Month: August 2018

Singer

When Williams Advanced Engineering agreed to collaborate with Singer Vehicle Design on a Dynamics and Lightweighting Study (DLS) for a Singer client, it was expecting to wring the best dynamics and wrest the most weight from a vintage Porsche 911. But that's not exactly what happened.

Based in Grove, Oxfordshire, England, Williams Advanced Engineering is a division of the group that includes the Williams Formula 1 race team. LA-based Singer restores and "reimagines" 1989 to 1994 Porsche 911s for its clients. The company has restored about 100 highly regarded and highly sought-after 911s so far.

Singer

When Williams Advanced Engineering agreed to collaborate with Singer Vehicle Design on a Dynamics and Lightweighting Study (DLS) for a Singer client, it was expecting to wring the best dynamics and wrest the most weight from a vintage Porsche 911. But that's not exactly what happened.

Based in Grove, Oxfordshire, England, Williams Advanced Engineering is a division of the group that includes the Williams Formula 1 race team. LA-based Singer restores and "reimagines" 1989 to 1994 Porsche 911s for its clients. The company has restored about 100 highly regarded and highly sought-after 911s so far.

Enlarge / Wildfire risk is set to increase, but regional differences in risk are incredibly important for fire management. (credit: flickr user: Tracy Vierra)

As smoky, apocalyptic-looking skies spread across western North America, researchers are scrambling to improve their predictions of wildfire risk. A changing climate means not just higher temperatures but also new patterns of rain and snow, which interact in complex ways to contribute to the risk of fire.

A paper in PNAS this week argues that the role of temperature has been exaggerated, while the importance of rainfall has been overlooked. Zachary Holden and a team of collaborators report finding that, out of a range of different factors, longer dry spells were the best predictor of wildfire risks. Other researchers, however, argue that the paper has overlooked previous research and that its results aren't definitive. Everyone agrees that wildfire risk is set to increase as a result of climate change—but the gritty details are harder to nail down.

Hot, dry, and fiery

This research sits in a strange place between the blindingly obvious and the intensely murky. The contributions of rising temperatures to summer wildfire risk are intuitive: less snow, earlier snowmelt, faster evaporation of water from the environment, hotter and drier vegetation. The role of drought in making things hotter and drier is also clear.

Enlarge / Wildfire risk is set to increase, but regional differences in risk are incredibly important for fire management. (credit: flickr user: Tracy Vierra)

As smoky, apocalyptic-looking skies spread across western North America, researchers are scrambling to improve their predictions of wildfire risk. A changing climate means not just higher temperatures but also new patterns of rain and snow, which interact in complex ways to contribute to the risk of fire.

A paper in PNAS this week argues that the role of temperature has been exaggerated, while the importance of rainfall has been overlooked. Zachary Holden and a team of collaborators report finding that, out of a range of different factors, longer dry spells were the best predictor of wildfire risks. Other researchers, however, argue that the paper has overlooked previous research and that its results aren't definitive. Everyone agrees that wildfire risk is set to increase as a result of climate change—but the gritty details are harder to nail down.

Hot, dry, and fiery

This research sits in a strange place between the blindingly obvious and the intensely murky. The contributions of rising temperatures to summer wildfire risk are intuitive: less snow, earlier snowmelt, faster evaporation of water from the environment, hotter and drier vegetation. The role of drought in making things hotter and drier is also clear.

Enlarge / A technician inspects a Waymo vehicle. (credit: Waymo)

Many people worry that the development of self-driving technology will put taxi drivers and truck drivers out of work. What often gets missed is that self-driving technology companies are going to create plenty of jobs, too.

Most obviously, high-end jobs will spring up for engineers designing the necessary hardware and software. But there are also going to be jobs for workers further down the income spectrum, doing things like taking customer calls, cleaning and repairing cars, and updating the high-definition maps that cars use to move around.

Take Waymo, for example. The Google spinoff plans to launch a driverless taxi service in the Phoenix area before the end of the year. On Tuesday, the company offered a look inside its operations center in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler.

Enlarge / The Rocket Report is published weekly. (credit: Arianespace/Aurich Lawson)

Welcome to Edition 1.14 of the Rocket Report! This week, we've got lots of news to share about small rockets for big airplanes, the last flight of the venerable Delta 2 rocket, and a report on whether any new technologies might be coming along soon to supplant rockets. (Spoiler alert: probably not).

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Stratolaunch discloses rocket-development plans. The maker of the world's largest airplane, which appears to be progressing toward a maiden flight late this year, has released some of its plans for what it will send into space. In addition to the previously announced Pegasus rockets, the company plans to develop a medium and heavy rocket that will carry 3.4 and 6 tons to low Earth orbit. Stratolaunch is also doing early development work on a space plane.