Space travel can be challenging, and astronauts will have to handle conditions such as handling life in isolation over long periods of time, space disorientation, and microgravity the condition of weightlessness that astronauts experience in their spacecraft on space missions.

To train for such circumstances, simulator training is crucial. The Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) has simulators that are capable of simulating or 're-creating' the conditions of microgravity for the training of astronauts. IAM also boasts of a simulator that can simulate temperatures ranging from minus 20 degrees centigrade to 60 degrees, for training purposes.

The astronauts will also undergo training in the isolation and disorientation chambers. In this training, different illusions are created to disorient the trainees. Another simulator provides training in handling atmospheric pressures as high as six times that on earth.

Similar training will be provided to these astronauts at Russias Yuri Gagarin Centre as well, which is named after the first person ever to travel to space.

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Mission Gaganyaan: Training Indias Astronauts for Space Travel - The Quint

Imagine you could throw the perfect bullseye, but you'd have to wear glasses to do it. That's a trade-off some space travellers may unwittingly make when they venture off the planet.

A study published Friday examined the brains of eight male Russian cosmonauts roughly seven months after they returned from lengthy missions to the International Space Station.

The researchers discovered minor changes in the cosmonauts' brains that suggested the men were more dexterous but had slightly weaker vision.

"They actually acquired some kind of new motor skill, like riding a bike," Steven Jillings, the study's lead author, told Business Insider.

The researchers used a type of MRI to produce 3D images of the cosmonauts' brains.

The scans showed an increased amount of tissue in the cerebellum: the part of the brain responsible for balance, coordination, and posture (shown in green in the video below).

Illustration from Steven Jillings and Ben Jeurissen using MRtrix3. (University of Antwerp)

But the scans also showed that people living in space could wind up with trouble seeing up-close. Both of those changes could potentially be long-lasting.

Any human brain, whether it has been to space or not, can adapt to new environments and experiences. Many athletes, for instance, acquire specific motor skills directly related to their sport.

"If you were to do an MRI study where you compare normal people to athletes or people who really use motor skills like dart players, for example, you would hypothesize to find changes in the cerebellum," Jillings said.

"This is not just because they trained once and then it changes and goes back. It's actually something that lasts in the brain."

On average, the Russian cosmonauts in the study spent six months onboard the space station. Researchers expected to see temporary changes in the cosmonauts' brains, but they were surprised to discover that the improved motor skills were still there several months after they'd returned to Earth.

"The difficulty with studying these cosmonauts is you don't really have a reference - nothing on Earth that it really can be compared to," Jillings said.

"It's possible that when they go to their next mission that they actually are able to adapt more quickly."

Many previous studies have revealed that astronauts experience physical changes in microgravity, including muscle and bone loss.

Astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS typically exercise more than two hours a day to combat this process. They can also feel disoriented or motion-sick while their body adjusts to a weightless environment.

One important difference between life in space and on Earth is that our blood and bodily fluids normally move against the downward tug of gravity, whereas in space, astronauts' bodily fluids shift upward.

The new study found that microgravity causes the brain to shift upward as well. This in turn redistributes the fluids in which the brain floats.

Jillings said his study found evidence that the fluid may pile up behind the eye, causing swelling. This could impair astronauts' near vision, resulting in a condition called spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome.

A 2012 survey found the same effect among many NASA astronauts - up to 60 percent of those studied said they were seeing less clearly onboard the ISS. NASA even flies prescription glasses to space just in case an astronaut's vision changes.

But Jillings said there's still more to learn about this phenomenon, especially because not all astronauts or cosmonauts return to Earth with bad vision, and most astronauts studied only developed impaired vision in one eye. Some also recover their vision shortly after returning to Earth.

What's more, many Russian cosmonauts have extremely sharp sight to begin with, so even after they complete a stint in space, their vision is still normal compared to the average person.

"The fact that we do see the small decrease probably means that there are some common effects across all people who spend six months in space," Jillings said.

Scientists are still trying to determine the degree to which the impaired eyesight could be permanent.

An April study from the University of Texas found that swelling in astronauts' brains persisted one year after their return to Earth. But Jillings said there are no long-term follow-up studies to see how long the condition really lasts beyond that.

"There are not many studies looking into the brains of astronauts," he said.

Overall, Jillings added, it's good news that his study didn't pick up on any serious health effects linked to space travel.

Previous studies, by contrast, have suggested that radiation in space could lead to neurodegeneration, which might accelerate the development of Alzheimer's disease among astronauts.

"We did not find any evidence of detrimental changes to the brain," Jillings said. "It's actually more of an adaptation."

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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Cosmonaut Brain Scans Show Space Does Weird Things to Motor Skills And Vision - ScienceAlert

I've been in this business for 29 years, so to find projects that are authentic and unique is hard, Hilary Swank tells me. Away, now streaming on Netflix, was that rare jewel: a heartwarming family drama that showed real reactions to the (mostly) real situations playing out onscreen. Think This Is Us or Friday Night Lights, just with more space travel.

Swank plays Emma Green, the commander of the first-ever mission to Mars. It's dangerousand to go, she must leave behind her teen daughter (Talitha Eliana Bateman) and husband (Josh Charles) for three years. That dynamic is the heart of the show's drama: How do you navigate being a good partner or parent when you're literally on a different planet? And is there anything we non-space-travelers can learn from that experience?

Here, we invited Hilary Swank, showrunner and writer Jessica Goldberg, and Karen Nyberg, the real-deal astronaut who helped Swank with research for the show, to discuss.

Glamour: To start, tell me what drew you to Away?

Jessica Goldberg: I had never seen a working mother portrayed like this onscreen. A woman can love her work and her family equally, and I felt so excited to tell that story truthfully. Also, we were already in a divisive moment internationally when I got the show. The knee-jerk reaction seems to be in television to write dystopian bleak programs, but I wanted to be a part of something that imagined the world coming together.

Hilary Swank: [I appreciated] the idea of being a commander on a mission to Mars where the drama isn't that she's a womanshe's the person best suited for the job. The drama is around normal stuff, like building trust. You have these human beings who are all on this journey toward a common goal with no borders. Jessica, you talked so beautifully in one of the episodes you wrote about hope and how it is really everything. It's what we all can understand and relate to in life, no matter your gender, no matter your race, no matter your creed. Hope is what you have to hold on to in order to persevere. This show encapsulated all of these things without forcing it.

Story continues

Glamour: Karen, as an astronaut, what stuck out to you as being particularly resonant?

Karen Nyberg: When they were showing the family experience before Emma goes to Mars, I was tearing up. I was feeling what I've felt before I went to space, as well as when my husband [Doug Hurley, who is also an astronaut] went just a couple months ago. I think the show really captured that. I felt it as a memory. My son is 10 now. He was only three when I went for my six-month-long flight. I didn't have to explain things quite the same, but there was still things to deal with.

Hilary: Karen, if you wouldn't mind sharing the story you told me. You don't have to, but I find it really fascinating.

Karen: Yeah, I don't mind sharing it because there was a lot of emotion with it. After my first space shuttle flight, in 2008, I was really eager to go again. Extremely eager. But Doug and I were trying to have a child when I was assigned to the space mission STS-132. I was assigned to the flight and going to do spacewalksand then I got pregnant. The frustrating part was that my baby was due well before the mission. I had gone to my commander, and we thought I could continue training, have the baby, and then do this mission. We had a planwe had a backup in case something happened and I couldn't continue training.

And then I was taken off the flight. It was disappointing. But, like most things, it all worked out fine in the end. Peggy Whitson was the chief of the astronaut office at the time, and as soon as I came off maternity leave, she assigned me to a long-duration mission. She took care of me.

Hilary: Didn't they call it a health crisis or something?

Karen: The official word that went out from NASA was that I was removed from the flight for a temporary medical condition. My son wasn't quite so temporary. [Laughs.]

Glamour: One thing that struck me was watching Emma, a mother, trying to parent from space. Karen, you can actually speak to that unique experience.

Karen: I had to travel a lot for training. It was hard, but I had to learn to give up control. Doug was training when we first had my son Jackfor the first 18 months he was training for a space flight, so he was very busy. I was in control of Jack's schedule, what he ate, and any activities he did. So when I was training, I would try to micromanage what was happening in Jack's life. I had to let go of that. By the time I flew in space, I had worked through it.

The key is to have support and people you trust. My husband was home, but he was working. We had an amazing nanny, Lucy, who we just adored, and my mother-in-law helping. When I was in space, my husband and I had very good communication. I could talk to him on the phone every single day. But for a three-year-old, it was a little difficult. I made a video for him every single day on my iPad that I sent home. I had 166 videos saying, "Good night, I love you."

I did prepare myself for something, and I'm glad I did: coming home and him not wanting to come to me as the primary caregiver. And it happened. Jack had spent a lot of time with my mother-in-law. So the first night I was home, he wanted her to put him to bednot me. Luckily, I prepared myself for that. I told myself, I haven't been here. I haven't been the motherly figure to him for six months. It only took a few days, and he was back to coming to me.

Jessica: Now that your son is 10, would it feel harder to go to space?

Karen: I think so. I think it would be a lot harder to go right now than when he was three. I think he was fine with my husband going [a few months ago], but it probably was a little stressful for him. I anticipate it might have been more so if it had been me going this time.

Jessica: When we met, Hilary, one of the things that struck me was that you take care of your father. That resonated with a lot of the themes we were discussing in the writers room, which is: How do you go away when there's someone...

Hilary: Yeah, there was a conversation at one point if we could film the show in Bulgaria or something. At that point I wouldn't have been able to commit because my dad wasn't in a position where I could be on a flight that long as his health advocate. Vancouver quickly became the obvious choice, thankfully, so that I could get back home within three hours.

Jessica: For some reason I've never been able to work in Los Angeles. Nothing shoots here. So I always have to leave my daughter. Luckily, my mother lives a mile down the street, but you do miss things like the tooth fairy. It's amazing how much those little thingsa toothcan really spiral you.

Karen: When I left for space, Jack was at the level where he could take a crayon and draw lines and shapes. When I came home, he was turning those shapes into people. In that amount of time, he had gone from just doodling to actually drawing people. I made a little quilted art piece of his first drawing that he made when I came back, because it was so special. Things like that made me realize the length of time.

Jessica: Would you go to Mars, like Emma?

Karen: It's easy right now to say no because it's not a possibility. I think we're far enough away from that. It's such a commitment. If we were in a position where we were actually doing Mars missions right now, I don't know how I would feel.

Jessica: With COVID, did your experience of being isolated on a ship prepare you for the isolation people are doing now? And the way people are communicating now?

Karen: I was telling Hilary earlier that I don't mind being alone. I don't mind being stuck in my house. That part of being on the space station wasn't challenging. Of course, being away from Doug and Jack was.

One thing we deal with when we're talking to mission control is that when you don't have a face-to-face, all you're doing is talking via the communication loops. You lose that human connection, and you can find yourself getting angry at the other person or thinking, Well, that's a dumb idea. Why are they making me do that? You wouldn't do that if you were in the same room with them. I can imagine that happens with Zoom calls too.

Jessica: Yeah, that makes sense. Did you two talk before the show?

Hilary: Yeah, I spent a lot of time one-on-one with Karen down at mission control. We had a whole day together. I feel like we really got to know one another.

Swank and Nyberg at the Johnson Space Center in February 2020

Glamour: Did anything really surprise you?

Hilary: The story she just shared about getting pregnant and not being able to go on that mission really paralleled what Jessica had written in one of my favorite episodes. Also, Karen told me that the press always asks the women, Oh, what's it going to be like for you when you leave your family? But they asked 20% of the men that question. It boggles my mind that a man wouldn't feel the same about leaving his family, or that the family doesn't feel the same about losing their dad for a certain amount of time. They doit's just stereotypes.

Glamour: In the pilot we learn Emmas husband dreamed of going to space as well but didnt meet the requirements. I thought it was really beautiful that his reaction was to tell her, Okay, were all in on you.

Hilary: Karen and her husband, Doug, are both astronauts, so they understand on a deep level what that's like for the other person. Emma is going on this mission, and her husband is left behind, but it's not a masculinity thing. That's not the drama of the story. There's sadness that he's not fulfilling a dream of his, which is understandable, but it's not about her. It's not about how she has to underplay her joy or shining her light in order to make him feel better about himself.

That was a plus for me. That there was this man who was like, Oh, hell yeah, you're going to go. Every time I think about that in the through line of the story, how it's woven in, it makes me cry. Josh Charles was an anchor to me. His ability to have understated strength and the way he delivers his lines in support of herit's so beautiful.

Jessica: To me, it's the sexiest man in the world that can say, You go. When we first started thinking about this couple, we were like, What couples share a vision? We thought of the Obamas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband. Usually you see a husband get jealous, but what if there was a shared dream at the heart of this love story? It's something I haven't seen a lot of couples portray on television. Karen, you must have that in your marriage?

Karen: Absolutely. I could not have left a three-year-old for six months if my husband wasn't completely on board and supportive. He was fine being the primary caregiver. If he was at all jealous, it wouldn't have worked. He wanted me to reach my dream too. We talked about it when Peggy offered me the six-month flight. I asked, Should I not go because of our son? He helped me make the decision to do it.

Glamour: Karen, we talked the experience of mothering from space, but Id also love to hear from your experience about being a partner as well. Is your marriage dynamic different when youre so far away?

Karen: Communication is key. We speak every day, and I would still participate in the household. When Doug was in space recently, I was going to make sure the bills got paid and everything. But he had an internet access, so sometimes I would log on and a bill's already been paid. When he had time, he would take care of those things. Another important thing is that when you are gone for that amount of timeand a three-year mission to Mars would be even more soyou have to realize that your family has come up with their own routine and ways of doing things. You have to assimilate back into that and not expect things are going to be exactly how they were when you left.

Hilary: That's like being on a movie set. You leave for six months, things were run a certain way, and you have to reassimilate back in after having a journey with all these other people. Can you imagine going into space without Wi-Fi anymore?

Glamour: Hilary, what do you hope people take away from the show?

Hilary: I feel like the show, now more than ever, resonates because we've all been in this type of isolation. Sometimes our only way of communicating with loved ones is via Zoom. I think we'll have a deeper appreciation for what the crew is going through with missing their loved ones and only being able to have this way of communicating. That deep desire to see your loved one and hope that they're making it through this.

Jessica: I have a 13-year-old daughter, and there's so few things that you can watch with your kid that you enjoy as much as they do. For the first time, she got what I did. That's an amazing thing. Karen, do you experience that feeling with your son?

Karen: He's now old enough to understand it more. He's not interested in being an astronaut and following in our footsteps. He told me one time, a few years ago, Mom, all you do is go to space and do stupid interviews. I think seeing Doug go and all the hoopla around that and watching the launch, he's now old enough to feel it and understand it.

Also, that feeling [on the show] of hope and no borders and people just working togetherthe International Space Station has been doing that for 20 years. It goes beyond politics. It's working together for this common goal. Sometimes I'd be up at the space station and think, Why aren't we all doing this? Don't we all have the same goal? It works so well in exploring spaceit's too bad it doesn't translate so easily to other areas.

Jessica: That is something that blew us away, that none of the politics of earth mattered. Can you describe what it's like seeing earth from up there?

Karen: It's more than just what you're seeing; it's what you're feeling as you're looking at it. One morning I was watching the news while eating breakfast, and there was a conflict in Syria at the time. And you know when you're watching the news and you don't fully understand it because you're not there? Later that day I was looking out the window and realized we were right over Syria. I'm looking down and thinking, They're right there. There was this connection I started feeling. Those types of experiences really increased my empathy for others. If everybody could get that feeling, I think it would be a good thing.

Anna Moeslein is the senior editor at Glamour. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Originally Appeared on Glamour

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What Is It Like to Actually Parent From Space? - Yahoo Lifestyle

BERLIN, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- The production site of the German rocket start-up Isar Aerospace near the city of Munich was inaugurated by Bavaria's minister president Markus Soeder on Monday.

"We believe that the next big technological revolutions will take place in space," the German start-up announced on Linkedin. "We are building the first German launch vehicle in Bavaria and feel proud to lead the way as local pioneering project."

The 27-meter-long launch vehicle, a rocket called Spectrum designed for satellite constellation deployment, is expected to reach earth orbit for the first time next year, Isar Aerospace co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Daniel Metzler confirmed to the German Press Agency (dpa).

Isar Aerospace which was founded in 2018 closed an investment round of 17 million U.S. dollars at the end of last year, said the company.

A total of around 100 million euros would be available by the end of the year through a second investment round. "We want to build a European SpaceX, a privately financed company for the construction of space rockets," Metzler told the German newspaper Handelsblatt on Monday.

To support German start-ups, the Federation of German Industries (BDI) called for a German launch platform for small carrier rocket. "A mobile launch platform in the North Sea is technically feasible and makes strategic and economic sense," said BDI Director General Joachim Lang on Monday.

The BDI presented a concept to the German government for the realization of a mobile launch platform in the North Sea which could be realized within two years as a private operator scheme with state support.

Germany's Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier already expressed interest in the idea of a spaceport in Germany at the end of last year. "Space travel inspires many people and secures thousands of jobs in Germany. We are a leader in satellite technology," he noted.

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German rocket start-up inaugurates production site in Bavaria - The Star Online

That's it. You have decided 2020 has been enough. You have created a spaceship and have made the choice to leave for the closest habitable planet. None of the traditional potentially habitable nearby neighbors like Mars, Venus, or Titan will make the cut. Rather than risk living through anymore 2020 catastrophes, your best bet is to fly out to one of our closest interstellar neighbors. In 2017, astronomers reported that our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, has several potentially habitable exoplanets. It looks like this may be your next destination. However, how long will it take for you to get to your new home with our current technology? For reference, consider that the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo 11 spacecraft into space traveled at just over 40,000 kilometers per hour.

However, let's assume that your spaceship can reach the same top speed as the Parker Solar Probe, right under 700,000 kilometers per hour. How long will it take you to get to Proxima Centauri, which lies approximately 4.2 light-years from Earth? A few months? Years? Decades? Assuming that you can travel as fast as the Parker Solar Probe, it would take approximately 6,600 years to arrive at your destination. No amount of gameplay will keep you entertained for that long, given that you have found a way to survive. Say, if you were only able to travel at the speed of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, it would take you 113,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri.

Perhaps we have a solution to your conundrum. A warp drive. Before we even jump into warp speed, you need to fully grasp our universe's massive size and the concept of light-years.

As the universe is unimaginably big, researchers tend to use light-years to describe the distance between objects. In short, a light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. Light is the fastest thing in our universe, traveling at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles or 300,000 km per second. One light-year is approximately 6 trillion miles or 9 trillion km. If you wanted to travel to something a little closer like the Sun it would take 8.3 minutes to reach your destination traveling at the speed of light.

However, if you wanted to go to our closest big galaxy, Andromeda, it would take you 2.5 million light-years. Even if humans were able to create a ship that could travel at the speed of light, our potential destinations would still be limited. Much easier, but still annoying. As we said, the universe is unimaginably large. However, could we create a ship that travels faster than light? Though this sounds like something out of your favorite science fiction show or movie, a warp drive may not be as unrealistic as once thought.

In fact, it may be crucial to our survival. "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars," said the late Stephen Hawking.

17 FACTS ABOUT INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL THAT WILL HAVE YOU DREAMING OF SPACE

In the legendary Star Trek film and television show franchise, warp drive technology was described as a machine designed "to manipulate space, to violate the laws of motion. You make the tiniest mistake, you'll collapse the warp field, you'll crush this ship."

Sounds cool, right?

Basically, a warp drive allows space explorers to travel faster than the speed of light. In Star Trek, it worked by generating "warp fields" to form a subspace bubble that enveloped the starship, distorting the local space-time continuum and moving the starship at velocities that could significantly exceed the speed of light. This fictional 24th-century device makes all interstellar exploration and commerce possible in Star Trek. However, what about in reality?

As mentioned, in our fictional world, a warp drive would allow us to manipulate space-time itself, very literally taking advantage of a loophole in physics to move faster than light. The closest thing to a real warp drive is known as the Alcubierre Warp Drive, which is still only a theoretical construct. It is based on a highly speculative physics paper published in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, who proposed a purportedly valid solution to how space-time and energy interact.

Why would we do something like this? You can thank Einstein. Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity has driven our understanding of the universe for over a century. Scientists have been operating under the restrictions imposed by a relativistic universe. One of these proposed restrictions centers around the idea that the speed of light is an unbreakable universal speed limit.

This means things like faster-than-light space travel is impossible. Alcubierre's answer? He believes that bending space-time could be the solution. How would that work?

Let's go back to our space trip to Proxima Centauri example. In this case, rather than have a standard space ship, we have a new and improved ship with Alcubierre's warp drive technology installed. How would it work? Simply put, as your ship travels to Proxima Centauri, it would cause space ahead of it to contract while the space behind it would expand. Your ship would be moving in space-time within a bubble, or what is known as a "warp bubble" of flat space.

The solution to Einsteins field equations that would allow this warp-speed travel is called the "Alcubierre metric". Imagine you and your roommate picked up the sheet on your bed and straightened it, holding each corner so that it was suspended above the bed, completely flat and stable. If you were to drop a round crystal ball and let it sit on this sheet, it would create an indent, "bending" the fabric. This is going to be your spaceship within its warp- bubble, and the sheet is space-time. Our spaceship is not only making a dent in space; it is pulling part of space-time towards it (expanding) and pushing space-time behind it (contracting).

Two-dimensional visualization of an Alcubierre drive, showing the opposing regions of expanding and contracting spacetime that displace the central region,Source: Allen McC/WikimediaCommons

As described by Matt Williams of Universe Today, "Since the ship is not moving within this bubble, but is being carried along as the region itself moves, conventional relativistic effects such as time dilation would not apply. Hence, the rules of space-time and the laws of relativity would not be violated in the conventional sense."

Our ship is not violating Einstein's equations thanks to the "Alcubierre metric". This phenomenon would give our unique spaceship special properties. We could reach our destination faster within our bubble than a beam of light traveling outside our warp bubble. Interestingly, the fabric of space-time is not limited by the speed of light as proposed by Einstein.

What type of spaceship would we need to create to do this? We would need to create a football-shaped spacecraft with a massive ring encircling it for our faster than light travel to be possible. Think of the enormous ship presented in Interstellar or even in 2001: Space Odyssey. The ring circling the ship would be made of "exotic matter" that would cause space-time to warp around it, creating the scenario described above. Going back to our warp bubble explanation we would be able to travel about ten times the speed of light.

So why are we not funding this? To build a space-ship powerful enough to warp, space-time would need to be massive. The minimum amount of energy required would be about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.

Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center says, "There is hope." At the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss interstellar spaceflight, he talked about the possibility of creating an Alcubierre warp drive. Initially, it was believed the ring on our ship needed to be a perfect circle, making further complicating its design. However, White's new calculations propose that the ring circling our ship be more donut-shaped.

This could power a spacecraft with the mass-energy of the Voyager 1 probe. Even more recently, a report published by NASAhas insinuated that the space agency has at least taken a serious look at warp drive technology there are multiple steps required to achieve interstellar travel, and it could take countless years before we become an interplanetary species. Whats more, there are multiple other steps we need to take to get there. Simply, creating a self-sustaining civilization on Mars is going to be a monumental task.

As Elon Musk once said, There needs to be an intersection of the set of people who wish to go, and the set of people who can afford to go...and that intersection of sets has to be enough to establish a self-sustaining civilization."

However, warp drive technology could be an important first step. Until then we can put our hopes in the development of ion propulsion.

Do you think we will have warp drive technology in the near future? Where would you travel?

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A NASA Warp Drive Could Be a Reality in the Distant Future - Interesting Engineering

The UK's rural areas are being scouted for a big space tourism project by Virgin Galactic, a British spaceflight company within the Virgin Group.Space tourism seeks to give tourists the ability to become astronauts and experience space travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes.Conservative Chair of the Parliamentary Space Committee David Morris spoke to Express.co.uk about why this was good news for the UK.

He said: "The reason that Virgin want to have a space port down in the southwest of England is because space tourism would work so well from that point there.

"If you put a spaceship up into the upper atmosphere of the Earth into lower space, from there you will see literally everything from the north down to the equator.

"You will see quite a large area of the Earth from up there so space tourism is very beneficial for the UK.

"We're placed to do that and the weather is more conducive further south we go to doing this kind of a project."

READ MORE:WATCH: SpaceX rocket booster fails to land correctly - misses ship

Mr Morris continued: "The UK is not just about putting up satellites. We've got space tourism coming along, we've also got other applications that we can use, and we're very good at doing that.

"So I do think it's a very positive outlook for the UK industry.

"The UK Space Agency has been working very hard over the years to ensure that.

"I do think it's now time that we had a dedicated Space Minister that brings all of this together and brings partners in touch with one another under a banner of where we want to go with it."

The Space Committee Chair also spoke about why it was necessary for the UK to develop its space industry.

He told Express.co.uk: "You can see there's quite a lot of people employed in the space sector, it's a high tech, high quality jobs industry.

"This is how we can actually spread it out across the UK and bring all the talent together."

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Mr Morris added: "To give you an example, the preferred areas for space ports are rural areas.

"We have mainly ballistic capabilities that we're trying to develop so we can send our own satellites up into orbit in the more remote rural areas, the ones that are more north because of trajectories and securities as far as sending any ballistic missiles into the air.

"So we're looking at trying to put investment into those areas so that we can enhance the capabilities of ballistics.

"We have the ITAR agreement with the Americans so if we send anything up it doesn't contravene anything to do with ballistic missiles and military.

"It's very beneficial for Scotland and the rest of the UK to remain a united kingdom in that respect."

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UK's big advantage that will spark European dominance in post-Brexit space tourism - Daily Express

As Nashville's hospitality and food service industry fights to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city is eyeing a potential lifelinefrom the pages of the European restaurant playbook: al fresco dining.

Metro Council is considering legislation for final approval on Sept. 15 that could give way for Nashville restaurants to temporarily allow sidewalk cafe dining.It's aimed at giving restaurants an avenue to expand their outdoor seating while still complying with capacity limitations imposed by the city.

While Metro's existing sidewalk cafe permit program predates the pandemic, it's only been an option offered to businesses downtown. If approved, the ordinance would extend the choice throughout the the county, and also allow businesses to utilize some of their private parking spots not includingAccessible Parking Spaces for additional seating.

"Thiswas a result of the conversations I had with small business owners in the East Nashville community sort of about finding ways that we could, within the context of safe social distancing and reduced capacity, allow them to see some more customers and provide some opportunity for people to better weather this unprecedented situation," said Council Member Sean Parker, who is sponsoring the bill.

The legislation has wide support on council and comes at a time when businesses have had tofind creativeways to adjust their operations under health restrictions.

Puckett's Wayne Johnson takes Jonathan and Leslie Godfrey's lunch order on Puckett's outdoor patio in downtown Nashville on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020.(Photo: Shelley Mays/The Tennessean )

Supporters hope the ordinance, which would expire at the end of the calendar year unless extended by council, will be a time to learn lessons and see how it could change how Nashville utilizes public space and right-of-way in the future with potential shifts and changes in a post-pandemic world.

"Maybe some of this will be a permanent fixture and the city will be better off,"Metro Public Works Assistant Director Jeff Hammon said. "We're happy to use bad situations like we're in with COVID, and experiment and change minds."

While "sidewalk" is in the title of the permit, it's notjust limited to sidewalks. Public Works has the authority to extend the use of other public right-of-way to businesses, including on-street parking, travel lanes and curbs.

It willall be determined on a case-by-case basis, Hammon told The Tennessean.

Restaurants must still get a permit fromPublic Works the $100 fee is waived during the duration of the ordinanceand comply with existing provisions, including at least a 4-foot sidewalk clearance as required by theAmericans with Disabilities Act.

In some cases more clearance for pedestrians might be required.

While safety remainsparamount, Hammon said thedepartment is trying to strike a balance between due diligence and not overthinking the process.

"We have one objective right now and that is to try and do just enough to allow this to happen and then get out of the way. Time is a bit of the essence for thesebusinesses and there's pressure to make it happen," he said. "There may be less oversight than what we might normally do, but there's also not as heavy of pedestrian traffic as (pre-COVID-19). It seems like a reasonable trade-off."

Officials will do an initial look at a site plan and then examinehow operations are set up.The city already has a mechanism in place for concerns related to public rights-of-way, and deploys inspectors whenany complaints are filed with the city.

Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant on 5th Avenue and Church Street worked with the Nashville Downtown Partnership and the city to create a sidewalk dining spaceabout four years ago.

But while sidewalk dining is not new to Nashville, it's one idea that hasn't been put to much use, according to Hammon, who could think of maybe one other restaurant downtown who holds a permit.

Much of that, he suspects, has to do with little knowledge about the process.

"I have learned more about sidewalk cafes as a result of this conversation," saidDowntown Council Member Freddie O'Connell. "There's a new level of interest, especially about public spaces, and that's a good thing. Particularly because it's better for people to be outdoors right now."

COVID-19 has brought on a particular set of challenges on Lower Broadway, including enforcement of the city's mask mandate asfoot traffic remains high on weekends with tourists continueto flock to the popular street.

Images from the holiday weekend showed packed sidewalks with no social distancing as patrons mingled as they waited to get inside businesses.

Leslie Godfrey eats lunch on Puckett's outdoor patio in downtown Nashville on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020.(Photo: Shelley Mays/The Tennessean )

While the city has already closed down some lanes to extend space for walkability, including this Sunday when officials completely shut down traffic between 4th and 5th avenues, some businesses lining Lower Broadway have tried to set up tables and chairs outside to optimize sales and profits with reduced capacity indoors. But because it's a state route, they're prohibited from conducting operations on state right-of-way.

Puckett's is one of several restaurants run by A. Marshall Hospitality under CEO and founder Andy Marshall, who said the sidewalk dining option was part of an effort by the Nashville Downtown Partnership to bolster a "community feel" downtown.

Puckett's outdoor seating lines the sidewalk near the street, leaving a pathway for pedestrians between the restaurant and sidewalk dining space.

"For us, it's been popular, and now it's even more popular than it was when we started it," Marshall said.

He supports the ordinance, which he noted could boost both sales and morale in Nashville's restaurant industry during the pandemic. But he doesn't think it has to end there.

"I think if the room allows it on the sidewalks, for a clear pathway for pedestrians and the outside dining, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want this to be a permanent ordinance for restaurants and cafes to participate in," Marshall said. "It adds a wonderful atmosphere, not only downtown but in the neighborhoods, and I think it would be something that should be long term."

Meitra Aycock, president of the 12 South Neighborhood Association, said she was surprised an ordinance like this wasn't introduced sooner.

"This has been going on in cities across the U.S. for months now, and it seems like such an obvious solution for these small business owners," she said.

The 12 South neighborhood is lauded as one of the most walkable in Nashville, with its streets particularly a half-mile stretch on 12th Avenue South lined with local small businesses and restaurants.

Aycock said she thinks the ordinance will be helpful for some businesses on 12 South that have parking spaces they could convert into seating areas, or areas where roadways could be closed to accommodate pedestrian traffic (the latter idea is not part of the ordinance currently under consideration). For other businesses, the logistics would be more complicated.

"Do I support that our merchants (would) have an enhanced ability to thrive? Absolutely," she said. "Do I want to forego the walkability of 12th Avenue? No."

Businesses thathave already pivoted and adapted operations in the past five monthswill have to decide which revenue model works best for them, said Council Member Colby Sledge, who represents the 12 South area.

For some, it might make more sense to retain parking spots for increased vehicle turnover due to upticks in take-out orders, or continue to use space out front for curbside or window pick up.

Ownersat Edley's Bar-B-Que recently redid theoutdoor dining area on their 12th Avenue South location'sexisting outdoor deck, and told Sledgedeliverieshave greatly increased making on-street parking in front of their businesses important to keep available.

Not all sidewalks are created equally, and Nashville is not known for its walkability, Sledge added.

Before the slowdown brought by COVID-19, the idea of sidewalk cafes along the popular avenue likely wouldn't have been feasible, he said. At least not without a lot of work.

Sledge said he doesn't see ordinance resulting in "cafe style" seating everywhere in Nashville in future, butthat the lesson could be the city creativelyrethinking already made spaces within the city particularly in the Urban core, such as the Gulch, or Houston Street in his district.

Adding sidewalk dining space has already benefited Lockeland Table, among the first restaurants in Nashville to request permission to do so from the city during the pandemic.

Metro worked with the restaurant and the Civic Design Center to provide a different temporary process dubbed the "tactical urbanism" permit.

Civic Design Center is an organization that works with various groups and Public Works to reclaim public space, using short-term, low costs projects to improve safety and pedestrian-friendly spaces.

The restaurant, located in the Lockeland Springs neighborhood, lined the sidewalk on one of its outside walls with seven small tables, two seats each. Co-owner Cara Graham said it's made a world of difference in helping the business survive while following mandates limiting its indoor space to half capacity.

"14 seats in a situation like this is huge for us, and people want to be there," Graham said. "That's where they request to sit 90% of the time."

East Nashville's Lockeland Table added a bunch of tables on the sidewalk on the 16th Street side of the restaurant(Photo: Submitted)

Graham said the restaurant's attorney handled the application process, which went smoothly. The planning commission inspected the sidewalk setup and determined that the sidewalk was wide enough to accommodate tables and still comply withADArequirements.

"I think it's really an example of the city recognizing that we need to re-imagine public spaces and how these public spaces can be activated in positive ways," Graham said.

Making this process easier for restaurants could be their saving grace, she added.

"We just feel like we've consistently been doing our part for the city ... we were doing the things that were mandated before they were mandated," Graham explained. "...We feel like this is just a way for the city to give back to small businesses that are trying to survive right now."

Yihyun Jeong covers politics in Nashville for USA TODAY NETWORK - TENNESSEE.Reach her at yjeong@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @yihyun_jeong.

Cassandra Stephenson covers business for The Tennessean. Reach her at ckstephenson@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @CStephenson731.

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Nashville eyes sidewalk dining as a tool to keep restaurants afloat. Could the idea outlast COVID-19? - Tennessean

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.

Imagine its the year 2500, and scientists at some NASA-like space agency are waiting to hear back from the first colonists to ever travel to another planetary system. The spaceship took off 200 years earlier, and rather than put the travelers into a state of suspended animation and risk biological damage or equipment malfunction, several generations have been living and dying and reproducing on board, propagating the human line along the way. Communication with them has been minimal, given the vast distances involved: By trips end, a radio message at light speed takes more than a decade to reach Earth, and a reply then takes another 10 years. But based on future-NASAs calculations, word of the colonists landing should be coming any day now.

Suddenly, it arrives! Its the first message from human beings to be warmed by another sun. The scientists crowd around their screens, eager for the news.

Theres just one problem: The message is indecipherable. Its not that its corrupted; it looks like real language, and familiar phrases pop out here and there. But the message is littered with strange words in unexpected order, as well as words with odd suffixes and prefixes and phrases that dont mean anything to the scientists; the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary all seem off. Their stomachs clench as they realize the truth: The colonists very language has mutated, and we Earthlings can no longer understand what theyre saying.

Usually when we think about linguistics and space travel, its an Arrival-type scenario that requires communicating with extraterrestrials. But given the mutability of language, future space explorers could face an even more fundamental problem: Their language could shift so much on the journey out that people back on Earth sound alien to them, and vice versa. Even if we avoid the full disaster of mutual incomprehensibility, some communication issues will inevitably arise, because a spaceship is a perfect Petri dish for accelerated language change.

For one thing, language changes when people find themselves in new social situations, because they need new ways of describing their reality. Living your entire life inside a rocket ship certainly qualifies as novel. Language also mutates quickly when a small group of speakers is isolated for an extended timeand no one in human history would be more isolated than the colonists.

Finally, people often intentionally change their language as a mark of distinctiona way to brand themselves one of us, not one of them. (Even nowadays, if tensions arise during a space mission or habitat simulation, its rarely an issue of astronauts fighting among themselves. Rather, the astronauts tend to band together against Mission Control.) Given that theyre never coming back to Earth, space colonists would likely feel even more bound to one another and less beholden to earthly norms. Adopting new forms of language is a natural way to exhibit that.

So, given that isolation and new social circumstances will change the colonists language, what kinds of changes might we expect?

Some will no doubt be subtle. Consider uptalk? The habit of ending every sentence with a rising pitch? Uptalk started among certain groups of Australians in the 1980s and soon went global. But while a space analogue to uptalk might strike Earthlings as strange, it wouldnt hinder communication that much. The same goes for new vocabulary that the colonists develop on the journey, perhaps from jury-rigged technologies or new interstellar features they encountered. If these words were derivatives or portmanteaus of familiar words, context clues could illuminate the meaning.

Other changes would take more getting used to. In a recent paper titled Language Development During Interstellar Travel, linguists Andrew McKenzie and Jeffrey Punske point out that people 200 years ago commonly used constructions like The road is currently building. Today, that sounds ungrammatical and odd. Wed say The road is being built instead.

Pronunciation tends to shift over time as well, they note. Between about 1400 and 1600, the English language underwent whats grandly called the Great Vowel Shift. Before the shift, the a in tame sounded like the a in father, and teem used to rhyme with our modern fame, among other differences. Then everything shifted, for reasons that remain unclear. Its likely that only one or two vowels shifted at first, but several others then followed suit to make each one clearly distinguishable. In total, this cleaved English into barely intelligible camps of Before and After.

The colonists will need new words to describe their radically new world. Meanwhile, words that we use all the time on Earth will likely atrophy anddecay.

As a result, while we can still understand Shakespeare four centuries after he wrote, Geoffrey Chaucers English from circa 1400 looks indecipherable. In Chaucers time, spelling was less standard and people often simply transliterated pronunciations onto the page. Then the Great Vowel Shift happened, and those old spellings and pronunciations suddenly looked obscure. As McKenzie and Punske write, Even Shakespeare in 1600 could not have heard [Chaucers English] without learning a different language. Shifts like this also help explain why English spelling is so treacherous nowadays.

Such shifts arent all cordoned off in the distant past either. Text-speak (wtf, lolz, brb) spread remarkably quickly over the past few decades but looks like gibberish to an outsider; its all but indecipherable unless someone tells you what the acronyms and abbreviations mean. As for spoken language, the Great Lakes region in North America is currently in the midst of the so-called Northern Cities Vowel Shift: The vowel in bat is shifting to sound like the vowel in bet, for instance. Meanwhile, bet is shifting to sound more like but, which itself is shifting toward bought, and so on. McKenzie and Punske also point out that many linguists consider spoken and written French to be distinct dialects now, since what French people say in conversation doesnt always follow the rules for proper writing. If splits like those can arise within a single population in a relatively short time span, how much greater are the odds of a split among two groups of people billions of miles apart?

Linguist Sarah Thomason has also explored the idea of language shifts among space colonists, especially in their vocabulary. (Her paper, Language Change and Cultural Continuity, appeared in the book Interstellar Travel and Multi-Generational Space Ships, which is not available online.) Again, the colonists will need new words to describe their radically new world. Meanwhile, words that we use all the time on Earth will likely atrophy and decay. As Thomason points out, what use will people in a rocket ship have for words like snow, windy, river, ocean, mountain, sunburn, summer, winter, horse, tiger boat, truck, airplane, skyscraper, tunnel, [or] bridge? Colonists might still encounter such words in books or stories about Earth, but they will be relics at best and their resonance will likely fade.

Extending that idea, a life of permanent, cloistered space travel will likely give rise to new metaphorsand perhaps even a new metaphysics, as new religious practices develop. The arts will no doubt morph as well: Will epic war stories or sun-dappled Vermeers really resonate with someone trapped in a tin can? New art will emerge to speak to new experiences, and all of this will change the colonists language.

Things get even messier if you consider the possibility of language blending. Right now, space travel is largely a monoglot enterprise: Russian is the official language aboard the Soyuz rockets that deliver astronauts to the International Space Station, but once they arrive, English is used in most situations. That might not be the case on a colonizing mission. For political reasons, and especially to ensure as much genetic diversity as possible, space colonists could be drawn from several different continents. In that case, the mission would likely have at least two official languages; children born on the journey would grow up speaking both.

That split wouldnt last long, though. People who grow up speaking two different languages dont always keep them in separate compartments in their head. The languages blend and influence each other: Spanglish is a prime example. Theres nothing wrong with this, and the blends can in fact enrich both languages. But if the parent languages have markedly different grammar or syntax, and the hybrid language combines aspects of both, it will make communication with people back on Earth more difficult.

All of this will be complicated by the fact that while the colonists are hurtling along and developing their new language, language on Earth wont stand still either. Both the colonists language and the Earthlings language will be shifting simultaneously, so a 200-year mission effectively means 400 years of language change. Similarly, consider what would happen if Earthlings decide to send several waves of colonists to a single planet, on ships spaced a decade or two apart. Each ships language will evolve separately, and the later colonists could step out onto their new home planet having no idea what the prior inhabitants are saying.

So is there any way around these problems, or is space language doomed to deteriorate into a Babel?

McKenzie and Punske recommend training future astronauts in linguistics, to make them aware of potential shifts and help minimize the friction that arises. To be sure, linguistics will always be secondary to, say, keeping crops alive or keeping generators running. But as Thomason points out, poor communication is a waste of time at best and a real danger at worst, given how precarious survival will be in space. A second wave of colonists arriving on a new home planet could immediately do something stupid and endanger everyone there, simply because they didnt understand some subtlety about what was going on.

But the real solution here might involve a throwback to the distant past. Inevitably, the children being raised on the spaceship will need to attend school and learn something. We could take advantage of that schooling to teach them a lingua francaa frozen form of Spanish or Chinese or English.

This frozen language would essentially function the same way that Latin did for European scholars during much of the previous millennium. No one spoke Latin organically, but many people communicated with it. We often deride the old, Gradgrindian-school systems of yesteryear, with their emphasis on rote learning and perfect Greek or Latin. It seems so stuffy and outdated in our high-tech world. But something similar could be our best hope for ensuring smooth communication on the most high-tech adventure that humankind will ever undertake.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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How will language change if humans travel the stars? - Slate

SpaceXs Elon Musk is already flying astronauts to the international space station, and developing the rockets and ships that will take astronauts to the moon and Mars. But what about once we actually get there? Yeah, hes thinking about that too and he knows the next step could be the hardest of all.

Speaking at the recent virtual Humans to Mars conference, Musk opened up about the development of the companys new Starship, a reusable rocket system he sees as the future of space travel. The set-up will be capable of transporting an immense amount of cargo, or around 100 passengers, to space. He says theres good progress on getting those crafts and massive rockets designed and built, though it will obviously take some time to create a production system for something so ambitious.

He says hes not sure exactly how long it will take for humans to reach Mars (current plans call for boots on the red dirt within the decade), but hes already thinking about what comes after the first couple of visits and return trips. Namely, how do we set up a permanent settlement on an alien planet? He already has designs for how a base could work, but minces no words about the type of challenge it will be.

And getting to Mars, I think, is not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is building a base, building a city on Mars that is self-sustaining, Musk said via CNBC. Were going to build a propellant plant, an initial Mars base Mars Base Alpha and then get it to the point where its self-sustaining I want to emphasize that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart.

He added: Good chance youll die, its going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out.

Gulp.

Which, Musk is almost certainly right. If theres one thing that is infinitely consistent about space travel, its that its dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Theres a reason they test rockets and ships dozens and dozens and dozens of times before they even consider putting a human passenger on board. Any tiny, minor problem can mean life or death when youre hundreds, thousands or millions of miles from Earth.

So yeah, if you plan on getting your ass to Mars in the next few decades, just take Musks words to heart. It could be awesome, but itll also be dangerous.

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Looking ahead to Mars base, Elon Musk says theres a good chance astronauts could die there - SYFY WIRE

There is a scene about midway through Netflix's new series Away, which follows a multinational crew of astronauts on the first-ever manned mission to Mars, where one of the astronauts, his body deteriorating from months in space, slowly peels a chunk of dead skin off of his foot. Not a layer, not a flake, a chunk. It's a moment taken, like certain other moments in the show, from a 2014 Esquire feature, also titled "Away," in which the writer Chris Jones interviewed astronaut Scott Kelly in the days leading up to his one-year solo mission aboard the International Space Station.

During his previous six-month stay aboard the ISS, in 2011, the unthinkable happened: U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, the wife of Scott's identical twin brother, Mark, was shot in an assassination attempt. With no way to come home, Kelly could only complete his mission, fueled by daily calls and updates from his family on his sister-in-law's condition. It's this impossible, heart-wrenching situation that inspired playwright and screenwriter Andrew Hinderaker to create Away -- though Hinderaker is no astronaut, he felt a kinship with Kelly nonetheless.

"My partner and I have been together for fifteen years, and she lives with a progressive and really terrible disease and was diagnosed when I was away opening a play," Hinderaker explained during a recent interview. "To be apart from someone you love when they need you, to be pulled there because you think you're doing what you should be doing for your career and then you receive this really devastating news, you fundamentally want to be home with the people you love, and that was a feeling that resonated with me really personally."

Away follows astronaut Emma Green, played by Hilary Swank, who is forced to decide whether to stay home with her family after her husband (Josh Charles) suffers a devastating medical emergency, or to command the first human mission to another planet. Emma chooses to go, and the show follows the challenges she and her fellow spacefarers face trying to stay alive for years aboard a spaceship, the trials back home faced by her daughter and her husband, and the bond that ties them together.

Part of the challenge -- and the thrill -- of writing about an endeavor of this scale that hasn't been attempted yet is imagining what a trip this far away from home would do to a person. In Jones' article, he writes about the phenomenon astronauts experience of becoming "more yourself" in space. "The moon is, if I remember correctly, 240,000 miles away," Hinderaker said. "Mars at its closest is 40 million miles away. So, everything in terms of the psychological weight, what that sense of isolation might be, everything is amplified exponentially." Green is constantly at odds with Misha (Mark Ivanir), a cosmonaut from Russia, and Lu (Vivian Wu), a Chinese astronaut, experiences a betrayal that compels her to lock herself in her quarters for months. Astronauts, by nature the most professional people in the world, wouldn't normally be susceptible to breakdowns or panic attacks or arguments with crewmates, but a journey of this magnitude allowed Hinderaker to explore his characters a little bit more. "Green's psychiatrist has a line to the effect of, 'She's currently 20 million miles from her family. I can talk about isolation, but that requires a new word altogether.'"

Yet, the best parts of Away, and another reason Hinderaker was inspired to create the show, focus on the crew's ability to problem solve and work together, not just to keep themselves alive, but also to do something that has never been done before. "The article speaks really specifically about the International Space Station, and how something so ambitious was only possible because countries that normally don't work together found a way to work together," Hinderaker said. "Rocket scientists from the former Soviet Union and the United States, who would otherwise be engaged in designing technologies of warfare, repurposed those technologies for discovery." The ISS and other research into space that requires multinational cooperation exist in a space outside of government borders: "The set of rules and politics that govern the International Space Station are completely different than the ones that govern Earth."

In his research, of which Hinderaker and his team of writers (which also included Jones) did copious amounts, interviewing astronauts and their families to get the feeling of what it all must be like, he discovered a few common threads which he called "paradigm-shifting." "They are one of the very small handful of people who get to look back at our planet and understand that, for example, national borders don't exist as they exist on maps and globes, that they are a construct made up of lines that people drew," Hinderaker said. Former astronaut Cady Coleman once explained that the first time she experienced zero-G in space, she realized that "gravity was just one way in which humans were meant to live." Another astronaut, Don Pettit, described to Hinderaker a theory that a piece of Mars, which may at one point have been biologically diverse, could have broken off and landed on Earth, introducing life to our planet. "So, in a very real way," Hinderaker said, "these astronauts who are going to Mars are going home."

There's a concept that some who study ancient things -- geologists who map the strata of the Earth's crust, or physicists who spend days in silent rooms listening to the cosmic background radiation of the universe -- call "deep time," which spans not generations or millennia but millions, billions of years, a kind of time that the mere human mind wasn't built to comprehend. Space travel, the drive to visit places beyond our planet that could someday house our descendants, to be the first or the second or the tenth person to set foot on soil that's not our own knowing you won't live to see what ends up being built upon it, is an inherently selfless thing. There's a beautiful moment in the show's finale, which, without spoiling too much, boldly eschews anything having to do with nationality or personal gain, marking space travel as a human achievement instead of a contest between countries. It's in the same spirit of Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step" quote, whose final word, purposely, is "mankind."

"In one of the first conversations I had with an engineer at NASA, when I described the show via the first crewed mission to Mars, he said, 'Oh, is it set in, like, 2090?'" Hinderaker explained. "And I said, 'Well, if there was the international collaboration and the will, how soon could you go?' And he was like, 'We could go tomorrow.'" The show has no flying cars or brain implants or food coming out of spray cans -- Away is meant to look as if it could be happening today, right now. "We're not talking about sci-fi," Hinderaker said. "We can do this. And the show is rooted in that optimism."

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Netflix's 'Away' Imagines a Future in Which Going to Mars Is Possible - Thrillist

Virgin Galactic Holdings (NYSE:SPCE) has been one of the more interesting speculative plays this year. And on a certain level, I understand the allure of SPCE stock. Weve always been a nation of risk takers. Theres a part of us that wants to make the movies our reality.

Source: Christopher Penler / Shutterstock.com

But theres a reason why a movie is a movie. Space travel in the movie presumes that all the bugs have been worked out. That weve been traveling in space for years. But thats not the case. And if theres one thing we know about our society, we love to litigate.

Aggressive growth investors will be quick to point out that if you wait for a stock to prove itself, youve waited too long. But in the case of SPCE stock, rushing in too soon carries a higher-than-usual risk premium.

Investors have been trading SPCE stock on the news. And that news has been mostly good. The company announced in its last earnings call that it had completed 27 out of the 29 test flights it is required to undertake before beginning commercial flights.

That puts the company in position to send founder Sir Richard Branson on its first commercial suborbital space flight. But even that positive news sent the stock lower because the flight was pushed off until the first quarter of 2021 amid delays in testing due to the novel coronavirus.

However, Virgin Galactic just got a very bullish call by Cowen analyst Oliver Chen. Chen initiated his coverage with a $22 price target. He bases his optimism on the idea that once the super rich get a taste of the experience of suborbital flight, theyll be coming back for more.

Virgin Galactics new chief executive officer (CEO) Michael Colglazier comes from Disney (NYSE:DIS). Its a savvy move for founder Sir Richard Branson. Colglazier says that the two companies are both in the business of providing amazing transformational customer experiences.

That would fit Chens rosy portrait. And it may be true. But the experience that customers have at Disney is not overtly life threatening (insert cynical Covid-19 joke if you must). However to borrow a quote from Jurassic Park, Yeah, but if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates dont eat the tourists.

And thats my objection with SPCE stock from a commercial perspective. Putting the clever movie quotes aside, the company has to be right every time. You show me a waiver of liability, and Ill show you an army of lawyers waiting to shred it. Even if the company wins, space flights will be grounded while the legal battle ensues.

The company has a partnership with NASA to develop a readiness program for private-sector astronauts who are heading to the International Space Station.

We are excited to partner with NASA on this private orbital spaceflight program, which will not only allow us to use our spaceflight platform, but also offer our space training infrastructure to NASA and other agencies, Virgin Galactic chief space officer (CSO) George Whitesides said in the June news release.

To some this may sound like a distinction without a difference. After all, this can still theoretically expose the company to liability. In fact, NASA has talked openly about trying to send Tom Cruise to the International Space Station to film a movie.

But putting that aside, this has all the earmarks of a public-private partnership with NASA that can help pay the bills. As an investor, its not as exciting, but its something that seems more down to earth.

With a speculative stock such as Virgin Galactic, the extreme sentiment on either side starts to sound a bit like an infomercial. Company X promises to take you, and your well-heeled friends, into suborbital space.

But wait, theres more. Some day (in the undefined future), you and your friends will be able to spend an evening in our space hotel.

And, of course, theres the payoff. In the case of SPCE stock, Chen suggests that the stock could go to $50 per share.

Of course, the fine print suggests that the stock might not get there until 2050. But why quibble? Whats the harm in taking a couple of spins at the roulette wheel on the future of space travel?

And the answer is maybe there would be no harm. As Will Ashworth points out, the company is closer than perhaps imagined at achieving its goal of suborbital space flight. And if that goal is achieved, its likely that SPCE stock would go to the moon. So why not jump in when the stock price is sitting around a third of that price?

Because its not there yet. And like the Apollo 13 mission, failure is an option here and success is very expensive.

You can wait on SPCE stock. Really, you can.

On the date of publication Chris Markoch did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

Chris Markoch is a freelance financial copywriter who has been covering the market for over five years. He has been writing for Investor Place since 2019.

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When It Comes to Virgin Galactic Stock, There Is Absolutely No Rush to Jump In - InvestorPlace

The Wiggles

Ive been reviewing childrens music for 15 years.The Wiggleshave been around for 29 years. In our collective space, Ive only reviewed one CD by the Australian troupe a solo effort byGreg Page in 2015. Not that theyve waited for me; the Wiggles, currently in their second iteration, have released their staggering 55th studio album, entitled (wait for it) Choo Choo Trains, Propeller Planes & Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car!(and yes, the exclamation point is part of the title).

Emma, Lachy, Simon, and original member Anthony have collected 23 tunes for preschoolers, including songs about all forms of travel walking, wheelchairs, space travel, swimming, surfing, trains, planes, and that aforementioned Big Red Car. The Wheels on the Wheelchair Go Round and Round is certainly an inclusive take on the old chestnut. We Fly the Plane to the Outback manages to work in wallabies, kookaburras, and other Australia wildlife during their flight. Social Distancing is about as topical as the group gets, addressing the necessity to stay home and be safe and using online technology to visit with friends and family.

I had two kids cycle through a fascination with the band and was stunned to read about their vilification Down Under after a contentious separation from Wiggle Sam. The re-invigorated quartet came back strong and Matthew was riveted the two occasions when he saw the group live on Long Island during their trips to the U.S. Do The Propeller, an early song from those days, is given an acoustic recording. The nearly 30-year-old Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car gets a shine and polish as well.

Choo Choo Trains slipped through during the frantic first wave of the pandemic, and was released in July. But the Wiggles have managed the feat of staying young (curse you, Anthony and Captain Feathersword) while engaging with new generations of preschoolers for nearly three decades. Theyve traveled near, theyve traveled far, theyve kept in motion, and kept kids moving in the process.

Choo Choo Trains is available from the Wiggles website,Amazon,Apple Music,Spotify, andBarnes & Noble.

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The Wiggles Address Modes of Travel, Togetherness - GeekDad

After a record 82 initial public offerings of special purpose acquisition corporations known by the acronym SPAC 2020 seems to have upended the traditional IPO market, yet most offer lower returns on average than conventional deals, according to a report.

Of 223 SPAC IPOs conducted from the start of 2015 through July, 89 have completed mergers and taken a company public, offering the chance to examine their performance, according to the report from Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO ETFs and institutional research. Of those 89, the common shares have delivered an average loss of 18.8% and a median return of minus 36.1%. That compares with the average after-market return from traditional IPOs of 37.2% since 2015.

As of July 24, only 26 of the SPACs in that group had positive returns, the study found.

SPACs, also known as blank-check companies, have been around since the 1980s, but have become a juggernaut this year amid high levels of liquidity and a strong appetite for new growth companies.

Dont miss: The CEO who made one of Silicon Valleys worst acquisitions wants a $400 million blank check

SPACs raise money in an IPO, and then place it in a trust while the sponsor searches for a business or businesses to acquire, usually within a two-year period. The companies then complete a merger and the target becomes a listed stock. Recent examples include sports-betting operator DraftKings Inc. DKNG, -3.31%, electric truck maker Nikola Corp. NKLA, -1.60% and space travel company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. SPCE, -3.69%.

Its a back door to going public and avoiding scrutiny, said Kathleen Smith, Principal at Renaissance. You hear about the moonshots, like DraftKings and Virgin Galactica, which have done well, but the average return is negative. You cant just blindly go in and make money.

See also: A new breed of tech IPOs may give the stock market reason to party like its 1999

DraftKings went public via a merger with SPAC Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. and a gambling tech business, SBTech Global Ltd., earlier this year. The renamed DraftKings has been on a tear, gaining 258% in the year to date, even as major sports events were canceled during the pandemic.

Nikola merged with VectolQ Acquisition in June and immediately benefited from the cult status enjoyed by fellow electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. TSLA, +2.78% , which has propelled that stock to record levels this year. Nikola has gained 232% in the year to date.

See:Former House Speaker Paul Ryan to chair $300 million blank-check company: report

Virgin Galactics route to public markets came through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia last October. The stock is up 35% in 2020, outperforming the S&P 500 s SPX, -0.81% 5% gain and the Dow Jones Industrial Averages DJIA, -0.56% 2% loss.

The recent crop of SPAC mergers have performed better than the broader group, the report found. The common shares of the 21 SPAC mergers completed in the period from Jan. 1 to July are averaging a return of 13.1% from their offer price, but thats mostly due to the two highest performers DraftKings and Nikola. Without those two, the SPACs produced better returns than in the period going back to 2015, but are still a negative 10.5%. That compares with the 2020 IPO markets average aftermarket positive return of 6.5%.

The trend isnt expected to end anytime soon. SPACs have raised a record $31 billion in 2020 to date, and new announcements are coming every day as investors seem to be racing to join the club. The year also brought the biggest-ever SPAC, when billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman took one public in July with more than $4 billion in its kitty to spend.

At the time, Ackman said he was long-term bullish on America and the stock market, although he was bearish on highly indebted companies.

James Gellert, chief executive of Rapid Ratings, a data and analytics company that assesses the financial health of private and public companies, said SPACs are a bull market phenomenon that gain in popularity when markets are doing well, as the stock market was until the recent selloff.

See: The death of valuation and what it could mean for investors going forward

Theres a lot of liquidity looking for nuanced asset classes and SPACs as a sub-category of equity is an interesting one to take a flier on, he said. If you have a diverse portfolio, a SPAC that is executed well is like a liquid private-equity investment.

Many of the companies that are merged into SPACs come from private-equity portfolios, which usually means they are more mature businesses and in better financial health. For investors, they are really betting on the management team of the SPAC finding a good target business.

The broader initial public offering market is expected to be busy through the end of the year, with 45 companies in the current pipeline aiming to raise about $8 billion, according to Smith from Renaissance Capital.

See:Fisker is going public: Five things to know about the electric-car maker ahead of its IPO

Another 65 companies have filed confidentially with the aim of raising $28 billion, boosting the total to a potential 110 deals raising $36 billion.

So far this year, there have been 111 U.S. IPOs, raising $37 billion. The last year to see proceeds of more than that was 2014, when there were 275 deals that raised $85 billion.

Even if we dont get to that backlog of confidential filers, well still probably exceed any year going back to 2014, she said.

That was the year Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA, -0.39% went public, raising $25 billion in the biggest deal ever. That deal is expected to be eclipsed by the flotation of Ant Group, the payments company that was set up to serve Alibaba in 2004 and was spun off in 2011. Ant is expected to list on the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges later this year in a deal expected to raise up to $30 billion.

Smith said the pullback in stocks at the end of this week was a positive for the IPO market, as it puts a bit more fear in the market. Fear gets better pricing, because multiples drop as peers drop and pricing falls, she said.

Among the deals on tap are Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel; cloud data-warehouse company Snowflake Computing; videogame technology company Unity Software; Asana, a software provider started by Facebook; construction software company Bentley Systems; telehealth companies Amwell and GoodRx; packaging company Pactiv Evergreen Inc.; and Chinese online internet finance marketplace Lufax, among others.

The Renaissance IPO ETF IPO, -1.60% has gained 49% in 2020 to date.

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2020 is the year of the SPAC yet traditional IPOs offer better returns, report finds - MarketWatch

The history of space exploration is full of iconic images -- Alan Shepard launching into orbit, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon -- but for many years, women were missing from the picture.

CNET's new podcast series,Making Space: The FemaleFrontier, will tell these stories launching on Sept. 9, you'll be able to hear their stories over six weeks, with a new episode every Wednesday.

From the early days of the space race to the greatest scientific breakthroughs of our generation, women have always played a vital role in the history of space discovery. Sometimes front and center, more often than not invisible, these women helped build our understanding of space from the ground up.

Over six episodes, we're spotlighting the women that shaped space discovery. The women that fought to carve out a place at NASA, the scientists who were overlooked by the establishment all the way up to the trailblazers leading the charge in the next age of discovery -- we hear from six iconic women who represent six important eras in space discovery.

You can catch the series on Apple podcasts or search for Making Space: The Female Frontier wherever you listen.

JoAnn Morgan (sitting in the third row of consoles, at the center) was the only woman in the firing room for the Apollo 11 launch. She tells her story in Episode 1 of Making Space: The Female Frontier.

On July 16, 1969, when Apollo 11 launched from the Kennedy Space Center, JoAnn Morgan was the only woman watching from the launch control room. In Episode 1 of Making Space, Morgan tells us her story -- from her early days as one of the few women at NASA to the thrill of the moon landing and her continued push to get women involved in space exploration.

Episode 1 available Wednesday, Sept. 9.

In the early '60s, as NASA's Mercury astronauts launched into space, 13 women underwent a secret astronaut testing program to see if they had the right stuff to compete with the men. Wally Funk, one of the few surviving members of the "Mercury 13" tells us the story of those grueling tests and why she'll never never give up on her quest to go to space, all these years later.

Episode 2 available Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Wally Funk puts on a gas mask during testing at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The tests were designed to exactly replicate the testing done by the Mercury 7 astronauts to evaluate whether women were fit for space travel.

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was just 24 years old when she made one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, spotting a small "squiggle" on a telescope reading that signified the first pulsar ever discovered. Bell Burnell reflects on a lifetime of work and the Nobel Prize that was ultimately awarded to her supervisor for the discovery.

Episode 3available Wednesday, Sept. 23.

Kathy Sullivan was in NASA's first co-ed class of astronauts and was the first US woman to complete a spacewalk. But in 2020, she achieved a totally new feat -- becoming the first woman to dive to the deepest part of the ocean. Sullivan tells the story of seeing the world from both extremes and why space isn't all that different to the ocean's abyss.

Episode 4available Wednesday, Sept. 30.

In 2020, former astronaut Kathy Sullivan became the first woman to dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

In July 2020, NASA launched its newest Mars rover, complete with a stowaway: a super-lightweight helicopter that is set to fly on Mars. MiMi Aung, the project lead for the Ingenuity Helicopter, tells us the story of how the project came to be, and how you design a helicopter to fly on another world.

Episode 5available Wednesday, Oct. 7.

As the first female launch director for NASA, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is on a mission to get the first woman and the next man back on the moon. She tells us what it takes to launch a rocket -- from the years of preparation to the final exhilarating seconds -- and why humanity is venturing further than it ever has before.

Episode 6available Wednesday, Oct. 14.

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Making Space: The Female Frontier spotlights the women who shaped space exploration - CNET

The Hilary Swank-helmed drama 'Away' premieres globally on Netflix September 4.

Did you ever have dreams of becoming an astronaut? Well, Netflix NFLX has a new drama premiering globally September 4 that will allow you to vicariously join an international mission to Mars. The 10-episode series Away will keep you hooked from start to finish. Its an emotional and exciting ride!

Hilary Swank shines as Commander Emma Green, an American astronaut leading an international crew on a first-of-its kind mission. Josh Charles plays her husband Matt, who stays home to take care of their teenage daughter, Alexis (Talitha Bateman). Rounding out the international crew are Ato Essandoh as Kwesi, Mark Ivanir as Misha, Vivian Wu as Lu and Ray Panthaki as Ram. From different corners of the globe, the team must work together under extreme stress to save themselves and the mission at hand.

As fascinating as the plots main storyline, a three-year first-of-its-kind mission to Mars, are some behind-the-scenes facts, as well as things that happen to the human body during space travel.

L-R: Vivian Wu, MarkIvanir, Hilary Swank, Ray Panthaki and Ato Essandoh.

1.Like other hit Netflix series, such as last years Unbelievable, the new 10-episode drama Away was inspired by an article. In this case, the Swank-helmed series about an international three-year mission to Mars was loosely based on a magazine article of the same name written by journalist Chris Jones for Esquire. Jones then joined the shows production team as a member of the writing staff.

2.One question many fans will be apt to ask is how they filmed the no-gravity scenes. There is gravity in the lower living quarters of the spaceship but not in the upper areas, nor outside the spacecraft. The answer is in whats called wire work. Mark Ivanir, who plays Russian astronaut Misha Popov, had a bit of an advantage here or, as he says, a secret weapon. When he initially arrived for the casts astronaut training bootcamp, his background as a circus performer gave him a leg up. He admits that by the second day, as the rest of the cast was adjusting to the wires, he was doing backflips.

3.As if the physicality of the wire work wasnt enough, it also led to one of the most challenging aspects of filming for Swank, which was how to talk in space. She says that one of the most trying parts of these scenes for the cast was learning to slow body movements down while not altering the speed of their words. Swank described that when your body is moving slowly, the inclination is to also slow your words down in a way similar to speaking in slow motion. This is not how astronauts speak in space and she compared it to tapping your head with one hand while simultaneously rubbing your stomach with the other.

4.The food in space has improved over the years and can now actually be considered cuisine. Over the course of a three-year mission to Mars, the astronauts would require an incredible 24,000 pounds of food. Its been reported that famous chef Rachael Ray prepared Swedish meatballs, Thai chicken and vegetable curry for the crew of space shuttle Discovery in December 2006. The shows production designer, David Sandefur, said he took the volume of food storage into account when designing the ship and he used moveable racks that could be reconfigured depending on the need for space. Sandefur and his team also completed extensive research of recent and upcoming designs of command modules from the Orion mission to Space X to ensure every detail was just right when designing the shows spaceship.

5.The Obamas played a role in Away, whether they knew it or not. When thinking about the relationship dynamic between Emma and Matt, the writers drew inspiration from a very famous couple. Showrunner Jessica Goldberg says the powerful relationship between President Obama and Michelle Obama was top of mind in the writers room.

6.Space travel does some very odd things to the human body. For instance, in one scene a character is extremely concerned when a large chunk of his foot falls off. This is a brutal reality that real-life astronauts really do have to be concerned about. After just one month of being in orbit, astronauts begin shedding large quantities of skin from their soles, mainly consisting of the calluses that have built-up over time. One astronaut was reported to have called Mission Control when a sizable wedge of his heel floated away.

7.Another interesting fact about the human body and space travel is that some astronauts actually grow taller in space. According to NASA, astronauts have been known to grow up to two inches taller in space due to the lack of gravity compressing the vertebrae.

8. Designing the space suits for the show was a very detail-oriented job. Costume Designer Kimberly Adams says that one of the most time-consuming elements for the costume department and the production design team was designing the astronaut patches because in the world of NASA, the mission patches are a huge deal and are extremely intricate in design. Each crew that goes up on various missions has a say in the design of their patches. Adams, who previously designed spacesuits when working on Stranger Things, as well as the Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone 1999 movie Blast From the Past, adds that shes never created suits like the ones worn in Away. With these, the challenge was coming up with the practicality of what could be real in a near-future reality.

9.Real-life astronauts also came into play for the show. Former NASA astronaut and consultant Mike Massimino has a cameo playing himself in the series. He appears in the first episode in a scene where hes being interviewed about the mission. And, astronaut Peggy Whitson provided loose inspiration for Swanks character. Whitson commanded nine missions to space and when Swank called her to discuss her experiences, Swank learned Whitson is from the same town as her parents. Swank also admits that at five-years-old, long before she had dreams of becoming an actor, she had dreams of becoming an astronaut.

10. Two members of the cast knew as much as their characters. Charles plays Matt, who is much more than the husband of an astronaut and stay-at-home-dad. Hes also a NASA engineer and a composer and musician. Charles plays guitar in real life but he learned to also play the piano for the role. He had no prior experience but learned enough to make a scene work in the first episode. He initially aimed to learn to play well enough to fake it but he actually ended up playing the piano in the scene. Essandoh, who plays the missions botanist Dr. Kwesi Weisberg-Abban, also did double-duty in Away. Hes not only a brilliant actor but also has a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University.

Hilary Swank stars as Commander Emma Green in the Netflix drama 'Away'.

Rounding out the cast are Adam Irigoyen, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Fiona Fu and Felicia Patti. The series was created by Andrew Hinderaker, who also executive produces alongside Goldberg and Swank, Jason Katims, Matt Reeves, Edward Zwick, Adam Kassan and Jeni Mulein.

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10 Interesting Behind-The-Scenes Facts From The Netflix Space Drama Away - Forbes

We have talked extensively about how technology and science fiction parallel each other, with these impressive fictional engineering feats making them into our reality. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program is the coolest program that you have never heard of. The collaborative group funds ideas that sound like something directly out of your favorite film. For the uninitiated, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is a visionary and far-reaching aerospace program with the ambitious but straightforward aim of finding projects that could change almost every possible aspect of space travel.

Though it is a bit of a grim outlook, the late English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking famously said that humanity must find a new planet to live on within 1,000 years or perish. In short, becoming an interplanetary species is crucial to our survival. "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years," Stephen Hawking told listeners at the 2016 Oxford University Union.

"By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." For this to be possible, humans need to answer two questions, where would we go and how would we get there?

Due to current technological constraints, our answers to these questions have been limited. However, do not lose hope. Public and private institutions worldwide, most famously Elon Musk's SpaceX, are racing to solve this problem. Even more so, individuals in all fields are taking things into their own hands, working hard on projects that could very literally change the course of humanity.

As previously mentioned, the NIAC program nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions and the course of space travel. They look to fund ideas that often seem grandiose and overly ambitious, solutions that could provide radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts. Partnering with entrepreneurs and innovators, the program looks for these innovations in diverse and non-traditional sources. As the NIAC team has described, "They study innovative, technically credible, advanced concepts that could one day change the possible in aerospace." The NIAC Program funds these ideas helping innovators refine concepts, properly define, and inevitably bring them to fruition, depending on their feasibility.

Here, we will look at some of the most out-of-this-world ideas that have been awarded Phase I and Phase II funding. If you have an idea that the NIAC could be interested in, be sure to apply and submit your ideas here.

Source: NASA

As we have previously discussed, Venus is a viable candidate for a future human habitat. Of course, you would want to avoid the surface of the planet at any cost. However, higher up in the atmosphere, things are relatively pleasant; some could even argue better than Mars. But, to get to the neighboring planet, we need to understand its environment. A team at the State University of New York at Buffalo has proposed BREEZE. Standing for Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Exploration, these inflatable structures could be the key to understanding the Venus atmosphere.

The proposed inflatable solar-powered structures take their inspiration directly from biology. Hovering at approximately 50 km/h above the surface of Venus, these inflatable structures could be used to collect mountains of atmospheric data, track weather patterns, atmospheric constituents, and active volcanic investigations. BREEZE would include a host of technologies that could make this possible, including a mass spectrometer, nephelometer, visible and near-infrared high-resolution cameras, magnetometer, an anemometer, and sensors for measuring atmospheric pressure, temperature, and density.

You have probably come across "shapeshifting" robots in a few of your science fiction shows. Those shapeshifting robots are changing to avoid human detection. The shapeshifters proposed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been created to adapt and explore the harsh multi-terrain environments of planets and moons in our solar systems. The Shapeshifter NASA project proposes robots that are able to travel in an environment and atmosphere. Using a very minimal design, these robots are composed of smaller robot units combining and forming to fit an environment's needs, just like a Transformer. Robots can be aerial or amphibious. These Shapeshifters would be perfect for the exploration of Titan and other habitable bodies on our planet.

The Dual-Use Exoplanet Telescope, or DUET, could help us better understand planetary systems outside of our solar system. This new telescope design has the unique ability to detect exoplanets both indirectly (with radial velocity and astrometry techniques as well as directly with advanced spectroscopy). Even more impressive, DUET has an annulus gossamer membrane holographic primary objective that has four times the collection area and twice the diameterof the largest planned ground telescopes. Unlike competing exoplanet finders, DUET does not require a coronagraph or starshade.

Ice is far more abundant in our solar system than you may think. Mining for water on places like the Moon could drastically expand our potential for space exploration, with people going as far as to say the ice is the oil of space. Some of the more obvious water uses are that it could be recycled and used for drinking water and bathing on future habitats. Nonetheless, there is another reason. In our lunar example, water could be used to make rocket propellant. As you know, the main components of water are hydrogen and oxygen. These two materials are the two most prominent materials used to power rockets. Being able to make rocket propellant out of the water on the Moon could drastically cut down on the cost of some of our more ambitious missions in space.

That is the motivation behind the Colorado School of Mines Thermal Mining NASA project. The project involves applying heat to ice using redirected sunlight via conducting rods or heaters placed in boreholes. This method of mining would then capture the vapor in a dome-like tent and refreeze it in cold traps for processing.

Yes, if you were not already aware, there are flying spiders out there. The spiders use the process of ballooning, or what is sometimes known as kiting, to fly. Certain species of spiders are able to spin a few threads, creating a sail that then catches winds and transports them to different locations. West Virginia University researchers have proposed a similar concept that would allow NASA to study planetary atmospheres.

The concept is simple; thousands of micro spider probes would be deployed at once, each with a total mass of 50 mg. Each of the pods will have a small payload pod hanging under a 200 m long string loop, which provides both atmospheric drag and electrostatic lift. The pods will contain energy storage and conversion devices, an actuator for replenishing and regulating the static electric charge on the string loop, an integrated microprocessor, radio, and sensors. If done right, these microprobes would offer large spatial-scale atmospheric sensing capabilities.

As SpaceX has recently demonstrated, our space suits are in need of an upgrade, especially if we are planning to make it to another planet. This NIAC project proposes just that. Created by a team at Texas A&M Engineering, the SmartSuit is like nothing we have seen before. It is a spacesuit built for extravehicular activity (EVA) operations on Mars and other planetary environments.

The SmartSuit can not only increase human performance but also features stretchable self-healing skin. This smart outer membrane can provide visual feedback to the wearer, identifying potential damage, threats, or issues with the suit. Whats more, this EVA spacesuit is designed to be extremely comfortable.

Which project is your favorite? Which project do you think will have the biggest impact?

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The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Is Funding Some Out of This World Ideas - Interesting Engineering

Zion

Zion Clarke of "Zion" Netlfix

It's been a year of some pretty spectacular documentaries from HBO's revealing sports and mental health documentary "The Weight of Gold," to Netflix'sinspiring Paralympics Games doc"Rising Phoenix," to the heartfelt "A Secret Love."

But, as I've written about before, I've developed something that I call "quarantine brain." It's kind of like being on a heavy dose of cold medicine while also taking an hourly shot of espresso; mentally dull with some spikes of anxiety.

There's a simple explanation for this, and Corinne Purtill put it quite succinctly for the New York Times: "Stress, like a pandemic, puts our brains into 'fight or flight' mode, disrupting attention, memory, breathing and sleep."

There are times, especially at the end of a workday, where my attention span is just shot. Earlier this year, I used this as an opportunity to explore all the great sketch comedy options that were available to stream, but recently I've expanded my media diet to include short, upbeat documentaries. Netflix has a ton of options that are under an hour long, with an expanse of topics space travel, sumo wrestling, and speedcubing. Here are some of my favorites that I've discovered.

"John Was Trying to Contact Aliens" 16 mins.

In this documentary short, which debuted on Netflix in August, director Matthew Killip tells the story of John Shepherd, a man who spent 30 years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to contact aliens. From a cottage in remote northern Michigan which was increasingly filled with computers, machines, satellites and wires Shepherd would broadcast music millions of miles into space (he decided aliens would probably respond to Afrobeat, jazz, reggae records as a kind of universal language).

After spending much of his life with his head in the stars, Shepherd's attention is brought back to Earth after making a different kind of connection in his own community.

Story continues

"The Search for Life in Space" 32 mins.

Continuing with the space theme, dive into "The Search for Life in Space," a 2016 film that tackles some of the universe's biggest questions like "Where did we come from?" and "Are we alone?" in just over a half hour. Using cutting-edge imagery from some of the world's most powerful telescopes, astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor at Cornell University and Director of the Carl Sagan Institute, takes viewers from the surface of Mars, to extreme landscapes on Earth like the Hawaiian lava fields and thermal vents deep beneath the sea. In these environments, we encounter astrobiologists looking for clues about how life takes hold.

"Birders" 37 mins.

"Birders" has a tighter focus than "The Search for Life in Space," but it subtly tackles another big theme: migration across the US-Mexico border. In this 2019 film, directed by Otilia Portillo Padua, we observe birdwatchers on both sides of the border, and learn about how migrant birds travel back and forth across that border annually. I'm a big fan of documentaries that have a hyperfocus on enthusiast groups (there are a couple more of those on this list!), and "Birders" does a beautiful job showcasing the human connection that birdwatching fosters among an international community that obsessively counts, memorizes the calls of, and photographs migrant birds.

"America Wild: National Parks Adventure" 45 mins.

This film, which was originally released in 2016 in celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the formation of the national parks system, takes viewers into some of America's wildest natural playgrounds.

The cinematography is awe-inspiring from sprawling shots of Yellowstone and Yosemite to more intimate views of off-the-beaten path trails. Narrated by Robert Redford, "America Wild" follows world-class mountaineer Conrad Anker, adventure photographer Max Lowe and artist Rachel Pohl as they hike, climb and explore all across the country. It's a nice vicarious experience while many of us are homebound.

"Zion" 12 mins.

This is the shortest documentary on this list, but it probably packs the biggest emotional punch. Director Floyd Russ profiles Zion Clark, a high schooler who has found his purpose through competitive wrestling, after being born without legs and spending years in foster care. There's a tinge of sadness to "Zion," but in the hands of Russ who has a distinct, highly-stylized visual approach to filming Clark the story ultimately proves to be nuanced and inspirational.

"El lmite infinito" 47 mins.

Soon after Jean Maggi was born, he contracted polio and was paralyzed from the waist down, but he made a decision to live his life following a simple motto: "If you can't go fast, slow down, but don't stop." This Argentinian short documentary highlights his advancement of adaptive sports from developing a five-wheel chair to play basketball with more mobility to climbing the Himalayas.

"Little Miss Sumo" 18 mins.

Continue your binge of short documentaries featuring athletes that subvert societal expectations with "Little Miss Sumo." I love this film, which centers on Hiyori Kon, a 20-year-old sumo wrestler.

Sumo wrestling is a sport that is grounded in approximately 1,500 years of tradition tradition that allows men to compete into their late 30s, while women are unable to compete after they turn 21 based on an unfounded claim that women wrestlers reach peak physical capacity at the age of 20. This is something that Hiyori wants to change.

As I wrote for Salon following the film's debut in 2019, "'Little Miss Sumo' is astonishingly successful for an 18-minute film; through thoughtful interviews, beautiful training clips, and this idea of a countdown clock steadily ticking down without intervention, this is likely the last time Hiyori will be allowed to compete director Matt Kay strikes a masterful balance between contemplation and pressure."

"Lorena Light-Footed Woman" 28 mins.

This is another really thoughtful documentary short about women excelling in sports in ways that defy cultural norms. "Lorena Light-Footed Woman" follows Lorena Ramirez, a Mexican ultrarunner who lives in an indigenous community in the Tarahumara mountain range in Chihuahua, Mexico. She runs in traditional skirt and sandals; there is this absolutely breathtaking shot where cinematographer Hatuey Viveros scans across the feet of competitors lined up at the starting line of a race. You've got a pair of neutral Nike, a bright pair of Adidas, Ramirez's sandals, and then a pair of New Balance sneakers.

We enter Ramirez's story as she is just starting to gain attention globally. She is in her early 20s, has won a few ultramarathons and is beginning to receive invitations to travel internationally to Japan, Spain and Argentina to run. It's an interesting push-pull between honoring cultural tradition (and the sometimes limiting gender roles inherent to that) and personal advancement.

"The Speed Cubers" 40 mins.

"Speed Cubers" is a sweet and smart documentary about the lives of speedcubing champions,Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs. Both of the young competitors can solve a traditional Rubik's Cube in about four seconds.

As Salon's Hanh Nguyen wrote: "In the film, it's fascinating to witness solve after blurry solve because no matter how many times we see it, it's hard to follow what's going on in Feliks' or Max's heads, much less their fingers. We can only imagine the mental nimbleness required to assess the patterns in seconds and translate that into dexterity born of muscle memory; this is not the work of an Average Joe's brain."

Throughout the documentary, we also gain a deeper understanding of Max's life and what drew him to speedcubing; he was diagnosed with autism as a child and his mother would solve Rubik's Cubes with him as a bonding activity. He immediately fell in love

"While his speedcubing skills improved, his social skills were lagging behind," Nguyen wrote. "And the competitions offered unforeseen lessons in life experience: how to act in public, how to make friends, and most importantly, how to deal with failure."

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55 minutes ago Compiled by Gabi Zietsman

Want to leave the planet? It's safe to say that millions would like to do just that at this point in time.

But there are a few technical details that need to be figured out before space travel becomes more mainstream including cracking the code of near-light speed travel.

NASArecently released a fun video, explaining some of the mechanics of travelling at this velocity, which is 90% of the speed of light. (Light travels at more than a billion kilometres per hour.)

READ | Germs from space could cause havoc in human bodies

Perception of time

One of the biggest adjustments would be your perception of time. While it might take you three years to reach the planet of your choice, on Earth, time would have moved a bit faster. To get to the edge of our solar system would take nine months, while on Earth, a year-and-a-half would pass.

Beyond our solar system, the next closest star system is Proxima Centauri, and it would take more than two years to get there at 90% of the speed of light.

Time dilation

This time differentiation is called time dilation. This is a fact of space travel that forms part of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

According to MIT Technology Review, if you left your twin behind on Earth, they would age more quickly than you.

However, the age difference would depend on the speed of the spaceship, including when it accelerates and when it slows down. Time dilation is also dependent on gravity and how close the "clock" is to a gravitational force like that of a planet.

READ MORE | NASAs new space toilet makes it easier for women astronauts to go to the bathroom

Fast particles

Space also isn't exactly empty. You would, for example, need some sort of shield from free-running particles that could damage you and your spacecraft, as they can also travel at around the speed of light.

NASAexplains that there are three ways that this acceleration can happen: through electromagnetic fields, magnetic explosions and wave-particle interactions. These mostly involve the collision of energies and magnetic fields.

Unfortunately, humanity is still a long way from having the kind of technology that allows us to reach these speeds.

For now, you can but daydream with NASA, while watching the video below:

READ | Clots in space: How an astronaut's blocked vein brought medical insight

Image credit: Pixabay

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WATCH | What happens to time when you travel at the speed of light? - Health24

Wormholes are a popular feature in science fiction, the means through which spacecraft can achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel and instantaneously move from one point in spacetime to another.

And while the General Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of "traversable wormholes", recent research has shown that they are actually possible within the domain of quantum physics.

The only downsides are that they would actually take longer to traverse than normal space and/or likely be microscopic.

In a new study performed by a pair of Ivy League scientists, the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model could mean that there are wormholes out there that are not only large enough to be traversable, but entirely safe for human travelers looking to get from point A to point B.

The study, titled "Humanly traversable wormholes," was conducted by Juan Maldacena (the Carl P. Feinberg Professor of theoretical physics from the Institute of Advanced Study) and Alexey Milekhin, a graduate of astrophysics student at Princeton University. The pair have written extensively on the subject of wormholes in the past and how they could be a means for traveling safely through space.

The theory regarding wormholes emerged in the early 20th century in response to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The first to postulate their existence was Karl Schwarzschild, a German physicist and astronomer whose solutions to Einstein's field equation (the Schwarzschild metric) resulted in the first theoretical basis for the existence of black holes.

A consequence of the Schwarzschild metric was what he referred to as "eternal black holes," which were essentially connections between different points in spacetime. However, these Schwarzschild wormholes (aka. EinsteinRosen bridges) were not stable as they would collapse too quickly for anything to cross from one end to the other.

As Maldacena and Milekhin explained to Universe Today via email, traversable wormholes require special circumstances in order to exist. This includes the existence of negative energy, which is not permissible in classic physics but is possible within the realm of quantum physics.

A good example of this, they claim, is the Casimir Effect, where quantum fields produce negative energy while propagating along a closed circle:

"However, this effect is typically small because it is quantum. In our previous paper ["Traversable wormholes in four dimensions"] we realized that this effect can become considerable for black holes with large magnetic charge. The new idea was to use special properties of charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass). For a magnetically charged black hole these travel along the magnetic field lines (In a way similar to how the charged particles of the solar wind create the auroras near the polar regions of the Earth)."

The fact that these particles can travel in a circle by entering one spot and emerging where they started in ambient flat space, implies that the "vacuum energy" is modified and can be negative.

The presence of this negative energy can support the existence of a stable wormhole, a bridge between points in spacetime that won't collapse before something has a chance to traverse it.

Such wormholes are possible based on matter that is part of the Standard Model of particle physics. The only problem is, these wormholes would have to be microscopic in size and would only exist over very small distances.

For human travel, the wormholes would have to be large, which requires that physics beyond the Standard Model be employed.

For Maldacena and Milekhin, this is where the Randall-Sundrum II model (aka. 5-dimensional warped geometry theory) comes into play. Named after theoretical physicists Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum, this model describes the Universe in terms of five-dimensions and was originally proposed to solve a hierarchy problem in particle physics.

"The Randall-Sundrom II model was based on the realization that this five-dimensional spacetime could also be describing physics at lower energies than the ones we usually explore, but that it would have escaped detection because it couples with our matter only through gravity. In fact, its physics is similar to adding many strongly interacting massless fields to the known physics. And for this reason it can give rise to the required negative energy."

From the outside, Maldacena and Milekhin concluded that these wormholes would resemble intermediately-sized, charged black holes that would generate similarly-powerful tidal forces that spacecraft would need to be wary of. To do that, they claim, a potential traveler would need a very large boost factor as they pass through the center of the wormhole.

Assuming that can be done, the question remains of whether or not these wormholes could act as a shortcut between two points in spacetime? As noted, previous research by Daniel Jafferis of Harvard University (which also considered the work of Einstein and Nathan Rosen) showed that while possible, stable wormholes would actually take longer to traverse than normal space.

According to Maldacena and Milekhin's work, however, their wormholes would take almost no time to traverse from the perspective of the traveler. From the perspective of an outsider, the travel time would be much longer, which is consistent with General Relativity where people traveling close to the speed of light will experience time dilation (i.e. time slows down). As Maldacena and Milekhin put it:

"]F]or astronauts going through the wormhole it would take only 1 second of their time to travel 10,000 light-year distance (approximately 5000 billion miles or 1/10 of Milky Way size). An observer who does not go through the wormhole and stays outside sees them taking more than 10,000 years. And all this with no use of fuel, since the gravity accelerates and decelerates the spaceship."

Artist illustration of a spacecraft passing through a wormhole to a distant galaxy. (NASA)

Another bonus is that traversing these wormholes could be done without the use of fuel since the gravitational force of the wormhole itself would accelerate and decelerates the spaceship. In a space exploration scenario, a pilot would need to navigate the tidal forces of the wormhole to position their spacecraft just right, and then let nature do the rest.

A second later, they would emerge on the other side of the galaxy!

While this might sound encouraging to those who think wormholes could be a means of space travel someday, Maldacena and Milekhin's work presents some significant drawbacks as well.

For starters, they emphasize that traversable wormholes would have to be engineered using negative mass since no plausible mechanism exists for natural formation.

While this is possible (at least in theory), the necessary spacetime configurations would need to be present beforehand. Even so, the mass and size involved are so great that the task would be beyond any practical technology we can foresee. Second, these wormholes would only be safe if space were cold and flat, which is not the case beyond the Randall Sundrum II model.

On top of all that, any object that enters the wormhole would be accelerated and even the presence of pervasive cosmic background radiation would be a significant hazard.

However, Maldacena and Milekhin emphasize that their study was conducted for the purpose of showing that traversable wormholes can exist as a result of the "subtle interplay between general relativity and quantum physics."

In short, wormholes are not likely to become a practical way to travel through space at least, not in any way that's foreseeable. Perhaps they would not be beyond a Kardashev Type II or Type III civilization, but that's just speculation. Even so, knowing that a major element in science fiction is not beyond the realm of possibility is certainly encouraging!

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

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There's a Theory Beyond Relativity That Would Allow You to Fly Through a Wormhole - ScienceAlert

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Tanks and other war artifacts dating back to the War of 1812 can be found at the Northcoast Veterans Museum.(Photo: Doug Hise/Correspondent)

GIBSONBURG - There was a time 20 years ago when the Northcoast Veterans Museum had so many war artifacts there wasnot enough room to display them.

From military uniformsto equipment and other items, curator Rex Postlethwait said all they needed was space.

In 2000, they finally got the space they needed in Gibsonburg, at 411 N. Main St., and began the museum.

Now, 20 years later, Postlethwait, a retired master sergeant of the United States Air Force,said the museum is bursting at the seams with even more war artifacts and is looking to expand its space.

The Northcoast Veterans Museum is staffed by volunteers, from left, Bobby Whetsel, Mark Lodge, Vaughn Billow and Rex Postlethwait.(Photo: Sheri Trusty/Correspondent)

"We're trying to raise money to build a new building in Gibonburg," Postlethwait said.

The new building would increase the size of the museum and be used by a historical society, Postlethwait said.

Postlethwait said the museum is hoping to secure around $100,000 to build a new structure in Gibsonburg that would have more space and allow them to display more of the county's history.

"Right now we have about a quarter of that," Postlethwait said.

While some artifacts date back to the War of 1812, Postlethwaitsaid the majority of items on display are from the Civil War through today, with the artifacts changing out each week.

The museum is open from 5:30 to 8 p.m. each Monday, but Postlethwait said he is flexible, and if anyone is interestedthey will open the museum even at 2 a.m. for a tour.

"We have a little bit of everything," Postlethwait said. "We have weapons, uniforms, but we'redoing individual stories of World War II veterans and we have a four-by-four lighting case with uniforms and photographs and memorabilia."

The Northcoast Veterans Museum, 411 N. Main St., in Gibsonburg offers a historical snapshot of war artifacts and ties to local war history.(Photo: Doug Hise/Correspondent)

Sandusky County's rich military tradition is scattered from one end of the county to another, Postlethwait said, citing the Fremont Armory's role in the 37th Infantry Division an Ohio group called the Buckeye Division that fought in the Pacific during World War II.

"And the 37th Division stayed overseas longer than just about all other units in the Pacific," Postlethwait said.

Rodger Young, the namesake of Rodger Young Park and a Medal of Honor recipient, came from the Fremont Armory and the 37th Division that fought in the Pacific theater, includingbattles in Fiji Solomon Island and New Georgia, where Young was killed in action.

Stories like Young's can be viewed through the use of artifacts.

"We tell all these varied stories through the history of local veterans," Postlethwait said. "The Village of Gibsonburg itself, if you look at the number of people that volunteered or went into service per population, they had more than most other villages or cities in Ohio per capita."

Postlethwait said the museumwill travel, having displayed items at fairs and other military events.

The Northcoast Veterans Museum, 411 North Main St., Gibsonburg, is full of military displays and items that date back to the War of 1812. The museum is open to the public on Mondays from 5:30-8:00 p.m.(Photo: Doug Hise/Correspondent)

On Sept. 26 and 27, Postlethwait said the museum will set up an exhibit at the Military Vehicle and Equipment Display at Liberty Aviation Museum, 3525 E. State Rd., Port Clinton.

"We're going to set up a tent and have a small display there," Postlethwait said. "It will be more along the lines of a living history, we'll have volunteers dressing up in World War II uniforms and telling visitors about the museum."

cshoup@gannett.com

419-334-1035

Twitter: @CraigShoupNH

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Northcoast Veterans Museum looking to expand in Gibonburg - The News-Messenger