Transport
Wait one second!
Those aren’t Dolphins 🐬 following my boat!
CHICAGO Hancock Tower …A broken hoist rope caused the express elevator to malfunction… they had careened from the 95th floor down to the 11th floor.… It took nearly three hours to rescue six people… The rescue crew had to hammer out a concrete wall in the garage area of the 11th floor.…
…two-man U.S.-Russian crew of a Soyuz spacecraft en route to the International Space Station was forced to make a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan on Thursday when their rocket failed in mid-air. U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin landed safely without harm… made what NASA called a steep ballistic descent to Earth… Moscow immediately suspended all manned space launches… Footage from inside the Soyuz had shown the two men being shaken around at the moment the failure occurred, with their arms and legs flailing. Ovchinin, the Russian cosmonaut, can be heard saying: “That was a quick flight.”…
…Interstate 95, the country’s most used highway, will finally run as one continuous road between Miami and Maine by the late summer. The interstate’s infamous “gap” on the Pennsylvania and New Jersey border will be closed, turning I-95 into an unbroken river of concrete more than 1,900 miles long. In so doing, it will also mark a larger milestone, say transportation officials—the completion of the original United States interstate system.…
…The engine on Shults's plane had, in fact, exploded on Tuesday, spraying shrapnel into the aircraft, causing a window to be blown out and leaving one passenger dead and seven others injured. Frightened passengers on board the Dallas-bound flight braced for impact as oxygen masks muffled their screams.
In the midst of the chaos, Shults successfully completed an emergency landing at the Philadelphia International Airport, sparing the lives of 148 people and averting a far worse catastrophe.…
Could there be anything less American than driverless cars? I suppose sexbots might quality but certainly driverless cars are right up there.…
Getting From Here to There, a comic examination, from the Daily Doodle series.
A pedestrian was killed after she was struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Arizona.
Elaine Herzberg, 49, was hit by a SUV early on Monday in Tempe when she was walking outside of a crosswalk
She was immediately rush to the hospital where she died from her injuries…
…Self-driving cars are essentially a train with expanded range, each vehicle being its own railcar. In the planners' minds their flow-optimized system works neatly and safely at speeds and densities not achievable by human reflexes and with a minimal loss of autonomy. They refuse to acknowledge Murphy's Law though, which when dealing with the speed and densities expected means guaranteed disaster.
…CNN recently called carwashes “a nightmare” for self-driving cars, and here’s why: it seems the traditional car wash – with its massive automated brushes – are too harsh when applied to a vehicle whose exterior is covered in sensors.…
…red Tesla convertible …launched into space this week … While it seemed the flight controllers intended to send the vehicle into orbit around Mars, the car will instead circle the Sun, avoiding a fiery return to Earth or smashing into Mars or the asteroid belt…
During the night, Japan broke the record for the smallest rocket to orbit a satellite. They modified a two-stage suborbital sounding rocket by adding a third stage and a guidance system, and put a 6 lb. cubesat into orbit. (The previous record was also held by Japan, in 1970.)
Here is an article about it:
https://preview.tinyurl.com/yao28s3c
And the launch video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeW-Qqu9-8U
One can truly say that we have now passed out of perhaps the golden age of space flight . Apollo 17 Commander and the last man to stand on the moon, Gene Cernan, died today at the age of 82.…
All new cars and light trucks would be able to talk wirelessly with each other, with traffic lights and with other roadway infrastructure under a proposal released Tuesday by the Transportation Department.
Officials say the technology holds the potential to dramatically reduce traffic deaths and transform driving.…
—
Good idea? Probably more problems than helpful, like most such ideas.
—
Here is the "Getting From Here to There" panel predicting this, though.
…John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American aviator, engineer, astronaut, and United States Senator from Ohio. In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the earth, circling three times. Before joining NASA, he was a distinguished fighter pilot in both World War II and Korea, with five Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen clusters.
He was one of the "Mercury Seven" group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA to become America's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space. Glenn received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990. Glenn was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven after the death of Scott Carpenter.…
…A driver reported that the bald eagle flew in front of an oncoming vehicle and got stuck in the grill… quickly chased the other car down, notified him that he had a bird stuck in his grill, and called 911…
…commuter train… crashed into a station in Hoboken, New Jersey.… "We have a 100 plus injuries. Most of them are critical."…
CATOOSA, Okla. – An Oklahoma driver was shaken up after lightning struck their car… driver was able to maintain control, but was quite shaken up. … driver immediately called for an ambulance. … When fire crews arrived, they noticed smoke coming from beneath the vehicle’s hood. That is when the 2016 Toyota Prius Hybrid caught fire…
16 PEOPLE have been killed in a hot air balloon crash near Austin, Texas in one of the deadliest balloon accidents on record. The balloon caught fire before hitting the ground near Lockhart, south of the city of Austin.…
Wednesday marks the 47th anniversary of when NASA astronauts first landed on the moon, a giant leap of an accomplishment that still resonates today, over four and a half decades later.…
US authorities are investigating the first death potentially caused by self-driving technology. …driver of a Tesla car died in Florida in May… Model S car was unable to recognise “the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky” that had driven across the car’s path.…
• citing BBC
The Havana, Illinois police department says be careful on the bridge; it’s covered in bugs. …six inches deep… made of mayflies… has bogged cars and crashed motorcycles.…
A car crashed while traveling on the Autobahn in Germany after police say it slipped on slime produced by a group of snails.…
Roads …one day they might be paved with pig manure. …pig manure has oils that can be used to create a petroleum-like substance, which can be mixed with sand or gravel to make a strong asphalt substitute.…
A head-on collision involving two freight trains caused several box cars to derail and erupt in flames in the Texas Panhandle on Tuesday, injuring an unknown amount of people and leading authorities to evacuate people who live nearby.… Billy Brown, a farmer who lives in the area, said he saw a fireball erupt after the collision. … "I don't know how anyone survived," Brown said. "It's terrible. I've seen a number of train wrecks but I've never seen one like this."…
A tourist driving through Alberta performed a make-shift C-section to deliver a fawn, after its mother was struck by a car.…
…airlines report that some 4,000 passengers have missed flights at O’Hare Airport because of the long wait times since February, and there have been reports of screening hold-ups, delayed baggage transport, and difficulties at many other airports.… TSA executives got fairly hefty pay bonuses for their hard work..… guess who the TSA blames for their boobery? You.…
Experts are warning that the rise of semi-autonomous cars could lead to couples having sex in moving vehicles.…
Here is a pictorial history of "if this van is rockin'" type getaways, from the Getting From Here to There series: Getting Away From it All.
Proponents of autonomous vehicles are in a sticky situation. Self-driving technology is expected to have a tremendous impact on public health and reduce the 1.25 million deaths every year on global roads. At the same time, this emerging technology is a threat to the employment of the millions who are paid to sit behind the wheel — from truck drivers to cab drivers and delivery workers.
Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng, an expert in the world of artificial intelligence, acknowledges the unemployment concerns, but he sees a way forward that offers society the benefits of autonomous vehicles and blunts the negative impact of job losses.…
See this panel from the "Transport Future" series: Ask Professor Future
BIXBY, Oklahoma - A small plane landed on Memorial Drive at East 121st Street South Thursday afternoon. …pilot was the only person on board the single-engine Cessna. …no one was hurt.…