Boca Chica (Texas) – Wikipedia

Area on the Rio Grande River Delta

Boca Chica is an area on the eastern portion of a subdelta peninsula of Cameron County, at the far south of the US State of Texas along the Gulf Coast. It is bordered by the Brownsville Ship Channel to the north, the Rio Grande and Mexico to the south, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. The area extends about 25 miles (40km) east of the city of Brownsville. The peninsula is served by Texas State Highway 4also known as the Boca Chica Highway, or Boca Chica Boulevard within Brownsville city limitswhich runs east-west, terminating at the Gulf and Boca Chica Beach.

The Boca Chica area has historically consisted of Mexican land grants, Mexican and American ranches, a battlefield of the American Civil War (Battle of Palmito Ranch), a 1920s beach resort, a state park (Boca Chica State Park,[1] opened 1994), a small village (Boca Chica Village, circa 19602020), and, after the mid-2010s, an evolving private space launch facility (Boca Chica Spaceport), which includes a large SpaceX development and manufacturing facility for space vehicles and launch vehicles, and a launch complex that has been used for ground-based and flight testing since 2019 and is intended for subsequent orbital launches; both are included in the term: SpaceX South Texas launch site.[2]

Boca Chica means "small mouth" in Spanish, as the Rio Grande's flow is modest, and in droughts, the mouth of the river may disappear altogether.[3]

Transportation across Boca Chica has been an important part of the history of the area. A land transportation route existed across Boca Chica in the 19th century, starting at the Mexican port of Brazos Santiago, north of Boca Chica, and heading inland to the Rio Grande Valley area that would later become Brownsville. The shallow-water sail port at Brazos Santiago was used by sailing ships that used Brazos Santiago Pass to enter the South Bay of Laguna Madrea shallow, hypersaline, natural bayfrom the Gulf to transit goods to the mainland north of the Rio Grande.[4]:ch. 3 Historical artifacts of human usage from those eras remained as of 2013[update] illustrating road use during the MexicanAmerican War (circa 1846) and railroad use during the American Civil War. Two historical artifacts. Cypress pilings from a circa 1846 floating bridge and the "Palmetto Pilings" from a circa-1865 railroad bridge were both yet extant in 2013. Both are located within 0.5mi (0.80km) of the beach near the eastern terminus of Texas State Highway 4.[4]:338

In the late 19th century, much of the arable land on the subdelta peninsula of Boca Chica was used for ranching. Historical ranches include Tulosa Ranch, Palmito Ranch, Whites Ranch, and Cobbs Ranch.[4]:339 No historical Native American usage is known, and consultation with a number of tribes in 2013 identified no verbal record of native use of the area.[4]:339

In 1904, the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway was completed to Brownsville, which "opened the area to northern farmers who began to come to the area at the turn of the 20th century. They cleared the land, built irrigation systems and roads, and introduced large-scale truck farming and citrus farming. The new farming endeavors began a new period of prosperity around Brownsville."[4]

The availability of cheap land in the area created a strong interest in land speculation. Special trains were dispatched to bring land speculators to the area and by the early 1920s as many as 200 people a day were coming to see the land.

One of the more notable land speculation ventures was the construction of the Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica Beach. Advertised as being on the same latitude as Miami, the resort was built in the 1920s by Colonel Sam Robinson, who moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 1917. The resort had 20 daycabins available for rent, a bathhouse, and a ballroom. It was quite successful resort until 1933, when a hurricane destroyed most of the buildings. The remaining buildings were turned into a base for the US Coast Guard during World War II. As a result of the Great Depression and the hurricane damage, the owners of the property were not able to reopen the resort after the end of the war.

The devastating 1933 hurricane spurred the Works Progress Administration to take part in the dredging and construction of the Port of Brownsville, a venture that the city had been trying to complete since 1928. The port was officially opened in 1936.[4]

During the years that the ship channel was under construction, a nationally known rocketplane entrepreneur, William Swan, disappeared over Boca Chica as he attempted a rocket-powered human flight in 1933. As part of a skydiving exhibition over the Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica, he jumped out of an airplane in "an attempted manned rocket backpack flight. He disappeared into the clouds and was never seen again."[5] Swan had previously set records in 1931 with the first American rocket-powered aircraft flight over Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the "first air-launched rocketplane flight" in 1932.[5]

The completion of the port and the dredging of the Brownsville Ship Channel created a new human-made northern boundary of the Boca Chica peninsula. It cut the peninsula off from any land transport routes except from Brownsville to the east, which was also the transportation railhead for Boca Chica to the rest of the country.[4]

The Battle of Palmito Ranch is considered by some as the final battle of the conclusion of the American Civil War. It was fought 1213 May 1865, on the banks of the Rio Grande east of current Brownsville, Texas, and a few miles from the seaport of Los Brazos de Santiago.

Union and Confederate forces in southern Texas had been observing an unofficial truce since the beginning of 1865, but Union Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, newly assigned to command an all-black unit, and never having been in combat, ordered an attack on a Confederate camp near Fort Brown for unknown reasons. The Union attackers captured a few prisoners, but the following day, the attack was repulsed near Palmito Ranch by Colonel John Salmon Ford, and the battle resulted in a Union defeat. Union forces were surprised by artillery, said to have been supplied by the French Army occupying the nearby Mexican town of Matamoros.[6]

Boca Chica Beach is part of the 10,680-acre (43.2km2) Boca Chica tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The tract is a former Texas state park located in the Boca Chica Subdelta separated from Mexico by the Rio Grande. The park was acquired by the state of Texas and opened in May 1994. The state park land is now managed by the US federal government as part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.[1]

The portion of the beach north of the current Texas State Highway 4on what was historically Brazos Island, but is now connected to the mainlandwas known as Del Mar Beach prior to the second half of the 20th century.[5] This area was the location of the successful Del Mar Resort in the 1920s and early 1930s, which had 20 daycabins for rent along with a bathhouse and a ballroom.[4] Many of the resort buildings were destroyed by the 1933 hurricane.[7] Although the owners partially rebuilt and continued to operate during the 1930s, the remaining buildings were turned into a base for the US Coast Guard during World War II. As a result of the Great Depression and hurricane damage, the owners did not reopen the resort after the end of the war.[4]

An older map of Boca Chica[5] shows the existence of a ship passageBoca Chica Passfrom the Gulf into the South Bay of the Laguna Madre, several miles south of Brazos Santiago Pass, just north of the current SpaceX orbital launch site. This was from the time when Brazos Island, the duned area east of South Bay, was an island separated from the mainland. From 1846 to 1879, the King & Kennedy Steamboat service made calls at a landing in the South Bay. For sometime in the 1900s, a road bridge, called the Boca Chica Pass Bridge, went over the pass to connect the road from Brownsville to Brazos Island.[5] Storm movement of sands and tidal flats, principally from the 1933 and 1967 hurricanes have closed off the pass and connected Brazos Island to the mainland, although water still exits the southeast end of South Bay and flows beside SH 4 into the Gulf under certain weather conditions, particularly extended days of southerly winds which build up the water level at the south end of the bay at high tide allowing limited flows of bay water back to the Gulf via the highway cut through the dunes.

Boca Chica Village is the current name of a small unincorporated community in located on Texas State Highway 4, about 22mi (35km) east of Brownsville. It was formed in 1967 under another name as a land development project, and a community of about 30 ranch-style houses was built before the settlement was devastated by Hurricane Beulah later that same year, which greatly affected the progress of the would-be town.

In 2014, the village and surrounding area were chosen by SpaceX as the location for the construction of a spaceflight build-and-launch facility.[8][9] Much of the SpaceX build facility is located on land that was previously a part of Boca Chica Village, while the SpaceX test and orbital launch facilities are located two miles further east, adjacent to Boca Chica Beach.

In 2012, SpaceX named the Boca Chica area as a possible location for the construction of their future private commercial launch site.In August 2014, SpaceX announced that they had selected the area as the location for their South Texas Launch Site, and that their "control center" would actually be on land within the Boca Chica Village, while the launch complex would be located two miles to the east. Limited construction began that year,[10][4] but more extensive construction activities did not begin until approximately 2018. By May 2018, the site was expected to be used exclusively for launches of the SpaceX second-generation fully-reusable launch vehicle (which was eventually named SpaceX Starship in late 2018), and the launch complex was no longer planned to become a third launch site for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.[11]

Flight testing of the Starship second stage, with the newly designed Raptor rocket engine, began in 2019 and continued into 2021. With the village only a few miles from the test site, in August 2019, Cameron County officialsfollowing requirements set by the US regulatory authority, the FAAbegan to request village residents to stand outside their homes during any tests that involve loading of propellant fuel, due to perceived danger from shock-wave induced broken windows in the event of a test anomaly and explosion.[12] SpaceX is planning an initial orbital test flight of the entire two-stage Starship system in 2022, contingent on approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

As early as August 2020, SpaceX indicated it was looking to build a resort in South Texas with the intent to turn "Boca Chica into a '21st century Spaceport'".[13][14]

In March 2021, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk more formally announced plans to incorporate a new city in the area of Boca Chica to be called Starbase, Texas. Starbase would include the existing Boca Chica Village, the SpaceX test site and launch site, and more of the surrounding Boca Chica area.[15][16] Starbase is expected to include the land in Boca Chica Village properwhere both the legacy house community and the SpaceX build site are locatedas well as the land where the SpaceX test site and launch site is located, and more since Starbase is to be a municipality "much larger than Boca Chica."[15]

By April 2021, SpaceX was referring to the area as "Starbase" on their test flight webcasts, and Musk was openly encouraging people to move to "Starbase".[17] and projected that the population could grow by several thousand people in the next several years.[18] Starbase had also become a common term for the area amongst SpaceX fans and followers.[19]The company had not yet submitted the requisite paperwork in April 2021 to initiate the city formation process, and The Dallas Morning News reported that the "planning appears to be in the early stages".[20][needs update]

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Boca Chica (Texas) - Wikipedia

SpaceX: Where Elon Musk’s Rocket Facilities Are Located, What … – Insider

Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with little more than a handful of staff, an empty office in Los Angeles, and a mariachi band.

Today the rocket company employs more than 5,000 people, has received about $1.6 billion in funding, and is increasingly disrupting a storied (and expensive) space industry.

SpaceX has branched out from relatively small orbital rockets to heavyweight lifters that undercut the competition four-fold.

It's also developing the most expansive satellite internet network in history while pushing to build spaceships capable of sending 100 people to Mars at a time.

To get that work done, though, it's investing millions in remodeling and building new facilities all over America.

Here are the most important locations Musk and his army of SpaceX employees do their work to reach for the stars.

This story has been updated. It was originally published at 10 a.m. EDT on April 1, 2018.

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SpaceX: Where Elon Musk's Rocket Facilities Are Located, What ... - Insider

SpaceX Boca Chica beach case sparks appeal after lawsuit dismissed | Space

A dispute concerning SpaceX facilities and access to a nearby Texas beach is once again before the courts.

The Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of South Texas jointly appealed the 445th District Court's decision July 7 to dismiss a lawsuit concerning SpaceX testing of its next-generation Starship vehicle closing nearby Boca Chica Beach, the coalition said July 28.

In the dismissal, Judge Gloria Rincones argued there is "no private right of enforcement" concerning the beach access, according to KRGV.com (opens in new tab). The dismissal took place over the appellants' protests that closing the beach violates the Texas state constitution, along with access rights by traditional groups.

Related: 8 ways that SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

The Sierra Club's Brownsville organizer, Emma Guevara, stated the appeal is taking place because the beach is closed weekly to allow "a billionaire [to] launch deadly rockets near homes and wildlife."

Citing a fireball that briefly and unexpectedly engulfed Starship during testing July 12, Guevera said her family was "forced" to hear the noise, which "launched without any warning for the public."

None of the allegations have been proven in court, and the appeal does not name SpaceX among the entities pursued.SpaceX also did not respond to a Space.com request for comment.

The Boca Chica beach under dispute is located close to SpaceX's Starbase facility, where the next-generation Starship vehicle is being developed. A Federal Aviation Administration review in June allowed the development to continue as long as SpaceX addresses 75 matters to mitigate the environmental impact.

Not everyone agrees, however. The Sierra Club, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and non-profit Save RGV [Rio Grande Valley] all participated in the lawsuit alleging that restricting the beach access violates the Texas constitution.

The initial lawsuit alleged that Boca Chica Beach was closed for 196 hours, or roughly 8 days, in the first three months of 2022. In the previous year, the beach had about 600 hours, or 25 equivalent days, of closures.

Even after the lawsuit was dismissed, local residents continued to protest the beach closures, including at a unanimous vote July 14 by the Cameron County Commissioners Court to support SpaceX's Starship development, according to Texas Public Radio (opens in new tab).

Starship's team is targeting the program's first orbital flight later this year to support ambitious future plans for the program, including landing NASA astronauts on the moon and launching one of the Polaris program's private astronaut missions.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom (opens in new tab)and onFacebook (opens in new tab).

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Celebrities Are Officially Being Sued by FTX Retail Investors

The first civil suit against the crypto exchange FTX was just filed, naming FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and 11 of FTX's many celebrity ambassadors.

Welp, that didn't take long. The first civil suit against the still-imploding crypto exchange FTX was just filed in a Florida court, accusing FTX, disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and 11 of the exchange's many celebrity ambassadors of preying on "unsophisticated" retail investors.

The list of celeb defendants impressive — honestly, it reads more like an invite list to a posh award show than a lawsuit.

Geriatric quarterback Tom Brady and soon-to-be-ex-wife Gisele Bündchen lead the pack, followed by basketball players Steph Curry and Udonis Haslem, as well as the Golden State Warriors franchise; tennis star Naomi Osaka; baseballers Shoehi Ohtani, Udonis Haslem, and David Ortiz; and quarterback Trevor Laurence.

Also named is comedian Larry David — who starred in that FTX Super Bowl commercial that very specifically told investors that even if they didn't understand crypto, they should definitely invest — and investor Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" fame.

"The Deceptive and failed FTX Platform," reads the suit," "was based upon false representations and deceptive conduct."

"Many incriminating FTX emails and texts... evidence how FTX’s fraudulent scheme was designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country," it continues. "As a result, American consumers collectively sustained over $11 billion dollars in damages."

Indeed, a number of FTX promos embraced an attitude similar to the cursed Larry David commercial. In one, Steph Curry tells viewers that with FTX, there's no need to be an "expert," while a Naomi Osaka promotion pushed the idea that crypto trading should be "accessible," "easy," and "fun."

It's also worth noting that this isn't the first suit of its kind. Billionaire Mark Cuban, also of "Shark Tank" fame, was named in a class action lawsuit launched against the bankrupt lender Voyager in August, while reality TV star Kim Kardashian was recently made to pay a roughly $1.2 million fine for hawking the "EthereumMAX" token without disclosing that she was paid to do so.

The FTX suit, however, appears to be the most extensive — and high-profile — of its kind. And while a fine for a million or two is basically a one dollar bill to this tax bracket, $11 billion, even if split amongst a group of 11 exorbitantly wealthy celebs, is a more substantial chunk of change.

Of course, whether anyone actually ever has to pay up remains to be seen. Regardless, it's still a terrible look, and real people got hurt. If there's any defense here, though? At least they didn't promise to be experts.

READ MORE: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried hit with class-action lawsuit that also names Brady, Bündchen, Shaq, Curry [Fox Business]

More on the FTX crash: Experts Say Sam Bankman-fried's Best Legal Defense Is to Say He's Just Really, Really Stupid

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Celebrities Are Officially Being Sued by FTX Retail Investors

Startup Says It’s Building a Giant CO2 Battery in the United States

Italian startup Energy Dome has designed an ingenious battery that uses CO2 to store energy, and it only needs non-exotic materials like steel and water.

Italian Import

Carbon dioxide has a bad rep for its role in driving climate change, but in an unexpected twist, it could also play a key role in storing renewable energy.

The world's first CO2 battery, built by Italian startup Energy Dome, promises to store renewables on an industrial scale, which could help green energy rival fossil fuels in terms of cost and practicality.

After successfully testing the battery at a small scale plant in Sardinia, the company is now bringing its technology to the United States.

"The US market is a primary market for Energy Dome and we are working to become a market leader in the US," an Energy Dome spokesperson told Electrek. "The huge demand of [long duration energy storage] and incentive mechanisms like the Inflation Reduction Act will be key drivers for the industry in the short term."

Storage Solution

As renewables like wind and solar grow, one of the biggest infrastructural obstacles is the storage of the power they produce. Since wind and solar sources aren't always going to be available, engineers need a way to save excess power for days when it's less sunny and windy out, or when there's simply more demand.

One obvious solution is to use conventional battery technology like lithium batteries, to store the energy. The problem is that building giant batteries from rare earth minerals — which can be prone to degradation over time — is expensive, not to mention wasteful.

Energy Dome's CO2 batteries, on the other hand, use mostly "readily available materials" like steel, water, and of course CO2.

In Charge

As its name suggests, the battery works by taking CO2, stored in a giant dome, and compressing it into a liquid by using the excess energy generated from a renewable source. That process generates heat, which is stored alongside the now liquefied CO2, "charging" the battery.

To discharge power, the stored heat is used to vaporize the liquid CO2 back into a gas, powering a turbine that feeds back into the power grid. Crucially, the whole process is self-contained, so no CO2 leaks back into the atmosphere.

The battery could be a game-changer for renewables. As of now, Energy Dome plans to build batteries that can store up to 200 MWh of energy. But we'll have to see how it performs as it gains traction.

More on batteries: Scientists Propose Turning Skyscrapers Into Massive Gravity Batteries

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Startup Says It's Building a Giant CO2 Battery in the United States

FDA Gives First Go Ahead for Lab Grown Meat Product

The FDA has approved a lab grown meat product from Upside Foods for human consumption, which now only needs USDA approval before being sold to customers.

Meat and Greet

Behold, ethical omnivores: the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given a key go-ahead to what could be the first lab grown meat product bound for human consumption in the US.

The decision, a first for cultivated meat in the US, paves the way for Californian startup Upside Foods to start selling its lab-grown chicken product domestically — meaning that now, it only needs approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) before the ersatz chicken can hit restaurant menus.

"The world is experiencing a food revolution and the [FDA] is committed to supporting innovation in the food supply," FDA officials said in a statement. "The agency evaluated the information submitted by Upside Foods as part of a pre-market consultation for their food made from cultured chicken cells and has no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion."

Upside Foods' products were evaluated via a process in which manufacturers divulge the production process to the agency for review, along with a sample. If everything looks good after inspection, the FDA then sends back a "no further questions" letter to the company.

"We are thrilled at FDA's announcement," said Upside director of communications David Kay in an email to Reuters. "This historic step paves the way for our path to market."

Going Protein

Lab meat like Upside's aren't a plant-based imitation, unlike popular vegan alternatives such as Beyond Burgers. Instead, they're made from real animal cells grown in bioreactors, sparing the lives of actual livestock.

But while at a cellular level the meat may be the same, customers will definitely notice a difference in price. For now, cultivating meat remains an extremely expensive process, so pending USDA approval notwithstanding, it could still be a while before you see it hit the shelves of your local grocer.

To let eager, early customers try out the lab meat, Upside, which already announced its collaboration with Michelin star chef Dominique Crenn last year, will be debuting its chicken at specific upscale restaurants.

"We would want to bring this to people through chefs in the initial stage," CEO Uma Valeti told Wired. "Getting chefs excited about this is a really big deal for us. We want to work with the best partners who know how to cook well, and also give us feedback on what we could do better."

While the FDA's thumbs-up only applies to a specific product of Upside's, it's still a historic decision, signalling a way forward for an industry that's rapidly accruing investment.

Updated to clarify details regarding the FDA's evaluation of the product.

More on lab grown meat: Scientists Cook Comically Tiny Lab-Grown Hamburger

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FDA Gives First Go Ahead for Lab Grown Meat Product

Sam Bankman-Fried Admits the "Ethics Stuff" Was "Mostly a Front"

In Twitter DMs, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried appeared to admit that his

Effecting Change

The disgraced former head of the crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, built his formidable public persona on the idea that he was a new type of ethical crypto exec. In particular, he was a vocal proponent of "effective altruism" — the vague-but-noble concept of using data to make philanthropic giving as targeted and helpful as possible.

But in a direct message, Vox's Kelsey Piper asked Bankman-Fried if the "ethics stuff" had been "mostly a front."

Bankman-Fried's reply: "Yeah."

"I mean that's not *all* of it," he wrote. "But it's a lot."

Truth Be Told

If the concept of becoming rich to save the world strikes you as iffy, you're not alone — and it appears that even Bankman-Fried himself knows it.

When Piper observed that Bankman-Fried had been "really good at talking about ethics" while actually playing a game, he responded that he "had to be" because he'd been engaged in "this dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and everyone likes us."

Next time you're thinking of investing in crypto, maybe it's worth taking a moment to wonder whether the person running the next exchange might secretly be thinking the same thing.

More on effective altruism: Elon Musk Hired A Professional Gambler to Manage His Philanthropic Donations

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Sam Bankman-Fried Admits the "Ethics Stuff" Was "Mostly a Front"

"Elon" Plummets in Popularity as a Baby Name for Some Reason

According to BabyCenter's

Big Baby

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's name has clearly lost its luster among the parents of newborns.

According to BabyCenter's review of the data the name "Elon" has cratered in popularity over the last year, dropping from 120 babies per million in 2021 to just 90 babies per million, falling in the popularity rankings by 466 spots.

The name had seen a meteoric rise over the last seven or so years, but is currently falling out of favor big time, plummeting back down to 2019 levels.

The read? It seems like Musk's public reputation has been taking a significant hit.

Name Game

There are countless reasons why Musk could be less popular public figure than he was three years ago.

Especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Musk emerged as a controversial figure, speaking out against vaccinations and lockdowns. He has also become synonymous with an unhealthy work culture, firing practically anybody standing in his way and forcing his employees to work long hours.

The fiasco surrounding Musk's chaotic takeover of Twitter has likely only further besmirched his public image.

For reference, other baby names that have fallen out of fashion include "Kanye" — almost certainly in response to the travails of rapper Kanye West, who's had a years-long relationship with Musk — which fell a whopping 3,410 spots over the last year.

More on Elon Musk: Sad Elon Musk Says He's Overwhelmed In Strange Interview After the Power Went Out

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"Elon" Plummets in Popularity as a Baby Name for Some Reason

Former Facebook Exec Says Zuckerberg Has Surrounded Himself With Sycophants

Conviction is easy if you're surrounded by a bunch of yes men — which Mark Zuckerberg just might be. And $15 billion down the line, that may not bode well.

In just about a year, Facebook-turned-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse vision has cost his company upwards of $15 billion, cratering value and — at least in part — triggering mass company layoffs. That's a high price tag, especially when the Facebook creator has shockingly little to show for it, both in actual technology and public interest.

Indeed, it seems that every time Zuckerberg excitedly explains what his currently-legless metaverse will one day hold, he's met with crickets — and a fair share of ridicule — at the town square. Most everyone finds themselves looking around and asking themselves the same question: who could this possibly be for, other than Zucko himself?

That question, however, doesn't really seem to matter to the swashzuckling CEO, who's either convinced that the public wants and needs his metaverse just as much as he does, or is simply just convicted to the belief that one day people will finally get it. After all, he's bet his company on this thing and needs the public to engage to stay financially viable long-term.

And sure, points for conviction. But conviction is easy if you're surrounded by a bunch of yes men — which, according to Vanity Fair, the founder unfortunately is. And with $15 billion down the line, that may not bode well for the Silicon Valley giant.

"The problem now is that Mark has surrounded himself with sycophants, and for some reason he's fallen for their vision of the future, which no one else is interested in," one former Facebook exec told Vanity Fair. "In a previous era, someone would have been able to reason with Mark about the company's direction, but that is no longer the case."

Given that previous reports have revealed that some Meta employees have taken to marking metaverse documents with the label "MMA" — "Make Mark Happy" — the revelation that he's limited his close circle to people who only agree with him isn't all that shocking. He wants the metaverse, he wants it bad, and he's put a mind-boggling amount of social and financial capital into his AR-driven dream.

While the majority of his many thousands of employees might disagree with him — Vanity Fair reports that current and former metamates have written things like "the metaverse will be our slow death" and "Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the metaverse" on the Silicon Valley-loved Blind app — it's not exactly easy, or even that possible, to wrestle with the fact that you may have made a dire miscalculation this financially far down the road.

And if you just keep a close circle of people who just agree with you, you may not really have to confront that potential for failure. At least not for a while.

The truth is that Zuckerberg successfully created a thing that has impacted nearly every single person on this Earth. Few people can say that. And while it can be argued that the thing he built has, at its best, created some real avenues for connection, that same creation also seems to have led to his own isolation, in life and at work.

How ironic it is that he's marketed his metaverse on that same promise of connection, only to become more disconnected than ever.

READ MORE: "Mark Has Surrounded Himself with Sycophants": Zuckerberg's Big Bet on the Metaverse Is Backfiring [Vanity Fair]

More on the Meta value: Stock Analyst Cries on Tv Because He Recommended Facebook Stock

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Former Facebook Exec Says Zuckerberg Has Surrounded Himself With Sycophants

Celebrities’ Bored Apes Are Hilariously Worthless Now

The value of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs has absolutely plummeted, leaving celebrities with six figure losses, a perhaps predictable conclusion.

Floored Apes

The value of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have absolutely plummeted, leaving celebrities with six figure losses, in a perhaps predictable conclusion to a bewildering trend.

Earlier this year, for instance, pop star Justin Bieber bought an Ape for a whopping $1.3 million. Now that the NFT economy has essentially collapsed in on itself, as Decrypt points out, it's worth a measly $69,000.

Demand Media

NFTs, which represent exclusive ownership rights to digital assets — but usually, underwhelmingly, just JPGs and GIFs — have absolutely plummeted in value, spurred by the ongoing crypto crisis and a vanishing appetite.

Sales volume of the blockchain knickknacks has also bottomed out. NFT sales declined for six straight months this year, according to CryptoSlam.

According to NFT Price Floor, the value of the cheapest available Bored Ape dipped down to just 48 ETH, well below $60,000, this week. In November so far, the floor price fell 33 percent.

Meanwhile, the crypto crash is only accelerating the trend, with the collapse of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX leaving its own mark on NFT markets.

Still Kicking

Despite the looming pessimism, plenty of Bored Apes are still being sold. In fact, according to Decrypt, around $6.5 million worth of Apes were moved on Tuesday alone, an increase of 135 percent day over day.

Is the end of the NFT nigh? Bored Apes are clearly worth a tiny fraction of what they once were, indicating a massive drop off in interest.

Yet many other much smaller NFT marketplaces are still able to generate plenty of hype, and millions of dollars in sales.

In other words, NFTs aren't likely to die out any time soon, but they are adapting to drastically changing market conditions — and leaving celebrities with deep losses in their questionable investments.

READ MORE: Justin Bieber Paid $1.3 Million for a Bored Ape NFT. It’s Now Worth $69K [Decrypt]

More on NFTs: The Latest Idea to Make People Actually Buy NFTs: Throw in a House

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Celebrities' Bored Apes Are Hilariously Worthless Now

Panicked Elon Musk Reportedly Begging Engineers Not to Leave

According to former Uber engineer Gergely Orosz,

Elon Musk's Twitter operations are still in free fall.

Earlier this week, the billionaire CEO sent an email to staff telling them that they "need to be extremely hardcore" and work long hours at the office, or quit and get three months severance, as The Washington Post reports.

Employees had until 5 pm on Thursday to click "yes" and be part of Twitter moving forward or take the money and part ways. The problem for Musk? According to former Uber engineer Gergely Orosz, who has had a close ear to Twitter's recent inner turmoil, "far fewer than expected [developers] hit 'yes.'"

So many employees called Musk's bluff, Orosz says, that Musk is now "having meetings with top engineers to convince them to stay," in an  embarrassing reversal of his public-facing bravado earlier this week.

Twitter has already been rocked by mass layoffs, cutting the workforce roughly in half. Instead of notifying them, employees had access to their email and work computers revoked without notice.

Even that process was bungled, too, with some employees immediately being asked to return to the company after Musk's crew realized it had sacked people it needed.

According to Orosz's estimations, Twitter's engineering workforce may have been cut by a whopping 90 percent in just three weeks.

Musk has been banging the war drums in an active attempt to weed out those who aren't willing to abide by his strict rules and those who were willing to stand up to him.

But developers aren't exactly embracing that kind of tyranny.

"Sounds like playing hardball does not work," Orosz said. "Of course it doesn't."

"From my larger group of 50 people, 10 are staying, 40 are taking the severance," one source reportedly told Orosz. "Elon set up meetings with a few who plan to quit."

In short, developers are running for the hills — and besides, they're likely to find far better work conditions pretty much anywhere else.

"I am not sure Elon realizes that, unlike rocket scientists, who have relatively few options to work at, [developers] with the experience of building Twitter only have better options than the conditions he outlines," Orosz argued.

Then there's the fact that Musk has publicly lashed out at engineers, mocking them and implying that they were leading him on.

Those who spoke out against him were summarily fired.

That kind of hostility in leadership — Musk has shown an astonishing lack of respect — clearly isn't sitting well with many developers, who have taken up his to get three months of severance and leave.

"I meant it when I called Elon's latest ultimatum the first truly positive thing about this Twitter saga," Orosz wrote. "Because finally, everyone who had enough of the BS and is not on a visa could finally quit."

More on Twitter: Sad Elon Musk Says He's Overwhelmed In Strange Interview After the Power Went Out

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Experts Baffled by Why NASA’s “Red Crew” Wear Blue Shirts

Red Crew, Blue Crew

Had it not been for the heroics of three members of NASA's specialized "Red Crew," NASA's absolutely massive — and incredibly expensive — Space Launch System (SLS) likely wouldn't have made it off the ground this week.

During the launch, the painfully delayed Mega Moon Rocket sprang a hydrogen leak. The Red Crew ventured into the dangerous, half-loaded launch zone to fix it live. Incredible work indeed, although in spite of their heroics, keen-eyed observers did notice something strange about the so-called Red Crew: they, uh, don't wear red?

"How is it we spent $20B+ on this rocket," tweeted Chris Combs, a professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, "but we couldn't manage to get some RED SHIRTS for the Red Team."

Alas, the rumor is true. Red shirts seemed to be out of the budget this year — perhaps due to the ungodly amount of money spent on the rocket that these guys could have died while fixing — with the Red Crew-mates donning dark blue shirts instead. Per the NYT, they also drove white cars, which feels like an additional miss.

A leftover from last night that’s still bothering me:

how is it we spent $20B+ on this rocket but we couldn’t manage to get some RED SHIRTS for the Red Team pic.twitter.com/FO10Y6mg3H

— Chris Combs (@DrChrisCombs) November 16, 2022

Packing Nuts

For their part, the Red Crew didn't seem to care all that much, at least not in the moment. They were very much focused on needing to "torque" the "packing nuts," as they reportedly said during a post-launch interview on NASA TV. In other words, they were busy with your casual rocket science. And adrenaline, because, uh, risk of death.

"All I can say is we were very excited," Red Crew member Trent Annis told NASA TV, according to the NYT. "I was ready to get up there and go."

"We were very focused on what was happening up there," he added. "It's creaking, it's making venting noises, it's pretty scary."

In any case, shoutout to the Red Crew. The Artemis I liftoff is historic, and wouldn't have happened if they hadn't risked it all. They deserve a bonus, and at the very least? Some fresh new shirts.

READ MORE: When NASA'S moon rocket sprang a fuel leak, the launch team called in the 'red crew.' [The New York Times]

More on the Artemis I launch: Giant Nasa Rocket Blasts off Toward the Moon

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Experts Baffled by Why NASA’s “Red Crew” Wear Blue Shirts

NASA Orders Press Not to Photograph Launch Site After Moon Mission Takes Off

NASA apparently barred the press from photographing the Artemis moon rocket launch when it lifted its Orion capsule off to space earlier this week. 

No Photos, Please

NASA barred the press from photographing the launch site of its Space Launch System after it boosted the agency's Artemis I Moon mission into space earlier this week.

Multiple space reporters said on Twitter that the agency had sent them a message telling them they were prohibited from photographing the Artemis 1 launch tower after the liftoff.

"NASA did not provide a reason," Eric Berger, Ars Technica's senior space editor, tweeted. The reporter added that according to his sources, the ban was apparently an attempt to save face after the launch damaged the tower.

"So now sources are saying that yes, Launch Complex-39B tower was damaged during the Artemis I launch on Wednesday morning," Berger tweeted. "Basically, there were leaks and damage where there weren't supposed to be leaks and damage."

Damaging Reports

Later, Washington Post space reporter Christian Davenport posted a statement from NASA that seemed to corroborate Berger's sources, though he emphasized that there was "no word on damage" to the launch pad.

"Because of the current state of the configuration, there are [International Traffic in Arms Regulations license] restrictions and photos are not permitted at this time," the statement given to Davenport read. "There also is a launch debris around the pad as anticipated, and the team is currently assessing."

Whatever NASA's reasoning, it's pretty clear that the agency doesn't want unapproved photos of its expensive and overdue Space Launch System rocket going out to the public. NASA loves positive publicity, it seems — but not negative.

More on the Artemis 1 launch: NASA Says It's Fine That Some Pieces May Have Fallen Off Its Moon Rocket During Launch

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NASA Tells Astronauts That Tweeting Isn’t As Important as Staying Alive

NASA's astronaut social media handbook just dropped — and they've got some staunch guidelines for safely tweeting on the ISS.

Stayin' Alive

NASA's astronaut social media handbook just dropped — and they've got some staunch guidelines for space tweeting.

As part of a public records request, NASA released to Vox an almost entirely unredacted copy of its current social media handbook for astronauts, and it offers a fascinating look into the agency's policies for the online astronauts it sends to space.

Overall, it's a reasonable document. One particularly interesting detail? It advises astronauts to please lay off of posting when their lives are in jeopardy. Good advice for us all!

Socialing

In a 2018 memo from the Johnson Space Center included in the records provided to Vox, NASA notes that along with not posting for personal or financial gain or exposing state secrets, "social media efforts should always be considered secondary to the safety of the crew and vehicle."

In another section of the guidelines, a slide reminds astronauts that "social media is voluntary and should be considered secondary to safety of mission and crew cohesion."

Politicking

Beyond bodily safety, political discretion is also repeatedly advised in the guidelines — an important detail, given the past and current tensions between the ISS' main players, the United States and Russia.

While some have criticized NASA for doing a bit too much social networking — the agency operates a whopping 700 social media accounts, including on Reddit, Twitch, and LinkedIn — it clearly takes a backseat to onboard safety.

Given how much can go wrong on both a mortal and interpersonal level while floating above the Earth, that's definitely a good thing.

More on the ISS: Amazing Video Shows What the ISS Would Look Like If It Flew at the Height of a Jetplane

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Ticketmaster May Have Finally Met Its Match: Furious Swifties

The notorious ticket selling service Ticketmaster botched the pre-sale of tickets for Taylor Swift's upcoming tour. Now, everyone's calling for its head.

The notorious ticket peddling service Ticketmaster has never been a fan favorite, and anyone who's ever bought a concert ticket there can attest to why. Preposterous prices, slimy junk fees, and terrible customer service are just a few of its mundane evils. In spite of how universally reviled it is, Ticketmaster has persisted as the king of the box office. But now, it's facing its worst PR nightmare in years — and that's saying something. Why? It made the fatal error of pissing off Taylor Swift fans, or "Swifties."

Swift's "Eras Tour," which will have her perform at over 50 venues in the US alone, is set to be one of the biggest music events on the planet. Biding their time, her fiercely loyal fanbase — probably the largest of any single artist and easily the most vocal online — have been waiting since 2018 for her next headlining tour. So, looking to guarantee a spot, many of them signed up for Ticketmaster's Verified Fans program, a system which was supposed to only allow a select amount of around 1.5 million real fans — as opposed to scalper bots — to buy tickets ahead of time.

It didn't work. Ticketmaster CEO Michael Rapino told The Hollywood Reporter that around 14 million users, some of them bots, rushed to buy pre-sale tickets this week, and it pretty much broke the service. Parts of the website immediately crashed, leaving millions either waiting for hours or suffering through a miserable, glitchy experience — only for some to be told they couldn't buy a ticket anyway even though they were verified. In total, Ticketmaster was barraged with 3.5 billion system requests, which is nearly half the population of the Earth and four times its previous peak.

Even with all the difficulties, it did manage to sell around two million tickets — but it's unclear how many of those went to actual, verified Swifties and how many went to scalpers.

And we suspect that Ticketmaster has made way more than that in the form of enemies. Search its name on social media right now, and you'll be returned with swarms of complaints from ardent Swifties and Ticketmaster haters crawling out of the woodwork.

To make matters worse, the maligned seller abruptly informed fans via Twitter that it would be canceling the sale of tickets to the general public originally planned for Friday, "due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand."

With Ticketmaster shutting its doors, vulturous resellers who gobbled up tickets during the presale pandemonium remain the only alternative for fans, selling them at outrageous amounts as high as $28,000, Reuters reports.

Exceptionally crummy service isn't exactly a scandal in itself, but the magnitude of Ticketmaster's mishandling of the situation — and the blatant scalping it's enabled — has brought significant attention to the company's nefarious practices and its stranglehold on the market.

Now, politicians are jumping on the Swifties' grievances to call for Ticketmaster's head.

"Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, [its] merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be [reined] in," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in a tweet. "Break them up."

"It's no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly," echoed Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-RI), the chair of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.

"The merger of these companies should never have been allowed in the first place," Cicilline added, stating that he's joining others to call on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to "investigate LiveNation’s efforts to jack up prices and strangle competition."

Ticketmaster was already a behemoth in the 90s when Pearl Jam — then one of the biggest bands in the world — tried to take them on. Eddie Vedder and his bandmates certainly made the concert corporation sweat for a time, but since then, it's only grown. In 2010, it merged with LiveNation, once its largest competitor and now Ticketmaster's parent company. Critics, like AOC and Cicilline, argue that this merger was in blatant violation of antitrust laws.

Monopolistic behavior aside, as well as frequently bullying artists and venues to give into its tyrannical demands, consumers don't have to dig very far to realize Ticketmaster is ripping them off. Buy a ticket on there and it could charge you a significant portion of the ticket price in service and other junk fees.

Another culprit? Its dynamic pricing model, infamously used in other industries like airline tickets and hotels, in which prices are continuously adjusted in real time based on demand. As a result, ticket prices are not made public before a sale begins. In theory, dynamic pricing is meant to make predatory resellers obsolete by keeping prices competitive. But really, it's just a good excuse for Ticketmaster to match its prices with that of ludicrous resellers and pocket the extra cash.

Furthermore, at least one 2018 investigation by CBC found that Ticketmaster was quietly recruiting professional scalpers into its reseller program, and turned a blind eye to them using hundreds of fake accounts to sell tickets.

Bearing all that in mind, you'd think Swift would speak up about the most recent fiasco over her tour.

And for a while, she didn't, driving fans frantic over her silence — which she's finally broken.

On Friday, Swift spoke out in a carefully worded statement on her Instagram.

"Well, it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans," she began. "It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse."

Swift is clearly alluding to Ticketmaster here, and euphemistically summed up the situation as there being "a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets" — though she never specifically names the corporation.

Diplomatic as the words may be, they've dropped at the perfect moment, because The New York Times reports that the DOJ has opened an antitrust investigation over LiveNation's ownership of Ticketmaster (though at press time, official confirmation is still pending.)

Could this be the beginning of the end of the company's unfettered dominance? Maybe. Ticketmaster and LiveNation only seem to get stronger with the more bad PR they get. So taking them down? It'll take more than online outrage. However, with Swift looking poised to join the fight alongside the DOJ, maybe this time around the concert conglomerate will get a run for its money.

More on Taylor Swift: Taylor Swift Reportedly Threatened Microsoft Over Racist Chatbot

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NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born

The James Webb Space Telescope just released an image of a star being born, and it gives Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper a run for their money.

Birth Canal

The James Webb Space Telescope's latest mind-bending image just dropped — and this one is, in a word, splendid.

As NASA notes in a blog post about the finding, the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) was put to incredible use when capturing the "once-hidden features" of the beginnings of a star.

Known as "protostars," celestial objects like this one — found inside an uber-absorbant "dark nebula" cloud — are not yet stars, but will be soon. In short, the Webb telescope capture imagery of a star being born.

As NASA notes, the fledgling star itself is hidden within the tiny "neck" disk of the spectacular, fiery hourglass shape in the image — which is, as NASA notes, "about the size of our solar system" — and the colorful lights seen below and above this neck are emitted by the protostar's birth.

Countdown to a new star ?

Hidden in the neck of this “hourglass” of light are the very beginnings of a new star — a protostar. The clouds of dust and gas within this region are only visible in infrared light, the wavelengths that Webb specializes in: https://t.co/DtazblATMW pic.twitter.com/aGEEBO9BB8

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) November 16, 2022

Stellar Anatomy

While this incredible capture is not the first time space telescopes have observed star birth, Webb's latest does provide an incredible look at the phenomenon.

"The surrounding molecular cloud is made up of dense dust and gas being drawn to the center, where the protostar resides," the post reads. "As the material falls in, it spirals around the center. This creates a dense disk of material, known as an accretion disk, which feeds material to the protostar."

Some of that material, NASA notes, are "filaments of molecular hydrogen that have been shocked as the protostar ejects material away from it," most of which the stellar fetus takes for itself. It continues to feed on that material, growing more massive and compressing further until its core temperature rises to the point that it kickstarts nuclear fusion.

This gorgeous peek at that process is extraordinary to witness — and a yet another testament to the power of the mighty James Webb.

More on Webb: NASA Fixes Months-Long Issue With Webb Telescope

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NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born

Elon Musk Locks Twitter Employees Out Office, Then Asks Them to Meet Him on the 10th Floor

Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter is somehow going even worse than expected amid reports that he's locked employees out of the company's office buildings.

Worst Case Scenario

Elon Musk's Twitter-buying experiment is somehow going even worse than expected, amid reports that he's locked employees out of the company's office buildings.

As reported by Platformer's Zoë Schiffer, an email sent to Twitter staff yesterday evening informed them out of the blue that they wouldn't be able to get into their offices for the rest of the week.

"We're hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company," Schiffer wrote. "Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for."

Then, the saga somehow got even stranger today when Musk emailed staff asking them to come to the 10th floor of Twitter's headquarters — which, remember, they'd just been told they were locked out of — for a meeting on the 10th floor.

Ultimatums

All told, the aura of chaos surrounding Twitter since Musk's acquisition late last month has deepened to a comical degree.

News of the office closure, you'll recall, comes not long after Musk issued an ultimatum to the staff who survived his first purge the company's employees, in which he said that if "tweeps" didn't come into the office, they would be effectively tendering their resignations.

Just before the office closure announcement, Musk gave his new employees another apparent threat: that if they are not prepared "to be extremely hardcore" and work long in-office hours, they can cut and run with three months severance.

Unsurprisingly, many Twitter employees have chosen the latter — a move that some described to CNN's Darcy as a "mass exodus."

And in the face of all this contradiction and whiplash, who could blame them?

More on Musk: Panicked Elon Musk Reportedly Begging Engineers Not to Leave

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Elon Musk Locks Twitter Employees Out Office, Then Asks Them to Meet Him on the 10th Floor

Amazing Map Lets You Scroll Through the Entire Known Universe

Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have made one of the most comprehensive maps of the Universe yet, using data previously unreleased to the public.

All-Encompassing

The universe is so vast and old that we can't possibly fathom it all. But we can make some pretty admirable efforts.

Take this stunning new map, put together by astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, that displays the entire known universe in all its glory, showcasing some 200,000 galaxies as tiny dots that span all the way to the cosmos' observable limits.

Using data gathered over 20 years by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it shows the real positions and colors of the galaxies in a densely packed celestial slice which lets users easily scroll through billions of years.

You've probably seen other maps of the universe before, but likely none this impressive. Excitingly, it uses data previously unreleased to the public, and it might be the most comprehensive cosmic map made for the average Joe yet.

"Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries." said the map's creator and John Hopkins professor Brice Ménard, in a press release.

"But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists," he continued. "Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."

Cosmic Cartography

The map's narrowest point originates from our home, the Milky Way, surrounded by light blue dots of spiral galaxies up to two billion light years away from Earth. Further away, yellow briefly takes over, where elliptical galaxies outshine the dimmer spiral ones.

Then the map takes us into a vibrant gradient of red. These are also elliptical galaxies, but thanks to the phenomenon aptly known as redshifting, their yellow light gets stretched into red.

Lurking behind is a tremendous ocean of blue, where the dots represent quasars, the luminous supermassive black holes at the center of distant galaxies.

Even a few errant red dots, depicting redshifted quasars, are speckled across the universe's penultimate boundary that's shrouded in hydrogen gas.

Finally, the map terminates at 13.7 billion light years away, or years ago, where all that can be discerned is the cosmic microwave background.

More on the universe: NASA Releases Hubble Images of Star Right as It Explodes

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Experts Excoriate NASA Report Claiming James Webb Wasn’t Homophobic

A group of astronomers has clapped back at a NASA report claiming that it had found no evidence that the original James Webb was homophobic.

NASA says it can't find any record that James Webb, the State Department and NASA leader for whom the agency's groundbreaking new space telescope is named, was aware of homophobic government purges — but a bunch of astronomers are clapping back at the agency's claims.

"After an exhaustive search of U.S. government and Truman library archives," administrator Bill Nelson was quoted as saying in the agency's press release about its decision, "NASA’s historical investigation found, ‘To date, no available evidence directly links Webb to any actions or follow-up related to the firing of individuals for their sexual orientation.'"

In their own statement — which follows a 2021 Scientific American editorial and numerous other calls urging NASA to rename the telescope — astronomy experts Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Lucianne Walkowicz, Sarah Tuttle and Brian Nord are calling shenanigans in the strictest terms.

"NASA’s press release utilizes a practice of selective historical reading," the open letter reads, pointing to the agency's insistence that the original Webb was unaware of the firing of Clifford Norton, a NASA budget analyst who was canned in 1963 after being arrested for making a "homosexual advance" on someone. At the time, Webb was head of NASA.

The argument — which makes sense, if you think about it — is basically that Webb was either aware of the institutionalized homophobia in a way that didn't survive in existing documentation, or unaware of a key dynamic at the workplace he was in charge of. Neither option is flattering.

"Because we do not know of a piece of paper that explicitly says, 'James Webb knew about this,' they assume it means he did not," the experts wrote. "In such a scenario, we have to assume he was relatively incompetent as a leader: the administrator of NASA should know if his chief of security is extrajudicially interrogating people."

"We are deeply concerned by the implication that managers are not responsible for homophobia or other forms of discrimination that happens on their watch," they continued, noting that such a stance is "explicitly anti-equity, diversity and inclusion" that puts "responsibility on the most marginalized people to fend for ourselves, and it is in conflict with legal norms in many US jurisdictions."

It's "deeply unscientific," the astronomy luminaries added, that "NASA is engaging in historical cherry picking" with a figure who was, along with the state-sanctioned homophobia that occurred on his watch, accused of engaging in Cold War-era "psychological warfare," in which, as The Atlantic noted in 2018, then-Undersecretary of State Webb assembled a team of hard and soft scientists to figure out the best ways to conduct anti-Soviet propaganda.

NASA and the scientific community at large should, the astronomers wrote in Scientific American, "name telescopes out of love for those who came before us and led the way to freedom."

More on Webb: NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born

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Experts Excoriate NASA Report Claiming James Webb Wasn't Homophobic