Month: June 2019

Enlarge / Artist's concept of LightSail 2 above Earth. (credit: Josh Spradling / The Planetary Society)

As early as next Monday night, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a cluster of 24 satellites for the US Air Force. Known as the Space Test Program-2 mission, the rocket will deposit its payloads into three different orbits. Perhaps the most intriguing satellite will be dropped off at the second stop—a circular orbit 720km above the Earth's surface. This is the Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft.

After a week in space, allowing the satellites deposited in this orbit to drift apart, LightSail 2 will eject from its carrying case into open space. About the size of a loaf of bread, the 5-kg satellite will eventually unfurl into a solar sail 4 meters long by 5.6 meters tall. The Mylar material composing the sail is just 4.5 microns thick, or about one-tenth as thick as a human hair.

This experiment, which will attempt to harness the momentum of photons and "sail" through space, is the culmination of decades of work by The Planetary Society. "This goes back to the very beginning, to Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman," the organization's chief executive, Bill Nye, told Ars in an interview. "We are carrying on a legacy that has been with us since the founders. It’s just an intriguing technology because it lowers the cost of going all over the place in the Solar System."

Enlarge / "Oh brave new industry, that has such bots in't!" (credit: Javier Pierini / Getty)

The Matrix. Skynet. Roy Batty. Anyone who has watched a science-fiction movie has seen a scenario where factions of humans and machines find themselves locked in mortal combat.

Here in 2019, though, we're doing what we can to disrupt that vision and steer the course away from human-machine antagonism and more toward cooperation. Instead of robot servants plotting to overthrow their meatbag masters, we're trying to use machines to augment human skills and strengths—especially in the context of manufacturing, which is the place where we're most likely to see robots. The rapid push to update manufacturing methods to more smartly integrate human with machine isn't necessarily as big a deal as the original Industrial Revolution, but it is a big enough deal that analysts have coined a snappy phrase for what we're going through: "Industry 4.0."

Sometimes the man-machine enhancements are physical, and sometimes they’re mental. Sometimes it's a Venn diagram that includes both aspects, as a skilled human worker collaborates with robotics and AI to complete a task.

Enlarge / Manufacturers would prefer it if iFixit guides (like the one pictured on a Motorola Xoom from 2011) didn't exist. (credit: iFixit)

Kelsea Weber is apologetic for being hard to get ahold of. “We were all busy tearing down the iPhone XS,” she says.

A few minutes’ conversation with Kelsea is enough to convince you that she would be taking apart brand new Apple gear no matter what, but she does it professionally. Weber works for iFixit.com, a website you may have heard of once or twice. It provides repair videos, manuals, and tool kits to more than a hundred million visitors a year.

Or, to put it bluntly: iFixit.com is essentially a clearinghouse for information that some of the big names in consumer electronics would just as soon keep to themselves.

Enlarge / Waymo CEO John Krafcik in 2017. (credit: Misha Friedman/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Waymo announced early Thursday morning that it was forming a self-driving alliance with Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi—a trio of car companies that already have strong financial ties to one another. Under the deal, the companies will "explore driverless mobility services for passengers and deliveries in France and Japan." Renault is based in France while Nissan and Mitsubishi are Japanese companies.

The deal solves a couple of problems for Waymo.

Over the last three years, major car companies have been forging strong alliances with leading self-driving technology companies. GM bought self-driving startup Cruise, then accepted a major Cruise investment from Honda. Ford invested $1 billion in self-driving startup Argo AI and is reportedly negotiating to sell an Argo stake to Volkswagen. Toyota invested in Uber's self-driving project. Last week, Hyundai announced it was investing in self-driving startup Aurora.