Month: May 2021

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Another executive has left Google Stadia, and this time it's John Justice, vice president and product head of Stadia at Google. Along with Phil Harrison, Justice was the face of the project, frequently giving interviews and talking to the press. Justice hasn't updated his LinkedIn profile yet, but following a report from The Information, Google told 9to5Google, "We can confirm John is no longer with Google, and we wish him well on his next step."

This latest departure is just another sign that Google's game-streaming service is circling the drain. A Bloomberg report from February revealed that the service missed Google's internal sales estimates by "hundreds of thousands" of users. Shortly before the release of that report, Google shut down its in-house game studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment, after less than two years of operation, citing the high cost of operating it. This move led to Stadia's other high-profile departure, the exit of Assassin's Creed co-creator Jade Raymond.

Justice's last big media hit was a video interview with The Escapist in December. This interview from just six months ago shows how quickly Stadia collapsed at Google, with Justice talking up in-house projects led by Raymond and saying that "over time, we're going to keep doing more and more in-house games." Two months later, all those plans would be canceled.

Enlarge / Beneath the South Texas clouds, SN11, the predecessor to SN15, met an unhappy fate just before it attempted a soft landing. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

The vehicle is ready, its paperwork is in order, and weather conditions should be reasonably good in south Texas Tuesday. All of this points toward SpaceX attempting to launch its newest Starship prototype—SN15—later this afternoon.

Local officials have authorized a road closure from noon (17:00 UTC) on Tuesday through 8 pm local time (01:00 UTC Wednesday). The end of this closure coincides with sunset at the launch site, which will come shortly after 8 pm. In addition, in its daily operations plan, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the launch is scheduled for Tuesday.

This is an important mission for SpaceX. Already, as part of this experimental test campaign, SpaceX has lost four full-scale Starship prototypes—SN8, SN9, SN10, and SN11—in flights since December. Just one of these four vehicles has made a soft landing, SN10 in early March, but due to a fuel line problem, it exploded about 10 minutes after touchdown.

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  This sketch is all we've seen of Porsche's forthcoming LMDh hybrid racer. But now we know that when it starts racing in 2023, it will be run by Team Penske. [credit: Porsche ]

Porsche and Penske: two of the most storied names in racing. You could fill at least one library just with books about their exploits. In fact, you could probably fill a library just with stories of their exploits when working together—in the "anything goes" days of CanAm in the early 1970s or battling against the diesel Audis in the heyday of the American Le Mans Series. Now the two are coming together again as Porsche re-enters endurance racing with a hybrid LMDh race car in 2023.

As many have suspected, Penske will run Porsche's factory racing teams with these new 670 hp (500 kW) prototypes. In fact, Penske will field a pair of teams: a two-car effort for the FIA World Endurance Championship, which includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and another two-car program for IMSA's WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, which races here in the US. Additionally, Porsche plans to sell LMDh prototypes to privateer teams, something it last did with the RS Spyder in the mid-2000s.

"We are delighted that we were able to get Team Penske to form this partnership," said Oliver Blume, chairman of the executive board of Porsche AG in a statement sent to Ars. "For the first time in the history of Porsche Motorsport, our company will have a global team competing in the world's two largest endurance series. To this end, we will be setting up team bases on both sides of the Atlantic. This will enable us to create the optimal structures we will need to take overall victories at Le Mans, Daytona, and Sebring, for example."