Framing It: 2.4.2020

The groundhog did not see his shadow! The Hummer is back! No, it’s not a *stealth* rocket. RISC-V motor drivers!

A Quiet Revolution, but They’re Going to Fake Motor Sounds With a Speaker

A real Hummer. Yeah, they came in pickup truck form. That’s awesome.

The Hummer began as an Army project in the 1970s to replace the aging Jeep fleet. They first saw action in Panama, then the first Gulf War, and became an icon of off-roading capability. The Hummer H1, a civilian version of the HMMWV, was first sold in the public in 1992 and it still had helicopter lift points.

General Motors bought the rights, eventually started manufacturing the Hummer, and turned it into a Chevy Colorado body kit. GM then went bankrupt.

But now, the Hummer is back.

• GM announced they are going to build the next evolution of the Hummer (H4?), and it’s going to be electric.
• The move comes as Tesla is spinning up the ‘we turned a DeLorean into a Cybertruck’ and Ford is working with several other electric truck startups.
• The electric truck is getting bro-ified, and here’s the Super Bowl commercial with LeBron to prove it:

RISC-V motor drivers

Trinamic stepper motor drivers.

Trinamic motor drivers are the defacto standard when it comes to powering stepper motors. They’re great, and they’re quiet. Now Trinamic is shipping a motor driver with a RISC-V core.

• The new family of motor drivers features an embedded RISC-V core they’re calling ‘Rocinante’. This is a terrible name, and someone over there needs to read a book.
• Most motor drivers are a bit more complex than a few MOSFETs. There’s actual intelligence in there, usually in the form of a microcontroller. The Rocinante driver is using a RISC-V core for this, which means a big-O Open motor driver.
• What’s the takeaway? If we’re lucky, we might be able to configure the overcurrent protection, the shape of the driver waveform, and other cool bits that make stepper drivers awesome.

Stealth Space Company

Astra Space, the company referred to as the ‘stealth space company’ is now out of stealth mode. The company is building a launch vehicle to carry 450 pounds of payload to low earth orbit for $1 Million per launch.

• The figure of $1M / launch for 450 pounds ($2222.22, repeating, of course) makes Astra a little bit cheaper than the current market leader, SpaceX, and is in the ballpark of the cheapest launch available. Astra is doing this by making things simple — instead of carbon fiber tanks, they’re using heavier but cheaper aluminum.
• Being cheaper while going smaller is hard. Strength of materials and square cube law and all that.
• Astra is the finalist for DARPA’s Launch Challenge, a project to launch two rockets from two different locations within a few weeks of each other.
• The first Astra launch is planned for February 21st in Alaska.

Tesla to the moon

• Tesla stock is going bonkers. Just look:

TSLA was up 20% yesterday, up to 780. It was in the mid-200s six months ago.

• Obviously, there’s going to be a 2-for-1 stock split when TSLA reaches $840.