Daily Archives: December 13, 2018

Virgin Galactic flight sends first astronauts to edge of space – successfully. Are you looking, Elon?

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Virgin Galactic completed its longest rocket-powered flight ever on Thursday, taking a step ahead in the nascent business of space tourism.

The two pilots on board Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft Unity became the company’s first astronauts. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson was on hand to watch the historic moment.

“Many of you will know how important the dream of space travel is to me personally. Ever since I watched the moon landings as a child I have looked up to the skies with wonder,” Branson said after the flight. “This is a momentous day and I could not be more proud of our teams who together have opened a new chapter of space exploration.”

Virgin Galactic said the test flight reached an altitude of 51.4 miles, or nearly 83 kilometers. The U.S. military and NASA consider pilots who have flown above 80 kilometers to be astronauts. The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Thursday that pilots Mark Stucky and C.J Sturckow would receive commercial astronaut wings at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. early next year.

Lifted by the jet-powered mothership Eve, the spacecraft Unity took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in the California desert. Upon reaching an altitude above 40,000 feet, the carrier aircraft released Unity. The two-member crew then piloted the spacecraft in a roaring burn which lasted 60 seconds. The flight pushed Unity to a speed of Mach 2.9, nearly three times the speed of sound, as it screamed into a climb toward the edge of space.

After performing a slow backflip in microgravity, Unity turned and glided back to land at Mojave. This was the company’s fourth rocket-powered flight of its test program.

Unity is the name of the spacecraft built by The Spaceship Company, which Branson also owns. This rocket design is officially known as SpaceShipTwo (SS2).

Unity also carried four NASA-funded payloads on this mission. The agency said the four technology experiments “will collect valuable data needed to mature the technologies for use on future missions.”

“Inexpensive access to suborbital space greatly benefits the technology research and broader spaceflight communities,” said Ryan Dibley, NASA’s flight opportunities campaign manager, in a statement.

The spacecraft underwent extensive engine testing and seven glide tests before Virgin Galactic said it was ready for a powered test flight — a crucial milestone before the company begins sending tourists to the edge of the atmosphere. Each of the previous three test flights were successful in pushing the spacecraft’s limits farther.

Source: Virgin Galactic flight sends first astronauts to edge of space

Yes, it can be done without rockets exploding all over the place or going the wrong direction. Well done, this is how commercial space flight should look.

Taylor Swift Show Used to Stalk Visitors with Hidden Face Recognition in Kiosk Displays

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At a Taylor Swift concert earlier this year, fans were reportedly treated to something they might not expect: a kiosk displaying clips of the pop star that served as a covert surveillance system. It’s a tale of creeping 21st-century surveillance as unnerving as it is predictable. But the whole ordeal has left us wondering what the hell is going on.

As Rolling Stone first reported, the kiosk was allegedly taking photos of concertgoers and running them through a facial recognition database in an effort to identify any of Swift’s stalkers. But the dragnet effort reportedly involved snapping photos of anyone who stared into the kiosk’s watchful abyss.

“Everybody who went by would stop and stare at it, and the software would start working,” Mike Downing, chief security officer at live entertainment company Oak View Group and its subsidiary Prevent Advisors, told Rolling Stone. Downing was at Swift’s concert, which took place at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles in May, to check out a demo of the system. According to Downing, the photos taken by the camera inside of the kiosk were sent to a “command post” in Nashville. There, the images were scanned against images of hundreds of Swift’s known stalkers, Rolling Stone reports.

The Rolling Stone report has taken off in the past day, with Quartz, Vanity Fair, the Hill, the Verge, Business Insider, and others picking up the story. But the only real information we have is from Downing. And so far no one has answered some key questions—including the Oak View Group and Prevent Advisors, which have not responded to multiple requests for comment.

For starters, who is running this face recognition system? Was Taylor Swift or her people informed this reported measure would be in place? Were concertgoers informed that their photos were being taken and sent to a facial recognition database in another state? Were the photos stored, and if so, where and for how long? There were reportedly more than 60,000 people at the Rose Bowl concert—how many of those people had their mug snapped by the alleged spybooth? Did the system identify any Swift stalkers—and, if they did, what happened to those people?

It also remains to be seen whether there was any indication on the kiosk that it was snapping fans’ faces. But as Quartz pointed out, “concert venues are typically private locations, meaning even after security checkpoints, its owners can subject concert-goers to any kind of surveillance they want, including facial recognition.”

Source: Taylor Swift Show Used to Demo Face Recognition: Report

Very very creepy