rovers with video cameras to explore lunar landscapes. It’s inspired by the Orteig prize that sent Charles Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic Ocean more than 80 years ago. That feat helped launch the civil aviation industry. The sponsors of this prize hope it will unleash the entrepreneurial spirit into space. The goal of these missions is to begin to fulfill a …
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Rock Band 3 crashing into living rooms on October 26
Author: James Cliff
Look, it’s summer break. What better to do than learn a little piano in preparation for the upcoming release of Harmonix’s Rock Band 3? The next installment — which promises to bring all sorts of new kit to the market — was finally given a release date today, and not surprisingly, it’ll be quickly climbing the Santa Lists of rug-rats the world over. According to the company, the title will ship on October 26th in North America, with the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions priced at $59.99 sans hardware and the DS rendition at $29.99. Hop on past the break if you’re interested in learning about your wealth of pre-order options.
Continue reading Rock Band 3 crashing into living rooms on October 26
Rock Band 3 crashing into living rooms on October 26 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Inside WebKit2: less waiting, less crashing
Author: Markus Smith
Anders Carlsson, an Apple employee, announced today on the WebKit mailing list an evolution of the WebKit project called WebKit2.
WebKit2′s major aims are to bake both a “split process model” and a non-blocking API into the WebKit product—and by extension into Safari and any other client which takes advantage of the WebKit2 framework.
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Props to Infinite Loop
