FLYCON 9
#001 · LANDED 0/0
Pilot
Sea state
Sim speed
Instruments · autopilot
BRAIN IN FLY MODEAutopilot is flying. Switch Pilot to Fly to hand a fruit-fly brain the controls — or Manual to try it yourself.
Vehicle
FLYCON 9
A reusable first stage that falls back from space, steers with grid fins and lands on a drone ship with a single engine that cannot throttle low enough to hover. Below 1,000 m it can be flown by 30,000 simulated neurons wired from the male fruit-fly connectome.
- Height
- 47 M154 FT
- Diameter
- 3.66 M12 FT
- Dry mass
- 25.6 T
- Landing propellant
- 7.0 T
- Engine
- 1 × MAGGOT845 KN SEA LEVEL
- Throttle
- 40–100 %CANNOT HOVER
- Leg span
- 18 M
- Pilot
- 1 × D. MELANOGASTER ♂30K LIF NEURONS
Mission
FROM CONNECTOME TO TOUCHDOWN
- 00DONE
Flight sim
2D booster physics, autopilot baseline, hex compound eyes.
- 01DONE
Connectome
MaleCNS v1.0 → 30k-neuron lamina-to-DN subgraph, event-driven LIF.
- 02DONE
Closed loop
Descending neurons fly the booster below 1,000 m. Expect splats.
- 03RESULTS
Real vs shuffled
Same neurons, scrambled wiring, same held-out scenarios.
- 04LIVE
Broadcast
Live webcast: hand the fly the controls, flip its wiring.
Experiment
DOES THE WIRING MATTER?
A 90 m drone ship is smaller than one ommatidium from 5 km, so the autopilot flies the high part and hands the booster to the fly at 1,000 m. Every condition flies the same 60 held-out scenarios through the same compound eyes. The shuffled brain keeps every neuron, sign, weight and degree — only who connects to whom changes.
What we found
- Eyes alone: 22 of 600 flights landed across the real connectome, shuffled wiring and pixel conditions.
- With instrument senses the brains landed 110 of 240 flights.
- The harness works: the same linear readout fed the true state lands 41/60 on the vertical task.
- On landings, the wiring made no measurable difference (real 57%, shuffled 60%; confidence intervals overlap).
- Does the brain add anything? The same instrument channels fed straight to the readout land 41/60; routed through the real connectome they land 34/60.
Landing rate after handover
Vertical — fly controls engine, throttle, legs
Terminal — fly controls everything
Descending-neuron firing on the way down · scenario 1000
Giant fiber · DNp01 · Hz
Looming DNs · DNp02/04/06/11 · Hz
Table view · every condition
| Task | Condition | Pilot | Landed | 95% CI | Median |vy| | Most common failure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| full | Autopilot | full descent | 41/60 | 56%–79% | 1.4 m/s | tipped into the sea (13) |
| vertical | Autopilot | after handover | 41/60 | 56%–79% | 1.4 m/s | tipped into the sea (13) |
| vertical | True state | trained readout | 41/60 | 56%–79% | 1.7 m/s | tipped into the sea (11) |
| vertical | Instruments, no brain | trained readout | 41/60 | 56%–79% | 2.3 m/s | tipped into the sea (11) |
| vertical | Real connectome · eyes | trained readout | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 81.6 m/s | hard touchdown (40) |
| vertical | Real connectome · eyes | hand-wired | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 34.8 m/s | legs not deployed (43) |
| vertical | Shuffled wiring · eyes | trained readout | 8/60 | 7%–24% | 18.0 m/s | hard touchdown (34) |
| vertical | Shuffled wiring · eyes | hand-wired | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 3.7 m/s | missed the ship (60) |
| vertical | Real connectome · + senses | trained readout | 34/60 | 44%–68% | 2.9 m/s | tipped into the sea (10) |
| vertical | Shuffled wiring · + senses | trained readout | 36/60 | 47%–71% | 3.3 m/s | tipped into the sea (10) |
| vertical | Pixels, no brain | trained readout | 8/60 | 7%–24% | 24.7 m/s | hard touchdown (38) |
| terminal | Autopilot | after handover | 41/60 | 56%–79% | 1.4 m/s | tipped into the sea (13) |
| terminal | True state | trained readout | 32/60 | 41%–65% | 4.2 m/s | missed the ship (11) |
| terminal | Instruments, no brain | trained readout | 38/60 | 51%–74% | 1.9 m/s | tipped over (11) |
| terminal | Real connectome · eyes | trained readout | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 84.1 m/s | hard touchdown (44) |
| terminal | Real connectome · eyes | hand-wired | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 37.5 m/s | legs not deployed (51) |
| terminal | Shuffled wiring · eyes | trained readout | 6/60 | 5%–20% | 22.8 m/s | missed the ship (28) |
| terminal | Shuffled wiring · eyes | hand-wired | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 3.5 m/s | missed the ship (50) |
| terminal | Real connectome · + senses | trained readout | 20/60 | 23%–46% | 3.6 m/s | missed the ship (20) |
| terminal | Shuffled wiring · + senses | trained readout | 20/60 | 23%–46% | 3.8 m/s | tipped into the sea (14) |
| terminal | Pixels, no brain | trained readout | 0/60 | 0%–6% | 88.8 m/s | hard touchdown (44) |
MaleCNS v1.0 (minconf 0.5): 30,000 neurons, 967,110 connections, 4,426 lamina inputs, 951 descending-neuron groups. Trained readouts are ridge regressions from descending-neuron rates to the autopilot's commands, trained on 40 observed flights plus 40 DAgger flights. “True state” is the same readout fed the booster's real altitude and velocities — the best a linear readout can do. Eye gain 1500 Hz. Generated 2026-09-15 02:21 UTC.