TECHNOLOGY

Musk upbeat on Starship test flights

AMERICAN entrepreneur Elon Musk has given a further update on his Starship and Super Heavy rocket system.
He plans to use the new vehicles to send people to the Moon and Mars, and also to move them swiftly around the Earth.
The SpaceX CEO is in the process of building prototypes and plans to start flying them in the coming months.
The Mk1 version of his Starship would begin high-altitude tests in the next one to two months, he said.
“This is the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen,” the entrepreneur told an audience gathered at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, facility where the prototype has been assembled.
“So this thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000ft, about 20km, and come back and land. So that giant thing, it’s really going be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back.”
The 50m-tall Starship will eventually fly atop its booster, the Super Heavy.
A first test flight of this booster, carrying a Mk3 Starship, could go to orbit as early as next year, Musk said.
“This is going to sound totally nuts, but I think we wanna try to reach orbit in less than six months. Provided the rate of design improvement and manufacturing improvement continues to be exponential, I think that is accurate to within a few months.”
Both parts of the new rocket system, which together will stand 118m tall on the launch pad, are being designed to be fully reusable, making propulsive landings at the end of their mission.
Musk is well known for his aggressive scheduling, which even has a name: “Elon time”.
The scheduling often slips, but eventually he does tend to deliver.
Musk has given updates on the development of the new rocket system at regular intervals. He wants these future vehicles ultimately to replace his current fleet – the Falcon 9 and its bigger cousin, the Falcon Heavy.
He already has one customer on the books for a Starship flight – the Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who desires to go around the Moon and back with a group of artists.
Speaking at the Boca Chica event, the CEO outlined his latest thinking on the use of materials, changes in aero surfaces and the progress being made with the methane-burning Raptor engines that will power both the Starship and the Super Heavy.
The SpaceX boss explained his switch to using stainless steel over carbon fibre in building the Starship was in part down to cost. Steel is $2,500 per tonne whereas carbon fibre is $130,000 per tonne.
But he also championed the performance of steel at both low and high temperatures.
The Starship will feature heat-resistant “glass” tiles in those areas likely to experience the highest temperatures during a descent back through the atmosphere.

He also pointed to the four fins – two at the front, two at the rear – that will help control that re-entry; and to the Raptor engines. The Mk1 prototype has three, but operational versions will have six.
The Super Heavy booster, on the other hand, could have up to an extraordinary 37 Raptors all firing in unison.
Musk will be using Cape Canaveral in Florida for some launches, but Boca Chica also features in his flight plans.
This, he recognises, would mean considerable disruption for local residents, and the SpaceX company is therefore trying to buy them out.
“We’ve made an offer to that effect,” he said.
Musk has been criticised in the past for obsessing about going to Mars when there are many issues that need attention here on Earth.
He told his audience that the problems on our planet were not a reason to stop looking outwards.
“There are many troubles in the world, of course, and these things are important and we need to solve them. But we also need things that make us excited to be alive, that make us glad to wake up in the morning and be fired up about the future, and to think, yeah, the future is going to be great. Space exploration is one of those things.”
The administrator of the US space agency, Jim Bridenstine, put out an interesting tweet on the eve of the Boca Chica event in which he said he hoped the same enthusiasm shown for the Starship would not distract SpaceX from its Nasa commitments.
The company is contracted to the agency to deliver a Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule system capable of taking astronauts to the space station. This system is several years behind schedule.
Asked to respond to the tweet, Musk said the Starship and the Super Heavy booster were drawing on less than 5 per cent of SpaceX resources.
“Our resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon, especially crew Dragon,” he emphasised. -BBC

Videogames about building a better world

WITH calls for global climate action on the rise and time spent in nature recognised for its restorative quality, check out Eastshade, Civilization VI, Flotsam, Equilinox and Eco – five inspiring games that cover everything from refreshing countryside walks to the future of civilisation.
With players cast as a traveling painter, Eastshade welcomes leisurely strolling around a lush English island, with friendly residents to meet and secrets to discover, the game itself a portrait of luxuriant fauna and natural beauty.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm for PC, Mac and Linux, on consoles in November
A sizable addition to excellent, historically-inspired Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, Gathering Storm specialises in the depiction of changing climate systems and extreme weather events, inviting players to see how human activities past and present can affect near-future society.
Both Civilization VI and a digital-only Expansion Bundle that includes Gathering Storm will be landing on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Nov 22, with a Nintendo Switch Expansion Bundle arriving the same day.
Flotsam (Early Access) for Windows PC
Storms and sea level rises not only impact inadequately protected coasts but also low-lying islands, with several in the South Pacific already swallowed up over the past 70 years.
Flotsam imagines a submerged world, in which floating towns made from ocean salvage, a cheery warning and a heartfelt tribute to human ingenuity.
Equilinox for Windows PC, Mac and Linux
Start with grass seedlings and progress to biomes complete with animals that amble slowly or, in other cases, bounce excitedly from one place to another.
Nurturing plants and (non-human) animals helps them flourish, while full life-cycles are simulated, and both evolution and genetic modification systems are in place for those who want to tinker.
Eco for Windows PC
Like the hugely popular Minecraft in approach, but centered on connections between technological advancements, finite resources, harmful byproducts, and various forms of social collaboration.
Unlike Equilinox, this hinges on human interaction and, as a result, it’s best played with a group of other players. – AFP Relaxnews

Facebook to create VR world

FACEBOOK is creating an immersive environment called Horizon to tempt people into spending more time in virtual reality.
The VR app will be a mix of social places where users can mingle and chat, and other areas where they can play games against each other.
People will inhabit and explore the virtual spaces via a cartoon avatar.
The app will be made available and tested in early 2020, by a small group of Facebook users.
Stopping support
Details about Horizon and early footage of the virtual space were shown off at Facebook’s Oculus Connect 6 developer conference this week.
Facebook said anyone using Horizon would be able to call on human “guides” to help them navigate and become more familiar with the virtual environment.
The guides will not be “moderators” who will police behaviour, said Facebook. It added that it would include tools that let people manage how they interact with other users.
It will also have options that let people shape and build their own part of the environment. They will also be able to design their own avatars.
The entire space has been given a cartoon-like feel as it is intended to be used on Facebook’s Oculus Quest headset, which does not have the high resolution graphics of PC-linked headsets.
Sam Machkovech, a reporter for Ars Technica, who has tried Horizon, said Facebook had put “a ton of work” into the version he saw, to make it as welcoming as possible.
But he noted that Horizon was “yet another” combination of apps, chat and avatars which Facebook had produced in just a few years. He suggested that it was still searching for a good combination that proved properly tempting to users.
“We’re still waiting for Facebook to inspire confidence that it will launch a social-VR app and stick with it for more than two years,” he wrote.
Anyone interested in joining Horizon can sign up to be an early tester.
The creation of Horizon means Facebook will shut down its current VR hang-outs – Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms. Both will close on 25 October.
Facebook’s expansion of VR comes as Samsung cuts some support for the tech.
Samsung said it was dropping support for its Gear VR technology in its Galaxy Note 10 smartphones. Neither the Note 10 nor the Note 10 Plus will be compatible with the Gear VR system.
Samsung’s phone-based VR uses a headset into which a smartphone slots, to produce the immersive experience. Industry experts suggest that interest in phone-based VR systems such as Gear VR will decline as standalone devices, like the Oculus Quest, become more widely available. -BBC
In a statement given to tech news site the Verge, Samsung said it was “committed to innovating” in both VR and augmented reality systems. It said it would continue to maintain the software for Gear VR. -BBC