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On Sunday, SpaceX will make a historic attempt to catch the returning Starship booster

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The spacecraft is prepared to fly again — and for the first time, SpaceX will try to bring the booster back to the launch site to catch it with a pair of huge “sticks.”

SpaceX will launch the giant Starship on Sunday in a launch window that opens at 5 a.m. PST (7 a.m. local time) from the company’s Starbase in southeast Texas. The flight, the fifth in the spacecraft development program, will come a little sooner than expected: The Federal Aviation Administration has previously said it doesn’t anticipate issuing a modified launch license for this test before the end of November.

This timeline deeply offended SpaceX, prompting the company to repeatedly highlight what it described as regulatory inefficiencies. However, the world’s strongest launcher will take to the skies sooner than expected, and on Saturday the FAA announced it had approved tomorrow’s launch.

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“The FAA has determined that SpaceX has met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight,” the regulator said in a statement. It’s value noting that the authorization also includes approval for an additional test flight, on condition that “the changes requested by SpaceX for Flight 6 are within the scope of what has been previously analyzed,” the FAA said.

The nearly 400-meter-long spacecraft is at the center of SpaceX’s stated ambitions to make life multi-planetary, but more directly concerns NASA’s ambitious Artemis campaign to return humans to the lunar surface. SpaceX anticipates quickly reusing the entire Starship, which incorporates the upper stage (also called the Starship) and super-heavy booster, but meaning demonstrating the ability to get better each stages and quickly refurbish them for future flights.

Therefore, it is sensible that the primary goals of the fifth flight test are two-fold: attempting to “catch” the super-heavy booster at the launch site for the first time in history, and re-entry the spacecraft to its goal and splash down in the Indian Ocean.

The latter goal has already been achieved: SpaceX performed a controlled reentry and splashdown of the spacecraft’s upper stage during its last test mission in June. But the booster clip, as the company put it in a blog post, can be “uniquely innovative” in rocket history.

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The closest analogue currently is the routine landings of Falcon 9 rockets on autonomous barges and ground landing zones. However, the plan is that in the case of tomorrow’s launch, the booster will decelerate to a hover and gently position itself in the zone of two “stick” arms attached to the launch tower. These arms would then close around the booster and hold it in place when its motors stopped working.

– SpaceX noted in an update posted on its website that for a catch attempt to occur, “thousands” of criteria should be met, indicating that the systems in the vehicle and on the pad are functional. If these conditions are met, the mission flight director will manually command the booster before completing a trajectory adjustment maneuver, called the afterburner burn, roughly 3 minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff.

“If this command is not sent before the booster burn is completed, or if automatic health checks indicate unacceptable conditions for the Superheavy or tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that will cause it to burn out on landing and make a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico,” the company said.

The entire booster startup and return should take just 7 minutes. Once detached, Starship will proceed to ascend into orbit before descending into the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.

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While waiting for the launch license, SpaceX engineers have been very busy: in recent months, they conducted quite a few tests on the launch tower, completely replaced the rocket’s entire thermal protection system with newer boards and a spare ablative layer, and updated the re-entry vehicle’s software. This week, engineers accomplished tests of propellant loading and tests of the launcher flooding system, which is designed to protect the launcher from the powerful fire of the 33 Raptor engines positioned on the launch pad.

The company plans to eventually move Starship’s upper stage back to the landing site as well, though we’ll have to wait to see that in future test launches.

“When each flight builds on the lessons learned from the previous flight, testing hardware and performance improvements across all aspects of Starship, we are on the cusp of demonstrating techniques critical to a Starship design that allows for full and rapid reusability,” the company says. “By continuing to use our equipment in the aerospace environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we will quickly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s ability to access space.”

Watch the live test webcast starting roughly half-hour before launch (7:00 a.m. PST). SpaceX website Or on X

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This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

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Palantir Exec defends work in the company’s immigration supervision

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One of the founders of the Y startup accelerator Y Combinator offered this weekend the Palantir Data Analytical Company that doesn’t describe the controversial analytical company, running the company’s director to supply a broad defense of Palantir’s work.

Then it appeared forward federal applications He showed that American immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) – the task of conducting the aggressive strategy of the deportation of the Trump administration – pays Palantir $ 30 million for creating What does this call the immigration system operating systemSo immigration to assist ICE resolve who to direct to the deportation, and likewise offer “real -time visibility” in self -complacency.

Y founding father of Combinator Paul Graham divided the headlines about the Palantir contract on the subject of XWriting: “It is now a very exciting time in technology. If you are a first -rate programmer, there is a huge number of other places where you can work, and not in a company building infrastructure of a police state.”

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In response, the global business head of Palantir Ted Mabrey wrote that “he is looking forward to the next set of employees who decided to submit a request to Palantir after reading your post.”

Mabrey didn’t discuss the details of the current work of Palantir with ice, but said that the company began cooperation with the Internal Security Department (in accordance with which ICE works) “in an immediate response to the assassination of agent Jaime Zapata by Zetas in an effort called Fallen Hero surgery. “

“When people live because of what you built and others were not alive, because what you built was not good enough yet, you develop a completely different view on the meaning of your work,” said Mabrey.

He also compared Graham’s criticism with protests on the Google Maven project in 2018, which ultimately prompted the company to stop the work of drone photos for the army. (Google then signaled that he again became more open to defense works.)

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Mabrey called everyone interested in working for Palantir to read the latest book CEO Alexander Karp “The Technological Republic”, which claims that the software industry must rebuild its relationship with the government. (The company was Recruitment at university campus With signs declaring that “the moment of counting arrived west”)

“We employ believers,” Mabrey continued. “Not in the sense of the homogeneity of religion, but in the internal ability to imagine in something greater than you

Graham then Pressed Mabrey “To publicly commit himself on behalf of Palantir, so as not to build things that help the government violate the US constitution,” although he confirmed in one other post that such a commitment “would not have legal force.”

“However, I hope that if (they make a commitment) and a Palantir’s employee is one day asked to do something illegal, he will say” I didn’t join for it “and refused,” wrote Graham.

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Mabrey in turn compared Graham’s query In order for “or” you promise to stop beating a trick in court, but he added that the company “has made so many ways from Sunday”, ranging from the commitment to “3,500 thoughtful people who polish only because they believe that they make the world a better place every day because they see their first hand.”

(Tagstotransate) palantir

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Congress has questions about 23andme bankruptcy

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Low-angle view of logo on facade of personal genomics company 23AndMe in the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, California, October 28, 2018. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

3 The leaders of the Energy and Trade Committee said that they’re investigating how 23ndme’s bankruptcy can affect customer data.

Representatives of Brett Guthrie, Gus Biliakis and Gary Palmer (all Republicans) He sent a letter On Thursday, Joe Selsavage, Joe Selsavage, ask a variety of questions about how 23andme will serve customer data if the corporate is sold.

The letter also says that some customers have reported problems with deleting their data from the 23ndme website, and notes that corporations directly for consumption, reminiscent of 23andme, are generally not protected by the Act on the portability and accountability of medical insurance (Hipaa).

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“Considering the lack of HIPAA protection, a patchwork of state regulations covering genetic privacy and uncertainty related to customer information in the case of transmitting the sale of company or clients data, we are afraid that this best -confidential information is threatened with a player,” representatives write.

23andme, which has decided to violate data For $ 30 million last 12 months, he applied for bankruptcy in Chapter 11 in March, and the co -founder and general director Anne Wojciki said he was resigning from the corporate’s private bidder.

(Tagstotransate) 23andme

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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The White House replaces the Covid.gov page with the theory “Lab Leak”

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The Covid.gov government website has used Covid-19, tests and treatment to store information. Now, under the sight of President Trump, page redirects to the side of the White House Talking to the unverified theory that Covid-19 comes from the Chinese laboratory.

A theory during which many virologists have objected to in the report Through House Republicans last yr, which found that Pandemia began with a laboratory leak in China. House democrats He spent the overthrow At that point, the statement that the probe didn’t define Cavid’s real origin.

Covidtes.Gov website, during which people could order free coronavirus tests before, can be redirected to this New page.

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The latest website of the White House also includes medical disinformation on the treatment of the virus, falsely claiming that social distance, mask and lock fines should not effective in alleviating the spread of Covid-19. However, Hundreds of research They showed that these preventive measures In fact, reduce respiratory infections equivalent to Covid-19.

In the months, since Trump again confirmed his role of the US president, many web sites have been edited to reflect the program of his administration. With the help of Doge Elona Musk, the government tried to remove tons of of words related to diversity from government documents. This Include Words equivalent to “black”, “disability”, “diversity”, “sex”, “racism”, “women” and lots of more. The government also removed the mention of scientifically proven climate change from environmental sites.

(Tagstotranslate) covid

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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