Tag Archives: ideas

Food trucks and concerts: Prinsjesdag to get populist overhaul – DutchNews.nl

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Prinsjesdag, the tradition-laden state opening of the parliamentary year is to get a facelift after declining crowds and an increase in protests directed at the royals, forces officials to rethink their approach.

Every year the king and queen drive through The Hague in a horse-drawn carriage, on their way to perform the opening ceremony. And on their return to their Noordeinde palace, they stand on the balcony for a few minutes and wave at the crowds.

But fewer people have been showing up to watch the procession and the royals have had to face jeers and demonstrations, particularly during the coronavirus era.

Now, officials from the royal household, the upper and lower chambers of parliament, and the government are putting together a new plan to boost the publics involvement in Prinsjesdag, documents which have been leaked to broadcaster NOS show.

Some of the traditional elements, such as the procession of four coaches, the kings reading of a speech outlining government policy, and the balcony scene will be retained. But new elements will be added in, including some sort of walk-about by the royals to meet the public, NOS said.

One suggestion is a public concert on the square next to the parliamentary complex which should be similar in atmosphere to the events hosted by popular classical music conductor Andr Rieu in Maastricht.

Other ideas include encouraging everyone to wear a hat, a performance by an artist who is popular with the young, open days at the various palaces and other royal buildings in The Hague, and a food truck festival.

The first changes should be visible on September 17 when the next Prinsjesdag takes place, but it is unclear as yet what they are likely to be.

The governments spending plans for the following year are always presented on the third Tuesday in September.

According to research published last November, 50% of the general population support the monarchy but 26% would like the Netherlands to become a republic.

Among the under 35s, almost four in 10 support the monarchy but 34% consider themselves republicans. Eleven years ago, when Willem-Alexander was sworn in as king, 80% of the population backed the monarchy.

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Food trucks and concerts: Prinsjesdag to get populist overhaul - DutchNews.nl

Calgary to further develop Aerospace Innovation Hub – Cities Today

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13 March 2024

by Jonathan Andrews

A C$3.9 million investment will enable aerospace innovators to gain access to funding, business support and the ability to validate their technologies in real-world settings at Canadas Aerospace Innovation Hub (AIH) in Calgary.

The funding comes fromOpportunity Calgary Investment Fund, managed by Innovate Calgary, and the participation of industry partners WestJet, the Calgary Airport Authority and Chapter.ai Ventures.

The [hub] represents a significant opportunity not only for our airport but also for our region, Megan Gupton (pictured above), Chief Information Officer for the Calgary Airport Authority, told Cities Today. Innovation is crucial for the aviation sector, and by fostering innovators in the aerospace industry, directly in our terminal, we anticipate substantial benefits for our airport, and broader ecosystem.

Between 2024 and 2028, the AIH is expected to support incubator programming for up to 180 companies and create 150 net new skilled, indirect jobs. As part of this, the AIH will directly fund six companies through the accelerator programme aimed at upskilling and attracting talent to the province. Through the provision of resources available from OCIF funding, the hub is expected to generateC$1.5 millionof research and development and 40 patents supported through ElevateIP Alberta.

The Calgary Airport Authority will provide both a physical space for the hub as well as opportunities for innovators to apply their solutions to real-world airport scenarios.

While providing space is a key aspect of this initiative, our airports involvement extends beyond mere accommodation, said Gupton. Hosting groups that are focused on aerospace innovation holds promise for passengers, authority staff and our partners. We envision a space where new technologies can undergo real-world testing, facilitating quick feedback loops and ultimately leading to significant advancements that enhance the aerospace ecosystem.

The hub joins theUniversity of Calgarysnetwork of four themed innovation hubs managed byInnovateCalgary,including the Life Sciences Innovation Hub, the Energy Transition Centre and the Social Innovation Hub.

The AIH is currently accepting new companies looking to expand to or withinCalgary. Entrepreneurs, start-ups, scale-ups and large corporate partners from aerospace and advanced manufacturing sectors are invited to join the AIH, adding their ideas and expertise to build a world-renowned aerospace hub.

Image: Calgary Airport Authority

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Calgary to further develop Aerospace Innovation Hub - Cities Today

A Nasa mission that collided with an asteroid didn’t just leave a dent it reshaped the space rock – theconversation.com

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A frequent idea in sci-fi and apocalyptic films is that of an asteroid striking Earth and causing global devastation. While the probabilities of this kind of mass extinction occurring on our planet are incredibly small, they are not zero.

The results of Nasas Dart mission to the asteroid Dimorphos have now been published. They contain fascinating details about the composition of this asteroid and whether we can defend Earth against incoming space rocks.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) was a spacecraft mission that launched in November 2021. It was sent to an asteroid called Dimorphos and commanded to collide with it, head on, in September 2022.

Dimorphos posed and poses no threat to Earth in the near future. But the mission was designed to see if deflecting an asteroid away from a collision course with Earth was possible through kinetic means in other words, a direct impact of a human-made object on its surface.

Asteroid missions are never easy. The relatively small size of these objects (compared to planets and moons) means there is no appreciable gravity to enable spacecraft to land and collect a sample.

Space agencies have launched a number of spacecraft to asteroids in recent times. For example, the Japanese space agencys (Jaxa) Hayabusa-2 mission reached the asteroid Ryugu in 2018, the same year Nasas Osiris-Rex mission rendezvoused with the asteroid Bennu.

The Japanese Hayabusa missions (1 and 2) fired a small projectile at the surface as they approached it. They would then collect the debris as it flew by.

However, the Dart mission was special in that it was not sent to deliver samples of asteroid material to labs on Earth. Instead, it was to fly at high speed into the space rock and be destroyed in the process.

A high-speed collision with an asteroid needs incredible precision. Darts target of Dimorphos was actually part of a double asteroid system, known as a binary because the smaller object orbits the larger one. This binary contained both Didymus the larger of the two objects and Dimorphos, which behaves effectively as a moon.

The simulations of what has happened to Dimorphos show that while we might expect to see a very large crater on the asteroid from Darts impact, it is more likely that it has, in fact, changed the shape of the asteroid instead.

The collision was of a mass of 580kg hitting an asteroid of roughly 5 billion kg. For comparison, this is equivalent to an ant hitting two buses. But the spacecraft is also travelling around 6 kilometres per second.

The simulation results based on observations of the asteroid Dimorphos have shown that the asteroid now orbits around its larger companion, Didymus, 33 minutes slower than before. Its orbit has gone from 11 hours, 55 minutes to 11 hours, 22 minutes.

The momentum change to the core of Dimorphos is also higher than one would predict from the direct impact, which may seem impossible at first. However, the asteroid is quite weakly constructed, consisting of loose rubble held together by gravity. The impact caused a lot of material to be blown off of Dimorphos.

This material is now travelling in the opposite direction to the impact. This acts like a recoil, slowing down the asteroid.

Observations of all the highly reflective material that has been shed from Dimorphos allows scientists to estimate how much of it has been lost from the asteroid. Their result is roughly 20 million kilograms equivalent to about six of the Apollo-era Saturn V rockets fully loaded with fuel.

Combining all the parameters together (mass, speed, angle and amount of material lost) and simulating the impact has allowed the researchers to be fairly confident about the answer. Confident not only regarding the grain size of the material coming from Dimorphos, but also that the asteroid has limited cohesion and the surface must be constantly altered, or reshaped, by minor impacts.

But what does this tell us about protecting ourselves from an asteroid impact? Significant recent impacts on Earth have included the meteor which broke up in the sky over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, and the infamous Tunguska impact over a remote part of Siberia in 1908.

While these were not the kinds of events that are able to cause mass extinctions like the 10km object that wiped out the dinosaurs when it struck our planet 66 million years ago the potential for damage and loss of life with smaller objects such as those at Chelyabinsk and Tunguska is very high.

The Dart mission cost US$324 million (255 million), which is low for a space mission, and with its development phase completed, a similar mission to go and deflect an asteroid heading our way could be launched more cheaply.

The big variable here is how much warning we will have, because a change in orbit of 30 minutes as was observed when Dart struck Dimorphos will make little difference if the asteroid is already very close to Earth. However, if we can predict the object path from further out preferably outside the Solar System and make small changes, this could be enough to divert the path of an asteroid away from our planet.

We can expect to see more of these missions in the future, not only because of interest in the science surrounding asteroids, but because the ease of removing material from them means that private companies might want to step up their ideas of mining these space rocks for precious metals.

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A Nasa mission that collided with an asteroid didn't just leave a dent it reshaped the space rock - theconversation.com

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program: Where Future Tech is Developed – Popular Mechanics

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What will the future of

The NIAC program has a relatively tiny budget, just a few million dollars per year. Its a drop in the bucket compared to NASAs entire expenditure (which is itself just a fraction of a percent of the entire federal budget). But the purpose of NIAC isnt to build the next rocket or design the next mission. Its here to look 20, 30, 40 years into the future, and provide seed funding to anyone with a crazy, but still plausible, idea that can radically change spaceflight as we know it.

If you want a peek into the future of humanity in space, then NIAC is your window. (Full disclosure: I have served in NIAC review committees for several years, and recently joined the external advisory council. So if this reads like Im a big fan of the program, its because I am.)

As an example of the game-changing possibilities NIAC investigates, take FLUTE, the fluidic telescope. The largest telescope flown into space is the James Webb, a massive array with a width of 6.6 meters (21.7 feet). That sounds impressive (and it is), but ground-based telescopes dwarf itthe largest one stretches more than 30 meters (98.4 feet) across. And with telescopes, you care more about the total surface area than the diameter. Placed on Earth, the James Webb would be a decent, but not groundbreaking or world-class, telescope.

But space offers so many advantages for astronomers. It gets you away from light pollution, and, more importantly, from the distorting effects of Earths atmosphere. Thats why the James Webb is able to deliver such spectacular results. However, the telescope was also the most expensive scientific mission ever flown into space, because that large of a mirror couldnt fit within existing rockets. The engineers behind the James Webb devised a clever origami-like folding mechanism, something that had never been tried before with a telescope.

The FLUTE telescope would have a 50-meter (164-foot), unsegmented primary mirror based on fluid shaping in microgravity.

In astronomy, bigger is always better. Larger mirrors allow us to see further into the reaches of the distant universe, and they give better resolution of closer objects. If we want to go bigger, we dont have a lot of options unless we get clever. The FLUTE design envisions a radical new kind of telescope mirror, one made from liquid. The idea is to launch the observatory with tanks of some highly reflective compound. Once in space, the telescope would unfurl its support beams and begin rotating, allowing its own spin to stabilize the liquid in the shape of a mirror. The best part is that the only design limit is how much liquid you can pack on board. The reference design is for a jaw-dropping, 50-meter (164-foot) telescope, which would make the James Webb look like a hobbyists toy in comparison.

If astronomy isnt your main focus, the creative people NIAC funds have some other ideas for you, like utilizing fungi to build habitats on Mars. Thats right: fungi. Known as mycotecture, the projects aim is to solve one of the most basic problems facing any future Martian mission: building structures.

We take our building materials for granted. Cement, bricks, wood, plaster, drywall, all of it is readily accessible and relatively cheap. When you want to build something on Earth, you just grab your tools, load up your materials, and go for it. But on Mars there is no wood, no drywall, no plaster, no bricks. Just a lot of red dust and pavement-like desert floor, all at temperatures usually well below freezing. For the near term, NASA and other space agencies envision bringing all our building materials along with us for the ride, which increases the cost and complexity of any crewed mission to the Red Planet.

Building material wouldnt be made of mushrooms, but from specialized strains of fungi that grow tight, interwoven webs of material. This would yield cheap and effective Martian habitats.

But what if we could build our habitats directly on Mars? Unfortunately, the Martian soil isnt a great building material on its own, and its not like well have easy access to quarries. Enter the radical NIAC idea to use fungi instead. In this project, the researchers are developing specialized strains of fungi that grow tight, interwoven webs of material. The hope is that we just need to bring along the basic foodstuffs; we can grow the walls, ceilings, and even plumbing pipes that will enable the rapid infrastructure expansion needed to maintain a long-term presence on Mars.

Even if you just want to stay warm and cozy on planet Earth, NIAC is funding a project to help youliterally to save your life from a catastrophic asteroid impact. Simply called PI, the plan is to avert disaster by blowing up an asteroid before it ever reaches our planet.

Earth is constantly under cosmic bombardment. Thankfully, most of the material crossing our orbit is small, making no more than a delightful meteor shower. About every year or so, however, a large enough rock impacts our atmosphere with a velocity of 5070,000 mph. That releases enough pure kinetic energy to be the equivalent of a nuclear weapon, but usually these detonate safely in the atmosphere over some random patch of ocean. And then there are the big ones, like the asteroids that ended the reign of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Those come every few million years, and its been a while since the last one.

The PI approach would use energy transfer to pulverize very large asteroids so that their pieces burn up in Earths atmosphere.

If we are to last as a species into the long term, then we need to protect ourselves. One way will be to settle on other worlds, giving us backup options. But even if we leave Earth, were still going to be nostalgic for it, and well probably want to prevent large space rocks from messing up the place.

Recently, NASA demonstrated the DART mission, which nudged the orbit of an asteroid. This can work for planetary defense, but only if we see the asteroid from far enough away that we can effectively deflect it. With PI, however, the game plan is different. The idea is to send a swarm of small, hypervelocity impactors straight for an incoming asteroid. Instead of trying to nudge it off course, the colliding objects would burrow themselves into the body of the asteroid, tearing it to shreds.

The resulting fragments would still be headed toward Earth, but our atmosphere is great at taking a punch. If we get the pieces small enough, we can all celebrate as we enjoy the fireworks in the sky.

All of these ideas, along with the dozens of other projects NIAC funds, are only in their initial stages of development, and have no guarantee of success. In fact, most of these projects will not pan out. But, if we want to take big swings, were going to have to accept some misses, because when we hit, we really hit! Take the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, which is currently setting records and laying the groundwork for an entirely new class of planetary exploration; NIAC inspired that project.

The best part: anyone can apply, from an established player in the space industry to a garage tinkerer. If you have an idea for the future, and you have a plausible path to getting there, then NIAC wants to hear from you. Its the only way we can make the science fiction dreams of the future become reality.

Paul M. Sutter is a science educator and a theoretical cosmologist at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University and the author of How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena and Your Place in the Universe: Understanding Our Big, Messy Existence. Sutter is also the host of various science programs, and hes on social media. Check out his Ask a Spaceman podcast and his YouTube page.

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NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program: Where Future Tech is Developed - Popular Mechanics