NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 28: Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, poses for photographs ... [+] before ringing a ceremonial bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to promote the first day of trading of Virgin Galactic Holdings shares on October 28, 2019 in New York City. Virgin Galactic Holdings became the first space-tourism company to go public as it began trading on Monday with a market value of about $1 billion. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Virgin Galactic (SPCE:NYSE) blasted off on Valentines Day 2020, rising more than 21% to a 52-week high despite a falling stock market. The company was founded in 2004 by Sir Richard Branson (#478 on the Forbes billionaire list with, $4 billion) and has yet to earn a profit.

Why did the stock rocket upward? The company made a three-hour positioning flight. It flew its passenger spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, from Mojave Airport in California to its commercial headquarters at Spaceport Americas Gateway to Space building in New Mexico.

But the simple flight was, as the company puts it with its typical hype, another vital step on its path to commercial service.

The transfer of the spacecraft to its long-promised Spaceport America base is indeed big step in the companys 15-year journey to credibility. Typical of the companys history of hype is its exciting website. It opens with a little aircraft flying over the desert and suddenly belching rocket fire, along with video of an astronaut at the controls of a vibrating spaceship.

The product has been pre-sold to more than 600 would-be space tourists in 60 countries who have put down deposits on future flights.

Virgin Galactic Founder Sir Richard Branson demonstrates a spacewear system, designed for Virgin ... [+] Galactic astronauts, at an event October 16, 2019 in Yonkers, New York. - At the event Virgin Galactic and Under Armour unveiled the worlds first exclusive spacewear system for private astronauts. (Photo by Don Emmert / AFP) (Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)

But before Virgin Galactic reached orbit in the stock market in October of 2019 through a reverse-merger maneuver, it suffered a well-publicized series of reverses and controversies that might have derailed another company.

The opportunity to build the Spaceport, for example, was won by New Mexico in a bidding war with California. But with more than $250 million in New Mexico taxpayer money spent, the spaceport was largely unused for years. As the Atlantic put in in 2018, Although the spaceport has been flight-worthy since 2010, the first launch by its anchor tenant, Virgin Galactic, still hasnt taken off.

Of course, the biggest setback was the tragic 2014 crash of the original SpaceShipTwo on a test flight, which killed one pilot and injured another. The spacecraft was destroyed. But with more than a billion in capital raised from the likes of Abu Dhabi and Boeing, among others, Virgin Galactic soldiered on, with this weeks transfer of the space craft a major milestone for the company.

On the flight, the carrier aircraft, VMS Eve (named for founder Sir Richard Bransons mother) ferried SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity out of Mojave, where Virgin Galactics manufacturing and test facilities are base. (Virgin says the building of two additional spacecraft is well underway in Mojave.) The pair landed at 15:49MT, where Virgin says it was greeted by an enthusiastic group of teammates who will operate the spaceship in New Mexico.

This captive carry flight also let Virgin engineers evaluate VSS Unity for over three hours at high altitude and cold temperatures, which the company says are difficult to replicate at ground level. The flight was also an opportunity for Italian Air Force test pilot Nicola Stick Pecile to become the fifth pilot to complete a flight in VSS Unity.

As part of the getting ready for space process, Virgin Galactic has moved 100 team members to New Mexico, hired 70 local people, and now has transferred the space craft and carrier ship.

With the arrival of SpaceShipTwo in the New Mexico desert, Virgin Galactic says it will launch captive carry and glide flights from the New Mexico base so the spaceflight team can coordinate with Virgins airspace and ground control. After the glide tests, the team will carry out rocket-powered test flights from Spaceport America to continue to evaluate the spacecrafts performance, including final spaceship cabin and customer experience evaluations in preparation for the start of commercial spaceflight operations.

WhiteKnightTwo, carrying SpaceShipTwo, takes flight over Spaceport America, northeast of Truth Or ... [+] Consequences, on October 17, 2011 in New Mexico. Sir Richard Branson was on hand to host the Keys To A New Dawn event, for the dedication of Virgin Galactic's new home at Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport in southern New Mexico, where the Spaceport America Terminal Hangar Facility will serve as the operating hubfor Virgin Galactic and is expected to house two WhiteKnightTwos and five SpaceShipTwos, in addition to all of Virgin's astronaut preparation facilities and mission control. AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. BROWN (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

The irrepressible Sir Richard Branson, a founder of the company, has vowed to be among the first customers, as a sort of human proof of concept. As the Virgin Galctic website trumpets, Together we open space to change the world for good.

Branson will turn 70 in July. But as his improbable career shows, the British billionaire might just pull it off.

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Is Virgin Galactic And Its Version Of Space Travel Finally For Real? - Forbes

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LANGSTON, Okla. (KFOR) - A local university has teamed up with NASA to study the effects of micro-gravity on astronauts.

"Today is a big day. We're going to sign a document that establishes a relationship between NASA and Langston University," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a new partnership with the university to study the effects of micro-gravity on astronauts-- something that is key when considering long-term space travel.

"The research that will be done at Langston University is going to give us the counter measures that are necessary so humans are healthy all the way to Mars and all the way home," Bridenstine.

Students are also focused on ways to boost astronauts' immune systems. One strange fact about space travel is that dormant viruses-- like chickenpox--can activate during space-flight.

"We're trying to see what happens if we use plant extracts or natural countermeasures and seeing how that will affect the immune system to increase it, Myshal Morris said.

They will send a payload of biological experiments to the international space station in August-- all aimed at supporting an astronaut's health in no gravity.

"Maybe you're flying all the way to Mars at that point, and there's no way for you to get healthy so we have to make sure we mitigate against that," Bridenstine said.

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NASA, Langston University partner to keep astronauts healthy for future long-term space travel - KFOR Oklahoma City

The finding by Lockheed Martin and North Carolina State University effectively sinks one of the big issues in missions to Mars and beyond. A simple, easily-applied layer of powder can be an effective defense against radiation. This procedure would be marginally more difficult than any other type of assembly on any type of vehicle, like putting duco on a car. This, it turns out, is a baseline solution for one of anti-space rhetorics more banal objections. Consider for a moment a large number of people obviously dedicated to raising objections but never finding solutions. The theoretical objections to space exploration are almost unbelievably tedious in their dogma. Lockheed Martin and North Carolina State University had the insight and acumen to simply find the compound, evaluate it, and pin down a highly productive use for the material. The everythings impossible BS has to goConsider also the knowledge base required to make a finding like this. Now consider the lack of knowledge required for the everythings impossible approach to space travel and other future aspirations. Interesting contrast, isnt it? Now consider this Cheap, effective radiation shielding has a lot of practical uses. Satellites, for example, or systems vulnerable to solar flares, spring to mind. Why would such an important subject be so utterly neglected, never mind denigrated, by people so passionate about proving the impossibility of critical future needs? Sometimes this BS is qualified by the use of phrases like existing technology cant, but weve just had 200 years of massive technological advances, based entirely on solving problems like that. Case in point Artificial gravityA classic case of everythings impossible in the same context as radiation shielding is the spaceflight zero gravity issue. Long times in zero gravity lead to a range of physical risks for space travelers. Not least of these are muscle degeneration and leaky astronaut circulation issues. These are real problems, and proposals have been stymied for years by the everythings impossible argument. There are pages and pages of discussion on artificial gravity, and even more pages of actual designs, some dating back decades. Some of these designs are, to put it mildly gutsy, ambitious and deserve lots of credit for getting out of the pedantic box and staying there. The only thing holding back proper experimentation and research is the everythings impossible argument. The artificial gravity issue is critical to future space exploration. It doesn't matter whether anyone thinks it's possible or impossible; it must be done. One of the classic early cases of destroying these totally negative everythings impossible arguments was in 1903. An academic wrote to his friend that everything had already been discovered, and that science would inevitably follow the ideas of the 19th century. Six months later, the Wright Brothers took off. A bit later, mass production, electronics, genetics, space flight, and the 20th century obliterated that sort of thinking forever. Total obliteration is where everythings impossible needs to go, right now. Its a useless view of anything. Lockheed Martin and North Carolina State University have delivered a massive hit to this baseless idiocy with their research. Keep hitting these do-nothing dogmas until theres nothing left to hit. When you hit light speed, hit the accelerator. If the universe doesnt like it, it can get out of the bloody way.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com

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Op-Ed: Rust shield vs space radiation Debunking the space travel BS - Digital Journal

Comparing todays computers to their famous ancestors is a popular pastime.

As we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing last year, the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) became a particularly juicy target. The analysis, of course, showed just how much more powerful the chips used in common smartphones are than the computers that got us to the moon. Not too shocking, but amazing nonetheless.

For fun, Forrest Heller, a software engineer at Apple who previously worked on Occipitals Structure 3D scanner, thought hed cast around for a different comparison. How would far more basic chips, say, the ones in USB-C chargers, compare to the AGC?

Heller took a deep and detailed look and came to a fairly startling conclusioneven these modest chips can easily go toe-to-toe with the computer that got us to the moon.

Lets start with the caveats.

No USB-C charger on the market was designed to survive space travel. Goes without saying, but hey. Also, Heller says he didnt dive into how many external devices the AGC supported, and hed have to do more digging to find out if his chosen chargers chip would satisfy Apollos needs (not to mention 1960s-era voltages might be too high for it). Finally, as is often the case in space-rated devices where the price of failure is high, the AGC had a lot of redundancy built in (it ran calculations three times). Heller decided to leave this redundancy out of his final conclusions (though he may return to it).

So, how do the two stack up?

Heller looked at three USB-C chargers and chips and ultimately chose the most powerful, the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2 and its Cypress CYPD4225 chip, for his thought experiment. Given the decades separating one from the other, the comparison is not at all straightforward. Much of Hellers work is in making the conversion. (For the technically inclined and curious, be sure to read his post for a detailed blow-by-blow.)

Here are the highlights: Heller found the CPU in the Anker charger is 563 times faster than the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer. Which is impressive, but speed isnt all, Heller notes. NASA scientists opted for memory over speed. A small delay was worth the ability to load a bigger, more useful program. That is, the computers capability trumps speed.

And here, Heller found the two are a bit more comparable.

The Anker PowerPort Atom PD2 has a little over twice the RAM and can store up to 1.78 times more instructions than the AGC. That means that while no charger bought stock on Amazon is ever going to send astronauts to the moon, in theory, you could load an equivalent software package to perform the tasks required by the Apollo spacecraft.

All those caveats in mind, Heller concludes youd only need the computing power of four of these Anker USB-C chargersone for each of the three computers on the command and lunar modules and one for the computer riding the Saturn V boosterto get to the moon.

Now, this isnt to slander the Apollo Guidance Computer. Not at all. The AGC was amazing.

It was one of the first and most significant computers to use silicon integrated circuit chipsthe same basic technology behind the chips we use todayand was about the size of a few shoe boxes when computers were rooms packed with vacuum tubes. Without the AGC, no human pilot could have kept the Apollo spacecraft on course to the moon and back. Probably most incredible was how much it did with how little. You might say a USB-C charger is the opposite: Notable for how little it does with how much.

And thats really the point, isnt it?

Computers were rare and lovingly handcrafted back then; now theyre a commodity. Which is why you can put the equivalent of NASAs moonshot computer in a wall charger and sell it for $54.99. Its why 7 of the worlds top 10 public companies by market capitalization make a living navigating and adding to an ocean of computation, and Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet alone are worth almost $5 trillion on the open market.

So, due respect to the original. And with so much more power at our fingertips, lets remember the AGC and make the most of all that potential to do awe-inspiring work.

Image Credit: NASA

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Could a USB-C Charger's Chip Get You to the Moon? This Guy Did the Math so You Don't Have To - Singularity Hub

Imagine being confined to a metal cell with a couple of other people and few amenities for months or even years. Maybe after that, youll be moved to a new compound, but you still have no privacy and extremely limited communication with your family and anyone else in the outside world. You feel both crowded and lonely at the same time, and yet no one comes to treat your emerging mental-health problems.

While this might sound like life in prison, it could just as easily be life as a deep-space explorer, in a sardine can of a rocket hurtling to Mars or a more distant world. Despite years of research by NASA and others, scientists have little insight into the psychological, neurological and sociological problems that will inevitably afflict space travelers battling depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and personality clashes many millions of miles away from home. Sure, a growing body of research now documents the impact of microgravity on ones brain and body, along with the exercises and medical attention needed to mitigate the effects. But social isolation, limited privacy, interpersonal issues, along with vast separation from loved ones, remain relatively unexplored.

Even massive Star Trek spaceshipswith plenty of space per personcome with counselors on board, but what if the crew member with counseling training gets injured or falls ill during a critical moment? If morale plummets and rapport among the team disappears, an emergency situation could spell the end of both the astronauts and the mission.

Space confronts us with many fascinating worlds and phenomena. But we have to traverse the void to reach them, and almost any trip will be long and boring before we arrive. Peeking out the little window offers the same view you saw yesterday and the day before. While a jaunt to the Moon takes just a few days, its a slow, eight-month journey or longer to Mars. A trip to the more intriguing asteroids or moons of Jupiter and Saturn such as Europa and Titan would take years. (And, just for scale, an attempt to send a crew to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, would likely take millennia.) Then, when you arrive, new challenges and more isolation await you.

Research on people in prison and solitary confinement offers lessons that deep-space astronauts could learn from. People in prison develop symptoms similar to ones reported by those stationed for long periods on the International Space Station: hallucinations, stress, depression, irritability and insomnia, all of it exacerbated when physical activity is difficult to achieve. You dont have the freedom to go outside for a peaceful stroll to clear your mind or to visit and get cheered up by old friends. In solitary confinement, the social isolation, the loneliness and monotony affect your mental state and your brain activity after only a couple of weeks, and some people never totally recover from the ordeal.

To make matters worse, communication with Earth suffers more and more delay the further one travels from home. Deep-space astronauts would benefit from messages and video calls with loved onesor better yet, virtual-reality interactions with thembut as they fly further away, it becomes less and less feasible to have those conversations. Even a highly trained team of professional, resilient people would struggle when theres an increasingly tenuous connection to everyone they know on Earth.

Its hard to imagine what these situations will be like, but NASA is trying. The agencys psychological experiments with the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) involve sequestering a six-member crew in a cramped dome for four months to a year on a remote, otherworldly spot on Mauna Loa, a rocky volcano. Over that time, participants pretend theyre living on another planet, such as Mars. Theres a 20-minute delay in written communications with mission control (which means 40 minutes between a message and its reply). The dome is equipped with extremely limited amenities (such as composting toilets and freeze-dried food). And residents can leave the habitat only for short time periods in simulation spacesuits.

As part of these experiments, participants wear devices and answer weekly questionnaires that track their heart rates, sleep quality, fatigue and changes in mood. Researchers hope to learn which individual and group qualities help to solve problems and resolve the interpersonal conflicts that inevitably arise when people are cooped up in a tiny space.

Researchers have already accumulated plenty of data, though not from the most recent mock mission. That one didnt fare as well as hopedit had to be aborted after only four days. After fixing an issue with the habitats power source, a crew member appeared to have suffered from an electric shock and needed an ambulance. After that individual was taken away, a disagreement about safety concerns resulted in another person withdrawing from the simulation, which then had to be called off.

An earlier simulation of six men squeezed into a spacecraft-like module in Moscow also produced surprising results. Those crew members developed increasing trouble sleeping and sometimes slept more than usual, becoming more lethargic and less active. One members sleep rhythm shifted to a 25-hour cycle (which is actually the length of a Martian day), making him out of sync with everyone else. Follow-up research showed that the two crew members experiencing the most stress and exhaustion were involved in 85 per cent of the perceived conflicts.

In a real mission to Mars, people will get hurt, and someone might even get killed. When heated arguments develop, cooler heads will have to prevail. Real space travel probably will have more boredom and more infighting than anything on Star Trek or Star Wars. (Theres a reason why science fiction relies on ludicrously fast speeds: it makes such trips short enough for a story.)

To minimize conflicts among the astronauts or the pain of someone suffering from a mental breakdown, experts will need to spot the signs of their flagging mental state beforehand. These future space explorers will probably undergo a battery of physical and psychological tests every day, week and month, and their data could be sent to scientists at home for analysis. Anything raising a flag of concern could then be addressed.

If theres one thing the limited research shows, its that its hard to predict who will cope best and work well together as the weeks and months, maybe even years, wear on. Many factors can boost the chances of success, however, especially if crew members give each other precisely the kind of support and encouragement that people in prison are deprived of.

A well-performing team needs talented leaders and a closely knit group of people. They need to build trust between each other while theyre training, long before the rocket blasts off. Diverse, international crews could help to overcome some challenges that might come up, but that diversity also sometimes results in cultural and interpersonal problems. A larger crew would likely perform better than a smaller one, but the teams size will always be limited by how much weight and fuel can be launched.

Once theyre in space, people need to keep busy, and they need to think they have something worthwhile to do, even if its actually of limited value. They also need a tiny bit of privacy and entertainment at times, which might include something they brought from home or a simulation of the family and friends they left behind. While at work, the crew members need clear goals and procedures to follow in a wide range of situations. Only people shown to be resilient under pressure for long periods and who have strong teamwork skills even in stressful, sleep-deprived conditions should be part of the crew.

But this is just a start. Two out of 135 space shuttle missions ended in disaster, both for unforeseen engineering problems, but none of them really faced the psychological tests that more perilous, more distant missions will have.

Humans love to explore. Its in our blood. But setting foot on the Red Planet in 20 or 30 years is a more daunting task than anything else ever attempted. To make sure our quest to explore Mars and more distant worlds continues, we have to keep examining not just the engineering challenges but the challenges of our own minds.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Image Credit: NASA

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How to Optimize Your Headspace on a Mission to Mars - Singularity Hub

It's Valentine's Day, but you've probably had enough of Cupid by now. Love is great and all, but sometimes you just need a box of matches more than a matchmaker. Not every stock that sweeps you off your feet will be a winner, and I have three investments that I think will be heartbreakers.

Himax Technologies (NASDAQ:HIMX),Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), and Virgin Galactic(NYSE:SPCE) are three stocks that are flying high this year, but susceptible to selling off in the near future. Let's go over why these three market darlings may ultimately break your heart.

Image source: Getty Images.

Among the more unlikely stocks hitting new 52-week highs on Thursday is Himax Technologies, a designer of display drivers and other semiconductor products. The stock has nearly doubled this year, up 83% in 2020 after announcingbetter-than-expected preliminary financial resultslast month. The stock is making hearts go aflutter this week by actually posting those fourth-quarter results and issuing encouraging guidance.

Revenue for the fourth quarter clocked in at $174.9 million, declining 8% from a year earlier. A small gain in its small and medium display drivers segment was more than offset by a 22% plunge in large display drivers. Its non-display business also staged a year-over-year retreat. The excitement here is that business is actually growing sequentially, a big deal for a cyclical business like the semiconductor industry.

Guidance for the current quarter is even better. It sees an 8% to 18% year-over-year increase in the first quarter. It has historically posted a sequential top-line decline in the first quarter, but it's eyeing a 1% to 10% advance this time around during the seasonally sluggish period. The headwinds that it was warning about a few months ago are now tailwinds, with Himax eyeing positive momentum across its smartphone, tablet, and automotive display lines.

This all sounds like good news, but Himax has a habit of disappointing investors. The stock has only moved higher in one of the past six years. The only year in that time that it did move higher -- nearly doubling in 2017 the way it is right now -- it would go on to fall precipitously in each of the two following years.

This will probably be the most controversial of the three names on my heartbreaker list, but it's hard to justify the electric-car maker's stock more than tripling over the past six months. Revenue rose 2% inits latest quarter, and while it did see a 23% increase in the number of cars it delivered during the period it was basically consumers shifting to the cheaper Model 3 at the expense of the older and pricier S and X models.

The bullish narrative here is that Tesla should be valued more as a tech stock than a conventional automaker. Well, on that front, we're seeing ASPs (average selling prices) move lower given the product mix shift for a business that is low margin by tech standards.

I'm not bearish on Tesla. Analysts see revenue more than tripling within the next three years and I don't disagree with that. Wall Street pros see profits exploding skyward at this point, and I'm applauding. However, Tesla stock is a volatile beast. The effervescent bullishness for a company behind big-ticket products in an economy that can't be buoyant forever is a problem. Even bulls wouldn't be surprised if Tesla stock closes out the year below Thursday's $804 close. The median analyst price target is $506. The company is a long-term winner, but the same can't be said about the near-term prospects for the stock with its $153 billion enterprise value.

All three of these stocks are taking off this year, but Virgin Galactic is the only one that has more than doubled in 2020. Space tourism for the masses, for now, is just a billionaire's dream. True to its Virgin moniker, this is Sir Richard Branson's dream for space travel. He competes against other moneyed market icons Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Tesla's Elon Musk (SpaceX).

These are three pretty smart billionaires piloting these three pet projects, and since Virgin Galactic is the one venture that is now publicly traded, it's easy to see why space buffs with stars in their eyes are flocking to the stock. Branson hopes to start taking folks willing to shell out $250,000 on their first trip to the edge of space as soon as later this year.

Virgin Galactic dreams of a future of Earth-orbiting hotels, science labs, and transcontinental service, but folks are paying up just for the experience of going up to the edge of space -- joining the 50-mile high club to be technically considered an astronaut -- in a reusable vehicle. Hundreds of wealthy consumers have already booked with Virgin Galactic, but we're still decades, if not longer, away where this becomes anything other than a novelty. As the lone public play with a thin float, this is going to have more ups and downs than Avenue 5. Space travel is a gamble at this point, and it's why Virgin Galactic is a risky wager after soaring 105% so far this young year.Investing in IPOscan be risky, but this particular newbie is out of this world in more ways than one.

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3 Stocks That Will Only Break Your Heart - Motley Fool

Whether were staring into the depths of a campfire or watching a Space Shuttle burn 500,000 gallons of fuel as it rises off the launchpad, mankinds obsession with fire is so innate we almost take it for granted. Yet fire has catalyzed the human races most significant innovations; its helped us survive and flourish.

At the same time, the path that took us from hunching around a lightning-struck tree for warmth to carrying lighters in our pockets has many reminders of fires volatilityfrom the epic scope of The Great Chicago Fire to the explosion of the oil rig Deepwater Horizon. Fire comes with a big fat warning sticker, but nonetheless, its mans most essential tool.

Almost every primitive culture has a story about how man came to harness fire, and many of these stories involvecuriouslypetty theft. From the famed Greek myth of Prometheus snatching fire from Zeus and handing it to man (thanks for that, bud, and sorry about the whole bird-eating-your-liver thing), to the Native American story of Rabbit stealing fire from the bloodthirsty Weasels, to the Polynesian legend of Maui taking fire from the birds during a fishing trip for his mother, our desire to control the element has always run up against our better instincts.

Without fireand later, without combustionthere would be no skyscrapers, air travel, International Space Station, bourbon, or medium-rare steaks.

The themes of thievery make sense. In the days of early man, fire was our most valuable possession. Sculptor Paul Manship summed up this sentiment in his art. Behind his famous statue of Prometheus in New York Citys Rockefeller Center, he paraphrased the Greek dramatist Aeschylus, noting that fire proved to mortals a means to mighty ends.

Without fireand later, without combustionthere would be no skyscrapers, air travel, International Space Station, bourbon, or medium-rare steaks. The element has unlocked and enabled some of the greatest industrial and technological achievements in human history.

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Its impossible to know when the first fire was made, but we can speculate at its earliest major use: cooking, says Alan Rocke, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of the history of science and technology at Case Western Reserve University.

Cooking with heat broadened early mans palate by killing off potentially dangerous microbes in formerly unsafe foods. Fish and beef are at their juiciest and free of illness-causing bacteria at 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Rabbit is safe at 160F; chicken at 165F. Fire tenderizes meat (pulled pork falls apart at 205F), but at 330F it also triggers the Maillard reaction (browning) to give steak a mouth-watering sear.

Find Your Fuel

Keep seasoned woodmeaning it's been air or kiln driednear the fireplace (a couple of days indoors should dry out most pieces). Wood with rough surfaces will catch easier than smooth wood. For tinder, gather two handfuls of twigs and break them so they resemble a No. 2 pencil in length and diameter. Half a section of newspaper or a grocery store mailer will work as kindling.

Shape Your Kindling

After making sure your chimney's damper is open, tear the newspaper into two-inch-wide lengths and rub the strips between your fingers so they separate into ribbons. Put the ribbons in the fireplace in a mound the size of a tennis ball. Rest some of your tinder on top of the mound and lean more tinder on those twigs to create a little hut around the paper.

Prime Your Chimney Fuel

In wintertime, cold air coming down your chimney can suppress a fire and push smoke into your house. "Priming the flue" reverses the draft. To do this, roll up a spare piece of newspaper, light one end like a torch, and stick it up your chimney for a few moments. The rising hot air will push the cold air out of the chimney, allowing smoke to escape.

Light It Up

Light the paper. As it ignites, lean larger pieces of tinder against the hut. After those catch, add a fuel log on top of the hut, being careful not to smother the flames. To help the wood catch, blow air across the bottom of the fire where the newspaper meets the surface of the fireplace. Don't have a fireplace tool set? Use sturdy metal kitchen tongs to move the wood around.

Harvard professor and primatologist Richard Wrangham, Ph.D., suggests that the invention of cooking fed evolution itself by unlocking energy-giving nutrients for our ancestors evolving brains and bodies.

In fact, Wrangham suggests that our digestive tracts evolved as a result of discovering cooking. Human guts are 56 percent small intestine and 17 percent colon, while those respective numbers for chimps are almost the opposite: 23 and 52 percent. Translation: Chimp guts are better at breaking down plant fibers and meat collagen than human ones. We need blenders, food processors, and sweet, sweet heat to help our bodies absorb food in a way our guts can handle, says Rocke.

Around 10,000 BCE, our cavemen ancestors began to ditch hunting and gathering in favor of the farming life, and our usage of fire diversified. We started baking, defending our land from predators (the flashpoint of a sabertooth-warding wooden torch is 572F), and firing pottery (clay particles fuse at 1,650F). You can do some things with bowls made from reeds, says Rocke, but to make containers useful for cooking, you need fire.

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When wood reaches its flashpoint, the heat exorcises impurities like water vapor, sulfur compounds, and nitrogen compounds, leaving essentially pure carbon behindcharcoal. This substance burns hotter than normal wood, and throughout history, more heat has led to better tech.

The Hittites were some of the most prolific iron producers of the Bronze Age (33001200 BCE), and evidence suggests they were among the first ancient empires to discover that they could prevent their tools and weapons from rusting by forging steel from iron and charcoal. When charcoal fuses with iron ore, it acts as a reducing agent, attracting oxygen away from the metal. It also lowers irons melting point.

This lower heat threshold allowed the Hittites to produce more durable iron weapons on a mass scale. It also helped them gain trade leveragein the 13th century BCE, a Hittite king sent another ruler an iron dagger as appeasementand gave them a tactical edge over their bronze-bound opponents, including the mighty ancient Egyptians.

The invention of charcoal was a great asset to society because it enabled all these high-temperature processes, Rocke says. You can do some metallurgy without charcoal, but you cant make iron or steel, both of which require a blast furnace.

It isnt certain how the Hittites mass-produced malleable iron and steel, but archaeologists are confident that blast furnaces operated in China as early as the 5th century BCE. Blast furnaces liquefy metals at 3,000F. In ancient China, this meant the introduction of cast iron, the ultra-malleable, ultra-rust-resistant material the Western world has used in cannons, bridges, and, yup, the cast iron skillet in your kitchen that can withstand 2,000F.

BettmannGetty Images

No image captures the intersection of fire and modern industry better than a burning oil derricks column of flame. After Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859, people began to refine that oil over a fire and distill it into some of the tentpole resources of modern life: kerosene, diesel, and gasoline, the last of which could be boiled off and condensed between 104401F.

Early on, Americans used these resources mostly to illuminate our cities and homes, but in the mid-to-late 19th century, gasoline became fuel for a more adrenal, exciting purpose: helping us go far and go fast. The liquid-fuel internal-combustion engine burns a mixture of gasoline and air to create a combustion that expands gases inside the engine to push the pistons and rotate the crankshaft.

This simple fire-powered design became the basis of modern transport, from the Wright brothers plane at Kitty Hawk, to the refurbished Challenger 2, which topped 448 miles per hour and broke the land speed record in 2018, to the 2,300-ton diesel engines that power container ships through the Panama Canal today.

Gasoline had great advantages over electricity or gaseous fuels: energy density, weight, volume, Rocke says. You needed those differences if you were going to put your power plant [your fuel source] on a moving object.

In 1900, just 22 percent of American automobiles were powered by gas; but thanks to Henry Fords mass-production methods, the invention of the self-starting ignition in 1912, and our newfound need for speed, the internal-combustion engine gained supremacy among autos. Fire was powering us toward modern life.

This modernization put fire and combustion at the crossroads of practicality and danger once again. The early 1900s were fraught with fatal conflagrations. Chicagos Iroquois Theater fire in 1903 killed more than 600 people, and in 1910, the Big Blowup wildfire in Idaho, Washington, and Montana killed at least 85 people as it reduced 3 million acresan area about the size of Connecticutto ashes.

These fires prompted changes: The Iroquois fire led to the invention of the emergency exit panic bar for doors, and the Big Blowup led to the development of some prescribed-burn containment techniques. But they also served as reminders of the risks that come with implementing combustion in our everyday lives.

Harness the Power of Fire

Today, Rocke suggests the advances wrought by fire have ironically taken us past it. Many energy and power advances of the 20th century dont involve combustion: Nuclear energy relies on a physical reaction rather than a chemical one, and renewable energies like solar, wind, and water power skirt combustions literal explosiveness. We understand now there are costs of powering the world with fire, from deforestation to pollution to climate change. Going forward, we have to reconcile these downsides with fires awesome potential.

Because it is awesome. Fire sparks the reaction between aluminum and ammonium perchlorate that turns solid rocket fuel into the driving force of space travel (NASAs rocket boosters reach 5,000F during launch). When fire is used to distill alcohol (which evaporates at 173F), were treated to things like Four Roses Single Barrel bourbon and Blantons Original.

Every time you strike a match, the stroke of friction between the match head and the box turns the boxs red phosphorus to white, and it takes just 86F for white phosphorus to combust. Then you have fire at your fingertips.

Its hard not to stare at that little flame. Simple combustion still inspires us at a basic, primal level, whether were throwing another log on the fireplace or sitting around a backyard bonfire. As Rocke affirms: Fire is so elemental, it will never go away.

Read more here:

Why Fire Is the Greatest Tool of All Time - Popular Mechanics

Editors note: The opinions in this article are the authors, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft News or Microsoft. MSN Travel Voices features first-person essays and stories from diverse points of view. Click hereto see more Voices content from MSN Lifestyle, Health and Travel.

Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastianpoured fuel on an alreadyfiery, ragingdebate this past week when he suggested passengers should first ask and receive permission from the person behind them beforeleaning backtheir seat.

The proper thing to do is if youre going to recline i somebody that you ask if its OK first, he said.

Earlier in the week, a videowent viralof an agitated American Airlines passengerpunching the seat andchewing out a fellow traveler for failing to do so.

Like chronic territorial feuds between warring tribes, the greatairlineseat space battles are not a recent phenomenon, though the intensity and frequency of them seem to be escalating.In fact, back in 2003, Ira Goldman, a former Senate aide, invented and began selling the Knee Defender a small device that hooks onto the back of the tray table and prevents the person in front of y

As its popularity began rising and tempers along with it, airlines took notice andprohibitedits use. So, like fireworks, its one of those rare items thats not illegal to buy but which youre technically not allowedto use.

Goldman has long defended the product, suggesting its use could result in something of a dtente in the skies.

It gives you the chance to be human beings, he said. Do you want the conversation to start before the laptop screen is cracked or after its cracked?

The Knee Defenderis adjustable andallows for seats to recline in degrees. Its not an all or nothing proposition.

Reaction to Bastians recommendationthis weekto negotiate space has run the gamut from hearty agreement to outraged defiance.

Civility and courtesy are always a good thing, especially when youre flying 40,000 feet up in the air, butthe suggestion ofDeltas chief and even Goldmans ingenious entrepreneurial fix areignoring the root of the problem.

In a desperate attempt to maximize revenue, airlines havefor decadesbeen shrinking both the width and pitch of seats. In the 1950s and 60s long considered the golden age of jet travel, the distance between seatswasas much as36 inches. Today, someare as close as 28 inches apart and as narrow as 17, down from 20 a few decades ago.

Industry executives justify thegreat shrinkage by pointing to the economic realitiesof the business, a claim thatsbuttressedby howfew of the airlines of my childhood still exist today. I have great memories ofwelcoming my dad homeat JFKscircularPan Am terminal or being mesmerized by the magical, futuristic red-carpeted building that once housed TWA. As a young man, I flew Eastern, America Westand Northwest Airlines.

Theyre all gone, and withthemtheir nice, comfortable seats not to mention the once standard meals even in coach. My boys didnt believe me when I told them I was served steak and eggs on my first cross country flight between New York and San Francisco back in 1984.

But how much profit is enough and how long before the companyfinally acknowledges that theyre treatingthe customer as cattle?It seems Deltas suggestion is a subtle way of admitting what we all know that the space between seats is now bordering on the ridiculous.

At 6-foot-4, Ive grown accustomed to being jammed into my seat. I try and rationalize the discomfort by just being grateful to fly at all. I think about the pioneers who labored across the rugged and ragged plains in wooden wagons, many of them dying along the way. What kind of wimp or privileged person am I to complain about my tight space when what took my forefathers five months still only takes me fivehours?

Yet, there is still something unsavory and troublesome about the great airplaneseatsqueeze, especially for those with a disability orsomeone whose sizealready makes traveling a challenge.

I think of a friend who has arthritis, a painful and debilitating condition thats exacerbated when hes confined to tight spaces.Its just not fair and its certainly not considerate.In an age of increasing accommodation, shouldnt industries be compelled to create products that benefit not burden the consumer?

Of course, thegreatseat debate is big business. Now, with most airlines, you dont just buy a ticket you have to also buy your seat and if you want more room, well, youre going to pay for it. Im a capitalist and I get it. Its just irritating and leaves me feeling increasingly fleeced.

Newtons third law is that for every action, theres a reaction and the foolishness of airlines to try and fit more people in the same space is literally and figuratively squeezing the customer to a breaking point.

This is going to sound self-righteous, butI gave up reclining my seatyears ago, a decision borne out of the old biblical adage to, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.Im also a bit like George McFly from Back to the Future, who famously said, I'mafraidI'm just notverygood at confrontations.

Wed all be a lot better off if the airline executives responsible for positioning the seats on airplanes would likewise follow suit.

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Give us more room, airlines! Forget permission to recline our seats - msnNOW