Daily Archives: September 3, 2022

Seriously.Too Heavy

Elon Musk and musician Claire "Grimes" Boucher's child X A-12 or just "X" for short is already having trouble getting rockets off of the ground, much like his father during the early days of SpaceX.

"'Fuckin' rocket is too fuckin heavy,'" Grimes says their offspring explained "after his toy rocket failed to reach orbit."

The esoteric tidbit certainly raises questions. For one, rockets designed for toddlers generally can't make it into orbit. Besides, we're not entirely sure where they're supposed to get their hands on liquid oxygen and kerosene propellant.

But it's also reminiscent of SpaceX's troubles getting its own first rocket into stable orbit. The company led by X's father only managed to get its first orbital rocket, the Falcon 1, into stable orbit on its fourth attempt back in 2008.

And on top of it all, that seems just a little foulmouthed for a toddler, right?

Naturally, Twitter users had some fun with X's frustrations.

"Obviously he wants a reusable booster," one user suggested.

"Yes he says rocket landing about 200 times a day," Grimes responded. "Its very heartwarming."

But he's also really taking the failed launches to heart, which isn't exactly surprising for a two year old.

"He has destroyed them all because he doesnt realize they arent real and so he rips off the boosters and whatnot trying to emulate a real rocket then accuses me of trickery for giving him fake rockets and becomes inconsolable," Grimes added in a follow-up.

"Did he say if it cleared Max q?" business columnist and Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance responded, referring to the point during a launch when a rocket reaches maximum dynamic pressure, the scariest point after which engineers can let out a sigh of relief.

Musk and Grimes reportedly parted ways after dating for three years last year. X was born in May 2020. His sister, nicknamed "Y," was born via surrogate in December, though both parents kept the birth secret for several months.

Includingtwo more twins, birthed by one of Musk's top executives in November 2021 which he also kept secret until reporters discovered the paperwork Musk now has nine children that we know of.

No wonder at least one of them has already expressed interest in following his footsteps.

More on Musk's children: Experts Say Elon Musk Messed Up by Having Secret Children With His Employee

Read more:
Elon Musk's Two-Year-Old Son Frustrated When Toy Rocket Won't Reach Orbit - Futurism

NASA is paying Boeing double what it's paying SpaceX for the same service. Expensive Tickets

NASA is will be paying Boeing twice as much for each Starliner seat to the International Space Station than it's paying SpaceX for equivalent Crew Dragon tickets, Ars Technica reports, in a price differential that's becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile as Boeing has yet to successfully launch a single astronaut into orbit.

This week, the space agency confirmed that it has awarded SpaceX with five additional crewed missions to the station, bringing the total up to 14 through 2030, at which point the station is scheduled to finally be retired.

Boeing was awarded contracts for six crewed flights throughout the same time period but is still getting almost as much funding from NASA as SpaceX.

That means, according to Ars' calculations, that NASA will spend $183 million for each seat on board a Boeing Starliner across all planned missions, while it's pay SpaceX just $88 million per seat which is less than half.

Given Boeing's plagued development of its Starliner the capsule failed to reach a stable orbit during its first catastrophic test flight back in December 2019 it seems like an awfully steep price that's becoming harder to justify with every delay.

The company has made little progress since then, limping into orbit during its second attempt in May while suffering engine failures along the way, but with no crew on board.

The first crewed Starliner mission is tentatively scheduled for early next year, with NASA assigning two brave souls to take the capsule for its inaugural crewed test ride back in June.

In the longer term, Boeing may also struggle finding available rockets to launch the spacecraft, with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) retiring its Atlas V rocket after six Starliner missions, Ars reports.

That means the company have have to turn to the ULA's other unproven Vulcan rocket, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin or even SpaceX for a rocket ride.

Since NASA's Commercial Crew program is fixed price, Boeing will likely have to shoulder the costs for any incurred budget overruns. In fact, sources told Ars the Starliner program has already proven to be a major money drain for the company.

In short, Boeing is far behind SpaceX's immense progress at this point, which means NASA will likely have even more difficulties justifying the billions of dollars it's spending to keep both companies in the running.

READ MORE: NASA will pay Boeing more than twice as much as SpaceX for crew seats [Ars Technica]

More on Boeing: Piece Falls Off Boeing Starliner as It Trundles Toward Launchpad

Original post:
NASA Paying SpaceX Half of Boeing's Price to Launch Astronauts - Futurism

We're still not entirely convinced he's real.Fool You Once

A college student and visual effects artist named Curt Skelton managed to convince countless users on TikTok that he was a fake character created by a different visual effects enthusiast, Input reports.

It's a fascinating and mind-bending prank that shows how difficult it's become to tell digital effects trickery from the real thing, especially given the rise of photorealistic deepfakes and AI image generators.

In a video that's been watched over 13.5 million times on the platform, Skelton claimed that he was a 21-year-old visual effects artist Zahra Hussain, arguing that he or rather she had used the AI-powered tool DALL-E to generate an image, which was then wrapped around a 3D frame and animated.

"Will artificial intelligence replace the role of visual effects artists?" Skelton asks rhetorically in the video. "It already has, I'm not real," the video continues, Curt's voice melting into that of another person, identified as Hussain. "Curt Skelton is a fake character I made using multiple AI-powered programs, and here's how I did it."

But the ruse proved to be just a little too convincing.

"I dont know what to believe," one user replied.

"I am having a crisis is she being honest or not," another chimed in.

As it turns out, both Hussain and Skelton are real visual effects artists. Skelton isn't a character created by Hussain, though they did collaborate on the prank.

"He had a full idea down ready to go," Hussain told Input, referring to Skelton coming to her with the idea. "He brought me onboard with his enthusiasm."

Skelton himself has some regrets about the whole thing.

"I dont blame the people who thought it was real," he told Input.

That's partially because it really started to escalate.

"People flooded my Instagram with comments asking if I was real and also my girlfriends Instagram, letting her know that I was in fact a robot," he added.

But at the end of the day, Skelton thinks it was all fair game.

"The goal was never to trick people," Skelton told Input. "They did that to themselves."

READ MORE: How one TikToker convinced folks he was an AI-generated character [Input]

View post:
TikToker Fools Fans Into Thinking He Was Created With CGI - Futurism