107025982
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AppleHoshi writes:
The BBC is reporting that an accidental fire at Tesla's Gatwick Service Centre in the U.K. has damaged "at least half" of the facility. Initial reports are that the fire did not begin in the service area itself, but started in a parts storage area and spread from there. The fire was extinguished within three hours and no staff or customers were injured.
93335533
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AppleHoshi writes:
Those of us living in Japan found out at a little after six o'clock this morning when our phones went crazy on receipt of an automated alert from the "J-Alert" system. Shortly afterwards, loudspeakers broadcast another alert (there are loudspeakers everywhere in Japan, to warn of earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons).
As normal with any disaster situation in Japan, all of the available television channels immediately switched over to full-coverage mode, with a repetition of what the situation was ("There's a missile heading in the direction of north-central Japan") followed by basic instructions of what to do ("If it comes down in your area, try to extinguish any fires and immediately inform your local police and fire departments").
Shortly before twenty past six we got the news that the missile had over-flown northern Japan and landed in the Pacific, about 1,000km from the coast of Hokkaido. The "all-clear" was broadcast over the local speakers a short while later.
Strange as it may seem, this all had an air of normality about it. Japan gets more than it's fair share of natural disasters, so anyone living here gets plenty of exposure to this same routine (it's just that the reason is usually an earthquake, typhoon or tsunami, rather than a megalomaniac).
78915941
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AppleHoshi writes:
The BBC is reporting that a large chunk of the SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket, which exploded shortly after take-off from Cape Canaveral earlier this year, has been found 4,000 miles away, in the sea off the Isles of Scilly. The BBC also hints that they may have discovered the cause of the failure, noting at two different places in the article that the Falcon-9 was "...sending a cargo ship to the International Space Station". No word from "Aunty" yet as to whether they attribute the failure to the inefficient aerodynamics, or just the weight of said ship, though.
