Month: September 2019

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Oculus is clearly bullish on its wireless VR system, the Oculus Quest, which means this week's Oculus Connect conference is chock full of the $400 headsets. The biggest queues at the show, unsurprisingly, have been dedicated to Quest—and to the headset's pair of surprise "coming soon" features announced on Tuesday morning.

So much Quest attention is due to promising sales figures: "over $20 million" of games and apps have been sold on Quest's digital marketplace since its May launch, Oculus announced on Tuesday, as opposed to "over $80 million" of Rift-specific software since that platform's March 2016 launch. Four months versus three-plus years? We don't need a graphing calculator to plot which platform is kicking more software-sales butt.

With that momentum in mind, I cut a few lines to see the two intriguing features slated for Quest's near future: a wired PC-VR connection, launching this November, and a full hand-tracking API, launching in "early 2020."

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

Welcome to Edition 2.16 of the Rocket Report! It's been a busy week in space, with the launch of the first person from the United Arab Emirates as well as the final launch of a venerable Russian rocket. By my favorite story this week is a recollection by Wayne Hale about one contingency NASA never had to put in place with the space shuttle—a crew member riding home in the payload bay.

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.

Blue Origin to conduct two more uncrewed test flights. The company expects to fly its New Shepard space tourism rocket at least two more times before it puts the first people on board, chief executive Bob Smith said this week. This probably will necessitate a slip into 2020 for the first crewed flights, CNBC reports.

Enlarge / Indian Point nuclear plant, due to be closed in 2021. (credit: Gracelinks / Flickr)

Renewable power is capable of reducing more carbon emissions per dollar and per year than nuclear energy, according to the recently released World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR). The WNISR is about the nuclear industry, not by the nuclear industry—it's actually produced by an anti-nuclear activist. Naturally, the actual nuclear industry disagrees strongly with the report's conclusions.

While the report does reflect the reality that renewable power is now faster and cheaper to build and operate, what that means for limiting carbon emissions is substantially more complicated.

Slow nukes

The WNISR has been compiled annually since 1992 by Mycle Schneider, along with a range of other contributors. It has consistently made the case against investing in nuclear power.