Month: March 2019

Boston Dynamics has a new YouTube video showing off its newest robot design. This one is a reimagining of the "Handle" robot that the company originally showed off in 2017. Back then the robot could jump four feet in the air and do all kinds of tricks; now its purpose is to load pallets.

Back in 2017 Handle was the company's first public "wheel-legged" robot—that is, the robot is a bipedal design that stands on two legs, but instead of feet at the bottom, the design opts for a set of wheels. Boston Dynamics described the design decision on its website, saying, "Wheels are fast and efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs, Handle has the best of both worlds." Wheel legs allowed the original Handle design to have a roughly human form factor (albeit with backward knees) and a top speed of 9MPH, just by rolling its wheel feet.

The new Handle is no longer humanoid. While it still has wheel-legs with backward-bending knees, it's now more bird-like than human. The two arms have been replaced with a single arm mounted at the top of the bot, making it look like a long neck. The original Handle's top-heavy design has been changed, and now a lot of the robot's mass lives in a large, wildly swinging rear (butt? tail?) that acts as a counterweight as the robot lifts things and moves around.

Enlarge / The Electron launch vehicle is ready to soar. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Welcome to Edition 1.42 of the Rocket Report! This was another big week for boosters, with NASA's Space Launch System under the gun. Almost immediately after Vice President Mike Pence said NASA would look at alternatives if existing contractors couldn't get the job done, the White House and NASA's administrator were getting blowback from political supporters of the big rocket. That, and so much more, can be found below.

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.

Maiden launch of Chinese OS-M rocket fails. For the second time, an orbital launch attempt by a private Chinese company has failed. On Wednesday, OneSpace Tech's OS-M Chongqing launch vehicle took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and attempted to orbit the small Lingque-1B technology demonstration satellite, but it failed shortly after entering second stage flight, NASASpaceflight.com reports.

Enlarge / Metal plates of rare-earth neodymium magnets for 3D rendering. (credit: Getty Images)

Magnets made of rare-earth metals like neodymium are commonly used in the generators found in offshore wind turbines. Turbines with neodymium magnets generally need less maintenance than those without them—an advantage when your turbine is a few miles out from land.

But neodymium is costly, it almost all comes from China (which has restricted export in the past to drive prices up), and the environmental impact of extracting it from the Earth is not super.

Although there are hardly any offshore wind turbines in US waters today, the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2015 mapped out a plan to expand offshore wind to 86 gigawatts (GW) of capacity by 2050. If such a future comes to pass, the US will need to think about its supply of neodymium, especially if US government officials push for domestic offshore wind turbine manufacturing.