Month: April 2017

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Hyperlapse video shows off UW campus

UW in Motion video
Charles Johnson’s “UW in Motion” hyperlapse video puts some extra zap into campus scenes. (Charles Johnson via YouTube)

What is hyperlapse? Like the bullet-time realm of “The Matrix,” hyperlapse videos provide an unorthodox perspective on time and space – and you can see the result in a two-minute clip created by the University of Washington’s Charles Johnson.

The technique captures time-lapse videos of an environment, with an additional twist: Instead of remaining stationary, the camera moves through the scene, making it seems as if you’re soaring through a speeded-up space-time continuum.

“If you follow my work, you know that for the past six months I’ve been getting into hyperlapse photography,” Johnson, a videographer and editor for University of Washington Intercollegiate Athletics, said today in a Facebook post. “I’ve been slowly collecting hyperlapses of the UW campus to make an official UW hyperlapse edit, and I’m glad to [be] finally able to release it in time for the UW 2017 Maker Summit!”

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Tesla briefly tops GM’s market value

Image: Tesla Model 3
Tesla Model 3 candidates are being road-tested in preparation for production. (Credit: Tesla Motors)

For a time on April 10, Tesla edged out GM in market capitalization to become the most valuable U.S. automaker, even though Tesla is on track to lose almost a billion dollars this year while GM is expected to make a $9 billion profit.

The share prices for both car companies dipped today, putting GM ever so slightly back in the lead with a market cap of just less than $51 billion. What’s more, U.S. automakers still fall short of foreign companies such as Toyota and VW. Nevertheless, the rapid rise in Tesla’s share price left some observers predicting a sea change in the auto industry – while others were left just shaking their heads.

“Clearly General Motors is undervalued and Tesla is overvalued,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson was quoted as saying at a forum setting the stage for this week’s New York Auto Show. He said Tesla was “either one of the great Ponzi schemes of all time or it’s gonna work out.”

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Luxembourg and Seattle forge space links

Planetary Resources tour
Luxembourg’s Princess Stephanie and Prince Guillaume bend down to get a good look at Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 6 mini-satellites during a visit to the clean room at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Luxembourg’s royal heir and its top economic official got the grand tour of the Seattle area today, deepening a business relationship that could someday turn far-flung asteroids into the next commercial frontier.

“The exciting field of space technology could enable many more partnerships and economic success stories between Luxembourg and Seattle,” Prince Guillaume told a VIP gathering at Seattle’s Space Needle.

Luxembourg?

Don’t underestimate the tiny country nestled between Belgium, Germany and France: Over the past few decades, Luxembourg has built itself into a financial powerhouse as well as a center for Europe’s satellite industry. Now Luxembourg’s government and investment companies are aiming to do it again, with asteroid mining.

Asteroid mining?

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Space station trio makes ‘bull’s-eye’ landing

Soyuz touchdown
A Russian Soyuz craft touches down in Kazakhstan, marking the return of a U.S.-Russian crew from the International Space Station. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls)

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Russian crewmates Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko landed back on Earth today after spending almost six months on the International Space Station. The three left the station overnight in a Russian Soyuz craft and made what NASA spokesman Rob Navias called a “bull’s-eye touchdown” on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 5:20 p.m. local time (4:20 a.m. PT).

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Luxembourg leaders dig asteroid mining

Planetary Resources pact with Luxembourg
Planetary Resources President and CEO Chris Lewicki and Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider celebrate their partnership. (Planetary Resources Photo)

Luxembourg’s Crown Prince Guillaume and Deputy Prime Minister Étienne Schneider will be leading a delegation from the tiny European nation on a trip to the Seattle area on Monday. The main attraction? Asteroid mining, of course. Last year, Planetary Resources struck a deal for $28 million in investment and grants from Luxembourg’s government and bankers. Planetary Resources, based in Redmond, Wash., is developing spacecraft for Earth observation as well as asteroid exploration and mining. By some accounts, mining asteroids for water and other space resources could turn into a multitrillion-dollar industry. That fits in with Luxembourg’s SpaceResources.lu initiative – which will be in the spotlight in Seattle.

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How Blue Origin upgraded its rocket ship

Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin spaceship
JAmazon billionaire Jeff Bezos discusses Blue Origin New Shepard booster rocket and crew capsule, on display at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship performed beautifully during five trips to space and back, but the company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is already upgrading the next model to capitalize on the lessons learned to date.

Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson pointed out some of the upgrades this week here at the 33rd Space Symposium during an impromptu session with journalists who were waiting to climb inside a mock-up of the New Shepard crew capsule.

The scorch-scarred New Shepard booster was on display just a few yards away, and Meyerson said his team was getting ready for a new series of uncrewed test flights at Blue Origin’s suborbital launch facility in West Texas. “We’re building out the fleet, and we want to get multiple vehicles out in the field,” he said.

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NASA funds ideas from science fiction

Scene from "John Carter"
A scene from the 2012 movie “John Carter” shows an airship engaged in a Martian battle. The NASA-backed concept for a Martian airship isn’t as ambitious. (© 2011 Disney / John Carter™ ERB, Inc.)

Truth can be stranger than fiction, but it shouldn’t be strange to hear that NASA spends millions of dollars on efforts to turn science-fiction concepts into true technologies.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, also known as NIAC, has been backing far-out aerospace concepts for almost 20 years. It started out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, modeled after the Pentagon’s DARPA think tank.

NIAC’s latest crop of 22 tech projects was announced this week, and they include a few concepts that were virtually ripped from the headlines of science fiction’s pulp magazines.

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Hubble telescope gives Jupiter its close-up

Jupiter as seen by Hubble
As Jupiter made its nearest approach to Earth in a year, the Hubble Space Telescope viewed the solar system’s largest planet in all of its up-close glory. This picture was taken on April 3 from a distance of 415 million miles. (STScI / ESA / NASA / GSFC Photo / A. Simon)

Jupiter is as close as it’ll get to Earth this year, and the Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of the opportunity with a stunning picture that shows off the giant planet’s best-known spots.

Astronomer Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center arranged to have Hubble trained on the hemisphere that includes Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and another whirling storm to the south, dubbed “Red Spot Jr.” You can also see white spots speckling the planet’s cloud tops.

The interplay of orbits for Jupiter and Earth brought our two planets just 415 million miles apart, which means Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 could pick up features as small as 80 miles across.

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For the last time: Godspeed, John Glenn

John Glenn's burial
A casket containing former astronaut John Glenn’s remains is prepared for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. (DVIDS Photo)

Almost four months after his death at the age of 95, the mortal remains of former astronaut and senator John Glenn were interred today amid Marine Corps pomp and circumstance at Arlington National Cemetery. Glenn became the first American in orbit in 1962, and the oldest human in space in 1998.

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No potty breaks on Blue Origin space trip

Amazon's Jeff Bezos
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos takes questions in front of Blue Origin’s mock-up for the New Shepard spaceship’s crew capsule. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Are you worried about having to pee while you’re flying on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship? Or getting sick? Billionaire founder Jeff Bezos has a word of advice: Fuhgeddaboudit.

During this week’s visit to the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Bezos handled the standard questions about, um, bodily needs while in the confines of the suborbital spaceship that Blue Origin is developing.

Those questions have been addressed before, but perhaps not quite as authoritatively (or humorously). Watch our video, and then we’ll sum up answers to all the burning questions that arose.

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