ptha

With the help of special 3D glasses, rover drivers on Earth plan routes with specific stops, but increasingly allow the rover to "take the wheel" and choose how it gets to those stops. Perseverance's auto-navigation system, known as AutoNav, makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth. [1]

The mission has used AI not just for driving the rover, but also landing and targeting instruments. [2]

According to a leading Beethoven expert, the composer still had hearing in his left ear until shortly before his death in 1827.

“Not only was Beethoven not completely deaf at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in May 1824, he could hear, although increasingly faintly, for at least two years afterwards, probably through the last premiere that he would supervise, his String Quartet in B-flat, Op 130, in March 1826,” Albrecht said.

I think the first I heard of the Tokyo firebombing during WWII was in the Errol Morris documentary: "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara".

Robert McNamara was an officer under Curtis LeMay. He says LeMay once said that, had the United States lost the war, they would have been tried for war crimes, and agrees with this assessment. [2]

So far Starship has flown to 12.5 km [1], which seems to be a stretch to describe as "the edge of space" [2].

It seems like the FAA Environmental Assessment for the "SpacePort" at Boca Chica has been delayed again from Feb 28th, by a month to March 28th [3]. If they recommend a full Environmental review that will delay progress even further. I believe Elon mentioned in the recent Starship update that they will move Starship testing to Cape Canaveral which already has permissions to launch Starship there if this is required [4] [5], but that will require building out an orbital pad for Starship.

It will certainly be interesting to see how long it takes Starship to get to orbit. I would guess that the raptor 2 performance/reliability and also the heatshield performance will be significant challenges to overcome. When/if SpaceX do overcome them, the incumbents will be justified in "shitting the bed", as per the article.

The Irish elk stood about 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) tall at the shoulders and carried the largest antlers of any known deer, a maximum of 3.65 m (12.0 ft) from tip to tip and 40 kg (88 lb) in weight. For body size, at about 450–600 kg (990–1,300 lb) and up to 700 kg (1,500 lb) or more, the Irish elk was the heaviest known cervine ("Old World deer"); and tied with the extant Alaska moose (Alces alces gigas) as the third largest known deer, after the extinct Cervalces latifrons and Cervalces scotti.

It was not just native to Ireland, but many skeletons were found preserved in Irish peat bogs. The Irish elk had a far-reaching range, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the West to Lake Baikal in the East.