Category: They Made a Movie About This

COVID-19 vaccine updates

There have been several developments concerning COVID-19 vaccines.  To call some of them “horrifying” is a gross understatement.

First, the vaxx and fertility.

Why is there a substantial decrease in births in Germany and Switzerland (and other countries) – nine months after the beginning of covid mass vaccinations?

Do covid vaccines influence male or female fertility? … new birth data out of Germany and Switzerland raises some serious questions. Specifically, both countries recorded a consistent 10% to 15% decrease (compared to expectations) in monthly births from January to March/April 2022 (the latest available data) – that is, precisely nine months after the beginning of covid mass vaccination in the general population in April/May 2021 (see charts above and below).

How can this substantial decrease be explained? Is it due to behavioral or biological factors?. . .

Furthermore, there have been widespread and officially acknowledged reports of post-vaccination menstrual disorders (over 30,000 reports in Britain alone); official reports of vaccine adverse events including death in breastfeeding babies (over 60 reported cases in Germany alone); a still unexplained, transient increase in neonatal deaths in countries like Scotland; and reports by Austrian midwives of an increase in complications during pregnancy and delivery after covid vaccination. Meanwhile, Pfizer has never even finished its vaccine trial in pregnant women.. . .

A similar decline in births since early 2022 is visible in Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia and Taiwan, but apparently not in California (though states that saw an initial lockdown-related decline in births may see a subsequent rebound).

There’s more at the link, including further links to the studies cited above.

Some authorities are already trying to decry such “rumors” and “falsehoods”.  Unfortunately for them, the trickle of evidence is turning into a tidal wave.  See, for example, this Twitter thread from user Jikkyleaks (original tweet is here), providing yet more links and graphics to illustrate the trend.  A brief excerpt:

This is a massive safety signal for infertility. Germany’s FIRST report of birth rates since the rollout.

Remember that the birth rate data is 9 months too late.

If the next quarter is worse, this is Children of Men scenario.

For the years 2011-2021 the average number of births is 63,911 for the Jan-Mar quarter, with a standard deviation of 1015.

The drop to 54871 for 2022 is approx 9 SD.

9 Sigma. Unicorn events.

The money people understand this.

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/51725008-quantsb/5548386-2-3-sigma-events-are-low-probability-5-6-9-sigma-events-are-unicorns-lots-of-unicorn-events

Again, more at the link.  Nassim Taleb might call it a “black swan event” rather than a “unicorn event”, but the impact of either is no less disastrous.

Another report notes that Taiwan is experiencing an almost 25% drop in births over the same period, and rates this as no less than a 26-sigma event.  The author notes:  “This can be described as “unimaginable” in terms of the likelihood of happening due to random chance.”

Next, there’s preliminary but growing evidence that mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 may cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob or other prion diseases of the brain in some recipients.

Researchers believe the prion region from the original Wuhan COVID-19 variant’s spike protein was incorporated into mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vector vaccines — given to hundreds of millions of humans — and that it can cause a new type of rapidly progressing sporadic CJD.. . .

A French pre-print paper published in May on CJD and COVID-19 vaccination identified a new form of sporadic CJD that occurred within days of receiving a first or second dose of Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.. . .

Sporadic CJD occurs when a person becomes infected for no apparent reason. Once a single prion becomes infected, it will progress to other prions, and there is no treatment capable of stopping it.

More at the link.

The link between CJD and the vaxx was postulated by the late Nobel prize winner, Dr. Luc Montagnier, last year.

We’re in unknown territory and proclaim mandatory vaccines for everyone. It’s insanity. It’s vaccination insanity that I absolutely condemn. I want to say as well, that I never, never said that everyone will die from the vaccine, but that a certain amount of people who take the vaccine will suffer from it. That’s impermissible … There could side effects that affect future generations as well, maybe, but most probably from our generation in five to ten years. That’s absolutely possible. Notably, something we call neurodegenerative illness. There are sequences that resemble the prion sequences in the RNA of the coronavirus. These prions could disorder the natural proteins in the brain, modifying them to make prions.

More at the link.

Friends, if you took the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine, all I can say is, get checked out for any or all of the above problems, just in case.  If you’re fortunate enough to have missed them (at least so far), all well and good – but how will you know unless you check for yourself?  I can’t see the powers that be bothering to tell you about these issues.

They’ve made several movies on this theme, and none of them were good for humans.

Ukraine Unveils Mini “Terminator” Ground Robot Equipped With Machine Gun.

The latest war machine headed to Ukraine’s front lines isn’t a flying drone but a miniature 4×4 ground-based robot — equipped with a machine gun.

According to Forbes, Ukrainian forces are set to receive an uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) called “GNOM” that is no bigger than a standard microwave and weighs around 110lbs.

“Control of GNOM is possible in the most aggressive environment during the operation of the enemy’s electronic warfare equipment.

“The operator doesn’t deploy a control station with an antenna, and does not unmask his position. The cable is not visible, and it also does not create thermal radiation that could be seen by a thermal imager,” said Eduard Trotsenko, CEO and owner of Temerland, the maker of the GNOM.

“While it is usually operated by remote control, GNOM clearly has some onboard intelligence and is capable of autonomous navigation. Previous Temerland designs have included advanced neural network and machine learning hardware and software providing a high degree of autonomy, so the company seems to have experience,” Forbes said.

The 7.62mm machinegun mounted on top of the “Terminator-style” robot will provide fire support for Ukrainian forces in dangerous areas. The UGV can also transport ammunition or other supplies to the front lines and even evacuate wounded soldiers with a special trailer.

Temerland said the GNOMs would be deployed near term. The highly sophisticated UGV could help the Ukrainians become more stealthy and lethal on the modern battlefield as they have also been utilizing Western drones.

Killer robots with machine guns appear to be entering the battlefield, and this one seems as if it was “WALL-E” that went to war.

They made a movie about this……….in point of fact, more than one

While we might lose a cure for cancer, it’s time to permanently shut down most of this crap-for-brains gene hacking stuff, for if there’s one (1) thing we’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that these morons will discard all ethical considerations if they can make a few bucks.

SCIENTISTS GENE HACK HAMSTERS INTO HYPER-AGGRESSIVE MONSTERS

Hamster Brawl

Scientists say that a little gene hacking turned adorable hamsters into vicious monstrosities.

Researchers at Georgia State University may have published the scientific understatement of the year when saying that their CRISPR experiment with hamsters “found that the biology behind social behavior may be more complex than previously thought.”

Using the revolutionary gene editing tech, the GSU neuroscience team discovered that knocking out a receptor of vasopressin — a hormone associated with aggression, communication, and social bonding in both humans and hamsters — instead seemed to supercharge the cute rodents’ worst instincts.

“We anticipated that if we eliminated vasopressin activity, we would reduce both aggression and social communication,” GSU neuroscience researcher H. Elliott Albers said in a statement. “But the opposite happened.”

Almost 50 Years Ago, Soylent Green Portrayed a Grim Future for 2022

In anticipation of Earth Day 2022, it is a good time to reflect on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the release of the eco-apocalypse movie Soylent Green:

It’s the year 2022. Cumulative effects of overpopulation, pollution, and “climate catastrophe” have caused severe worldwide shortages of food, water, and housing. Scientists confirm oceanographic reports saying the oceans are dying. The food chain is disrupted. Food is becoming scarce, and the temperature is so hot that heat waves have become year-round thanks to climate change aka “global warming.”

Homeless people are everywhere; only half the workforce is employed while the other half is barely making it. Many people are illiterate and few factories are producing new goods.

The homes of the elite are barricaded, with private security. Only the elite can afford air conditioning. Strawberries are now a delicacy at $75 a quart. The situation with food has gotten so bad that people are being harvested off the streets and “recycled protein” is being distributed to the population.

The movie Soylent Green was produced and filmed in 1972 and released in 1973. It is a futuristic tale of doom, describing life in the year 2022.

We are living in that year, and things aren’t anywhere near as bad as the movie portrayed. While some of the items it touched on (self-inflicted thanks to COVID-19, green energy policy, inflation) might be considered climate-caused by “climate activists,” the climate itself is not a catastrophe when you look at real-world data.

For example, March 2022 global temperatures measured by satellite are 0.27°F (0.15°C) and U.S. temperature measured by the U.S. Climate Reference Network, is just 0.38°F (0.21°C) above normal; nearly undetectable fractions of a degree, with little change measured in the United States over the past 17 years.

And when we look at other real-word data, such as crop production and the overall health of the planet, we find things are even less like the predictions of the movie for 2022.

Global Crop production is actually up significantly according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture division. The Earth has actually become greener according to NASA, thanks to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And, air pollution is down 50 percent or more since 1990, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA added this note to their report: “During this same period, the U.S. economy continued to grow, Americans drove more miles, and population and energy use increased.”

However, the most significant climate related data in 2022 is the fact that “climate related deaths” have plummeted since the movie came out and is now approaching zero. Using data from the International Disaster Database, climate scientist Bjørn Lomborg found striking drops in the data. As Lomborg writes, “If we look at the death risk for an individual, the risk reduction is even bigger — dropped almost 99% since the 1920s.”

Two years ago, on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, there was much to celebrate about our present day due to improvements in our environment since 1970.

In contrast, Soylent Green portrayed a “climate catastrophe” and a grim future for 2022 due to climate change that hasn’t manifested itself in a profoundly negative way. In fact, most of what we experience today that could be considered a catastrophe is self-inflicted.

Runaway inflation and energy restrictive policies enforced by the Biden administration are the real catastrophes affecting Americans today.

I remember something very similar this was in a movie.
So does someone else.

Here’s When the U.S. Expects Kyiv to Fall

Even if they put up a good fight, Ukraine cannot win this war. They can’t. The gulf separating the capabilities between the two nations is wider than the Pacific. Ukraine has no way to counter Russian aircraft or missiles. They’re outmatched in men and heavy equipment. It’s only a matter of time before Russian tanks are rolling into the capital of Kyiv.

Yesterday, Russians launched their massive offensive against the rest of Ukraine which we all saw coming. Biden was asleep. We’ll hear from him later this afternoon. More American troops are said to be deployed east. We’ll keep you updated about other sanctions that are reportedly coming.

For now, the stream of cars we saw pouring out the Kyiv was for a simple reason. The people know they can’t stay there. The Ukrainian military can’t hold it. The timetable for the fall is within days. In 96 hours, the city could be surrounded by Russian troops. An airbase 15 miles from the capital was reportedly attacked by Russian forces today. Bear with us as a lot of information is unconfirmed. We’re dealing with a part of the world where state media keeps a lock and key on everything. Newsweek has more:

Three U.S. officials have told Newsweek they expect Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to fall to incoming Russian forces within days, and the country’s resistance to be effectively neutralized soon thereafter.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Moscow’s focus, as revealed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s references to a “special military operation” to “demilitarize” the neighboring country, would be to encircle Ukrainian forces and force them to surrender or be destroyed. They expect Kyiv to be taken within 96 hours, and then the leadership of Ukraine to follow in about a week’s time.

And Russia’s thunderous attacks on Ukrainian government and military institutions, paired with reports of ground personnel seeking to take strategic points including the Chernobyl nuclear facility, appeared to only be the initial phase of what may be a more comprehensive ground campaign.

… the senior U.S. intelligence officer said the next stages may be determined by U.S. President Joe Biden’s capability and willingness to risk further provoking Moscow by supporting partisan efforts on behalf of a potential Ukrainian resistance.

“Then it either becomes a robust insurgency or it doesn’t, depending largely on Biden,” the former senior U.S. intelligence officer said.

A source close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, who also asked not to be named, agreed with the U.S. assessment that Kyiv could be surrounded within 96 hours. But they did not believe Zelenskyy’s government would collapse.

The Antonov Airport near the town of Hostomel, just outside Kyiv, was the scene of some of the most dramatic early fighting. Ukrainian Interior Ministry officials reported early Thursday that Russian helicopter-borne forces had seized the airfield, though fighting around it is believed to be ongoing.

There are many, many issues scenarios to be gamed out here especially the potential Ukrainian insurgency phase. What do we do? What does Joe Biden do—and can he even do it? Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy endeavor for the past 40 years. Afghanistan showed he’s still a terrible decision maker.

They made movie(s) about this.

A Black Hawk helicopter flew for the first time without pilots.

a helicopter with no one on board

February has already been a big month for autonomous flight. For the first time, this past Saturday, and then again on Monday, a specially equipped Black Hawk helicopter flew without a single human on board. The computer-piloted aircraft was being tested as part of a DARPA program called Alias, and the tests took place out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

The retrofitted whirlybird was controlled by a Sikorsky-made autonomy system. As part of that system, the helicopter has a switch on board that allows the aviators to indicate whether two pilots, one pilot, or zero pilots will be operating the chopper. This was the first time that a Black Hawk was sent into the air with the no-pilots option, so that the computer system was handling all the controls. While these were just test flights, they hint at a future in which the Army could potentially send an autonomous helicopter on a dangerous rescue mission—and have no one on board it at all.

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They made a movie about this.

An AI robot nanny will care for human embryos in artificial wombs.

Scientists in China created an AI robot system that cares for human embryos growing in artificial wombs, a report from The Independent reveals.

When we think of AI-monitored humans in artificial wombs we think of the dystopian sci-fi future presented in ‘The Matrix’. However, the researchers behind the very real project believe their new system will be a force for good that will help to boost China’s population — the country is currently dealing with its lowest birth rate in six decades.

The team, from Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, designed the robot to constantly monitor and care for human embryos by adjusting the nutrition, carbon dioxide, and other important factors in the artificial embryos. They claim the new robot-assisted artificial womb is a safer and more efficient method for growing embryos than a natural womb, though no human trials have been conducted so far.

Investigating the ‘unsolved mysteries’ of embryonic development

The researchers, who outlined their project in a paper in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering, explained how it could rank embryos based on their development potential. The paper also described how the scientists have already tested their system on animal embryos.

In their paper, the researchers say their system could help to uncover “many unsolved mysteries about the physiology of typical human embryonic development.” What’s more, it could also “also provide a theoretical basis for solving birth defects and other major reproductive health problems.”

It’s worth noting that the researchers’ system is very much in the concept phase, and then there is the fact that they likely wouldn’t be cleared for human trials given laws on experimenting with human fetuses. Still, China does have somewhat of a track record for controversial experiments. In 2019, for example, scientists from Spain and China teamed up to develop human-monkey hybrid embryos. What’s more, if the situation were to get progressively worse when it comes to China’s declining birth rate, the country has been known to take drastic action in the past when it comes to controlling the size of its population.

Woman Who Stopped at Lab Monkey Crash Site Is Now ‘Sick.’

It sounds like every sci-fi virus film ever made.

Michele Fallon was driving near Danville, Penn., last Friday when she saw two trucks collide. Boxes littered the road. She stopped to help.

 

“I thought I was just doing the right thing by helping. I had no idea it would turn out this way,” Fallon told local news station WBRE.

Fallon had a cut on her hand and apparently, the highway was strewn with monkey droppings. That’s about to become important.

Backstory: Truck Carrying 100 Monkeys Crashes in Pennsylvania; At Least One Primate Still Loose

After stopping to help at the crash site, Fallon went home to learn that four of the lab monkeys had escaped and authorities were warning the public not to approach them, as they could transmit diseases to humans. That’s when Fallon called the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“I was close to the monkeys, I touched the crates, I walked through their feces, so I was very close. So I called to inquire, you know, was I safe?” Fallon reported.

“Because the monkey did hiss at me and there were feces around, and I did have an open cut, they just want to be precautious,” Fallon told reporters. There’s that monkey feces again.

By Saturday afternoon the four escaped primates were “accounted for.” By that, I mean the Pennsylvania Game Wardens showed up and shots were heard.

The CDC claims this type of monkey can spread herpes virus B through saliva, urine, and — you guessed it — feces.

The monkeys had recently arrived from Africa and were en route to a CDC facility in either Florida or Missouri, according to conflicting reports.

Three of the monkeys had to be euthanized, though the CDC didn’t reveal why.

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) used the incident to call for the U.S. to stop using monkeys for experiments.

 

NY and Boston face coldest temperatures since 2019 and up to two feet of snow Tuesday: More than 15 MILLION are under wind chill alerts as East Coast temperatures dip 45 below zero.

  • A strong cold front is coming through the eastern US and is expected to bring -45 degree weather this week, the coldest in three years
  • About 15 million people were already under wind chill advisories in the Midwest on Sunday, where wind chills are expected to plummet to -25 to -45 degrees on Monday
  • By Tuesday, the National Weather Service predicts parts of the Northeast and New England could face under zero temperatures
  •  Warnings to residents that wind chills as low as 40 below zero could cause ‘frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes’
  • Parts of New York, including Buffalo, are also expecting snow showers
  • The cold front is expected to move out of the area by Wednesday
  • Meanwhile, a cold front tearing into mild, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico led to several tornadoes in the southern United States over the weekend 
  • Five tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in southeast Texas on Saturday
  • Another tornado was confirmed to have hit northern Alabama and a possible tornado hit rural Louisiana

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“Skynet smiles”
Now, what other dangerous things are hidden within this program, and Amazon ‘isn’t aware of’?

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it “challenged” a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.

The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”.

“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” the smart speaker said.

Amazon said it fixed the error as soon as the company became aware of it.

The girl’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, described the incident on Twitter.

She said: “We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.”

That’s when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had “found on the web”.

The dangerous activity, known as “the penny challenge”, began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.

Metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fires and other damage.

“I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms,” Michael Clusker, station manager at Carlisle East fire station, told The Press newspaper in Yorkshire in 2020.

“The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt.”

Fire officials in the US have also spoken out against the so-called challenge.

Ms Livdahl tweeted that she intervened, yelling: “No, Alexa, no!”

However, she said her daughter was “too smart to do something like that”.

Amazon told the BBC in a statement that it had updated Alexa to prevent the assistant recommending such activity in the future.

“Customer trust is at the centre of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers,” said Amazon in a statement.

“As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it.”

The math behind this is complex, but from my limited understanding, and the explanations of the geeks who actually do understand the math, this is possible.

Scientists Claim to – Accidentally – Create a Warp Bubble

Warp drive pioneer and former NASA warp drive specialist Dr. Harold G “Sonny” White has reported the successful manifestation of an actual, real-world “Warp Bubble.” And, according to White, this first of its kind breakthrough by his Limitless Space Institute (LSI) team sets a new starting point for those trying to manufacture a full-sized, warp-capable spacecraft.

“To be clear, our finding is not a warp bubble analog, it is a real, albeit humble and tiny, warp bubble,” White told The Debrief, quickly dispensing with the notion that this is anything other than the creation of an actual, real-world warp bubble. “Hence the significance.”

Warp Bubble Theoretical
Theoretical Warp Bubble Structure: Image Credit LSI

THEORETICAL WARP DRIVES AND SCIENCE VISIONARIES

In 1994, Mexican Mathematician Miguel Alcubierre proposed the first mathematically valid solution to the warp drive. More specifically, he outlined a spacecraft propulsion system previously only envisioned in science fiction that can traverse the cosmos above the speed of light without violating currently accepted laws of physics.

That solution was lauded for its elegant mathematics, yet simultaneously derided for its use of theoretical materials and massive amounts of energy that appeared virtually impossible to engineer in any practical way.

Over a decade later, this theory underwent a major shift, when Dr. White, a then NASA-employed warp drive specialist and the founder of the highly respected Eagleworks laboratory, reworked Alcubierre’s original metric and put it into canonical form. This change in design dramatically reduced the exotic materials and energy requirements of the original concept, seemingly providing researchers and science fiction fans alike at least a glimmer of hope that a real-world warp drive may one day become a reality. It also resulted in the informal renaming of the original theoretical design, a concept now more commonly referred to as the “Alcubierre/White Warp Drive.”

Since then, The Debrief has covered a number of physicists and engineers taking their own stabs at designing a viable warp drive, including an entire group of international researchers working on a warp drive that requires no exotic matter. However, like Alcubierre and White before them, the warp concepts of these would-be visionaries all still remain theoretical in nature.

Now, it appears the situation has changed.

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Comment O’ The Day
I’m not actually sure that a nation of people who own nothing will be as easy to control as the powers that be seem to believe.

Own Nothing and Love It
An unholy alliance of planners, financiers, and leftists wants everyone to live in mass social housing developments.

From the ancient world to modern times, the class of small property owners have constituted the sine qua non of democratic self-government. But today this class is under attack by what Aristotle described as an oligarchia, an unelected power elite that controls the political economy for its own purposes. In contrast, the rise of small holders were critical to the re-emergence and growth of democracy first in the Netherlands, followed by North America, Australia, and much of Europe.

Today the current class of small holders face a threat from two powerful hegemonies, tech and financial interests, and increasingly intrusive bureaucracies. Both favor policies that would force higher population densities, which would likely raise housing costs and lead to lifetime renting for middle income households who would otherwise own their own homes. These forces—one long associated with the right, and the other the left—share a common agenda, though for different reasons.

Financial interests would reap a steady profit stream by creating a “rentership society,” where potential owners are transformed into tenants, guaranteeing the benefits of increasing land values. Today pension funds and Wall Street firms are buying up single family homes, often at prices too high for the average buyer. For their part, the planning clerisy believes that dense urbanism is socially, economically, and environmentally superior; some even favor a return to public housing, which not long ago lost was rejected as a massively failed experiment.

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Uh Oh, They Strapped a Sniper Rifle to a Robot Dog

Ghost Robotics

For years, we’ve been warning that it was only a matter of time — and now, the inevitable has happened.

Somebody strapped an honest-to-god sniper rifle to the back of a quadrupedal robot dog.

An image shared on Twitter by military robot maker Ghost Robotics shows the terrifying contraption in all its dystopian glory.

“Keeping our [special ops] teams armed with the latest lethality innovation,” the caption reads.

 

It’s a nightmare come to life, a death machine designed to kill with precision on the battlefield.

“This is sad,” one Twitter user commented. “In what world is this a good idea? I bet police is salivating at the chance to use these.”

There’s a lot we don’t know about the machine, but according to an Instagram post by Sword International, a gun manufacturer, the machine is called the SPUR or Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle.

“The [SPUR] was specifically designed to offer precision fire from unmanned platforms such as the Ghost Robotics Vision-60 quadruped,” reads Sword’s website. “Due to its highly capable sensors the SPUR can operate in a magnitude of conditions, both day and night.”

We don’t know what level of autonomy the robot has or if it was designed to be fully remotely operated. We also don’t know who the machine was developed for.

The four-legged robot is lugging a sniper capable of shooting 6.5 millimeter Creedmoor cartridges, a rifle ammunition, which was developed with long-range target shooting in mind.

It’s a troubling new development. Any new robot built with the intent to kill should have us worried.

NASA Set To Crash Spacecraft Into Asteroid At 15,000 MPH In Effort To Change Its Course

NASA announced Monday that it will crash a spacecraft into an asteroid as part of an experiment designed to prevent dangerous asteroids from hitting Earth.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will launch Nov. 23 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and, using a process known as a kinetic impactor technique, deploy a rocket to hit an asteroid at a speed of 15,000 mph and alter its trajectory, according to NASA.

The test’s obejective is to analyze possible solutions to prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth, and it is NASA’s first mission to test planetary defense technology, according to the space agency.

It will target an asteroid system known as Didymos. The two asteroids are not a threat to Earth but will pass close enough to the planet to conduct the test, according to NASA. (RELATED: Asteroid Flew ‘Close’ To Earth, Estimated To Be Same Size As Great Pyramid Of Giza)

DART will launch toward Didymos using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA’s statement said according to The Washington Post.

When it has a gun rack plus a place to attach a gun mount……….

Will This Jetpack Fly Itself? Startup aims to make piloting a jetpack as easy as flying a drone

Jetpacks might sound fun, but learning how to control a pair of jet engines strapped to your back is no easy feat. Now a British startup wants to simplify things by developing a jetpack with an autopilot system that makes operating it more like controlling a high-end drone than learning how to fly.

Jetpacks made the leap from sci-fi to the real world as far back as the 1960s, but since then the they haven’t found much use outside of gimmicky appearances in movies and halftime shows. In recent years though, the idea has received renewed interest. And its proponents are keen to show that the technology is no longer just for stuntmen and may even have practical applications.

American firm Jetpack Aviation will teach anyone to fly its JB-10 jetpack for a cool $4,950 and recently sold its latest JB-12 model to an “undisclosed military.” And an Iron Man-like, jet-powered flying suit developed by British start-up Gravity Industries has been tested as a way for marines to board ships and as a way to get medics to the top of mountains quickly.

Flying jetpacks can take a lot of training to master though. That’s what prompted Hollywood animatronics expert Matt Denton and Royal Navy Commander Antony Quinn to found Maverick Aviation, and develop one that takes the complexities of flight control out the pilot’s hands.

The Maverick Jetpack features four miniature jet turbines attached to an aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber frame, and will travel at up to 30 miles per hour. But the secret ingredient is software that automatically controls the engines to maintain a stable hover, and seamlessly convert the pilot’s instructions into precise movements.

“It’s going to be very much like flying a drone,” says Denton. “We wanted to come up with something that anyone could fly. It’s all computer-controlled and you’ll just be using the joystick.”

One of the key challenges, says Denton, was making the engines responsive enough to allow the rapid tweaks required for flight stabilization. This is relatively simple to achieve on a drone, whose electric motors can be adjusted in a blink of an eye, but jet turbines can take several seconds to ramp up and down between zero and full power.

To get around this, the company added servos to each turbine that let them move independently to quickly alter the direction of thrust—a process known as thrust vectoring. By shifting the alignment of the four engines the flight control software can keep the jetpack perfectly positioned using feedback from inertial measurement units, GPS, altimeters and ground distance sensors. Simple directional instructions from the pilot can also be automatically translated into the required low-level tweaks to the turbines.

It’s a clever way to improve the mobility of the system, says Ben Akih-Kumgeh, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Syracuse University. “It’s not only a smart way of overcoming any lag that you may have, but it also helps with the lifespan of the engine,” he adds. “[In] any mechanical system, the durability depends on how often you change the operating conditions.”

The software is fairly similar to a conventional drone flight controller, says Denton, but they have had to accommodate some additional complexities. Thrust magnitude and thrust direction have to be managed by separate control loops due to their very different reaction times, but they still need to sync up seamlessly to coordinate adjustments. The entire control process is also complicated by the fact that the jetpack has a human strapped to it.

“Once you’ve got a shifting payload, like a person who’s wobbling their arms around and moving their legs, then it does become a much more complex problem,” says Denton.

In the long run, says Denton, the company hopes to add higher-level functions that could allow the jetpack to move automatically between points marked on a map. The hope is that by automating as much of the flight control as possible, users will be able to focus on the task at hand, whether that’s fixing a wind turbine or inspecting a construction site.

Surrendering so much control to a computer might give some pause for thought, but Denton says there will be plenty of redundancy built in. “The idea will be that we’ll have plenty of fallback modes where, if part of the system fails, it’ll fall back to a more manual flight mode,” he said. “The user would have training to basically tackle any of those conditions.”

It might be sometime before you can start basic training, though, as the company has yet to fly their turbine-powered jetpack. Currently, flight testing is being conducted on an scaled down model powered by electric ducted fans, says Denton, though their responsiveness has been deliberately dulled so they behave like turbines. The company is hoping to conduct the first human test flights next summer.

Don’t get your hopes up about commuting to work by jetpack any time soon though, says Akih-Kumgeh. The huge amount of noise these devices produce make it unlikely that they would be allowed to operate within city limits. The near term applications are more likely to be search and rescue missions where time and speed trump efficiency, he says.

Finally:
Action on Taliban Hostage Situation With Americans in Mazar-i-Sharif.
But that’s only one (1) of six planes that sitting there.

 

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story about a party, and Vincent Price starred in a movie version. …The Masque of The Red Death.
Maybe Obammy’s will turn out the same