Gravity Falls
This wasn’t the first time Gravity has wowed observers with its Iron Man-esque Jet Suit, which features jets mounted to each of a wearer’s arms. The company even let a CNBC journalist take it for a test flight last year.
Continue reading “UK Military Could Deploy Iron Man-Style Jet Suit in Combat” »
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is looking for information on a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser for defending the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends against all ranges of enemy ballistic missiles in all phases of flight.
The post on the federal business opportunities website is asking industry for information on a capability to demonstrate a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser in the 2025–26 timeframe.
Missile Defense Agency does not provide a specific platform or strategic mission at this time. The proposed ground demonstrator laser system would be designed to have technology maturation and lightweight engineering paths to potential future platforms.
Continue reading “U.S. Missile Defense Agency wants a new 1,000 kilowatt-class laser weapons” »
India’s anti-satellite missile test created at least 400 pieces of orbital debris, the head of NASA says — placing the International Space Station (ISS) and its astronauts at risk.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Monday that just 60 pieces of debris were large enough to track. Of those, 24 went above the apogee of the ISS, the point of the space station’s orbit farthest from the Earth.
“That is a terrible, terrible thing to create an event that sends debris at an apogee that goes above the International Space Station,” Bridenstine said in a live-streamed NASA town hall meeting. “That kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human spaceflight.”
Continue reading “India anti-satellite missile test a ‘terrible thing,’ NASA chief says” »
Google recently appointed an external ethics council to deal with tricky issues in artificial intelligence. The group is meant to help the company appease critics while still pursuing lucrative cloud computing deals.
In less than a week, the council is already falling apart, a development that may jeopardize Google’s chance of winning more military cloud-computing contracts.
On Saturday, Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist and privacy researcher, said he won’t be serving on the council. While I’m devoted to research grappling with key ethical issues of fairness, rights and inclusion in AI, I don’t believe this is the right forum for me to engage in this important work,’’ Acquisti said on Twitter. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Continue reading “Google AI Ethics Council Is Falling Apart After a Week” »
According to the report, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has requested at least $10 million for its Reactor on a Rocket (ROAR) programme.
The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency intends to assemble a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system in orbit, Aviation Week reported, citing the Pentagon’s 2020 budget.
“The program will initially develop the use of additive manufacturing approaches to print NTP fuel elements… In addition, the program will investigate on-orbit assembly techniques (AM) to safely assemble the individual core element subassemblies into a full demonstration system configuration, and will perform a technology demonstration”, the budget document says.
Continue reading “Pentagon to Assemble Nuclear Rocket in Orbit by 2020” »
NASA on Friday published satellite photos of a powerful meteor which appeared just above the Bering Sea on December 18 but went unnoticed until months later.
The explosion unleashed around 173 kilotons of energy, more than 10 times that of the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima in World War II.
The partnership could greatly enhance the productivity of a single officer in the field and decrease fatigue or strain — but the USSOCOM didn’t reveal the exact intended use case for the exoskeleton, which lets the wearer heft 200 pounds (90 kg).
Forklift Arms
It’s the latest sign that exoskeletons are finally hitting the mainstream. Automobile manufacturers are already considering the use of simpler exoskeletons on factory floors. And the Food and Drug Administration approved a lower-body exoskeleton last year for use by people with lower limb disabilities.
It’s cliché to describe something very noisy as “louder than a jet engine.” But supersonic jet engines, like those powering fighters flown by the U.S. military, are so much louder than regular jet engines that scientists have a special term for their sound—” broadband shock-associated noise.”
Now, a team of faculty and students from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas will design and test innovative technologies to cut noise from supersonic military jets. The U.S. Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), the DoD’s environmental science and technology program, is supporting a one-year, $200,000 effort at KU, with the potential to expand that support in the years ahead.
