On Monday, 27 tanker cars carrying oil from North Dakota derailed in West Virginia. The train had 109 cars and was carrying 3 million gallons of crude oil. Nineteen of the cars, each capable of holding thousands of gallons of crude, caught fire, and despite freezing weather and snow, several small fires were still blazing on Thursday, days after the crash, with emergency responders deciding to let the flames burn themselves out.
Well, it looks like the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo on October 31 may change all that -- meaning government regulations for private spaceflight may be on their way. For now, the FAA is waiting on the results of the accident investigation before it makes any official regulatory changes. But the agency hinted at modifications to come in a recent statement to Bloomberg News:
Last night, Virgin Galactic held a press conference intended as its last connected directly to SpaceShipTwo’s crash on Friday. The conference had three major themes: the crash investigation is ongoing, the cutting edge of transportation technology always carries risk, and despite setbacks Virgin Galactic has no intention to abandon space tourism.
There’s a growing, looming shadow over the private spaceflight industry. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, a suborbital rocket designed for tourists, crashed on Friday, Oct. 31 due to an “in-flight anomaly" during a powered test flight over the Mojave Desert.
It's a bad idea to drink and drive. No rocket science there. But with the goal of reducing drunken driving, researchers have gone high-tech, creating a laser device that can detect alcohol vapor within a moving car, from alongside the road. After the laser is shone through a speeding vehicle, a mirror bounces it back to a detector that can sense small concentrations of alcohol.
GPS devices are great, but sometimes I want to throw mine out the window. There's something so obnoxious about the Garmin voice, especially when you disregard its navigation choice and it tells you it's "reCALCulating" in that disapproving tone. A new haptic steering wheel concept would be so much friendlier! Instead of smarmy commentary, the wheel simply vibrates to tell you which way to turn.