Google Robot Car Crashes?!

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. After 160,000 miles, Google's test-bed Toyota Prius crashed near Google HQ in Mountain View. Witnesses to the accident reported that the crash caused a five-car pile-up.

Google has been testing out the cars in California and Nevada and this was the first time one has had an accident. The bizarre accident occurred when Google’s car rear-ended another Prius that hit a Honda Accord, which struck another Accord that hit another Prius. The truly bizarre part of the accident witnesses are claiming the crash was the fault of a human at the car’s controls!

From the article:

• It’s not yet proven that a human was driving but experts say the car’s sensors, cameras and lasers would have avoided a collision.

Ironically here is Sebastian Thrun expounding on the future of robotic cars




Read complete story from the DailyMail online here

NASA underestimated shuttle dangers

In a recent USA Today article I read where NASA's Shuttle Program Safety and Mission Assurance Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston did a risk assessment of the dangers of shuttle missions.

As much as I hate to NASA bash, the initial results are disturbing to say the least.

When NASA start flying the shuttles in 1981, NASA managers thought there was only a 1-in-100,000 chance of losing a shuttle and its crew. Engineers thought the probability was closer to 1 in 100. The frightening fact is that those early missions had odds of less than 1 in 10!

From the article:

• Consider this: There was only a 6% chance that NASA would fly its first 25 shuttle missions without losing an astronaut crew, the assessment shows.
• Moreover, on the 88 shuttle missions flown between the Challenger and Columbia accidents, there was only a 7% chance disaster would be averted.

NASA realizes that to be more successful they need a " very robust test program" and collect as much data as possible.

In fact after two major accidents and many near misses shuttle now is 10 times safer than it was during the first flight in April 1981. The odds of a catastrophic failure now are 1 in 90.

Wana See What 10 Megajoules Worth of Damage Looks Like?

We have been hearing for quite some time now about the damage to the Large Hadron Collider when a malfunction during the initial startup phase brought further experiments to a screeching halt.

Here are some CERN's photos courtesy of Gizmodo, of the LHC's multi-million-dollar malf. They show the results of a single solder joint's failure on the world's most complex machine.

Aside from wrecking 53 of the Large Hadron's magnets, the incident released six tons of helium into the atmosphere.

CERN hope to get the Large Hadron Collider back into operation by June of next year. Two of the 53 replacement magnets have already been installed.

<- Gizmodo ->