Bookmarks (217)

Teslarati reports that local sources in Shanghai say that Tesla Giga Shanghai is already producing 1,600 Model Y vehicles per day. In August, Giga Shanghai reportedly started producing 1,000 Model Y units per day, officially exceeding its Model 3 production of 800 units per day. Tesla will be celebrating the 300,000th car-produced YTD on September ... Read more

Sutter Ultra is a NASA NIAC phase 2 study to find smaller and slower asteroids up to 350 times faster than all existing surveys combined. They will use sensor configuration with many low cost, high performance Compound Telescopes with Matched Filter (CTMF) technology, arrayed into a fully integrated system. They are making a ground demo ... Read more

Elon Musk says the SpaceX Raptor engine needs to be 10X lower cost. Order of magnitude change is good reason for a new name. He says what really matters is not yet another “advanced” rocket engine. There has never been a cheap (less than $1000/Ton-force) rocket engine. The SpaceX Raptor engine will have about 250 ... Read more

Tesla has released the first release of the Safety Score Beta. The Safety Score is an assessment of your driving behavior based on five metrics called Safety Factors. These are combined to estimate the likelihood that your driving could result in a future collision. They combine your daily Safety Scores (up to 30 days) to ... Read more

General Motors will start making battery fixes to over 140,000 recalled Chevrolet Bolts EVs and EUVs beginning in mid-October. Every GM Bolt ever made and every Hyundai electric Kona ever made have been recalled because the battery packs can catch fire. There needs to be a $11000 to 12000 fix for each electric car. There ... Read more

The Tesla full self-driving beta button is live. Tesla owners can now request to become part of the full self-driving beta. The system will monitor driving for 7 days and if the person is deemed to be a safe driver then they will be given access based upon Tesla’s selection criteria and timing. FSD Beta ... Read more

Cambridge Quantum, a leader quantum software, and Honeywell Quantum, a leader in trapped ion quantum hardware, have merged. The new company, which will be formally named in due course, will have a long-term agreement with Honeywell to help manufacture the critical ion traps needed to power the quantum hardware. Honeywell will invest between US$270million to ... Read more

IonQ’s quantum computers are now powerful enough to demonstrate a state-of-the-art quantum algorithm from Goldman Sachs and QC Ware that could one day speed up Monte Carlo simulations. These simulations are key for problem solving in many industries, including finance, telecommunications, robotics, climate science, and drug discovery. Arxiv -Low depth amplitude estimation on a trapped ... Read more

A NASA NIAC Phase III is developing and plans to fly a 2022 TDM (Technology Demonstration Mission) to prove the SGLF’s (Solar Gravitational Lens Focus) mission architecture. They will then prepare a near-term (by 2024), low-cost (less than $40M) mission to fly through the solar system faster than any spacecraft ever ~7 AU/year, capable of ... Read more

The Solar System Pony Express is a global, multi-spectral, high-resolution planetary surveyor supported by regular visits from a cycler satellite network to retrieve petabits of data for transit to Earth. The “courier” satellites use optical communications to receive 1-3 petabits from the surveyor at least once per year. They then travel close to earth where ... Read more

A large rocket landing on the moon will blow the dust like regolith all over the place. The dust and regolith could damage the rocket landing and the material could even fly off into space causing damage and hazard to satellites. A NASA NIAC study is looking at putting materials into the fuel of a ... Read more

An international research team led by Skoltech and IBM has created an extremely energy-efficient optical switch that could replace electronic transistors in a new generation of computers manipulating photons rather than electrons. In addition to direct power saving, the switch requires no cooling and is really fast: At 1 trillion operations per second, it is ... Read more

Home maintenance is a huge market, and there’s no end of products that cater to homeowners. As technology has improved, home automation products and smart devices have begun emerging. These devices do everything from start an oven to operate home security. Fortune Business Insights estimates that the home automation market, also called domotics, will grow ... Read more

A Phase 1 NASA NIAC study to more than double the power density for deep space atomic power. This will enable far more capable deep space missions which are too far from the sun for solar power. Main investigator is E. Joseph Nemanick of The Aerospace Corporation. The Atomic Planar Power for Lightweight Exploration (APPLE) ... Read more

University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon researchers have a NASA NIAC study into kilometer size structures deployable from a single SpaceX Falcon 9 launch. They are using flexible materials which would be able to expand to 150 times their packed size. They have made tiny prototypes of the planned materials and structures. They have modeled ... Read more

A NASA NIAC phase 2 is developing Titanium Nitride solar sails that would be able to perform an extremely close flyby of the sun to achieve speeds of 60 AU per year. This would be over 15 times faster than the Voyager (3.6 AU per year) spacecraft. They need to make metamaterial layers to achieve ... Read more

Phase 2 NASA NIAC study for a 1 kilometer diameter lunar crater radio telescope. The researchers have selected the best crater and worked out how to minimize the weight. They have worked out the main aspects for construction and deployment.

Seigo Tarucha and five colleagues, all at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, have initialized and measured a three-qubit array in silicon with high fidelity (the probability that a qubit is in the expected state). They also combined the three entangled qubits in a single device. Above – False-colored scanning electron micrograph of the ... Read more

China’s second largest property developer, Evergrande, is in big trouble and that caused global stocks and crypto to crash today. Here is a video by Asianometry which goes over how Evergrande grew quickly from 1996 to 2021. They used a lot of debt and leverage. They have US$300 billion in debt. They have development projects ... Read more

The University of Pennsylvania looking for a diabetes treatment have accidentally developed an innovative, even revolutionary treatment for weight loss. Treating obese mice with the cytokine known as TSLP led to significant abdominal fat and weight loss compared to controls. Unexpectedly, the fat loss was not associated with decreased food intake or faster metabolism. TSLP ... Read more

Technology is frequently positioned as one of the most powerful tools for tackling long-term global problems such as the climate emergency or food and water security. Terms such as “smart farming” refer to a future of agriculture where sensors monitor conditions such as soil quality, water, humidity, and temperature. Software and robotics technologies make continual ... Read more

IonQ unveiled the first Reconfigurable Multicore Quantum Architecture (RMQA) technology, a breakthrough in quantum computing. It is starting with the demonstration of 4 chains of 16 ions each that can be dynamically configured into quantum computing cores. IonQ believes this can scale qubit count into the triple digits on a single chip, as well as ... Read more

After three days on-orbit, Dragon and the Inspiration4 crew – the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit – has safely returned to Earth in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. They splashed down under parachutes. SOURCES- SpaceX Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

Carbon nanotubes can be five times as energy efficient and five times faster than silicon. engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison can align the nanotubes for computer chips by turning them into 2D liquid crystals. They can coat an entire 4-inch wafer with a uniform array of highly aligned carbon nanotubes in 40 seconds. A ... Read more

The more compute you put into a neural network then the better result you can get. There does not seem to be a limit for neural nets to utilize more resources to get better and faster results. Tesla is motivated to develop bigger, faster computers that are precisely suited to their needs. The Google TPU ... Read more

South Korea is developing a tailless stealth drone similar to the Lockheed RQ 170 Sentinal. The US first deployed the Lockheed RQ 170 Sentinal in Afghanistan back in 2007. The US built about 20-30 Lockheed RQ 170 Sentinals. The US also has the Grumman X47B stealth drone. The US spent about $1 billion on the ... Read more

Terrestrial Energy will double the power of the Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR®) nuclear power plant design. It is now called IMSR®400 and will generate net 390 MW of electric generation capacity for grid supply from twin reactors and generators. This upgrade, in response to utility requirements, further increases the cost-competitiveness of the IMSR®400 as ... Read more

In May, 2021, UK construction company Nationwide Engineering laid the world’s first graphene-enhanced concrete slab engineered for sustainability in a commercial setting. The new Southern Quarter gym in Amesbury’s Solstice Park opened in summer 2021. This is a joint venture between Nationwide Engineering and The University of Manchester. The addition of tiny amounts of graphene ... Read more

The Navy—solid state lasers (SSLs), the electromagnetic railgun (EMRG), and the gun-launched guided projectile (GLGP) [aka hypervelocity projectile (HVP)] for about a decade. The US Navy’s proposed FY2022 budget requests research and development funding for continued work on lasers but wants to suspend further work on the EMRG and GLGP programs and requests no research ... Read more

Inspiration 4 has successfully launched world’s first all-civilian human spaceflight to orbit. It launched from Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Approximately three days after liftoff, Dragon and the Inspiration4 crew will return to Earth and splash down at one of several possible landing sites off the Florida coast. SOURCES – SpaceXCentric ... Read more

Colossal has $15 million in funding and has started a de-extinction project to resurrect the Woolly Mammoth – or more specifically a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological traits of the Woolly Mammoth. It will walk like a Woolly Mammoth, look like one, sound like one, but most importantly it will be able ... Read more

Taiwan is considering a 5.6% military budget increase over the 2021 allocation and come to the usual 2.3% of gross domestic product. The new budget is in response to a surge in Chinese activity in or near the Taiwanese air defense identification zone since mid-2020. World War 2 might have been avoided if there was ... Read more

The first of the two high-temperature gas-cooled pebble bed reactors of China’s HTR-PM reactor reached criticality. Two small reactors that will drive a single 210 MWe turbine. This uses nuclear fuel with twice the efficiency. The design burn-up will be 90GWd/tU, while the maximum fuel burn-up will not be in excess of 100GWd/tU. Normal new ... Read more

Tesla released the version 10 beta of its full self-driving system just after midnight on Friday. Testers mostly agree that version 10 was a substantial improvement over version 9.2. Tesla is making and selling about 80,000 cars each month. They produced 44,200 cars in China in August and average about 35,000-40,000 cars from Fremont each ... Read more

U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59 will stand up on Thursday and be the second testing outfit for the Navy’s unmanned ships following Surface Development Squadron One (SURFDEVRON) establishment in 2019. They will expand the operational use of unmanned platforms in the region and experiment with their concept of operations. This will not just be ... Read more

With their first new album in 40 years heading to stores on November 5, ABBA give us a detailed look behind the scenes of their groundbreaking new live show ABBA Voyage, due to launch in May 2022. ABBA are a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, ... Read more

Doug Plata wrote an article on the Space Review that indicates that Starship to Orbit should be a policy tipping point. Orbital Starship is a historic transformation. It is the vehicle which will let us spread beyond Earth. Super Heavy Starship is not only developing the largest and most powerful rocket in history, but SpaceX ... Read more

Tesla full self-driving testers are reporting that FSD Beta 10 is a large improvement. They agree that in 2-4 weeks it will be ready for the start of wide opt-in release. They are feeling far more confident and comfortable using FSD. Gali of Hyperchange now thinks that robotaxi level could be reached in 6 months. ... Read more

New EV tax credits will happen but the House and Senate versions must get reconciled. On Friday, the US House has details in its proposed EV tax credits. The current EV tax is a $7,500 tax credit for the first 200,000 electric vehicles per manufacturer. Tesla has built more than 200,000 EVs. The new EV ... Read more

Here are a Lawrence Livermore and ARPA-E presentation on the science and roadmap details for Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). CFS has completed and validated their 20 Tesla magnet system which is critical for massively reducing the size of a commercial Tokamak. CFS has raised $215 million and now have a staff of over 240. They ... Read more

Commonwealth Fusion Systems and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) have demonstrated a magnet with a record-breaking 20 Tesla magnetic field. This is the core technology that they planned to create. They now have to mass produce it at ten times lower cost and assemble it into a net energy gain system by 2025. ... Read more

Internal documents by the Air Force’s future war-fighting cell indicated a plan to curb F-35 orders at 1,050 jets and Will Roper, the Air Force’s acquisition executive called for F-35 purchases to be capped at about 800 units. The old plan was to get 1,763 F-35As. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown is ... Read more

Australia and the United States signed a collaborative agreement to develop and test hypersonic cruise missile prototypes under the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE). The US hypersonic missile programs seem to be like the SLS (Space Launch System). The US hypersonic missile program and the SLS are not delivering consistently successful tests or ... Read more

Rodney Brooks is a co-founder of iRobots and has started other robot companies. Lex Friedman interviewed Rodney about how to make popular robots. iRobot Roomba came out in 2002 and has been the only high volume robot if hobbyist and enterprise drones are excluded. Rodney thinks the Baxter Robot could have had more success if ... Read more

Sam Korus of Ark Invest analysis shows SpaceX Starlink will be able to serve 30 million customers with 12000 Starlink Satellites. This would be $6 billion of revenue per year for SpaceX. The key inputs for the Ark SpaceX Starlink model are: The number of satellites in the constellation. The bandwidth of each satellite, measured ... Read more

Sandy Munro describes how Tesla’s cars are about 30% more efficient than the Ford Mach E and the Volkswagen ID4. Sandy Munro analyzes every component of cars by taking them apart. The Ford Mach E had good ride handling and is a comfortable car. Sandy said that Ford is about 7 years behind Tesla for ... Read more

Tesla China had August production of 44,200 which is about 20% over analyst expectations. There had been a rumor two weeks ago that Tesla China had increased model Y production to 1000 per day instead of 500 per day in July. Tesla China is also producing Model 3 at 800 per day. The combined 1800 ... Read more

Infineon, NXP, and Renesas were the leading automotive semiconductor manufacturers worldwide in 2020. Infineon’s market share was estimated at around 13.2 percent. The total market in 2020 was sized at around 35 billion U.S. dollars. In February, a winter storm in Texas caused blackouts at NXP Semiconductors, which is a major provider of automotive and ... Read more

Back in May 2018, was when Apple become the first trillion-dollar publicly traded company and then August 2020 it became the first $2 trillion company and now Apple is worth over $2.5 trillion. [$2.55 trillion]. Microsoft is at $2.26 trillion. Google is at $1.93 trillion. Amazon is $1.76 trillion. Facebook is at $1.08 trillion. There ... Read more