Multi-trauma patients stay too long in emergemcy room

Photo : Antaranews

Multi-trauma patients remained in emergency rooms much longer than recommended before being taken to operating tables, South Korea`s health ministry said Tuesday, a development that could lower their chances of survival.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said its analysis of nearly 3,000 critically injured trauma patients in 2011 showed that they remained in emergency room care for an average of 242 minutes before being moved to operating rooms.

The ministry said the time patients remained under emergency room care was much longer than the golden hour, which in the medical profession is the one-hour window following a traumatic injury that is most optimal to begin treatment to increase the patients chance of survival.

"The death rate could go up" if critically injured trauma patients are not treated during the golden hour," said Jung Woo-jin, a deputy director handling emergency health care at the ministry.

The ministry said it has invested more than 10 billion won (US$9.4 million) in selecting and running 17 trauma centers across the country.

The issue of multi-trauma patients received media attention in 2011 when doctors treated the captain of a South Korean chemical carrier, who suffered serious gunshot wounds from Somali pirates during a rescue operation by a South Korean commando.

The vessel was freed and the captain was airlifted to South Korea for medical treatment.

Sources : Antaranews

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Pentagon S&T strategy emphasizes cyber, space, EW

Pentagon Science & Technology leaders said government, academic and industrial innovators must embrace an investment strategy aimed at advancing key “thrust” areas such as electronic warfare (EW), cyber, counter-space and counter– weapons of mass destruction.

Alan R. Shaffer, acting assistant secretary of defense for Research and Engineering, outlined these priorities as something specifically designed to mitigate new and emerging threats — while delineating some key parameters of the Pentagon’s broader S&T strategy. He spoke Wednesday at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 14th Annual Science & Engineering Technology Conference/Defense Tech Exposition, National Harbor, Md.

“We have an increased set of threats. We have an unstable nation in the Middle East that has chemical weapons which could get in the wrong hands. We have to deal with North Korea. We have to deal with cyber attacks and cyber espionage. We have to deal with an increasingly complex set of Anti-Access/Area-Denial threats,” Shaffer explained.

At the same time, Shaffer emphasized affordability as a key to developing next-generation technology in today’s more constrained budget environment.

“We have reduced money, yet increased threats. Now we have to think what is in the realm of the possible, but what is in the realm of the possible that is also affordable. That is going to take a shift by people within the government and industry,” he said.

Shaffer described the vital need to harvest innovation and create what he called “technology surprise” within the context of discussing the fast-changing global technological environment, something he identified as a “rise in the commons.”

The “commons” are those areas, such as the electro-magnetic spectrum, oceans, space and cyber where the U.S. military no longer enjoys the same kind of unparalleled technological superiority it had just ten years ago.

“What we have noticed over the past decade during our counterinsurgency operations is an incredible rise in a place called the ‘commons.’ These are the places that no one owns and yet enable all of our operational systems,” Shaffer said. “It used to be that we had the pre-eminent electronic systems in the world. That is not really the case anymore.”

Ensuring safe commerce on the oceans is another vital common area where the U.S. will want to preserve and build upon its technological dominance.

“The U.S. still has the best platforms in the world,” Shaffer said. “When the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] is fielded, there will be no other aircraft like it in the world. Our surface combatant ships are the best platforms in the world. Our ground systems are the best in the world. We have to think about how we can enable these platforms to operate better.”

In terms of the electronic warfare arena, Shaffer said the U.S. military needs radio frequency mixed– signal component technologies and better, more affordable EO/IR sensors (electro-optical/infra-red).

“The electro-magnetic spectrum is so critical to our operations. We need distributed heterogeneous EW and we need adaptive EW,” he said.

He also talked about the importance of developing inertial navigation systems so as to provide key combat-relevant navigational information without necessarily needing to rely upon GPS technology.

“We need to start to develop space capabilities with or without a space layer. My goal would be to make GPS technology something that is more important to the Department of Transportation than it is to the military,” Shaffer said. “If I can do a better job with an inertial navigation system, then I no longer have to rely upon GPS and it doesn’t become such a lucrative target to ‘jam’ or take out.”

Shaffer cited a new Pentagon pilot program established to provide funds to government and industry defense laboratories for the specific purpose of advancing research in the field of autonomy; the effort involves providing labs with about $20 million a year over a period of four years, Shaffer said.

“Each of our defense laboratories are coming in with specific autonomy research proposals. We’re trying to think about a different way of doing business where we have our laboratories coupled with industry more tightly,” Shaffer explained. “Autonomy is potentially a huge enabler to the way we think about operating. Autonomy goes beyond robotics and goes to thinking about having multiple platforms out in some type of space that act together.”

Shafer outlined key elements of the S&T strategy, in part as way to inform the military’s industrial and academic partners about areas to direct Basic Research and expend Independent Research and Development (IRAD) dollars.

“Help us prototype. Help us deliver capability faster and a little more predictably,” Shaffer told an audience of academic and industry participants.

Sources : http://defensetech.org/2013/04/24/pentagon-st-strategy-emphasizes-cyber-space-ew/

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Orbital Scrubs Rocket Launch Minutes Before Liftoff

Orbital Sciences Corp. scrubbed the first attempted launch of its new Antares rocket minutes before liftoff after a hose prematurely detached from the booster.

The April 17 liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia, was set for 5 p.m. local time. It was aborted with slightly more than 10 minutes left in the countdown due to a “premature separation of an umbilical connection,” according to a brief statement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

The two-stage, medium-lift rocket — the Dulles, Virginia-based company’s newest and biggest — is flying its maiden flight as part of a test mission for NASA.

After retiring its shuttle fleet in 2011, the agency has turned to the private sector and companies such as Orbital and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX and headed by billionaire Elon Musk, to resupply the International Space Station. Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with the agency for at least eight cargo missions to the orbital outpost.

The rocket may eventually be a contender for such military programs as the Air Force’s Orbital/Suborbital Program-3, known as OSP-3, and Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, known as EELV.

The rocket for its first stage uses two liquid-fuel AJ26 engines, made by Aerojet, part of California-based GenCorp Inc. They’re modified versions of the NK-33s built in Russia more than four decades ago for its moon program, which was later canceled. Aerojet bought about 40 NK-33 engines in the mid-1990s and, under a contract with Orbital, modified them specifically for Antares, according to Aerojet. The second-stage of the rocket uses a solid-fuel engine made by Arlington, Virginia-based Alliant Techsystems Inc.

The launch has been rescheduled for 5 p.m. April 20, at the earliest, according to NASA. A previously scheduled liftoff on April 19 was canceled due to the weather forecast. A back-up date is set for April 21.

Sources : http://defensetech.org/2013/04/17/orbital-scrubs-rocket-launch-minutes-before-lift-off/

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Orbital Successfully Launches New Rocket

Orbital Sciences Corp. successfully launched its new rocket as part of a test flight for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The two-stage rocket lifted off at 5 p.m. local time on April 21 from Wallops Island, Virginia. About 10 minutes later, it delivered a dummy payload into orbit. The booster, called Antares, is the Dulles, Virginia-based company’s newest and biggest, measuring 133 feet long with about 755,000 pounds of thrust.

The test flight was required before Orbital attempts to launch an unmanned cargo spacecraft, called Cygnus, to the International Space Station this summer. Orbital and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, have NASA contracts to resupply the station through at least 2018. They’re also marketing the rockets to defense and intelligence agencies as cheaper alternatives to those built by Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co.

“Today marked a giant step forward for the Antares program, with a fully successful inaugural flight of the largest and most complex rocket the company has ever developed and flown,” David Thompson, Orbital’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We will now move forward toward completing the full demonstration mission of our system to resupply the International Space Station with essential cargo in just a couple of months.”

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a news release called it a “picture-perfect launch.”

The mission ended about 18 minutes after liftoff when the rocket’s upper stage completed planned maneuvers to distance itself from the dummy payload, which was the same size and weight as the Cygnus spacecraft, Orbital said. The flight demonstrated “all operational aspects” of the rocket, including reaching the target orbit of about 150 by 160 miles, the company said.

The launch was previously scheduled for April 17. It was aborted with about 10 minutes left in the countdown when an upper-stage engine hose disconnected prematurely. Once planned for 2011, the mission was repeatedly postponed because of delays in building and inspecting the new $125 million launch pad on Wallops Island.

Antares is designed to launch spacecraft weighing up to 14,000 pounds into low-Earth orbit and lighter payloads into higher orbits. It will offer commercial and other government customers such as the Air Force “affordable and reliable” launch services for medium-sized satellites that don’t require larger, more expensive vehicles, the company said.

The rocket for its first stage uses two liquid-fuel AJ26 engines, made by Aerojet, part of California-based GenCorp Inc. They’re modified versions of the NK-33s built in Russia more than four decades ago for its moon program, which was later canceled. Aerojet bought about 40 NK-33 engines in the mid-1990s and, under a contract with Orbital, modified them specifically for Antares, according to Aerojet. The second-stage of the rocket uses a solid-fuel engine made by Arlington, Virginia-based Alliant Techsystems Inc.

Orbital, which also makes satellites, saw an opportunity for Antares amid the dwindling inventory of Delta IIs sold by Centennial, Colorado-based United Launch Alliance LLC, a joint venture of Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp. and Chicago-based Boeing Co.

The rocket may be a contender for such military programs as the Air Force’s Orbital/Suborbital Program-3, known as OSP-3, and Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, known as EELV. It’s already certified for the NASA Launch Services-2 contract, according to the company.

Orbital has a separate $1.9 billion contract with NASA for at least eight resupply missions to the space station. The agency is relying in part on Orbital and SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to ferry food, water and supplies to the station after retiring its shuttle fleet in 2011. The agency also plans to begin ferrying astronauts to the station on commercial rockets beginning in 2017 so it can concentrate on manned mission to an asteroid and Mars.

“With NASA focusing on the challenging and exciting task of sending humans deeper into space than ever before, private companies will be crucial in taking the baton for American cargo and crew launches into low-Earth orbit,” John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, said in a statement following the test flight.

SpaceX, which has a $1.6 billion NASA agreement for at least a dozen cargo flights, was the first company to send a privately developed spacecraft to the orbital outpost. The Hawthorne, California-based company completed its demonstration mission to the space station last spring and its first regular flight in the fall. SpaceX finished its second regular mission in March.

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is designed to bring back science experiments, lab equipment and other cargo, unlike Orbital’s Cygnus, which is designed to take back trash and burn up during re-entry.

Sumber : http://defensetech.org/2013/04/22/orbital-successfully-launches-new-rocket/

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Chinese Satellite Grabs Another in Orbit

A Chinese satellite used a robotic arm to capture another in space as part of a covert weapons program, according to a news report.

The maneuver took place last week and involved one of three small satellites launched in July, according to an article by Bill Gertz, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon, an online investigative news organization.

The U.S. Defense Department has been monitoring the movement of the Chinese satellites, according to Cynthia Smith, a spokeswoman at the Pentagon, according to the report. U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Combatant Command for Space has observed the relative motions of the objects, she told the reporter.

The experimental satellites were identified as Chuangxin-3, which is translated as Innovation-3; Shiyan-7, or Experiment-7, the one believed to have the mechanical arm; and Shijian-15, or Practice-15, according to the article. They were launched in a Long March-4C rocket on July 20 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China, according to the report.

U.S. military and intelligence officials are increasingly concerned over China’s so-called anti-satellite systems.

In 2007, China fired a missile into space and destroyed a weather satellite. The incident “was a seminal event in world attention” and created some 3,000 pieces of orbital debris, according to the Defense Department’s 2011 space strategy.

http://defensetech.org/2013/10/03/chinese-satellite-grabs-another-in-orbit/

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Google to Soldiers: Malware is the Enemy

Getting the military’s cyber forces to focus more on the most serious threats to U.S. national security means getting away from a whack-a-mole-like strategy now used to find and remove malware in the system, officials from Google and Lockheed told a crowd of soldiers Wednesday.

Most of what cyber soldiers deal with is malware living in a system that can be exploited by an enemy, according to Jim Young, U.S. Army Account Executive for Google Enterprise Transformation.

It’s a common problem, but one that should not happen, he said at the last panel session at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington D.C.

“This notion that persistent malware can stay on your machine should not happen,” he said. “The technology is out there today to erase it, or not make it an attack factor. So I encourage you … to start looking at opportunities that fundamentally change how you probe cyber security. Do not do incremental. It will not get you where you need to be.”

Charles Croom, vice president of Cyber Security Solutions for Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services, called it the “80/20 cyber rule.”

“It’s a rule of thumb that says, ‘hey, if I implemented everything I knew how to do today [to stop the malware] I could take 80 percent of my threats off the table, and then I could focus on this advance persistent threat of 20 percent.”

No one has developed such an all-in-one package yet, but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – DARPA – has issued proposals intended to find solutions, Croom said.

The only way to do it is to automate these solutions, he said, whether they are patching, vulnerability assessment, or remediation. These steps now are all done successfully by individual soldiers, but are done again and again as they keep cropping up, he said.

“The only way we’re going to [fix it] is through automation. We’ve got to get people out of the loop and automate what we know how to do,” he said.

The problem is that it is a multi-platform, multi-device world across “monstrous enterprises that are globally connected,” he said.

“We can’t even get our configuration management down to knowing what’s on the network, who is on the network,” Bryant said.

Networks should be automatically and constantly scanned to identify exactly what and who is on them at any time, and looking for changes to software and hardware; it can be done at the speed of light, Croom said.

And when an unauthorized change is found or weakness or an intrusion is detected, the solution should be instant and automatic, as well.

“When you know there’s an issue on your network you ought to be able to close most of them with machines,” he said. “These are repetitive things that have to be done and most of it can be done by machines. And then you save the manpower for the high-end intellectual issues, the threat you’ve never seen before, that is unique and requires some intelligence.”

Sources : defensetech.org/

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FBI on the hunt for eBay car 'fraudster'

The FBI has issued wanted posters for a man they say is behind an eBay car scam that has netted $3m (£1.8m).

Authorities in the US also want to track down six other fugitives in relation to the charges.

The gang were described as "masters of illusion" who convinced people to pay for cars that did not exist.

"They thought their distance would insulate them from law enforcement scrutiny. They were wrong," said US attorney Loretta Lynch.

The FBI put out a wanted poster for 33-year-old Romanian Nicolae Popescu, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

"They siphoned funds from victims to fuel their greedy desires and created false identities, fake websites and counterfeit certificates of title in order to make the scheme more convincing," said FBI Assistant Director, George Venizelos.

"Popescu and his co-conspirators were masters of illusion, but they can't escape their ultimate reality.

"With the help of our law enforcement partners at home and abroad, we will bring them to justice."

Romanian notoriety

In a recorded conversation, the FBI said Mr Popescu boasted that he was "beyond the reach" of US authorities.

As well as eBay, the gang is said to have used Cars.com, AutoTrader.com, and CycleTrader.com to sell the non-existent cars, usually priced between $10,000 (£6,150) and $40,000 (£24,700).

"After the 'sellers' reached an agreement with the victim buyers, they would often email them invoices purporting to be from Amazon Payments, PayPal, or other online payment services, with instructions to transfer the money to the US bank accounts used by the defendants," an FBI statement explained.

Romania has gained increasing notoriety as a hub for cybercrime.

A report from technology magazine Wired detailed a village dubbed "Hackerville" by locals - where cybercriminals are said to learn their craft at an early age.

Sources : BBC

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Wikipedia pilots articles-via-SMS service aimed at Africans

Wikipedia has begun piloting a service that sends articles via text message, primarily aimed at users in Africa.

The online encyclopaedia has partnered with mobile operator Airtel to offer the free initiative which is being tested out in Kenya.

It is hoped the service will be used to reach people who do not have internet access.

The trial will be active for three months, said Dan Foy, technical partner manager for the Wikimedia Foundation.

"Throughout most of the developing world, data-enabled smartphones are the exception, not the rule," he wrote.

"That means billions of people currently cannot see Wikipedia on their phones."

To activate the service - called Wikipedia Zero - users need to dial *515#, after which they will receive a text message prompting them to search for articles.

Next five billion

Adoption of cheap mobiles in Africa is widespread, and in many regards the mobile industry across the continent is more advanced than in more developed parts of the world.

For instance, the sending of money via text message is extremely popular - one service, M-Pesa, boasts 17 million users in Kenya alone.

Western technology companies see the region as a major source of future growth. Facebook, for example, is approaching saturation point in its current markets, and so it is looking at methods to adapt its services to suit those with more basic technology.

The social network also launched a drive to get other technology companies looking at ways to make access easier - starting with bringing down costs of accessing mobile data.

Tom Jackson, who edits African technology news website HumanIPO, said Wikipedia's initiative would be warmly welcomed.

"There has been a steady move towards putting educational material online in many African countries, led mainly by the private sector rather than governments, but access to the internet remains a problem given that most Africans surf on their phones rather than browsers.

"This step increases the chances of access, especially as there is functionality to provide Wikipedia via SMS. Feature phones are still dominant in Africa, so this is a helpful addition."

He added: "I just hope it comes with the same warnings that European and American kids are given about taking Wikipedia at face value!"

Sources : BBC

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More than 1,000 delegates attend 7th Internet forum

More than 1,000 delegates from numerous countries attended the seventh meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) at Nusa Dua in the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Tuesday.

During his opening remarks, Indonesian Minister of Communications and Information Tifatul Sembiring said the rapid growth of the Internet could open a wide range of opportunities in all aspects of life.

"The internet can be used for communications and to create business opportunities in support of economic growth," he said.

The rapid growth of the internet poses a challenge, not only to individuals but also to the public and state, he noted.

The use of the Internet has had an impact on the development of information technology as well as on human social life, he said.

"In the next few years, the use of the internet in the economic field, such as electronic trade, will become a priority," he said.

He also expressed his hope that the forum would reach decisions to ensure the sustainable use of the internet.

He predicted that the number of internet users in Indonesia, which has a population of 240 million, will reach 60 million by the end of 2013. 

"Therefore, we hope this forum will be able to create cooperative networks among various parties to better use the Internet throughout the world," he said.

During the meeting, delegates will discuss a wide range of global internet issues, including ethics, security, human rights and the use of the Internet by the disabled.

Sources : Antara

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Finally, You Can Sandbox Flash Player in Safari for OS X Mavericks

Better late than never: you can now avail yourself of Safari for OS X Mavericks‘ new sandboxing feature to firewall Adobe’s Flash player. Adobe “security strategist” Peleus Uhley confirmed as much in an update to the company’s software security engineering team blog.

The move is both to Apple and Adobe’s credit, but it’s late-coming. As Adobe notes, it’s been working with Google, Microsoft and Mozilla for years to build sandboxing into Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Safari would be the last of the major players to join the dance. Adobe says it’s been working with Apple for an unspecified period of time, and that the result of that work is present in Safari for OS X Mavericks. “Flash Player will now be protected by an OS X App Sandbox,” writes Uhley.

What’s an “app sandbox” and why should you care? Apple has a handy guide here, but in brief, a sandbox is like a micro-firewall around each app; instead of governing at the network level, it governs at the permissions level. Without sandboxing, apps have the same rights you do. If those apps then happen to have security holes and someone exploits those holes, said person (or person’s “malicious code”) can gain the ability to do anything you can.

Sandboxing an app restricts it to do only the things it’s explicitly designed to. It’s not a blanket guarantee of security, of course, since what an app needs to do can still, by design, involve access to critical or sensitive resources, but sandboxing prevents the app, or someone exploiting the app, from poking around anywhere they’re not supposed to be. Think of it as putting the operating system’s resources behind doors with keycard access, then only handing out keycards to apps that warrant it.

With Adobe Flash, Uhley says the app will now be restricted to reading and writing files in need-to-access locations only:

For the technically minded, this means that there is a specific com.macromedia.Flash Player.plugin.sb file defining the security permissions for Flash Player when it runs within the sandboxed plugin process. As you might expect, Flash Player’s capabilities to read and write files will be limited to only those locations it needs to function properly. The sandbox also limits Flash Player’s local connections to device resources and inter-process communication (IPC) channels. Finally, the sandbox limits Flash Player’s networking privileges to prevent unnecessary connection capabilities.

Sources : TIME

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Yes, OS X Mavericks Is Free. Wait, No It Isn’t — Or Is It?

The last half-dozen times I’ve updated OS X between hardware upgrades, I’ve paid money. Not money built into the price of each system — I’ve paid that, too. But like any self-respecting OS-maker, Apple’s charged a fee to upgrade, and I’ve been paying it for years.

Apple, of course, has software engineers and designers and project managers who work year in, year out to refine OS X, layering in new features, performance improvements, overhauling the interface and so forth. These people need to be paid, and Apple itself needs to take its piece for investing substantial time to advance the Mac platform. Upgrade fees have been Apple’s way to recoup some of that investment. None of that’s rocket science.

But with OS X Mavericks, Apple finally eliminated that upgrade fee, making OS X Mavericks free for existing Mac owners. If you own a Mac running OS X 10.6.8 or later, you just have to click the Mac App Store icon, locate OS X Mavericks (currently listed in “featured”), click “Download” and run through the particulars. No money changes hands.

So yes, I think it’s accurate to say that OS X Mavericks is free. And yes, “free” has qualifications, but when hasn’t it? When we say something that used to cost money now costs nothing, we’re saying so in relation to an industry norm. The norm in Apple’s case was paying $20 a year, and the norm prior to that was paying considerably more.

On the other hand, nothing’s really free. Someone’s paying something, somewhere, and Apple’s going to get its piece one way or another. To obtain OS X, you need to purchase a Mac, just as you need to purchase an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to obtain iOS (iOS upgrades also cost nothing). By eliminating OS X’s upgrade fee, Apple’s simply folding its R&D costs into the platform as a whole. But I’d wager Apple’s been folding those costs in for years (and since Apple designs and controls its hardware, it’s probably been doing so from the start).

The least expensive Mac, the Mac mini, starts at $600. You could argue that’s how much Apple’s now charging for OS X Mavericks, minimum, but I think it’s the wrong way to characterize what’s happened here. It ignores the fact that Apple’s eliminated a consumer cost, however slight.

Prior to Tuesday, you paid whatever you paid for a Mac, but you also paid ongoing upgrade fees for OS X, plus app costs if you used Apple products like iWork. By eliminating those latter costs, you now pay whatever you pay for a Mac and that’s it – either less or the same for notably more power, more storage, more bells and whistles, etc. That’s been the industry norm: that you get more for the same or less.

How much more is debatable, and demands a much more serious, comparative, scholarly survey of historical pricing and price trends alongside economist-caliber analyses of markets, consumer price indices and so forth. I’m also not arguing Apple’s prices are just as they should be (Apple is, in my view, selling what amount to consumer-grade products for boutique prices — my friends and I used to call what we’d pay for our Mac desktops and laptops the “Steve Jobs tax” back when the disparity between pre-Intel Apple and its consumer-angled, Intel-based competition was even starker).

But when you do the math, we’ve been paying $20 to upgrade OS X and now we’re paying nothing. That may seem a trivial difference, but it’s still a difference. Apple hasn’t upwardly adjusted the prices of any of its Macs to compensate (indeed, it’s lowered them significantly on the new Retina MacBook Pros). And the minimum requirement to upgrade — OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard — came out in August 2009. If Apple holds that line, we’re looking at a four-year window rolling forward before you’ll have to buy a new Mac to get the latest version of Mac OS. If Apple continues to update OS X annually, that’s a savings of $20 a year. If you hold onto your Mac for the full four years, it’s not a trivial amount.

Technically speaking, we should probably refer to OS X and Apple’s app productivity suite as “bundled,” since that’s more accurate. But make no mistake, this is Apple eliminating discrete software fees (and as my colleague Harry McCracken argues, potentially fighting fragmentation), and placing its margins in a singular, platform-holistic basket.

Sources : TIME

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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Blasts Off

An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from California on Sunday to test upgrades before commercial satellite launch services begin later this year.

The 22-story rocket, built and flown by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, soared off a newly refurbished, leased launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Station.

The Falcon 9 blazed through clear blue skies out over the Pacific Ocean, its water vapor trail visible even as the rocket left the atmosphere.

“It went better than expected. It was incredibly smooth,” SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk told Reuters after the launch.

Nestled inside the rocket's new 17-foot (5-meter) diameter nose cone was a small Canadian science satellite called Cassiope. Cassiope had initially been scheduled to fly on SpaceX's now-discontinued Falcon 1 launcher in 2008.

“It's certainly a huge relief to have successfully delivered Cassiope to orbit. It's been weighing on me quite heavily,” Musk said.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a small science satellite for Canada is seen as it is launched,

Cassiope, which is designed to monitor the space environment around Earth and serve as a communications satellite, and five secondary payloads were delivered into their intended orbits, Musk told reporters on a conference call.

As an experiment, both of the rocket's two stages were restarted during flight.

Musk is particularly interested in developing the technology to fly the Falcon's first stage back to the launch site or have it gently splash down in the water so its motors can be recovered, refurbished and flown again. Currently, after delivering their payloads into orbit, the boosters tumble back toward Earth and essentially explode mid-air before crashing into the sea.

“The most revolutionary thing about the new Falcon 9 is the potential ability to recover the boost phase, which is almost three-quarters of the cost of the rocket,” Musk said.

Neither engine restart test went perfectly, but engineers were able to get enough data to plan on a demonstration flight next year.

“The most important thing is we now believe we have all the pieces of the puzzle,” Musk said.

The upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 has engines that are 60 percent more powerful than previous versions, longer fuel tanks, new avionics and software and other features intended to boost lift capacity and simplify operations for commercial service.

Privately-owned SpaceX has contracts for more than 50 launches of its new Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets.

Ten of those missions are to fly cargo to the International Space Station for NASA. The other customers are non-U.S. government agencies and commercial satellite operators.

SpaceX also has two contracts for small U.S. Air Force satellites but is looking to break the monopoly that United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has on flying big military satellites as well.

SpaceX has already flown three Dragon capsules to the station and made two other successful test flights with older versions of the Falcon.

Falcon 9's next mission is to put a communications satellite into orbit for SES World Skies. The launch is targeted for next month and will take place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

“We accomplished a lot today,” Musk said. “We have a little bit of work to do obviously, but all-in-all I think it's been a great day.”

Sources : VOA

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SpaceX's Grasshopper Goes Up, Comes Down

What goes up, must come down. And sometimes, the trip back to Earth is just as important as the flight itself.

That’s what SpaceX proved recently when its 10-story Grasshopper rocket flew nearly 744 meters into the air, reversed course and then made a gentle vertical landing on the same launch pad from which it started.

The successful test marks a milestone for the company, which plans to launch reusable rockets.

SpaceX's Grasshopper reusable rocket is seen flying over McGregor

The flight took place October 7 and demonstrated the feasibility of a concept that could revolutionize space flight by dramatically reducing costs.

For 97 seconds, the Grasshopper rocket was airborne over SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, facility, the latest in several low-altitude tests. The company plans to ramp up testing at a location in New Mexico at a later date.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk. The company makes cargo capsules and rockets at its facility in Hawthorne, California. The company recently carried out a successful resupply mission to the International Space Station.

Sources : VOA

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Hyperloop Proposed as Fifth Mode of Transport

Inventor Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX and PayPal, is proposing what he’s calling a fifth mode of transportation after planes, trains, cars and boats.

In a release posted today on the Tesla Motors website, Elon calls the Hyperloop idea a “safer, faster, lower cost, more convenient, immune to weather, sustainable self-powering and resistant to earthquakes” mode of transport compared to the high-speed rail link that has been approved to run between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The solar-powered Hyperloop as conceived, would be a tube structure that would shoot pods filled with passengers through the tubes at speeds approaching 1,000 kilometers per hour.

He wrote that the system could be “some enlarged version of the old pneumatic tubes used to send mail and packages within and between buildings. You could, in principle, use very powerful fans to push air at high speed through a tube and propel people sized pods all the way from LA [Los Angeles] to San Francisco.“

Hyperloop is depicted in a drawing released by inventor Elon Musk.

While still very much a concept, Hyperloop was described by Musk last May as “a cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table.”

Musk expressed disappointment in the high-speed rail link set to run between the two cities.

“How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?” he wrote.

Musk said something like the Hyperloop would be the best solution for cities between 1,500 kilometers apart.

“Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper,” he wrote.

Musk said while he thinks the idea is viable, he won’t have the time to dedicate to it.

“I think I kind of shot myself by ever mentioning the Hyperloop,” he said during a Tesla earnings call last week. “I don’t have any plans to execute, because I must remain focused on SpaceX and Tesla.”

Sources : VOA

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Space Tourism Closer to Reality After Second Virgin Galactic Test Flight

Space tourism is one step closer to becoming a reality as Virgin Galactic successfully completed the second supersonic test of its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) vehicle over the Mojave Desert in California this week.

The flight “demonstrated the vehicle’s full technical mission profile in a single flight for the first time, including a high altitude deployment of the unique wing ‘feathering’ re-entry mechanism,” according to a statement from the company.

Virgin Galactic said the flight achieved the highest altitude and greatest speed yet for its new spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is seen flying over the Mojave Desert in California on Sept. 5, 2013.

SS2 was taken aloft by the carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), which took the spacecraft to an altitude of just over 14,000 meters. When SS2 was released, the rocket motor was ignited for a 20-second burn that shot the spacecraft to just over 21,000 meters above Earth at a speed of Mach 1.43.

“We couldn’t be more delighted to have another major supersonic milestone under our belts as we move toward a 2014 start of commercial service,” said Virgin Galactic Founder Sir Richard Branson. “It was particularly thrilling to see for the first time today the whole elegant system in action during a single flight, including the remarkable feathering re-entry system.”

The company plans to begin commercial spaceflight in 2014.

Sources : VOA

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Flying Cars Could Be a Reality in Two Years

Tired of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic?

In just two years, a company called Terrafugia says it will offer flying cars for sale.

The company plans production of two “roadable” aircraft, the Transition, which has folding wings and must be driven to an airport for takeoff, and the TF-X, a car that could vertically take off and land.

“The potential benefit to humanity of a practical flying car is tremendous," says Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. "The global impact of widely distributed, practical, personal airborne transportation has been estimated by the non-profit CAFE Foundation at approximately $800 billion/year. NASA has estimated it at $1 trillion/year. I believe it is impossible to quantify the benefit to humanity."

Terrafugia's Transition "roadable aircraft" is seen in flying mode. (Terrafugia)

The Transition, which is much further along in development than the more conceptual TF-X, is expected to cost nearly $300,000, but the company says there were already 100 pre-orders earlier this year. The car uses the same engine for driving and flying, and can be run on premium gasoline instead of much costlier aviation fuel. On a full tank, the company says the plane has a range of about 800 kilometers.

Owners will have to have a valid driver’s license as well as a sport pilot certification to operate the Transition.

Terrafugia says the Transition must meet the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of the automotive certification process.

Recent drive testing showed the craft is capable of stopping from a speed of 120 kilometers per hour in a distance of only 34 meters, according to the company.

Sources : VOA

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NASA Breaks Data Transmission Speed Record With Laser Shot to Moon

If you thought your high-speed Internet was fast, think again.

NASA has set a new speed record for data transmission in space, beaming information to and from the LADEE probe some 380,000 kilometers away in lunar orbit. NASA downloaded data at a rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps) using a pulsed laser beam.

For comparison’s sake, Akamai technologies says that the average internet user has a connection speed of 3.3 Mbps.  In the United States, the average connection speed is 8.7 Mbps.

NASA’s Lunar Lasercom Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) Terminal, sending a laser beam to the moon.

Aboard LADEE is the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) is NASA’s first system for two-way communication using a laser instead of radio waves. It also has demonstrated an error-free data upload rate of 20 Mbps transmitted from the primary ground station in New Mexico to the spacecraft currently orbiting the moon.

Since NASA first ventured into space, it has relied on radio frequency (RF) communication. However, RF is reaching its limit as demand for more data capacity continues to increase. The development and deployment of laser communications will enable NASA to extend communication capabilities such as increased image resolution and 3-D video transmission from deep space. LLCD demonstrated speeds five times faster than NASA currently has.

"The goal of LLCD is to validate and build confidence in this technology so that future missions will consider using it," said Don Cornwell, LLCD manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This unique ability developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory has incredible application possibilities."

LLCD is a short-duration experiment and the precursor to NASA's long-duration demonstration, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). It is scheduled to launch in 2017.

Sources : VOA

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Google launches Chromecast low-cost TV dongle

The device plugs into a television's HDMI slot

Google has announced a low-cost competitor to Apple TV - a "dongle" device called Chromecast.

The dongle is plugged into a television's HDMI port, and allows users to stream media from smartphones, tablets and computers.

Launching immediately in the US, the device will cost $35 (£23). There is as yet no word on international launches.

Google also announced an upgraded Nexus 7 tablet, the first to run the new version of the Android system.

Failed attempts

Chromecast is Google's latest attempt to gain ground in the television industry.

In 2012, Google faltered in its attempts to make a move into the living room, considered by many experts to be ripe ground for making large profits through advertising.

Google's partnership with Sony, with which it released a £200 set-top box, was poorly received.

That attempt followed an even earlier false start in 2010 when it launched Google TV, a service that was blocked by several TV networks, and suffered greatly from requiring consumers to buy expensive hardware.

More recently, the orb-shaped Nexus Q device, announced last year, fell flat almost immediately - Google pulled it from sale in response to "feedback".

With Chromecast, Google is attempting to simplify its large-screen offering, focusing on streaming clips from services such as YouTube and Netflix via a far cheaper device.

The dongle plugs into a television's HDMI port, and uses wireless home internet to link to devices.

However, unlike other similar devices, such as Apple TV, the media is streamed from the cloud, rather than from the mobile device itself.

This, Google said, allowed for higher-quality streaming, and had less impact on battery life.

The search giant was especially keen to stress the dongle's ability to stream across multiple operating systems, be it Android or Apple's iOS.

This aspect in particular is central to Google's core strategy, said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

"It's a big departure from the Nexus Q," she told the BBC. "What it boils down to is a focus around YouTube - and getting people back into that ecosystem.

"If you look at the opportunities around advertising, they're getting eyeballs back to that."

New Nexus

Also shown off at the event was Google's updated Nexus 7 tablet, which will go on sale in the "coming weeks".

The tablet will be the first to run Android 4.3, the latest iteration of the Jelly Bean flavour of Google's mobile operating system.

Among the software's new features will be the ability to set restricted profiles, meaning parents can, for example, only give their child access to certain functions on a device.

The Asus-built device is slightly smaller, and 50g (1.8oz) lighter, than the original Nexus 7, which was launched last year.

The new device will have a screen resolution higher than any in its class, boasting 323 pixels per inch.

That is significantly higher than the iPad Mini's 163ppi and the 7in Kindle Fire HD's 216ppi.

But Jason Jenkins, from technology website Cnet, said it still had a lot of ground to make up with consumers.

"I am not convinced that ordinary consumers will respond better to this tablet than the last one," he said.

"Apple has established such momentum, Google's real challenge isn't just making a better tablet than Apple, it's persuading ordinary people to care that it makes one at all."

The new Nexus 7 will cost $30 more than it predecessor at $229 (£150), with other international prices yet to be announced.

The price point keeps it in line with Amazon's Kindle Fire, another key competitor - and considerably cheaper than Apple's iPad Mini, which retails starting at $329, or £269 in the UK.

Sources : BBC

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