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SpaceX's Next Starship Prototype Launch Will Be a 12-Mile-High Test Flight, Elon Musk Says

"Aiming for 20km flight in Oct & orbit attempt shortly thereafter," Musk said on Twitter before making another promise to his followers. "Starship update will be on Sept. 28th, anniversary of SpaceX reaching orbit. Starship Mk 1 will be fully assembled by that time."

[...] SpaceX's current plans for Starship call for a 100-passenger spacecraft powered by six of the company's Raptor rocket engines. Starhopper, for comparison, used a single Raptor engine, while the Mark 1 Starship will apparently use three Raptors for early tests. When Starship and the Super Heavy are on the launchpad, they'll stand 387 feet (118 meters) tall, Musk has said.

Those details may change on Sept. 28, when Musk rolls out his Starship and Super Heavy update. He has said the presentation will he held at SpaceX's Boca Chica test site in South Texas, home of the Starhopper and the first Starship prototype, the Mark 1. (A second, the Mark 2, is being built at SpaceX's facility in near Cape Canaveral, Florida.)

Starship construction in Florida is halted due to the incoming Hurricane Dorian.

"You can't prove a thing"

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 CPUs To Feature Support on TRX40, TRX80 & WRX80 Series Motherboards – ASUS TRX40 Motherboards Leak Out

1 channel per chiplet?

See how easy it is?

Ok, moving along... What's next on the docket?

Correction: The Russians didn't co-sign

It was the Saudis...

President Donald Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars' worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.

He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.

Mexico border wall: Trump orders aides to seize private land and disregard environmental rules

AI Learns To Animate Your Face in VR (4m2s)

VR Facial Animation via Multiview Image Translation

THE ONLINE SILENCER MARKET IS BOOMING — JUST DON’T CALL IT A SILENCER

SD Tactical Arms calls them barrel shrouds. Hawk Innovative Tech says they’re solvent filters. Prepper’s Discount sells flashlight tubes. But with a few hours and a little elbow grease, all of these products become the same thing: gun silencers.

Silencers, otherwise known as suppressors, are among the most highly regulated gun accessories in the US. Under federal law, consumers must apply for a license to purchase them. The process involves paying a fee to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and submitting to extensive screening. It can take more than a year to get an answer. Americans eager to skip the wait, though, have a shortcut: tap one of the dozens of online retailers selling de facto suppressor parts and build their own.

Even a search for “solvent traps” on Amazon returns a page of unrelated items useful in silencer construction, such as automobile fuel filters. A spokesperson from Amazon refused to comment for this story, but emphasized that all the products sold on the site were legal.

[...] Bob Folkestad, the founder of a leading solvent trap retailer called Quiet Bore, told The Trace the ATF forced manufacturers like him into business. “It’s 450 dollars and a yearlong wait [to purchase a suppressor],” he said. “Buy a solvent trap, and you can be approved in two to four weeks.” Solvent traps are designed to collect cleaning fluid from the barrel of a gun, and amateur gunsmiths can easily convert them into suppressors.

Mod Virge Informatif. Much moreso than their PC builds.

Hook it up (yeah yeah, spare me the details) to her brain at this moment.

Wanna do it twice? Let's try hers.

30 Years Ago: Voyager 2's Historic Neptune Flyby

Thirty years ago, on August 25, 1989, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made a close flyby of Neptune, giving humanity its first close-up of our solar system’s eighth planet. Marking the end of the Voyager mission’s Grand Tour of the solar system’s four giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – that first was also a last: No other spacecraft has visited Neptune since.

The Solar System’s Loneliest Planets, Revisited

NASA’s nuclear rejuvenation could not arrive at a better time. To begin, there is no question that such a mission would revolutionize our understanding of the outer solar system, simply by virtue of voyaging there after three decades of further technological development and scientific discovery. What is more, in the late 2020s, the planets will be positioned so that a Neptune-bound spacecraft can get a gravity assist from Jupiter, picking up tremendous speed from swinging by the giant planet and shaving years off the travel time. Finally, a mission to Uranus needs to reach the world before 2050 in order to see its northern hemisphere for the first time. (When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus, only the planet’s southern hemisphere was illuminated.) “I’m hopeful because that puts a little bit more pressure on NASA,” says Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist at JPL. “But in the back of my mind, there’s a fear that if we miss it, I’m going to miss the boat.” Hofstadter is 56 years old and would therefore be in his mid-70s when—if—a mission reaches the ice giants in the late 2030s. To him and many other planetary scientists on the verge of retirement, an accepted mission would be bittersweet. “I like to joke that they’ll have to reserve a rocking chair and a drooling rag for me by the time we get there,” Hansen says.