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Time After Time Is More Timeless Than You Think – Gizmodo

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The futures not a utopia after all, Mr. Wells.Image: Warner Bros.

Released September 28, 1979, sci-fi romance-slash-crime drama Time After Time has a lot of elements that feel quite dated when you watch it today, including some very primitive special effects. But its chilling underlying message still rings trueand its cornier parts make it fun to revisit.

In Victorian London, an eccentric gentleman named H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), still a few years away from becoming the famous author we all know him to be, hosts a dinner to unveil his new invention: a time machine. Most of the assembled group (dressed in stuffy waistcoats with pocket watches, and given to saying things like Balderdash! and calling each other Old sport!) dont know what to make of the devicebut one among the party, Dr. John Leslie Stevenson (a pre-Time Bandits and Tron David Warner), seizes the opportunity to use it as an escape route when Scotland Yard arrives to arrest him for being Jack the Ripper.

Thats a hell of a build-up, and it doesnt stop there.

Time After Time leaps into 1979 San Francisco with Wells in pursuit of Stevensonsomeone he once thought was just condescending and really good at chess, but now realizes is a sadistic murderer. Even worse, hes a sadistic murderer who has appropriated Wells invention (which Wells originally constructed as a way to visit what he assumed would be a utopian future) to commit more horrific crimes without consequence.

Everyone wants a personal time travel device, but with so many different devices to choose from,

Despite what sounds like a pulse-pounding plot, Time After Time is not what Id call an action movie. Its not a time-travel thriller like Timecop, noris it trying to build a Terminator-style complex mythology. Instead, the stakes feel very contained and personal. But while Marty McFly, another unwitting time traveler, could at least recognize the past he visits in Back to the Future, Wells Time After Time journey plops him into a 20th-century world where everything is unknown. That includes whatever historical milestones hes totally skipped over, as well as advancements in technology and the evolution of culture. He also has no way of predicting or preventing whatever awful thing his former friend is going to do next.

Thanks to the way the time machine worksit requires the use of a special key to prevent it from returning to its point of origin, which Jack the Ripper fails to grab before he peaces out of 1890s LondonWells at least knows where and when to start his search. Why San Francisco? Well, thats where an H.G. Wells museum exhibit containing the time machine is on display, so thats where Wells turns up, to the shock of onlookers (including a very young but unmistakable Corey Feldman).

Truth be told, if Time After Time had just been an entire movie of Wells fumbling around San Francisco, discovering things that both shock (cars, airplanes, telephones, the need for a personal ID) and delight (McDonalds French fries!) him, that wouldve been OK with me. Part of that might be down to the fact that Ive lived in San Francisco for over half my life, and its pretty incredible to see whats changed and whats stayed the same since 1979, since much of Time After Time makes use of real locations around the city. It even throws in offhand references to Bullitt and Vertigo, two of San Franciscos most famous cinematic showcases.

Star Trek isnt really known as a comedy, and on its face, neither is The Voyage Home. Its about

Speaking of movies set in San Francisco, theres a very good reason the early part of the movie feels a lot like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Time After Time director Nicholas Meyer, who adapted his script from Karl Alexanders work-in-progress novel, also co-wrote Leonard Nimoys 1986 entry in the big-screen Trek series. Specifically, he penned the modern day San Francisco scenes, and while theres no Time After Time scene to rival Spock nerve-pinching an obnoxious punk kid, we do see Wells trying to sell antiques hes brought through time with him to raise funds for his detective work, much like Kirk does in The Voyage Home.

Ultimately, his old-fashioned awkwardness serves him well when it endears him to staunchly modern gal Amy (Mary Steenburgen, whose quirky performance injects an off-kilter energy into the proceedings), the free-spirited bank employee who becomes entangled in his quest. After the two fall in love (fun fact: McDowell and Steenburgen met on the movie and were married for 10 years after), she inevitably catches the Rippers eye when Wells and his nemesis cross paths again.

Now that a Star Trek movie is #1 at the box office again, everybody's looking back at the

After the success of Time After Time, his directorial debut, Meyer went on to direct 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and 1991's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But Time After Time came after Meyer scored a scriptwriting Oscar nom for 1976 Sherlock Holmes tale The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, based on his own novel about the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle characters struggles with cocaine addiction. Holmes gets a shout-out in Time After Time, a project representing the ultimate combo of Meyers twin passions for period intrigue and sci-fi, as seen throughout his careerjust look at his more recent writing credits, which include History Channel miniseries Houdini and the first season of Star Trek: Discovery.

While certain aspects of Time After Time are fairly ridiculous in 2019the time machines trippy journeys look like someone just slapped a prismatic Instagram filter over the film, and the scripts earnest attempts at championing womens lib now come off as cringe-worthyits critical take on humankinds lust for violence still hits its mark. Jack the Ripper is delighted to realize hes not the sickest ticket running around in 1979, not by a long shot. In fact, he blends right in amid all the war, mass murder, civil unrest, serial killers, stores peddling guns, ultraviolent entertainment (when Wells and Amy take in a movie, its the fictional Exorcist IV), you name it.

When Jack picks up where he left off in Whitechapel and starts slicing up sex workers anew, the jaded San Francisco homicide cops just sigh and mutter, First the Zodiac, now this. Its not the utopia Wells was so sure hed find in the future; its a grim reality check about the horrors that people can and will carry out, and it feels just as true today as it did 40 years ago. We suck, for the most part...but at least there are a few kind souls, like Amy for instance, whore doing their best to keep a certain amount of goodness in circulation.

The tale of Time After Time enjoyed a brief revival thanks to a 2017 TV adaptation based on Alexanders novel, but the series, which globbed a more convoluted storyline onto that already bonkers initial premise, failed to catch on like the movie did and was canceled after just five episodes. No matterif you want to see Jack the Ripper stalking prey at a disco, or H.G. Wells sampling fast food for the first time, the mostly silly but occasionally sobering Time After Time has long since cemented its weird little corner in history.

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Time After Time Is More Timeless Than You Think - Gizmodo

Matt Collins: The next trend in digital? It’s not coming – Third Sector

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

If I speak at a conference and do a Q&A session at the end, theres one question that always gets asked: "Whats the next big trend in digital?"

The world this casual question comes from looks like this.

We come back to work after the Christmas break. We open our favourite charity digital news sources and find that theres a fun new trend in the sector. Hes a fun little virtual robot Twitter user. Lets call him Trendo.

Trendo (right) is coded to solve all your challenges: everything from a broken culture to a bloated team structure and, of course, achieving your online income targets.

All you have to do is follow Trendo on Twitter, retweet his latest tweet for engagement purposes, sit back and let the magic happen.

Trends that are/were fads

Trendo, of course, isnt real. But he has other disguises in the real world.

Remember Ello, the no-advert, invitation-only, potential Facebook killer social network without any users? We were all sure that everyone would abandon the existing dinosaur platforms in droves and sign up for this ad-free utopia.

How about the Draw Something craze? For a while, the future was drawing random stuff on your phone. Given enough time, charities would find out how to make money from it.

Today, Trendo is taking more of a virtual reality form. Just send a headset to your supporters and the problem of creating truly immersive content for it (not to mention a compelling donation call to action) will probably solve itself.

All fun things. All fads. None of them will lead to the money the charity sector really needs to do the work it really needs to do.

Its discipline

The problem is this: digital marketing is not a fashion show.

Heads of digital at big charities do not sit sit back by the virtual catwalk, watch a parade of this seasons outfits and pick their favourites.

Neither is it Tinder. Managers at smaller charities cant just sit back in their chairs, swiping left or right on their phones, constantly hopping to the latest fun platform.

This is a discipline. It requires time and money to learn. There are diplomas in digital marketing, an MSc in user experience design and post-graduate study in digital sociology, to name but three.

Doing digital of any kind is a marriage. Its a commitment between your charitys objectives and the best way of achieving them. Its doing what works, not whats new: the right kind of trend

How about this for an alternative form of trend hopping (a true story)?

A large charity built the expertise and reputation of its digital comms team internally, as many do. As it did this, it saw an opportunity to provide more of its services online.

So it built the internal skills needed and a proof of concept for these online services by applying for and getting external funding.

Meanwhile, senior managers at the charity were looking for new fundraising products to expand fundraising. The digital comms team was also able to apply to that the skills it had learned in developing those digital services products. It showed the need by starting with contractors and freelancers as a more palatable introduction than with permanent staff. This led to five new team members joining.

At the same time, the head of digital made the case for additional budget and headcount by demonstrating the new demands on resources. That brought in another four new team members.

All this led to the charity reaching online one in five of the people it helped in total. Today, a business case for a permanent digital services function has been agreed in principle by senior management.

The trend that the head of digital hopped on was of increasing demand for online services externally and for new fundraising products internally.

This was not some shiny, disposable app, not a flash-in-the-pan trend.

Outro

Viral campaigns are over. Trendo isnt coming. Theres no more magic. We need to get back to work.

So lets all acknowledge: that digital marketing is a real discipline; that getting results from digital marketing usually takes a long time; and that it will feel like a right slog most of the time.

If youre working in digital marketing, forget the trends and tool up with what will actually work, what will actually change the world.

Matt Collins is managing director of Platypus Digital, a digital marketing agency specialising in the charity sector

Pope: without the joy of the Gospel one cannot be a missionary – Vatican News

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Pope Francis on 30 September met representatives of missionary congregations of Italian origin and urged them to go out and joyfully proclaim the Gospel of Jesus who attracts.

By Robin Gomes

Pope Francis on Monday encouraged missionary congregations of Italian origin to keep alive in the people of God the awareness of being fundamentally "outgoing", that is, sent to bring to all nations the blessing of God who is Jesus Christ.

May your Institutes collaborate more and more with the particular Churches in order to foster an increased awareness of the missio ad gentes (mission to other peoples) and take up again with renewed fervour the missionary transformation of the Churchs life and pastoral activity, the Pope told some 70 men and women religious of the Comboni, Consolata, PIME and Xaverian congregations.

The heads of these congregations met the Pope on the eve of the Extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019 that he instituted in October 2017, to commemorate 100 years of the Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud of Pope Benedict XV, that sought to give a new impetus to the Churchs missionary mandate of proclaiming the Gospel.The theme of the month is Baptized and sent out.

At a time when everything seemed to lead to the preservation of the existing, the Pope noted, their founders, on the contrary, became the protagonists of a new momentum towards the other and those far away. The Church exists on the road, he said. "On the couch, there is no Church."

The Pope said it is necessary to rediscover the mysticism of mission in all its fascinating beauty, and a thirst for communion with Christ through witness, which their founders experienced, leading them to give themselves totally. This mysticism, he said, always retains its extraordinary power.

The Holy Father said he was struck by their pledge of being missionaries sent to other peoples, outside their country of origin, and for life without any sense triumphalism but welcoming it as an opportunity for discernment, conversion and renewal.

The Pope thanked the missionary men and women congregations for their dedication to their vocation of missio ad gentes, which, he said, is inseparably ecclesial because it is rooted in baptism, and linked to their rich charisms that the Lord has called them to.

Help to keep alive in the people of God the awareness of being fundamentally "outgoing", sent to bring to all nations the blessing of God who is Jesus Christ, the Pope urged. By collaborating among themselves, he said, missionary congregations also help the people remember that mission is not the work of individuals, of "solitary champions", but is communitarian, fraternal and shared.

The Pope said that mission is not a one-way traffic from Europe to the rest of the world but thrives on exchange. Territories that once received missionaries are today producing the majority of priests and religious in the Church. This, he said, arouses a sense of gratitude towards the holy evangelizers who with great sacrifices sowed in those lands. It is also a challenge for communion and formation for the Churches and for congregations, trusting in the Holy Spirit who is Master in harmonizing differences.

In this regard, Pope Francis recalled that General Congregation of the Jesuits in 1974, where someone asked if they could have an Indian or an African as Jesuit general. But those days, the Pope pointed out, a general had to be a European. Today many religious congregations have superiors general from those lands, he said, noting there is a Latin American Jesuit general today. The thing has been reversed: what in 1974 was utopia, is a reality today, he said.

He told the men and women missionaries that by leaving behind their beloved native country they are proclaiming that with Christ there is always novelty in life, without boredom, fatigue or sadness. The missionary needs the joy of the Gospel: without this one cannot be on a mission, one does not proclaim a Gospel that does not attract. "This attraction, he stressed, is the heart of mission" because it is only Christ who attracts.

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Pope: without the joy of the Gospel one cannot be a missionary - Vatican News

The New Alchemists: could the past hold the key to sustainable living? – The Guardian

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The New Alchemists: could the past hold the key to sustainable living? | Life and style | The GuardianSkip to main contentAUTUMN DESIGN PART 3 INDEXEditor's letterThe right design can make a radical difference. It can change lives and save the planet. The latest issue of the Observer's Design magazine is full of designers and artists who are rethinking the way the world works from the ground up. Fashion designers who dont think we should make more clothes. Researchers looking at moss, fungus and meat for new construction materials. We also mark the anniversary of the group the New Alchemists, a research group from the 60s who first saw the magic in renewable energy and a sustainable way of living. Enjoy. Alice Fisher

In 1982, Richard Buckminster Fuller visited the New Alchemy Institute, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to open a new geodesic dome. Frail of body but still sharp of mind, the 87-year-old architect was something of a countercultural guru by this stage, thanks to his spaceship Earth philosophy and his forward-looking designs, not least the dome.

Lightweight, efficient, simple to construct and futuristic, domes became a hippy cliche in the 70s, but the New Alchemists dome was a little different. Designed by Fullers disciple Jay Baldwin, it was the first pillow dome: made of triangular panels of transparent plastic inflated with argon gas, which improved its insulation properties (the same technology is behind Cornwalls Eden Project).

Inside the pillow dome was a miniature forest of plants, tropical fish ponds and a ripening fig tree. Fuller nodded with approval. He said, Shes beautiful, recalls Nancy Jack Todd, co-founder of the New Alchemy Institute (NAI), along with her husband John. He turned around and said to John with this happy smile: This is what Ive always wanted to see: my architecture with your biology. He called the work we were doing the hope of the world.

Founded in 1969, the NAI set out to design a sustainable way of living from top to bottom: food, energy and shelter. This was the era of Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, James Lovelocks Gaia hypothesis, and the Whole Earth Catalog (of which Baldwin was an editor). It was the era of anti-nuclear and anti-Vietnam war movements; a time when huge numbers of people felt that modern society was on the wrong path, and better alternatives were possible. I wouldnt say we were on the same page as Bucky, John Todd says, but we came to the same conclusions. His basic message, about how to do more with less, really resonated with us.

The New Alchemists alternative was a harmonious system of organic farming, renewable energy, sustainable architecture, waste treatment and ecosystem restoration. No pesticides or chemicals, no fossil fuels, no waste, no pollution, low impact, energy efficient. In other words, they were doing 50 years ago what were now realising we should have been doing all along.

Despite their long hair and countercultural leanings, the New Alchemists were not hippies; they were scientists. John Todd, the driving force behind the NAI, is a marine biologist by training; his wife Nancy is a writer and activist, and the third founding member, Bill McLarney, is a fish biologist. True, their large-format journals of the time have a quaint, radical vibe to them, with their intricate hand-drawn covers depicting unicorns and dragons. But alongside quotations from Tolkien and poems about mushrooms are reports on their experiments on the insect-resistance of certain cabbage varieties, diagrams of their low-tech wind turbines or progress reports on aquaculture techniques.

Nor was the NAI a commune. It was a research project, the Todds explain; people came there to work, not to play. At its peak, the NAI had around 30 members, aided by hundreds more temporary volunteers. Few actually lived on the site. There were no experiments in common ownership or free love. The Todds and their three young children lived in a small cottage a few miles away, where they still live today.

Socially, we agreed, the three of us founders, that we wanted to lead private lives, Nancy says. We felt that there were too many revolutions underneath it already without trying to do a social one as well. Besides, John adds, Being somewhat reserved Canadians, there is not a lot of gossip or juicy stories.

The catalyst for the NAI was frustration with academia, John says. In the late 60s, he and McLarney both began teaching at San Diego State University, where John was to head up a new department of environmental studies. He soon hit a wall of institutional inflexibility: The idea of doing activities from various disciplines energy, architecture, agriculture, waste water, you name it was simply not possible within the university setting at that time. A number of people, who became very close friends, were coming to the same conclusion: that we had to find new institutional structures to go after a larger vision.

The Todds and McLarney quit academia, found new jobs at an oceanographic institute in Cape Cod and started to put their New Alchemist ideas into practice on a 12-acre plot of land. The first objective was agriculture. They set about improving the soil quality and planting food crops. They began breeding rabbits and digging fish ponds. McLarney introduced the then-unheard-of tilapia, an easily farmable fish. Other friends and colleagues came to join them. A 1973 film made by the National Film Board of Canada portrays the NAI as an Arcadian utopia: a lush, green world of healthy, happy people tending healthy, happy crops. They build wind turbines out of car parts and oil drums, swim in the pond, gather for communal outdoor meals, scavenge at the local dump and play guitars together in the sunset. It almost looks like a parody.

The NAIs approach was a combination of old-fashioned common sense and modern scientific method. Everything was monitored and recorded: weather conditions, soil chemistry, crop yields, numbers of midge larvae (used as fish food) growing in different qualities of water. Data was analysed, techniques were compared, processes were refined, until their organic yields exceeded those of industrial farms. But underpinning it all was Johns belief that natural systems could be duplicated, harnessed and harmoniously interlinked. The wind pumps the water, that waters the garden, that grows the carrots, that feed the rabbits, that fertilise the earthworms, that feed the fish, along with the carrot tops. And it all feeds the people. Each time we make a connection, as in nature itself, the whole becomes more stable, more strong and more healthy, John says in the film.

In one significant, typically low-tech breakthrough, John began to experiment with 5ft translucent cylindrical water tanks filling them with pond water and observing the miniature ecosystems that formed inside. As the tanks received more sunlight than a pond would, algae and other life grew much quicker. They were perfect for cultivating fish in (tilapia eat the algae). You could link them together and water would become progressively cleaner as it flowed from one to the next. You could grow vegetables hydroponically on their surface. Most importantly, the water heated up in the sun, so the tanks became an effective store of solar energy thermal flywheel, as John puts it.

All of this fed into the New Alchemists approach to more complex architecture. Where Le Corbusier famously decreed that a house is a machine for living, the New Alchemists believed it should be more like a living machine a combination of architecture and biology. Our first little experiment used a geodesic structure to literally create a miniature world, John says, explaining a 1971 forerunner of the pillow dome, which they built over a fish pond. Inside the structure, the air was the atmosphere; the water was analogous to the 70% oceans the Earth needs to maintain a stable climate; the remaining 30% was a quite complex ecosystem, considering the size of the project. So we were already using the Earth as a model for design.

The New Alchemists most ambitious structures were what they called arks two experiments into the shelter aspect of their mission. Two young architects from Yale University, David Bergmark and Ole Hammarlund, led the design: one ark in Cape Cod and another on Prince Edward Island, Canada, thanks to a commission from the Canadian government.

The Prince Edward Island ark, on a windblown promontory surrounded by the sea on three sides, was the New Alchemists architectural high point. We would recognise it today as a show-home for off-grid living, employing sustainable design principles that are now common practice but were nascent, untested technologies at the time. Aligned east-west, the Prince Edward Island ark was partly sunken into the earth on its north side, with sloping glazing along its south facade to capture maximum solar radiation. The south facade also featured a row of vertically aligned solar collectors (heating water rather than generating electricity photovoltaic technology was nowhere near advanced enough yet). A prototype hydraulic wind turbine nearby covered the buildings electricity needs.

The dominant space inside was a high-ceilinged greenhouse containing plant beds for growing vegetables, herbs, flowers and tree saplings. Lizards, newts, ladybirds and even a resident snake controlled insect populations. The ark also contained 32 of Todds solar-algae tanks primarily for fish cultivation, but the tanks proved so effective at storing heat that the buildings other experimental climate systems became redundant. We were growing bananas in January, says Todd. When a winter storm caused a three-day power cut and buried the landscape in snow, the ark remained a stable temperature inside.

About one-third of the ark was a home, where the Todds New Alchemist friend Nancy Willis and her family lived happily for a time, growing their own produce and managing the living machine. Though light and spacious, the ark was not the stuff of high-end design aesthetically, but it represented a potential new way of living sustainable, self-sufficient, integrated with nature on an intimate scale. Shelter, food, energy. Perhaps a social revolution after all.

The Prince Edward Island ark was opened in September 1976 by Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (father of current PM Justin), who arrived by helicopter with much fanfare to find a bunch of dirty, exhausted New Alchemists who had completed the build hours before. Trudeau gave a stirring speech about how the ark was the birth of the new philosophy and told the Todds he would like to have a similar house for his own family. Very close by was a nuclear plant, Nancy recalls, so I said to him, All of this makes nuclear energy completely unnecessary, doesnt it? Trudeaus answer was noncommittal.

The fate of the Prince Edward Island ark mirrors that of not only the NAI itself, but the whole sustainability movement of the 70s. Functionally, the building exceeded expectations. The hydraulic wind turbine proved to be a failure and the solar collectors leaked, but the living machine was alive and well, drawing visitors, spreading the sustainability gospel and growing enough vegetables and fish to sell surplus to local restaurants. But politically, the winds were changing. By 1981, their Canadian government allies were no longer in office and financial support dried up. After numerous rescue attempts, the ark was converted into a small hotel and restaurant in the early 80s. Around 2000, it was demolished.

A similar change of sentiment hobbled the NAI in Cape Cod. During the 70s, it had been funded by a series of grants from the US government and private foundations. But as the Reagan era set in, those funds became harder to access. The sentiment became more me than we. The hippies cut their hair, abandoned their geodesic domes and found proper jobs. The NAI survived Reaganism, but much of its energy through the 80s went into merely staying afloat, rather than pushing the vision, as John puts it. It eventually dissolved in 1991.

But the New Alchemists found other ways to push their vision. McLarney founded an offshoot of the institute in Costa Rica, named ANAI, which has transformed the countrys southern Caribbean coast and become a model for conservation and sustainable development. Architects Bergmark and Ole remained in the Prince Edward Island region practising sustainable design. The New Alchemists Cape Cod plot was turned into a co-housing project, complete with a refurbished ark.

John Todd retreated from architecture and returned to his first love: water. Those experiments with solar-algae tanks put him on a path of environmental restoration, using natural systems to improve water quality and remove pollution. He realised a long time ago what the world is just beginning to realise now: that ecosystem restoration is key to stabilising the climate, and nature itself can help provide the answers. In 1982 the Todds founded a new initiative, Ocean Arks International, researching and applying this knowledge in multiple situations, from natural wastewater treatment to ocean-going eco-repair vessels to an ambitious project to re-green the Sinai desert (it even involves geodesic domes). It is a continuation of what the New Alchemists began, John says: Doing good things in bad places.

Rather than feeling bleak about the future, he is surprisingly optimistic. He recently published a book called Healing Earth, part-autobiography, part-manual on how to save the world. Its opening line reads: I am writing this book based on the belief that humanity will soon become involved in a deep and abiding worldwide partnership with nature. Yes, the planet is in crisis, but rather than what the New Alchemists called doomwatch science monitoring environmental decline John Todd has always been focused on practical solutions. The more we weave together the knowledge thats been accumulated in the last 100 years, the more we can do things that we never dreamed of, he says. We dont have to invent anything; we just have to pay attention to whats been learned.

A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise Of Ecological Design by Nancy Jack Todd is available now (25, Island Press).

Living Lightly on the Earth: Building an Ark for Prince Edward Island 197476 by Steven Mannell is available now (30, Dalhousie Architectural)

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The New Alchemists: could the past hold the key to sustainable living? - The Guardian

From Doctor Who to The Walking Dead: your favourite TV cliffhangers – The Guardian

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Cooper head butts himself

Twin Peaks, picked by Holden_on

Just when you think everything has gone well Cooper is out of the Black Lodge, Annie is saved, Windom Earle defeated (albeit by Bob!) it all goes wrong. Cooper goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He starts to grin, squeezes the toothpaste into the sink, rears his head back and head butts the mirror. In between the cracks in the mirror, Bobs face is staring back at him.

The West Wing, picked by NonOxbridgeColumnist

It has to be the season one finale of The West Wing, leading up to the assassination attempt and its two cliffhangers in one episode. The cold opening (six and a half minutes by itself) takes you up to: I saw something ... and then you spend 30 minutes or so watching the previous 24 hours before lurching back to the present. Those last five minutes, with foreknowledge of something, seeing things youve already watched from a different angle (most wonderfully Sams smile at Toby after the take-off sign, which brings me to the verge of tears just writing about it), are stomach-churningly tense. Ive watched it eight times and I still feel queasy. Its absolutely masterful writing.

24, picked by StanleyGoodspeed

The best ending of a 24 episode was when Jack Bauer had to execute his annoying but totally innocent and good-guy-in-the-end boss Ryan Shapiro in a scrapyard on the orders of the series villain, otherwise he would release a bio weapon. I kept thinking something or someone would save the day, or it was just a test to see how far Bauer would go. But it happened and the episode ended with a blank screen and no end credit music.

Doctor Who, picked by chriskilby

The Master, nicking the Doctors Tardis and stranding him at the end of the universe with hungry cannibals banging at the door in Utopia, still takes some beating. Also, Edge of Darkness: GET ME PENDLETON!

Battlestar Galactica, picked by ExileCuChulainn

Battlestar Galactica (the new one) when the battered fleet jubilantly arrives at Earth. Adama announces to the survivors that their journey is finally over. A party travel down to the surface, landing in the ruins of a large city. They are left speechless when they find Earth to be a desolate, radioactive, lifeless world, destroyed by nuclear conflict thousands of years previously.

The Walking Dead, picked by mattblack81

The Walking Dead where Negan had them on their knees. You knew someone was getting beaten to death but you had to wait months to find out who. Because of the comics, there was lots of speculation but even when you think you knew, there was another twist.

The Bridge, picked by Literally

I liked the second series of The Bridge. When Saga realises Martin killed Jens, we expected this would be the time for her to realise how much she likes Martin and understands his reasons but she arrests him.

Dallas, picked by GonePhishing

The JR thing was massive it even spawned T-shirts with I Shot JR on them. Esther Rantzen and the Thats Life! crew milked it for an age, doing weekly trawls of high streets in search of grannies opinions. But it was at a time when there was very little TV choice. We had two and a half channels and not 24/7. Most telly finished at about midnight and didnt kick off again until about 9am, 11am at the earliest in BBC Twos case. The BBC drama budget was about 5 an episode, so anything from the States was considered huge.

Blockbusters, picked by DiagostA 1985 edition of Blockbusters we were left on a Friday tea time cliff edge after time had run out and it was flashing for both white and blue hexagons in a deciding game. A very tense weekend in our household was had.

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From Doctor Who to The Walking Dead: your favourite TV cliffhangers - The Guardian

"Could all things ‘green’ be the glue that sticks us back together?" – Dezeen

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Dulux choseTranquil Dawnas its colour of the year for 2020, but something bolder would have better represented the year ahead, says Michelle Ogundehin.

Dulux's colour of the year for 2020 a hazy, muted green that recalls a sort of pale Chinese celadon mixed with sage and a smudge of grey is intended to embody "our desire to treasure our most human qualities and give our homes 'The Human Touch'".

However, more than the actual colour it is the whybehind the hue that interests me the rationale of the process before the product, if you will. Quite aside from the complexity of trying to assign a single shade to represent an entire year.

Dulux's approach is nothing if not rigorous. Every year its parent company, Akzonobel, gathers an international team of independent architects, creatives and designers at its Global Aesthetics Centre in Amsterdam in order to debate the cultural and lifestyle shifts deemed significant for the year in question.

The brief is to compile as coherent a global picture as possible of the mood ahead. Last year, I was invited to join them. To be clear though, the translation of this three-days of brainstorming into physical colour is the remit of the in-house team alone, we're just sketching the outline for them to fill in, so to speak.

The brief is to compile as coherent a global picture as possible of the mood ahead

Certainly, there was much to discuss, from the growing phenomenon of bio-hacking and the question of whether we've reached peak human, to what one participant dubbed, the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world.

The words of Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM were recounted: "you can be the disruptor instead of the disrupted". Statistics like "47 per cent of today's jobs will disappear in the next 25 years", were shared. And we discussed the urban isolation seen in China, a result of the proliferation of virtual reality online services that render real life human interaction redundant.

But it wasn't all bad. There was also the new wave of gentrification of China's countryside as old houses in villages deserted by a generation's exodus to the city are remade as luxurious guest lodges slow retreats, in an ironic twist, for those now harassed urbanites to escape back to. Plus, the possibility of a shift from a consumer society to a creative one, and the emergence of the Elastic Woman, the now 50-60-year-old baby boomers who refuse to conform to any ageist stereotypes.

The rationale for Tranquil Dawn hinged on rediscovering what makes us human.

In summary, things were messy, but there was a glimmer of hope and optimism visible just over the horizon. After the dark, must come the light, no? But how does this all add up to a laconic misty green?

Certainly, all things "green"are the narrative of the times. Pinterest noted back in 2018 that sage green saveswere up 170 per cent, and as issues of sustainability hit the mainstream and campaigning about the environment gets ever more vocal, even business behemoths like Unilever have stated that its entire portfolio of over 400 brands "will need to demonstrate viable corporate social responsibility goals in order to remain part of the group in the long-term".

"Pantone's colour of the year harks of naivety, not optimism"

Nevertheless, the rationale for Tranquil Dawn hinged on rediscovering what makes us human. And this is a markedly different stance to that of trend forecaster WGSN, which predicted Neo Mint as the colour for 2020 a shade superficially similar to Tranquil Dawn in its minty-ness but with a far more strident edge, less fresh than fluorescent.

As WGSN put it, "For years we've been imagining life in 2020, and now the worlds of technology and science are turning these dreams into reality".It cited the NASA Mars mission, the building of the world's tallest building in Saudi Arabia and the introduction of artificial intelligence to assist judges at the Olympic games as evidence of technology's beneficence.

We are after all in the midst of what has been dubbed the Age of Anxiety

This is a rather idealistic stance, and one that immediately brings to mind American satirist H L Mencken's scathing put down: "an idealist is someone who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes better soup".

We are after all in the midst of what has been dubbed the Age of Anxiety. An era in which the superficial seems to reign supreme, infamy is more desirable than respect, consumerism is promoted at every turn and the digital realm appears to have superseded reality.

Have you watched the Netflix documentary The Great Hack? If not, I highly recommend that you do, because, as this film asserts, data is becoming the most valuable asset on earth, and yet it's the one thing that we as individuals have no power to own yet give away with every single digital interaction.

We need think only of the ease with which highly polarising, filtered "news" was used to target, influence and persuade the unsuspecting to understand why this should be cause for concern. In short, instead of delivering a glorious collaborative utopia, right now, the dream of the connected world, is tearing us apart.

In response, according to Heleen van Gent, head of AkzoNobel'sGlobal Aesthetic Centre: "Against a background of increasing technological power, we want to understand our place in society and how we can make a positive impact on it. We need fresh purpose, to be the architects of our own future, and we are asking searching questions of both ourselves and society."

Tranquil Dawn is more of a cool neutral, than a statement shade, what I'd refer to as a subconscious colour

So, could all things 'green' be the glue that sticks us back together? Certainly, the US-based Behr paints concur with Dulux. In August it announced its 2020 Colour of the Year as Back to Nature S340-4 describing it as a "fresh and slightly yellow-based green [that] serves as an ideal backdrop to satisfy the desire for a soft landing at home a great option for adding peace and tranquillity to any space".

Indeed, from a psychological point of view most shades of green do automatically recall lush grass, trees and foliage, thus we intuitively connect it with Spring, new growth, optimism and rebirth."We are reassured by green on a very primitive level," says colour psychologist Karen Haller, "Where there is green, we can find food and water it equals life."

Tactility, imperfection and a pale flush of colour: interior design trends for 2019

It sits at the centre of the colour spectrum too making it restful for the eye; in other words, we don't have to work too hard to see it, so it's intrinsically calming, which is why you see pale green used a lot to paint the walls of hospital wards.

But lest we forget, green also connotes jealousy, decay and sickness, thus the precise shade of green chosen is paramount. After all, contrast the stealthy allure of British racing green with the zesty reverberation of a vivid lime.

I'd have preferred a slightly punchier, dirtier green

Simplistically put, the former is mixed with black, thus deepened, slowed and given a sophisticated solidity; less the green shoots of spring than the ancient fir forests of Scandinavia. And the latter, energised by a generous dollop of yellow, has a shouty, look-at-me absence of subtlety that calls to mind highlighter pens and sugar-fuelled fizzy drinks. Both greens, but miles apart in their resultant emotive affect.

Thus, Behr's Back to Nature veers dangerously towards the sickly with its subdued yellow undertones; and Tranquil Dawn, goes to the other end of the scale, being a seriously dialled-down green with base notes of smoky blue. It's more of a cool neutral, than a statement shade, what I'd refer to as a subconscious colour, in that it's there, but it's only whispering for attention, happy to hum along in the background, without overwhelming.

Arguably we could say that it speaks well of collaboration because it works best as part of a palette; it's a team-player rather than a leader, eminently tasteful, diplomatic and flexible, and no doubt it will have universal commercial appeal. In short, it's a natural comforter rather than a provocateur, hinting at success rather than overtly promising it.

However, I think Dulux could have been bolder. A year ago perhaps there was more optimism about the future, but right now, as we still lack the strong governmental leadership that we so sorely need, the goal must be self-empowerment, something evidenced already in the escalating number of people's marches, rebellions and protests seen all over the world.

Thus, I'd have preferred a slightly punchier, dirtier green, as one thing is for sure, it promises to be anything but a tranquil dawn to 2020.

Bless the Harts Shakes Up Animation Domination – Vulture

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

In 2005, Fox debuted a new name for its Sunday night programming block: Animation Domination, a two-hour run of American Dad!, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and King of the Hill. The four shows mostly stood out from one another: Family Guy and American Dad! shared styles and creative teams, but they were more frenetic than The Simpsons, more into referential comedy, more surrealist, and more hollow; King of the Hill was on the other side of the spectrum, warmer and quieter and more sly.

This Sunday, after abandoning the brand five years ago, Fox will revive the Animation Domination block, including OG shows The Simpsons and Family Guy, Sunday night mainstay Bobs Burgers, as well as a new series from Emily Spivey called Bless the Harts. Its a fast-moving, very funny show about a working-class family trying to make ends meet, featuring the voices of Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Jillian Bell, and Ike Barinholtz. The pilot episode is extraordinarily promising, but its also suggestive of what the Animation Domination block has been, and what it could be in the future.

Shows came and went through Animation Domination over the years, including The Cleveland Show, Axe Cop, and Golan the Insatiable, but no addition stuck as well as Bobs Burgers, the sweet, smart, endlessly generous comedy about a family who owns and operates a burger shop. In spite of the differences among the Domination shows, the longevity of Bobs Burgers points to what most of the block has had in common: Theyre typically shows about middle-class and working-class American families, telling stories about everyday problems like money, marital tension, job insecurity, and local communities.

Bless the Harts fits into that tradition nicely. The first episode is about a battle between Jenny (Wiig) and her mother, Betty (Rudoloph), over the family finances. Their water is about to be shut off, and as Jenny rifles through the large stack of bills trying to decide which one to pay (the answer is: none of them), she stumbles across a bill for a storage locker she didnt know they had. It turns out, Bettys been renting a large storage locker for years so she can house her massive collection of not-quite-Beanie Babies Bless the Harts calls them Hug n Bugs which Betty assumes will boom in value and save the family from ruin.

Jokes about the Beanie Baby bubble are not new, just as a family does some wacky stuff to pay the bills is not new. But Bless the Harts takes a well-worn thread and weaves hilarious gold out of it, first by making the Hug n Bugs into a mashup of 90s memorabilia that turns each Hug n Bug line into a cornucopia of goofy, nostalgia-skewering references (Nelson Mandela Super Soaker Hug n Bug! Sir Mix-a-Lot Hubble Telescope! Tamagotchi OJ Trial!). Then, where other shows would mine these faux Beanie Babies are actually worthless for a reveal, Bless the Harts is more interested in what happens next, spinning the episodes premise into an escalating series of miscommunications that concludes, improbably, in a glorious, symbolic (and literal) bonfire. At the same time, a B-plot about the relationship between Jennys daughter, Violet (Bell), and Jennys live-in boyfriend, Wayne (Barinholtz), demonstrates the fundamental compassion of the show. Itd be easy to imagine that relationship as contentious or dismissive, but Harts turns Wayne and Violet into a pairing you root for.

All together, Bless the Harts is a very nice way to round out the revived Animation Domination block, with the new show ably taking up a position once held by King of the Hill. The difference and the reason Bless the Harts makes such a promising addition is that in previous years, Foxs Sunday night animated lineup might just as well have been called Male Domination. Its shows, all 14 of them from 2005 to 2014, had male creators (save for Napoleon Dynamite co-creator Jerusha Hess) and male lead characters. Marge Simpson and Linda Belcher are powerful characters, but men have been the main anchor for most of these series, either as single men with a group of friends or as father figures coping with their family members.

Bless the Harts looks different, and its creators do too. Like more than one great live-action TV show before it Im thinking specifically of Gilmore Girls and Jane the Virgin the triad of a grandmother, mother, and daughter are a compelling foundation for Bless the Harts family structure. Even in the pilot episode, you feel how interesting and rich the story can be when several generations live in the same house. The burden of supporting the family largely falls on Jenny, but Betty has financial responsibility too, and the economic and social pressures are distributed more evenly between the three protagonists than they would be in a traditional dad-brings-home-the-bacon structure. Each character has more autonomy and more power.

The effort to include shows made by women and starring women isnt contained to just a single show, either: In 2020, Fox will add two other animated series with female creators to the Animation Domination block, Duncanville (created by Amy Poehler, Mike Scully, and Julie Scully) and The Great North (created by Wendy Molyneux, Lizzie Molyneux, and Loren Bouchard). Its not enough, of course, but its a heartening step in the right direction. It also suggests how much this TV genre not just animation, but shows about working- and middle-class families still has to say when different voices get a chance to tell their stories. With its fast, absurd, dry sense of humor, hopefully Bless the Harts will have a chance to stick around for a long time.

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Bless the Harts Shakes Up Animation Domination - Vulture

OUR SPACE: It’s getting crowded on the ISS – The Union-Recorder

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Now heres a picture you wont see very often: nine astronauts on the International Space Station at the same time!

Usually, the crew size is three or six, depending on the sequence of flights to and from the orbiting outpost. But due to rather unusual circumstances for about a week it will be pretty crowded on the ISS until three astronauts leave again. Normally it would be the three who have been in space the longest, and two of them are indeed going home next week. However, Christina Kochs residency has been extended another six months into February 2020, which will push her into first place for the longest duration spaceflight for a female astronaut.

In her place, a very special visitor will return to Earth.

Hazzaa Ali Almansoori is the first-ever astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. He has diligently completed all the required training for a short duration spaceflight and will enjoy a special guest status on the ISS. But like any guest there he will have to pull his weight and hes prepared to work hard for the privilege. He is officially classified as a Spaceflight Participant, which sounds a lot better than space tourist, and is also far more accurate since he will be working during his time in space.

Nine people will use up 50% more resources on the ISS for eight days. But its not just food and water its also air. The ISS was always meant for about half a dozen people, and all its capabilities are geared towards that number. From air to accommodations, from water use to water recycling, it works best for six people. But that doesnt mean it wont be able to handle nine astronauts for a week!

Having extra people is actually coming in very handy right now: a cargo transport from Japan will arrive on Saturday, and all the good stuff will have to be unpacked and stowed. Along with food and water and other supplies, the spacecraft will also carry parts to repair a cosmic ray detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, and brand new batteries to replace the aging ones on the space station. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was not designed to be repaired in orbit, so it will take about half a dozen spacewalks to get back to business. Like the Hubble Telescope repairs, these will be very complex and the astronauts working on them had to receive special training, as its not as easy as pulling out a filter for your AC and snapping a new one in place.

The stations batteries are rechargeable of course, and they have to be, as all the stations electricity is generated by solar panels, and the electricity has to be stored somewhere to keep the place running when it swings around the night side of the Earth. But like all rechargeable batteries, they dont last forever and eventually, they will suffer from battery fatigue, when they simply cant hold a full charge anymore. Lives depend on these batteries so they must be regularly replaced well before their performance declines. The new batteries will be the Lithium-Ion kind, which pack a far greater punch than the ones currently in place, so fewer of them are needed for the same task. Its a win-win situation!

Almost a dozen spacewalks are planned before the end of the year. Doing repairs outside the station isnt as easy as ambling out to your garden shed. Every spacewalk is a dangerous undertaking that requires extensive training and many hours of preparation as well as other crew members waiting in the airlock, ready to go outside and assist in an emergency.

If all goes as planned well also have the first commercial crew capsules arriving, and possibly even the first commercial crewed spaceflights. And we really need those now, as Russia has only two flights to the ISS scheduled for next year. To maintain a proper crew rotation, we need far more crewed missions than that, so keep your fingers crossed that both the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Boeing Starliner test flights go well and regularly scheduled commercial flights can commence. Besides, its been far too long since the U.S. has launched astronauts into space from American soil!

Beate Czogalla is the Professor of Theater Design in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a Solar System Ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com

OUR SPACE: It's getting crowded on the ISS - The Union-Recorder

At the podium: Free public lectures this week – South Bend Tribune

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The following lectures are scheduled this week in the community. All events are free and open to the public:

12:30 p.m. Tuesday. The Innovation Paradox: Developing County Capabilities and the Unrealized Promise of Technological Catch-Up, William Maloney, chief economist for equitable growth, finance and institutions at The World Bank Group. C103 Hesburgh Center, University of Notre Dame.

4 p.m. Wednesday. Morsifications and Mutations, Sergey Fomin, University of Michigan. 229 Hayes-Healy Hall, University of Notre Dame.

7 p.m. Wednesday. Why Public Wages, Barrett Ward, CEO of ABLE. Jordan Auditorium, Mondoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame.

3 p.m. Friday. Fairness, Sanction, and Condemnation, Pamela Hieronymi, professor of philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles. 104 Bond Hall, University of Notre Dame.

10:30 a.m. Saturday. Dorothy Day, Servant of God, The Eucharist Orders us to the Poor, John C. Cavadini, director, McGrath Institute for Church Life; professor of theology. Andrews Auditorium, lower level of Geddes Hall adjacent to Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame.

11:30 a.m. Saturday. The New Science of Compassion as the Hubble Telescope for the Health Professions: How the Science of Compassion is Uncovering What is Essential for Medical Training and Clinical Practice, Dominic O. Vachon. Jordan Hall of Science, Auditorium 105, University of Notre Dame.

12:30 p.m. Saturday. Optics and Natural Magic in the Renaissance, Robert Goulding, director, John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Snite Museums Annenberg Auditorium, University of Notre Dame.

What It’s Like in the Abaco Islands Bahamas After Hurricane Dorian – Miami New Times

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The devastation on Great Abaco wasn't apparent at first.

While the pilot we'd paid $1,300 for the 45-minute flight from Nassau began the plane's descent, the teal-and-cobalt Atlantic gave way to vast expanses of jagged green spits bordering shallow, sandy lagoons. A grounded boat lying on its side some 500 yards inland was the first indication of what was to come. The landscape shifted from green to a deathly brown, all the trees stripped of their foliage. The first houses or what once had been houses came into view. Most were smashed, leaving only roof sections and chunks of siding clumped together in big piles. Full-size shipping containers were strewn about like dented, discarded soda cans.

Five days after Hurricane Dorian stalled over the Abacos and nearby Grand Bahama, pummeling the islands for 24 hours with its 185 mph winds, the runway of the Leonard M. Thompson International Airport had been cleared. But the buildings that ringed the landing strip had been ripped open like Christmas presents. The control tower remained upright, but the attached office building was stripped to its skeleton. Once our twin-prop six-seater touched down, I realized the airstrip was being operated by U.S. Navy personnel who were orchestrating the traffic from the tarmac via radios.

The strangest sight: Blackhawk helicopters, C-130 Hercules transport planes, and untold millions' worth of gleaming Gulfstream jets parked scant steps from hundreds of people who, having made it this far, had no idea when or whether they'd be able to get out.

"I don't know where I'm going to go no idea. Maybe somewhere where I can have a job, but who knows," said Benghy Delotte, a 35-year-old carpenter who'd been waiting outside the airport for four days with scarcely any food or water. "We've had to survive on our own. Whatever we find on the ground is what we eat."

Delotte and several dozen other men were clustered outside the airport's powder-blue-trimmed main terminal. Women and children had been allowed inside, where they'd transformed the space into a musty shelter ripe with the stink of dirty diapers. The security checkpoint had all but lost its former identity: A conveyor belt that once scanned the luggage of moneyed tourists had become a triage station littered with discarded medical supplies; the cafeteria was the domain of a burgeoning swarm of flies.

In stark contrast to Delotte, my three fellow travelers and I were well equipped. We had clean clothes. Our employer, Reuters news service, had outfitted us with plenty of water, ready-to-eat meals, mountains of batteries, portable solar panels, powdered electrolytes, and fruit juice. We had cigarettes, mesh bug nets, camera equipment, functioning smartphones, and portable satellite dishes to beam back images and interviews from the aftermath.

For the next three days, it would be our discomfiting task to point our recording equipment at piles of rubble that days earlier had been houses, and to extract stories from the occupants who'd abandoned them to the hurricane, who now were reduced to convulsive sobs at the sight of what had become of their homes and their lives.

When I deplaned in the tourist-thronged capital of Nassau late the previous afternoon, September 5, the Holiday Inn Express on Bay Street across from Junkanoo Beach was already one of the de facto headquarters for personnel arriving on behalf of relief agencies and news organizations. The lobby bustled with blue-vested United Nations workers; the thumping of Dutch, Canadian, and U.S. military boots; and the chatter of Japanese, French, Italian, and Mexican journalists.

The 700 islands that compose the Bahamas archipelago dot a swath the size of Texas in the western Atlantic Ocean. (Bimini is closest to the U.S. mainland, about 70 miles southeast of Miami.) Dorian had spared all but two of the former British colony's 16 major islands: Grand Bahama, where the city of Freeport is located, was hit hard, while Great Abaco was nearly obliterated the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) estimated 90 percent of that island's structures were destroyed. According to the WFP, 70,000 people were in need of housing and shelter on the two islands, respectively the second- and third-most-popular tourist destinations in the Bahamas. Nassau, meanwhile, remained a veritable Disneyland, with cruise ships arriving and departing regularly.

My plan was to board a charter to Great Abaco the next morning. But the promised plane didn't materialize. Nor did a helicopter service that had accepted a $5,000 wire transfer for two rides.

Marooned in Nassau, I walked to Princess Margaret Hospital, a pastel-yellow complex styled in the imposing manner of the country's onetime British colonial overlords and the only large medical facility in the Bahamas that was fully functioning after the storm. Victims had begun arriving the day before, yet the lobby was eerily calm. I found Leon Lazard, a 42-year-old contractor from Abaco who'd been airlifted in after he was injured while rescuing his mentally handicapped brother Lawrence. Lazard and about 30 others had been caught for hours in a horrifying relay race, running from one flooded house to another, fleeing each as the winds ripped off roof after roof.

"Every time we tried to go outside, the weather would show its might," Lazard said, speaking quietly while staring off into the distance. "It would pick up something and throw it at us like it was saying, 'If you come out here, all of you are dead.'"

As Leon clung to his brother in the rafters of one house, the winds began to pull Lawrence from his arms. Leon's foot became wedged in the roof's beams, which snapped and broke his ankle, peeling back the skin all the way to the bone. Somehow both men made it to a shelter, where Lawrence remained after Leon was airlifted out.

A hospital employee demanded I sign a release limiting the kinds of questions I could ask and forbidding me to publish certain information before letting me interview any other patients only the first of several interactions in which officials would attempt to control the flow of information. But Dr. Caroline Burnett-Garraway, the hospital's medical chief of staff, was more forthcoming. She told me that the government had yet to formulate a plan to deal with the dead bodies believed to be on Great and Little Abaco, and that two refrigerated 40-foot containers were en route to Grand Bahama by boat to serve as a temporary morgue. She must have realized she'd said too much; I wasn't able to get ahold of her again.

The rest of the day was an unwelcome education in dealing with the government. A scheduled meeting with representatives of the myriad nongovernmental organizations working on the islands withered after government officials failed to show up, leaving everyone standing around in an empty ballroom. I heard about a news conference with the head of the Bahamas' National Emergency Management (NEMA) and trekked up the road to its small pink headquarters, only to learn that the proceedings had already taken place behind closed doors.

The building brimmed with people looking for family members, who were offered little more than the addition of the names of the missing to a pen-and-paper list. Evacuations by air had begun; a NEMA employee told me that 200 people had been flown out. At that time, the national carrier, Bahamasair, was offering its empty seats on flights off the island for $75 a controversial charge that was later rescinded.

When we finally reached Great Abaco the next day, one of my colleagues found us a ride in a burgundy pickup captained by a heavyset Haitian who introduced himself as Pasteur. We were headed to a hotel, I was told as I threw my bags into the truck bed and jumped in.

From the air, Marsh Harbour had appeared to be a small town. On the ground, it was an endless wasteland, stripped of street signs, landmarks, and buildings. The denuded landscape induced a kind of horizontal vertigo that left locals and interlopers alike disoriented.

Complicating matters were downed trees and power lines. And broken roads: At multiple intersections, Pasteur had to back up and turn around, the concrete slabs that once made a smooth junction between converging roads having been lifted by wind and water and deposited elsewhere. Eventually, we arrived at what was left of the Abaco Beach Resort, formerly a sprawling seaside oasis complete with a glittering marina, now tattered and seemingly abandoned. No boats in the water, only torn tree limbs jutting up like bony fingers.

Photo by Zachary Fagenson

The ground floors of three waterside villas had been washed away, leaving what remained of the structures partially collapsed and pancaked onto their foundations. I deposited some supplies in a room whose door frame had been blown off to who-knew-where; then I went back out to find Pasteur.

He drove us to a large pink health clinic that was serving as a shelter, but armed troops wouldn't allow us inside. Farther down the road, we came upon a three-story government complex overflowing with partially clothed people, most of them Hatians, whose homes had been swept away. They said the police had stopped by the prior evening and told them to leave, likely owing to sanitation concerns stemming from a lack of power.

"Three or four police officers came in the middle of the night and said, 'Y'all are too nasty. You can't stay here. This is a government building. You have to get out,'" 38-year-old Andreuse George-Louise recounted.

George-Louise told me she was born in Haiti but had lived in the Bahamas for more than two decades. Two years ago, she moved to Nassau from the island of Bimini hoping to find work as a housekeeper. Before the storm, she said, she'd been living on Great Abaco in the large shantytown known as the Mudd, which Dorian had all but obliterated.

"We have nothing now. We lost everything," she said. "And now they're telling people who were saved by God, who saw their families die, to go sleep in the bush?"

A ten-minute trek up the road revealed what was left of the Mudd. Shacks were split apart, spilling their contents onto the waterlogged earth. The ground was littered with clothing, children's bicycles, shredded suitcases, mattresses, tools, books, family photos, and dislodged toilets and appliances. Crumpled cars were piled together like balled-up waste paper. On the roof of a silver sedan lay the carcass of a dog, its mouth ajar, its eyes already decaying.

Armed with our cameras, my fellow journalists and I trudged through the killing field, looking for the perfect image to capture the tragedy. A pair of drones buzzed overhead.

My reverie was broken by the sight of a wild pig that emerged from the rubble and charged in my direction. A swing of my backpack didn't deter it, but a group of men in a passing Geo Prizm with blown-out windows paused to holler at the beast, and it changed course.

A few minutes later, a lone Bahamian in a sagging pickup drove by, staring me down as he passed. Twenty yards farther along, I heard his brakes screech and his car flip into reverse.

"You guys need to get out of here," he said to me and my two colleagues. What followed was a diatribe about how this vast expanse of stinking refuse should have never existed.

"These people moved here, illegally coming to this country, and within two days they illegally build a shack house, and this shouldn't be," the 37-year-old contractor, Topeto Davis, fumed. "We've been having this problem for years. If you look at this death count in this country, 90 percent of the people who died live here, and they should have never been here to begin with."

Davis was not expressing an uncommon sentiment. In annihilating Great Abaco, Dorian exposed the tensions that have simmered between native Bahamians and Haitian immigrants who began coming to the island in the '60s to escape Franois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's murderous reign.

In 1963, the Haitian community accounted for 3.2 percent of the nation's population. By 2009, that figure had more than tripled, to 11.1 percent, according to an estimate from the Bahamian Department of Statistics. In recent years, the country has tightened its immigration laws, targeting migrants from Jamaica and Cuba in addition to those from Haiti; since 2015, all residents have been required to carry a passport. Prior to the storm, the government had set a deadline of July 31, 2019, to evacuate those living in the Abacos' six shantytowns.

"They're robbing regular folks; they're robbing the people who have money; they're looting and grabbing everything they can," said Davis, echoing sentiments that flooded social media in the Bahamas in Dorian's wake.

As night fell, the pickup that was supposed to shuttle us back to the hotel failed to materialize. The three of us caught a ride back to Marsh Harbour with an assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Without electricity, it was impossible to locate the room where I'd stowed my gear. The telltale groan of a generator led us to a shack occupied by five cooks from chef Jos Andrs' World Central Kitchen, who were making plans for the following day and insisted on feeding us dinner.

Photo by Zachary Fagenson

As we set off again in search of our room, we encountered more hospitality this time from a team of paramedics who beckoned us aboard the lone boat bobbing in the marina, offering air-conditioned comfort and outlets to recharge our dying phones and laptops.

"We were at the airport earlier today," Mark Glicksman, a volunteer paramedic from the Israeli nonprofit United Hatzalah, told me. "Cleveland Clinic was there, Florida Task Force was there, a bunch of people were there. But everyone looked around and didn't see anything to do, so they left.

"These organizations are coming in and the government is clearing them, but there's nothing else," he continued. "They're providing their own logistics and having to figure out where to go themselves. This is five or six days old there should've been someone there coordinating security, coordinating food, coordinating flights or boat rides off the island. Someone should be organizing search-and-rescue. We know there are still people out there."

After the generator clicked off and the boat became a sauna below deck, we all went up to sleep under the stars.

I don't believe I've ever eaten a meal that nourished the body and spirit as thoroughly as that sweet beef stew and carrots, served over mashed potatoes. Same goes for the ice-cold beers the paramedics pressed upon us.

But no amount of food and drink could stave off the disorientation brought on by enjoying First-World comforts amid a shattered hellscape.

We rose at dawn to head northwest out of Marsh Harbour with a driver from the Royal Bahamas Police Force and two of the Hatzalah paramedics. Even as the density of homes waned, the destruction persisted. Roads had only recently been cleared, bulldozers had yet to sweep away the nests of tangled power lines that had a nasty habit of wrapping themselves in the axles of passing cars and creating 2,000-pound roadblocks. Side roads were flooded or clogged with debris. Here and there, a person would appear in the doorway of a faraway house on top of a seemingly inaccessible hill and give a curt wave.

After a while, the paramedics decided anyplace was a good place to stop. We got out and began knocking on doors.

Despite the deathly silence, the area was not abandoned. Many residents had returned to their homes to dig out what clothing and furniture they could, hoping to stave off mildew in case they could move in again. In some instances, the storm had done the work, dislodging doors and blowing the entire contents of a house onto the street. The people we spoke with said they'd seen no one going house-to-house, no aid workers, no one from the government since the storm had passed through more than a week earlier.

"You're the first ones we've seen come around," Roseline Valiant said. "We need medication. We need clothes. We need water. We need everything to start all over. It's like being born again."

Valiant, who's 57, said she flies back and forth to Miami to restock her small clothing boutique in Marsh Harbour. Now, though, the store was missing part of its roof, and half of her house was flooded. She and her two children had taken refuge in the living room, which now was crammed with all of their belongings, along with what she had salvaged from her inventory, hoping to dry it out.

Down the road at the Soul Saving Ministry, Pastor Lawrence Arnett warned that we hadn't seen the worst of the damage, which lay just over the hill on which Valiant's house was built. It took us half an hour to locate a passable route, plus another ten minutes to free a terrified dog chained to a fence.

From the top of the hill, we could see the sparkling turquoise sea that a few days earlier had leveled the land below us. Overhead, military helicopters churned. All that remained of the houses that led down to the water were cinder-block skeletons or heaps of rubble resting on concrete pads. In the distance, a generator whirred. A family of six, mostly adults, peeked out from their front door and gave a cautious smile and a wave.

"We've seen nobody, and we need help," 38-year-old Louinoi Louincee said. The shoe shop owner's front yard was covered in neat rows of sneakers and high heels she hoped she might still be able to sell. "The first day after the storm, we walked up to Marsh Harbour for supplies, but we haven't been able to get back. There's no food, no water, and no fuel. We're stuck."

The paramedics asked whether anyone required medical attention. No, they all said. Louincee's brother and her father popped open a can of Vienna sausages and began to debate who would hike to town and how much water they could carry back.

Midday brought radio calls that search-and-rescue teams were converging on the island's other large shantytown, Pigeon Peas, to look for human remains. Over the course of the morning, it had become clear there was little rescuing to be done. Most of the critically injured, along with children and pregnant women, had been evacuated by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter days earlier. All that was left to do was find the dead.

As we made our way back to Marsh Harbour, the sour smell of death surrounded us. We stopped frequently, lifting sheets of plywood and twisted mattresses to see what might lie beneath.

Photo by Zachary Fagenson

We chanced upon a small crew of firefighters from North Florida slowly making their way through a small field of tall matted grass. They weilded metal poles that looked like fireplace pokers, which they used to lever up nail-studded slabs of plywood. For now, they could do little beyond scanning the surface of the field of debris. Peeling away the ten-foot-high piles of wreckage would have to wait for the arrival of heavy equipment.

"A local said it best when he expressed a lot of gratitude from the people who live here who did lose loved ones and will be able to have some kind of closure after their loved ones' remains are found," said Chad Belger, a 38-year-old lieutenant from the Gainesville Fire Department who's a member of one of Florida's volunteer emergency task forces.

Government workers clad in disposable hazmat suits, rubber boots, and masks carried a body bag out of a teal building.

"The devastation here is unbelievable," Joe Colon, a retired Green Beret, said when the crew broke for lunch. "I've been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and this looks worse. This looks like they threw a couple of bombs here, gathered up all the stuff, and threw another bomb on top of it."

A Navy SEAL who introduced himself as Richard Graham had brought along a German shepherd named Mika who was indicating so many potential bodies it was almost impossible for Graham to discern where they were.

In total, the team marked three more bodies: a man who'd been crushed between two shanties; a woman in purple-flowered pants lying facedown in the muck; and a victim tangled in chicken wire. A thin piece of plywood was laid atop each, and the locations were marked with orange spray paint and tagged with GPS waypoints that would be passed along to recovery crews that would return the next day.

Given the extent of the damage, Belger said, there could be weeks of work ahead. "You just have to pick a spot and move out from there."

As I write this, few news cameras remain on Great Abaco, even as an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of storm debris rots in Marsh Harbour. The Miami Herald no longer publishes daily updates about the aftermath; the last story Reuters ran was dated September 15.

So many of Abaco's residents have fled the destruction that the government closed its main shelter there.

As of presstime, the death toll stands at 56 the same as it has been since September 21. The number of missing stands at 692, down from the 2,500 the government announced earlier in September and a figure many are taking as a proxy for the actual death toll.

"World Central Kitchen has established a kitchen on Abaco, and we are uniquely committed to serving fresh food to those in need," the organization's executive director, Nate Mook, wrote in an email. "We will continue to provide hot meals as long as we are needed."

Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis has announced the creation of the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness, Management, and Reconstruction to oversee the effort. Minnis designated Grand Bahama and the Abacos as Economic Recovery Zones for a minimum of three years. "This designation will allow communities affected by Hurricane Dorian to benefit from a wide range of fiscal incentives," Minnis said during a news conference.

The truth is no one knows how long it will take to rebuild the crushed islands. But the people who lived there are determined to do so.

Before I left Abaco, I met Carrington George Woodside, the owner of a port security company. He was trying to get one of his pickup trucks to start so he could drive to the police station to offer his assistance.

"Help is what we need a lot of help," he said. "We need our electricity back; we need generators; we need our water system. And people need food and drinks across the island, not just Marsh Harbour.

"We can't give up on this island," he added. "This place is everything to us: our home, our culture, our souls. We will rebuild, and we will come back stronger."

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What It's Like in the Abaco Islands Bahamas After Hurricane Dorian - Miami New Times

Sandals Emerald Bay Sweepstakes To Deliver Golf Vacation That Shows Bahamas Is Still Going Strong – Forbes

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The Greg Norman-designed course at Sandals Emerald Bay plays host to a Korn Ferry Tour stop in ... [+] January and has six holes on the ocean.

When Hurricane Dorian slowly churned its way across the Northern Bahamas with 185 mile-per-hour winds, it left a trail of devastation in its wake that will be felt for years, particularly on the islands of Grand Bahama and Great Abaco. Other islands escaped completely unscathed but are still feeling effects of the devastating hurricane most notably a significant drop in tourism driven by the mistaken belief that the Bahamas as a whole was devastated by the category 5 storm.

Among these is Great Exuma, one of the most southerly of the more than 700 islands, cays and islets that make up the Bahamas and are spread over almost 180,000 square miles of ocean.

Great Exuma is home to a number of terrific resorts, chief among them Sandals Emerald Bay, which hosts a professional golf event for the Korn Ferry Tour The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic in January. In addition to its oceanfront golf course designed by Greg Norman, the all-inclusive resort features elegant villas and suites, 11 restaurants and an award-winning spa spread across a 500-acre enclave that includes a pristine, mile-long beach.

A scenic view of the fifteenth hole during the final round of The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at ... [+] Sandals Emerald Bay golf course on January 16, 2019 in Great Exuma, Bahamas. (Photo by Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

The resort is actively supporting hurricane relief efforts through the Sandals Foundation, joining a wide range of efforts to help their neighbors in the Northern Bahamas. At the same time, Sandals Emerald Bay is determined to make sure those outside the region are aware it is open for business a necessity for the livelihood of many locals in Great Exuma. More than 60 percent of the Bahamas gross domestic product is dependent on tourism, the most of any Caribbean nation.

Sandals Resorts and Troon, the worlds largest golf management company, have teamed up to offer the Sandals Emerald Bay Golf Sweepstakes, which will reward one winner and a guest with a four-day, three-night golf experience vacation at the adults-only resort during The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic from January 9-15, 2020. In addition to luxurious accommodations and free dining including unlimited wine and liquor the winner will receive an entry to the official Pro-Am competition, get a private player meet-and-greet, and take part in an instructional golf clinic with a pro.

Kayakers kept tabs on play during the final round of The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals ... [+] Emerald Bay golf course on January 16, 2019 in Great Exuma, Bahamas. (Photo by Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Those interested in entering the sweepstakes just need to join the Troon Rewards loyalty program, which is free.

I took keen interest in this contest because I was lucky enough to visit Sandals Emerald Bay during the Korn Ferry Tour event (then the Web.com Tour) earlier this year and experience many of the special opportunities that await the winner.

After flying into Great Exuma with a host of players who have PGA Tour aspirations, I stayed in an oceanfront villa just steps from the beach and crystal-clear turquoise waters; if you left the sliding door open at night, you could be lulled to sleep by warm tropical breezes and the gentle crashing of waves. I played (not especially well) in the Pro-Am competition, which also included a Caribbean Junkanoo themed draw party night with live music and entertainment, and endless food and drink. The tournament itself was an absolute blast, but the lead-up was equally fun.

During this year's Pro-Am at Sandals Emerald Bay, the writer hits a drive under the watchful eye of ... [+] tournament host and course architect Greg Norman.

I visited the world-class Red Lane Spa to ease my sore muscles after being tested by the winds that buffeted a scenic course with six oceanfront holes. I hit several swim-up bars and tried to sample every culinary offering I could, from an authentic English Pub and a flavorful Indian restaurant to the Caribbean-themed Jerk Shack and a sensational seaside spot called Barefoot By The Sea, where I ate grilled lobster (the chefs signature dish) and conch fritters with my feet in the sand.

I dozed off in a hammock near the water, searched for conch shells, sat poolside with a fruity drink in my hand, hopped on a swing in the surf, and dove into the idyllic waters of the Exumas. I also ventured off property, swimming with pigs and stingrays, and sharing snacks with endangered Bahamian Rock Iguanas during a thrilling cruise through nearby cays.

Feeding Bahamian Rock Iguanas after swimming with the pigs off Great Exuma.

Just as rewarding was my trip to a local elementary school arranged by the Sandals Foundation, an experience that allowed me to not only read to eager students but play with them too, throwing a football, shooting baskets and tossing around Frisbees. It was a special adventure that gave me the chance to connect with the locals way of life. Many of the kids I spent time with have mothers or fathers who work at Sandals Emerald Bay.

And despite the damage sustained in the Northern Bahamas, Sandals Emerald Bay in Great Exuma is most definitely open and welcoming much-needed guests. Come January, thanks to the Sandals Emerald Bay Golf Sweepstakes, a couple of lucky visitors will get a truly special trip. Troon and Sandals are billing it as a once-in-a-lifetime golf experience vacation. After my first-hand immersion at Emerald Bay earlier this year, I can safely say thats no exaggeration whatsoever.

Food, tents and pet supplies heading to Hurricane Dorian-battered Bahamas – Naples Daily News

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Ron Seppa and Cindy Seppa unload donations from their car during a Bahamas Disaster Relief event at the Miromar Outlet Mall on Sunday, September 29, 2019, in Bonita Springs.(Photo: Wangyuxuan Xu/Naples Daily News USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA)

Two years ago, pallets of food, water and clothing flooded to Southwest Florida after Hurricane Irma ravaged communities. Locals havent forgotten about strangers' kind donations, and Floridians are giving backthis time,to the Bahamas.

Michael DeVolder stood in front of two FedEx shipping trailers, surrounded by half a dozen volunteers and boxes of donations, Sunday at Miromar Outlets. He spent the weekend taking clothes, tents and dog food from charitable locals wanting to help Bahamians in the aftermath of the countrys worst disaster, DeVolder said.

Weve all seen the pictures and know the story, he said.

Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the Abaco Islands on Sept. 1 as a Category 5 storm. The storm slowly drifted over the island of Grand Bahama, home to 50,000 residents. The deadly storm stalled for 30 hours as winds, reaching over 200 miles per hour, buffeted homes and infrastructure.

Hundreds of islanders are missing nearly a month after the storm.

The winds and floods of Hurricane Irma werent as deadly as Dorian, but families still faced life-changing damage as homes flooded and rainwater blasted into houses, said Kim Cabrera, teacher at Varsity Lakes Middle School in Lehigh Acres.

Many of my students were affected by Irma, Cabrera said.

Kimberly DeVolder holds a bag of clothes passing over During a Bahamas Disaster Relief event at the Miromar Outlet Mall on Sunday, September 29, 2019, in Bonita Springs.(Photo: Wangyuxuan Xu/Naples Daily News USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA)

She drove up to the Miromar Outlet with a dozen black trash bags full of clothes and other necessities. Cabrera started a school donation campaign days after Hurricane Dorian struck.

I reminded (my students) how bad it was for them (after Irma), she said. Students, staff, everybody started bringing stuff in.

Cabrera planned to use another group to send their donations to the Bahamas, but her deal fell through. She found the Miromar Outlets donation drive Saturday night and knew it was her last shot at getting the clothes to Bahamians.

The bags were sitting in my garage for weeks, she said.

No official organizations ran the event. DeVolder has experience running a nonprofit and knew how to get hold of the right people. FedEx offered to ship the items for free, and Miromar Outlets opened its parking lot. A ship organized by the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency is leaving Fort Lauderdale this week, and any donations that reach the pier will get to those in need.

People want to help but dont know how, DeVolder said. They cant ship a pallet of water to the Bahamas. Were giving them an easy option.

It worked.

Michael DeVolder oprates a forklift during a Bahamas Disaster Relief event at the Miromar Outlet Mall on Sunday, September 29, 2019, in Bonita Springs.(Photo: Wangyuxuan Xu/Naples Daily News USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA)

He expects to fill nearly two tractor-trailers of needed supplies. A Bahamas representative told DeVolder the islands needed tents for the homeless and pets supplies, he said.

They said everyone has a dog, DeVolder said. So thats what we asked for.

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Food, tents and pet supplies heading to Hurricane Dorian-battered Bahamas - Naples Daily News

GOLF Advisor Round Trip Showcases Islands of the Bahamas – Golf Channel

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The newest episode of GOLF Advisor Round Trip, premiering Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 7:30 p.m. ET on GOLF Channel, explores two of the more than 700 islands and cays that escaped the brunt of the devastating effects of Hurricane Dorian and remain open for tourism.

The Bahamas is so special for so many reasons, but the reason why I will keep going back is the people. They are warm, welcoming and gracious, said Matt Ginella, series host and GOLF Advisor editor-at-large. As many of them have said to me, if you want to help the Bahamas, visit the Bahamas.

Ginella will introduce life on land and on the clear-blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean that make the Bahamas a special place to visit. While exploring golf on the islands, he joins Gerrod Chadwell, University of Houston womens golf coach and husband of two-time major champion Stacy Lewis, for a round on the Tom Weiskopf-designed Ocean Club at Atlantis Resort, arguably the most picturesque golf course in the Bahamas. Away from the golf course, Ginella dares to swim with the sharks and takes a paddle board to visit with some curious dolphins. He also joins local residents for a traditional Bahamian fish fry.

The episode also will provide information on additional ways viewers can support relief efforts in the Bahamas through http://www.bahamas.com/relief.

Each month, the GOLF Advisor Round Trip travel series takes viewers around the globe to explore a variety of destinations offering the best in golf, resort accommodations, dining and activities.

Travel with GOLF Advisor Round Trip

Viewers will have an opportunity to have their own Bahamian experience with Ginella as their host by booking the GOLF Advisor Getaway to the Bahamas, scheduled for Nov. 14-17. GOLF Advisor Getaways feature Ginella and other GOLF Advisor personalities hosting individuals and groups at destinations featured on the GOLF Advisor Round Trip television series. Serving as host and trip captain, GOLF Advisor personalities are responsible for organizing itineraries that not only include great golf, but also destination side-trips, entertainment and varied dining experiences. GOLFPASS members can save $100 on GOLF Advisor Getaways. More information can be found on how to join these trips at http://www.GolfAdvisor.com/getaways.

Upcoming GOLF Advisor Getaways in 2019 include:

Sept. 29-Oct. 1 Sweetens Cove (Tenn.) Host: Bradley S. Klein

Oct 20-23 Carolina Sandhills Host: Bradley S. Klein

Nov. 14-18 Atlantis (Bahamas) Host: Matt Ginella

Dec. 1-7 Maui, Hawaii Host: Matt Ginella

About GOLF Advisor

GOLF Advisor is the ultimate digital destination for traveling golfers, who love to play, travel and learn more about how the sport can be experienced around the world. Featuring more than 950,000 reviews of 15,000-plus golf courses, GOLF Advisor serves as a one-stop, customized experience for golfers of all levels to find honest recommendations from their peers and to offer feedback of their own about any golf course they play, anywhere, anytime. The GOLF Advisor portfolio also includes a GOLF Channel travel series, GOLF Advisor Round Trip and GOLF Advisor Getaways, premium travel experiences at world-class resorts and clubs. A veteran staff of award-winning writers provides complementary, expert editorial content about golf travel, architecture and history. GOLF Advisor also is home to the popular Best of Lists generated each year from authentic golfer reviews. Special GOLF Advisor perks and benefits, including travel assistance, insider travel information and credit at a selection of top resorts, are available through any GOLFPASS membership.

-NBC Sports Group-

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GOLF Advisor Round Trip Showcases Islands of the Bahamas - Golf Channel

Tropical Storm Karen Could Loop Toward the Bahamas and Florida – The New York Times

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Tropical Storm Karen, which was headed north into open water on Wednesday, is expected to perform a loop-de-loop, cross back over its own track and swing west toward the Bahamas and Florida.

The storm, which soaked Puerto Rico, was about 330 miles north of the island on Wednesday night, sailing in the general direction of Bermuda at about 14 miles an hour, the National Hurricane Center said. But long before it gets to Bermuda, it is expected to curl east and complete a clockwise loop that puts it on a path toward the Bahamas, where several islands were devastated by Hurricane Dorian this month.

Forecasters said that residents of Florida, which was largely spared by that hurricane, should be keeping an eye on this storm.

There was considerable uncertainty surrounding the storms future. Some models suggested that Karen could strengthen and develop into a hurricane by early next week, while others say it could simply sputter and dissipate. Even if the storm does plow westward, its winds are not expected to approach the Bahamas until Sunday evening at the earliest, according to the National Hurricane Center.

At least 51 people died in the Bahamas this month when Dorian, a Category 5 storm, leveled Great Abaco Island and submerged much of Grand Bahama.

The predicted looping track of Tropical Storm Karen is not unheard of, according to Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He said it can occur when low-pressure troughs stop pushing a storm north, leaving it to sit relatively still until a high-pressure ridge catches it and begins moving west.

Karen could also weaken significantly as it dawdles over cooler water, Mr. Blake said, with the result that it could be days before forecasters are able to safely predict if, when or where Karen will make landfall again.

Were going to have to wait and see, Mr. Blake said, adding that weaker storms are more difficult to predict than powerful storms. The best advice is to sit and watch it, he said.

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Tropical Storm Karen Could Loop Toward the Bahamas and Florida - The New York Times

How Justin Leonard and Brad Faxon put together the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am to assist Hurricane Dorian victims – Golf Digest

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

It has been more than three weeks since the Bahamas were ravaged by Hurricane Dorian, the Category 5 storm with wind gusts as high as 220 mph that leveled Great Abaco, Grand Bahama and elsewhere in the archipelago. The road to recovery has been an arduous one, laden with bureaucratic red tape and the inherent challenges that follow catastrophic disaster.

Golf and the courses on the islands are low on the priority list, but the game has a deep connection in that part of the world with the Bahamas a popular destination for everyone from the casual fan to PGA Tour player. Which is why those in the golf community are trying to do what they can to get the people there, several hundred of whom work at Bakers Bay, The Abaco Club and other courses, back on their feet.

On Oct. 8, Brad Faxon and Justin Leonard will co-host a pro-am at Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Among those already committed to play are Justin Thomas, Jack Nicklaus, Jessica Korda, Ernie Els, Greg Norman, Lucas Glover, Billy Horschel, Jaye Greene, Corey Conners, Brett Quigley, Marina Alex and Charl Schwartzel. Funds raised will go directly toward relief efforts.

They need everything, Faxon said. Theres no fuel, no place to stay. People need necessities like food, water and underwear because this is going to take months.

RELATED: With the Bahamas reeling from Hurricane Dorian, local golf community looks to help lead relief efforts

How the fundraiser came to be in the first place speaks to the connection between Floridians and the Bahamas.

A well-connected Ponte Vedra Beach woman named Beth Warren, a neighbor of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan though she doesnt know him, was on a group text of other like women who had frequented the Bahamas on countless vacations and wanted to help. Her familys home just outside the gates of Bakers Bay on Great Guana Cay was destroyed in the storm but that was secondary. There were more pressing needs amid the chaos for the people shed gotten to know over the years.

Another of the women who was on the text chain: Leonards wife Amanda. The idea percolated from there, with her husband reaching out to Faxon as well as PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, and the pro-am was born.

RELATED: Tiger Woods announces One Bahamas Fund for hurricane recovery efforts as government lists 2,500 people missing

We made friends with so many of the Bahamians that it was truly our second home, said Warren, who isnt a golfer but had spent more than a decade visiting Great Abaco, often spending weeks at a time there with her four children. Our souls were there. That was the happy place.

Warrens efforts have extended beyond just flying a plane full of supplies there, too. In the wake of the disaster she says she has fielded calls from dozens of people whose lives have been interrupted or destroyed and has put them up in homes or flown them to Miami, where they could stay with relatives or in a hotel.

But it will be months if not years before there is any level of normalcy, particularly in Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco, where shantytowns were flattened and countless buildings reduced to rubble. The death toll is currently at 52 but that is expected to rise significantly with more than 1,300 people still registered as missing with the Bahamas government.

Theres so much they need before they can even think about rebuilding, Warren said. There is a lot of need and a lot of confusion down there.

In the meantime, every little bit of goodwill helps.

For more on the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am and how to donate, click here. https://www.bahamasstrongproam.com/

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How Justin Leonard and Brad Faxon put together the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am to assist Hurricane Dorian victims - Golf Digest

UWM to Offer Tuition, Application Help to Bahamas Students Impacted by Hurricane – Newswise

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

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Newswise MILWAUKEE_The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is offering tuition and admissions assistance to students from the Bahamas impacted by Hurricane Dorian.

Students can apply for reduced tuition, and UWMs admissions office will work with students who have difficulties accessing records and transcripts.

As a caring, compassionate campus community, we recognize that students sometimes face unforeseen challenges because of natural disasters, UWM Chancellor Mark Mone said. We strive to help those who are impacted by these situations.

UWM extended similar help to students from Puerto Rico in 2017 after Hurricane Maria, in accordance with its established process for dealing with applicants having challenges because of extenuating circumstances.

If granted, the tuition reduction would cover the nonresident portion of tuition at UWM in spring 2020, giving Bahamian students resident tuition for that semester.

Students would then need to obtain Wisconsin residency for tuition purposes or submit an appeal to determine eligibility for future semesters. The admissions department will work with students applying from the Bahamas to use alternative documents in cases where power outages or communication disruptions have made it difficult or impossible to obtain high school or college transcripts.

UWM will also waive application fees and consider students impacted by Dorian based on what records they can provide. These may include unofficial transcripts, test scores and other documents. UWM may also use placement testing and individual interviews to help in admission and registration decisions.

We are committed to helping students achieve their goals in higher education said Katie Miota, UWMs chief enrollment officer. When students lives are uprooted by natural disaster, we are driven to do anything we can to help. Its in our values and our access mission.

Students who qualify can fill out a form at https://uwm.edu/undergrad-admission/prospective-students-affected-by-recent-natural-disasters/. Or they can contact the appropriate university admissions office via email, social media or phone, details of which are at uwm.edu/contact.

Students should reference UWMs Natural Disaster Admissions Relief in their inquiry. They will be contacted by an advisor.

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UWM to Offer Tuition, Application Help to Bahamas Students Impacted by Hurricane - Newswise

Elon Musk wants to move fast with SpaceX’s Starship – Spaceflight Now

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

SpaceXs Starship Mk. 1 prototype stands 164 feet (50 meters) tall at Boca Chica, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

Standing in front of a shiny full-scale prototype of SpaceXs Starship vehicle in South Texas, Elon Musk said Saturday night he wants the companys gigantic next-generation rocket to fly into orbit within six months, a bold schedule that he acknowledged requires exponential improvements in design and manufacturing.

Regardless of when the futuristic-looking vehicle reaches orbit for the first time, Musk told several hundred employees, local supporters, space enthusiasts and space reporters along with thousands more watching online that SpaceX will build a fleet of Starships and launch them from sites in Texas and Florida.

The first full-size prototype of SpaceXs Starship space vehicle named Starship Mk. 1 and built this summer on the South Texas coast should be ready to launch on a high-altitude atmospheric test flight in the next one or two months, Musk said.

SpaceX plans to practice launching and landing the Starship with suborbital up-and-down flights, similar to the way engineers perfected landings of Falcon rocket boosters with an experimental vehicle named Grasshopper.

Whats really kind of hard to grasp, at a visceral level, is that this giant ship will do the same thing that Grasshopper did, Musk said, backdropped by the Starhopper prototype. This thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000 feet about 20 kilometers and come back and land in about one to two months So that giant thing, its really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back.

Yeah, its wild, he added.

Musk, an avowed optimist, said an orbital launch attempt with Starship, and its not-yet-built Super Heavy first stage booster, could happen next year.

With any development into uncharted territory, its difficult to predict these things with precision, he said. But I do think things are going to move very fast. So, our plan is in basically in one to two months to do the 20-kilometer flight with Starship Mk. 1. Our next flight after that might actually just be all the way to orbit with a booster and the ship.

SpaceX says the reusable Starship and Super Heavy will eventually replace the companys Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, along with the Dragon cargo and crew capsules.

According to SpaceXs website, the Starship and Super Heavy will be able to deliver satellites to orbit at a lower marginal cost per launch than our current Falcon vehicles. But SpaceX says the next-generation booster and spaceship can do much more, including interplanetary flights to the moon, Mars and other destinations with up to 150 tons of cargo, or crews of up to 100 people.

Musks presentation Saturday came three years after he first unveiled the deep space transportation architecture that became the Starship and Super Heavy. SpaceX has since settled on a smaller, but still record-large, rocket than the design Musk presented in 2016.

The Starship and Super Heavy are designed for vertical takeoffs and landings, similar to the method SpaceX uses to return Falcon rocket boosters to Earth for refurbishment and reuse. During orbital launches, the Super Heavy booster will propel the Starship toward space before detaching and returning to a landing near the launch site. The Starship will then accelerate into orbit on its own.

I have this mantra called, If a schedules long, its wrong, if its tight, its right,' he said. If the design takes a long time to build, its the wrong design. This is the fundamental thing. The tendency is to complicate things.

I have another thing, the best part is no part, the best process is no process, Musk said. It weighs nothing, costs nothing, cant go wrong The thing Im most impressed with when I have design meetings at SpaceX is, What did you undesign? Undesigning is the best thing. Just delete it, thats the best thing.

That ethos led SpaceX to assemble the first Starship prototypes in the open in public view, not inside a climate-controlled factory with strict cleanliness requirements. Musk said it would have taken too long to construct a dedicated assembly building for the Starship.

And instead of building the vehicle out of carbon fiber, as many modern rockets use, the Starship is made of stainless steel. The structures of modern launch vehicles are primarily made of carbon fiber or aluminum, but rockets designed in an earlier era, such as the Atlas-Centaur conceived in the 1950s and 1960s, flew with a stainless steel skin.

Up until October of last year, we were pursuing a completely different design, Musk said, referring to SpaceXs switch to a stainless steel structure for the Starship, reversing earlier plans to construct it out of carbon fiber.

Less than a year after the redesign, Musk has a full-size Starship prototype on the verge of its first test flight. SpaceX says a Super Heavy first stage, which will stack under the Starship during an orbital launch, is not far behind.

Stainless steel is heavier than other rocket materials, but it comes with several major benefits that ultimately make the entire vehicle, including its heat shield, lighter than otherwise possible, Musk said.

Stainless steel is resilient and strong at super-cold temperatures. Thats important because the Starship and Super Heavy will be loaded with 9 million pounds of cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen at liftoff.

The best design decision on this whole thing is 301 stainless steel because at cryogenic temperatures, 301 stainless actually has about the same effective strength as an advanced composite or aluminum-lithium, Musk said. Unlike most steels, which get brittle at low temperature, 301 stainless gets much stronger.

Its strength-to-weight ratio at cryogenic temperatures is equivalent, or even perhaps slightly better than, advanced composites or aluminum-lithium, he said. This is not well appreciated because if you just look at the materials manual and say what is the strength of stainless steel, it looks much weaker than it is. (If) you say what is the strength at cryogenic temperature much, much stronger at very low temperature, almost twice as strong. Thats when it becomes better than carbon fiber or aluminum-lithium.

Steel has a melting temperature of around 2,700 degrees Celsius (1,500 degrees Celsius), significantly higher than that of the aluminum structure used on the space shuttle orbiter.

For a reusable ship, youre coming in like a meteor, Musk said. You want something that does not melt at a low temperature. You want something that melts at a high temperature, and this is where steel is extremely good as well.

That means the top side of the Starship will not need a heat shield, and the thermal shielding on the side of the vehicle oriented forward during re-entry into the atmosphere will be massively reduced, Musk said.

Because the steel can take a much higher temperature, your heat shield even on the windward side is much lighter, he said. The net effect is that a 301 stainless steel rocket is actually the lightest possible reusable architecture.

A ton of stainless steel is 2 percent the cost of a ton of carbon fiber, Musk said.

Also, its very easy to weld stainless steel, the evidence being that we welded it outdoors without a factory, he said. With carbon fiber this is impossible, with aluminum-lithium, also impossible. But steel is easy to weld and it is resilient to the elements.

For orbital-class Starships, SpaceX plans to install hexagonal ceramic tiles on the bottom side of the vehicle. The tiles will take the brunt of re-entry heating as the ship falls into the atmosphere at an angle of attack of around 60 degrees.

The ship will then free-fall in a horizontal orientation like a skydiver, Musk said using fins and thrusters for stability before flipping vertical and igniting its base engines for a vertical landing.

SpaceX is building a second Starship prototype, designated Mk. 2, at an industrial yard in Cocoa, Florida, near Cape Canaveral. Once complete, the vehicle will be transported to the nearby Kennedy Space Center for testing at launch pad 39A, a former Apollo and space shuttle launch facility now leased by SpaceX for its Falcon rocket family.

Im giving you literally just stream of consciousness here, Musk said Saturday at SpaceXs launch site at Boca Chica, Texas. Most likely, we would not fly to orbit with Mk 1, but we would fly to orbit with Mk. 3, which will be built after Mk. 1 right here. In fact, well start building it in about a month.

A few minutes later, Musk said the SpaceX would probably launch the first Starship into orbit using the Mk. 4 or Mk. 5 vehicle.

Just to frame things, we are going to be building ships and boosters at both Boca and the Cape as fast as we can, he said. Its going to be really nutty to see a bunch of these things, not just one, but a whole stack of them. Were improving both the design and the manufacturing method exponentially.

For example, the third iteration of SpaceXs Starship will be built in fewer pieces, with thinner walls, a lighter structure, and lower costs, he said.

The rate at which were going to be building ships will be quite crazy by space standards, he said. I think well have Mk. 2 (in Florida) built within a couple of months or less, and Mk. 3, maybe three months, that type of thing. Mk. 4, four months, maybe five months. And we would seek to go to orbit with probably Mk. 4 or Mk. 5.

This is going to sound totally nuts, but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months, Musk said. Provided the rate of design improvement and manufacturing improvement continue to be exponential, I think that is accurate to within a few months.

The Starship alone could probably reach orbit without a boost from the massive Super Heavy first stage, but flying it to orbit in that configuration wouldnt make sense, Musk said. Without the help of a booster, the Starship could not carry a heat shield, extra fuel or other equipment to return to Earth intact.

So far, SpaceXs development of the Super Heavy and Starship has been privately-funded through revenues from Falcon and Dragon missions. SpaceX has also raised more than $1 billion this year from investors, largely to fund the companys Starlink program designed to provide Internet services from space.

SpaceX says future revenue from the Starlink business could be applied to the Super Heavy and Starship projects.

The priority is to build at least two Starships at each site at Boca and at the Cape and then start building the (Super Heavy) booster, Musk said. Well complete Mk. 1 through 4 before doing Mk. 1 of the booster. And then well do Mk. 1 and Mk. 2 of the boosters at the Cape and at Boca.

Clusters of methane-fueled Raptor engines will power the Super Heavy and Starship vehicles.

Three Raptors are mounted to the base of the Starship Mk. 1 prototype at Boca Chica, and three more will be installed on the Mk. 2 vehicle in Florida for initial test flights, Musk said.

The Raptor is the most powerful engine ever built by SpaceX. The early version of the Raptor engine can produce up to 440,000 pounds of thrust at sea level, roughly equivalent to the main engines flown on the space shuttle.

The Raptor engine has more than twice the thrust of the kerosene-burning Merlin 1D engine that flies on SpaceXs Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. And the Raptor is the most powerful methane-fueled engine ever flown.

Orbital-class Starships will have six Raptors three gimbaling center-mounted engines for vertical landings, and three engines with expanded nozzles optimized for firings in space.

The Super Heavy booster could accommodate up to 37 Raptor engines, depending on final design decisions and mission requirements, Musk said. He expects the Super Heavy to generate around 15 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, about two times the thrust generated by the gigantic Saturn 5 rocket used for the Apollo moon landing missions.

The main constraint on launching the booster is engines, Musk said. The booster has a lot of engines. So spooling up the Raptor production rate is extremely important vital to completing the booster. Doing the tanks and the legs and the grid fins, that is not a constraint. That we can get done fast. I think wed want to have at least probably 24 engines, but I think really at least 31 engines to launch.

The Super Heavy will likely fly with seven Raptor engines with the ability to gimbal, or swivel, to provide steering. The rest of the booster engines will have fixed nozzles, Musk said.

Including development engines from now through orbit, we probably need 100 Raptor engines. Our production rate right now is maybe one every eight to 10 days, he said.

By next year, SpaceX wants to build a Raptor engine every day.

The Starship vehicle assembled at Boca Chica stands around 164 feet (50 meters) tall and weighs 200 tons without propellants. It measures around 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter, about one-and-a-half times the diameter of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

Combined with the Super Heavy first stage, the entire stack will stand around 387 feet (118 meters) tall.

The fully reusable Super Heavy/Starship launch vehicle will be able to loft some 150 tons of payload to low Earth orbit, Musk said.

Assuming the Starship can be refilled with methane and liquid oxygen in orbit, the vehicle can deliver the same mass to the moon or Mars, he said.

Musk, an avowed optimist, said people could ride into space on Starship flights before the end of next year.

I think we could potentially see people flying next year, he said. Its designed to be a reusable rocket, so we can do many flights to prove out the reliability very quickly. With an expendable vehicle, if you want to do 10 flights, lets say, to prove out the viability of an expendable vehicle, you need to build and destroy 10 vehicles, whereas we can do 10 flights within basically 10 days.

When I say rapid reusability, I mean you can fly the booster 20 times a day, you fly the ship three or four times a day. Thats what I mean by reusability.

Japanese billionaireYusaku Maezawa announced last year he plans to fly on SpaceXs next-generation spaceship, along with a crew of artists, on a flight around the moon as soon as 2023.

SpaceX says the aspirational goal is to make the Starship ready for a flight to Mars without humans in 2022. A crewed flight to the Red Planet could follow as soon as 2024.

While he didnt mention it Saturday night, Musk has previously saidthe Starship could be used for point-to-point transportation around Earth, enabling intercontinental flights in minutes instead of hours.

Musks presentation Saturday was heavy on propulsion systems, structural design, aerodynamics and vision, but light on talk of funding or technologies necessary to sustain Starship crews in space, which SpaceX says may number as many as 100 people at a time.

For sure, youd want to have a regenerative live support system, Musk said in response to a question. That just means youre recycling everything. Thats for sure important if youre on a several-month journey to Mars and on the surface for 18 months. Regenerative is kind of a necessity. I dont think its actually super-hard to do that relative to the spacecraft itself. The life support system is pretty straightforward.

Musk suggested work on life support systems will come later because the Starships first flights will be unpiloted.

The early flights of Starship would not have any people on-board, he said. It would just be in automatic mode. It would only be later flights that would have people on-board. Even the first flights to Mars, we would send at least a couple of ships, (and) have them land automatically before sending people.

SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule, designed to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, will be the companys first human-rated spaceship. But its designed for a limited purpose, and has basic life support systems to accommodate crews for a few days during trips to and from the space station.

And SpaceXs Crew Dragon has not yet flown into orbit with astronauts. Musk said in an interview with CNN after Saturday nights presentation that hardware for a high-altitude abort test will arrive at Cape Canaveral next month, and hardware for the first Crew Dragon mission with astronauts will arrive in November.

He did not specify any schedule for the Crew Dragon launches themselves.

Musk hosted a presentation similar to Saturdays event in May 2014 to reveal details about the Crew Dragon spacecraft. At that time, Musk said the Crew Dragon would be ready to carry astronauts to space in 2016.

For long-duration voyages to other other worlds, SpaceXs Starship will need a much more elaborate life support system to regulate oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, store and process human waste, generate drinking water, and perhaps grow vegetables on-board.

NASA is testing some closed-loop life support system technologies on the space station, with more upgrades set for launch to the orbiting research complex in the next few years.

SpaceX and NASA have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for more than a decade, beginning with the U.S. space agencys award of a $278 million agreement to SpaceX in 2006 just four years after its founding to demonstrate the delivery and return of space station cargo.

SpaceX has delivered on the cargo contract, and continues to provide regular resupply flights to the station. The Dragon capsule is also the only spacecraft currently flying that is capable of returning significant mass from the station back to Earth.

The early NASA investment also gave SpaceX an anchor customer for the Falcon 9 rocket, which has become a market leader in the global commercial launch business, prompting competitors to cut prices. It also pioneered the vertical landing and reuse of rocket boosters, a crucial capability for Musks vision of expanding human civilization to Mars.

Since 2006, SpaceX has received $7.7 billion in contract awards from NASA for space station cargo and crew transportation through 2024, according to a report released last year by NASAs inspector general.

NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop and fly new human-rated space capsules the Crew Dragon and Starliner to carry astronauts to and from the space station. The commercial crew program was conceivedto limit the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability after the space shuttles retirement in 2011.

Despite the deep bond between NASA and SpaceX, the U.S. government, so far, has little role in the privately-run Starship program.

NASA is focusing on the Space Launch System, Orion spacecraft and the development of a commercial lunar lander to achieve the Trump administrations goal of landing astronauts the moon by 2024.

SpaceX wrote in an environmental impact statement outlining the companys future construction plans at the Kennedy Space Center that the development of the Super Heavy/Starship vehicle may support NASA in meeting the U.S. goal of near-term lunar exploration.

Delays in the commercial program were revisited Friday in a written statement from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow, Bridenstine said Friday. In the meantime, commercial crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. Its time to deliver.

A series of redesigns and technical delays have been partly responsible for schedule slips on the Boeing and SpaceX commercial crew programs. For example, problems with the abort engines on Boeings Starliner crew capsule delayed critical testing by nearly a year, and a valve failure led to the explosion of a Crew Dragon spacecraft during a ground test in April.

But some of the commercial crew delays were caused by Congress, which failed to provide the funding NASA said it needed for the space taxi program prior to 2015.

In June, the Government Accountability Office raised workload concerns for NASA engineers tasked with reviewing a high volume of data submitted by Boeing and SpaceX teams as they finalize their designs and test plans.

The reviews are aimed at ensuring the contractors comply with NASA safety requirements.

NASAs ability to process certification data packages for its two contractors continues to create uncertainty about the timing of certification, the GAO said. The program has made progress conducting these reviews but much work remains.

Musk responded to Bridenstines apparent criticism Saturday night.

From a SpaceX resource standpoint, our resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon, he said. Just to be clear, its a small percentage of SpaceX that does Starship, less than 5 percent of the company.

The U.S. Air Force, which needs powerful new rockets to carry satellites into orbit, has funded a fraction of the Raptor engines development costs. But the military did not select SpaceX last year as part of a round of rocket development contracts that went to SpaceX rivals United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman.

SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government in May protesting the Air Forces rocket development contracts awarded last year to SpaceXs competitors.

Meanwhile, the Air Force has received bids from SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman for lucrative military contracts for as many as 34 launches between 2022 and 2026. The so-called Phase 2 launch service procurement is the next stage in a multi-step, multi-year effort by the Air Force to select two contractors to cover the militarys future satellite launch needs, and end reliance on foreign-made rocket engines, such as those used by ULAs Atlas 5 booster.

ULA and SpaceX currently launch most of the U.S. governments military and intelligence-gathering satellites.

SpaceX said it was the only one of the four bidders to offer the Air Force a launch system that is currently flying, making the company the lowest-risk solution for the militarys most critical satellites. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are already certified by the Air Force, and SpaceX indicated it planned to use the Falcon rocket family to compete for the Phase 2 launch service contracts.

ULA is developing the Vulcan-Centaur rocket to replace its Atlas and Delta rocket fleet. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos, is developing the New Glenn rocket, and Northrop Grumman is working on the new OmegA launcher.

While the ULA, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman rockets are based on new designs, none look quite like the Starship.

Blue Origin is designing the first stage of its New Glenn rocket to land and be launched again, and ULA says it intends to eventually recover Vulcan main engines for reuse. But neither vehicle comes with the same lofty ambitions SpaceX has attached to the Starship.

A scaled-down version of the Starship with a single Raptor engine, called the Starhopper, completed a 500-foot (150-meter) test flight Aug. 27. The stubby three-legged vehicle, which space enthusiasts likened to a flying water tower, flew with a single Raptor engine, the most powerful rocket powerplant developed by SpaceX to date.

The Starhopper has been retired as a flight test vehicle in favor of the full-scale Starship.

About a mile down the road from the current location of SpaceXs first Starship prototype, teams are readying launch and landing pads for the vehicle. Ground crews will transfer the Starship to the launch pad ahead of the first atmospheric test flight.

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Photos: SpaceX’s first full-size Starship prototype Spaceflight Now – Spaceflight Now

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

SpaceXs first full-size stainless steel Starship test vehicle stands some 164 feet (50 meters) tall and measures wider than the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. If Elon Musk has his way, it will fly to an altitude of 65,000 feet (20 kilometers) before the end of the year.

These photos taken Saturday show the Starship shining in the Texas sun before Elon Musk took the stage at Boca Chica, Texas, to present an update on SpaceXs plans for a gigantic next-generation rocket and spacecraft designed to carry cargo and crews to Earth orbit, the moon, Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

The vehicle measures 30 feet (9 meters) wide, and features movable fins and canards to provide aerodynamic stability in flight. Not visible in these images are three methane-fueled Raptor engines, which sit inside an aft skirt and can generate more than 1.3 million pounds of collective thrust at full throttle.

Future Starship vehicles will have six Raptor engines, and will be mounted atop SpaceXs Super Heavy booster for missions into Earth orbit and beyond. The entire stack will stand around 387 feet (118 meters) tall.

Up to 37 Raptor engines will power the Super Heavy booster, producing more than 16 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, according to SpaceX.

The Starship and Super Heavy will be fully reusable, SpaceX says, and capable of vertical takeoffs and landings.

Read our full story for the latest details revealed Saturday by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

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Photos: SpaceX's first full-size Starship prototype Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

HTV delivers batteries and experiments to space station – Spaceflight Now

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Japans eighth HTV supply ship was captured by the International Space Stations Canadian-built robotic arm at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT) Saturday. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now

Japans eighth robotic resupply mission to the International Space Station arrived at its destination Saturday, delivering six fresh lithium-ion batteries, science experiments, CubeSats and other gear to the research outpost.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch used the space stations Canadian-built robotic arm to capture Japans eighth H-2 Transfer Vehicle, or HTV, cargo craft at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT) Saturday.

The high-altitude link-up occurred as the station flew 262 miles (421 kilometers) over Angola, concluding the HTVs four-day pursuit of the orbiting research complex since its launch Tuesday from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

The arrival of the Japanese cargo freighter Saturday came during a busy week of traffic at the space station. A three-person crew aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked with the complex Wednesday to temporarily raise the stations crew size to nine.

Another Soyuz capsule is set to depart the station Oct. 3 to bring home two members of an outgoing space station crew, along with UAE space flier Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, who flew to the station Wednesday with two new expedition crew members.

The HTV 8 mission is also known as Kounotori 8. Kounotori means white stork in Japanese.

Packed with some 8,326 pounds (3,777 kilograms) of equipment, experiments and crew provisions, the Kounotori 8 spacecraft approached the space station in autopilot mode Saturday. After Kochs capture of the HTV supply ship, control of the robotic arm was to be handed over to ground teams to maneuver the cargo freighter to a berthing port on the nadir, or Earth-facing, side of the stations Harmony module.

After opening hatches leading to the HTV, the crew inside the station will unpack 5,313 pounds (2,410 kilograms) of cargo inside the HTVs pressurized logistics carrier. Meanwhile, robots outside the station will extract a pallet from the HTVs unpressurized cargo bay containing six lithium-ion batteries to upgrade the space stations power system.

Astronauts on the space station will conduct five spacewalks currently planned on Oct. 6, 11, 16, 21 and 25 to begin install he fresh batteries, which will replace aging and less-capable nickel-hydrogen batteries on the P6 solar array module on the far port side of the stations truss backbone.

The Kounotori 8 mission delivered the third set of six lithium-ion batteries to upgrade the space stations four huge U.S.-built external power modules, each of which features solar array wings that span 240 feet (73 meters) tip-to-tip. The sixth HTV mission in 2016 carried the first set of new batteries to the station, followed by a second batch last year on the Kounotori 7 resupply mission.

A final set of six batteries will launch on the ninth HTV flight next year.

Each solar array section powers two electrical channels with 12 charging nickel-hydrogen batteries, and NASA is replacing the old batteries in power truss section with six lighter, more efficient lithium-ion batteries.

JAXA uses the HTV missions as part of its contribution to the space station program. Each HTV cargo freighter measures about 33 feet (10 meters) long and about 14 feet (4.4 meters) in diameter.

The Kounotori 8 mission also carried food, fresh drinking water, a high-pressure gas tank to recharge the space stations internal atmosphere with oxygen and nitrogen, and spacewalking tools, such as high-definition cameras and equipment for a series of repair spacewalks planned later this year for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 cosmic ray experiment.

The HTV also delivered research payloads to the space station.

One of the experiments will demonstrate a high-speed satellite laser communications system developed by JAXA and Sony Computer Science Laboratories. The technology demonstrator will test a laser link with a ground station, which can accommodate higher-bandwidth communications than radio systems.

This technology, which employs a laser for in-orbit mass-data communication, will likely be widely used not only in the telecommunications industry, but in the future as a means of communication in the field of exploration, said Koichi Wakata, a JAXA vice president, in a statement. Specifically, it can be used as a means of communication between the Earth and the International Space Station, the moon, and Mars. There is a wide range of potential applications, such as communication with the moon rovers.

TheSmall Optical Link for International Space Station, or SOLISS, experiment willbe mounted on an experiment platform outside the space stations Japanese Kibo laboratory module.

Sony CSL is taking advantage of the in-orbit demonstrations to complete our long-distance laser communication system, said Hiroaki Kitano, president of Sony CSL. It will be the first step for Sony to build upon the results of these demonstrations and put it into practical use in society as we commercialize it.

The opportunity to use Kibo for the in-orbit demonstrations makes it possible to greatly advance the research and development of the optical communication system, much more quickly than if we had launched a small satellite for the same purpose on our own, Kitano said. The SOLISS system is built using consumer components. After the demonstrations, we will retrieve the SOLISS unit and perform follow-up analyses, which we expect will further accelerate our commercialization process.

Japans Hourglass experiment also launched on the eighth HTV mission to help scientists investigate the behavior of soil and rock particles under low gravity, simulating the conditions future probes might encounter on a small planet or asteroid.

New hardware for a cellular biology experiment rack is also flew to the space station on the Kounotori 8 spacecraft, expanding the stations capabilities for biological research.

Three CubeSats also rode to the station inside the Kounotori 8 spacecraft. Astronauts will transfer them to the Japanese Kibo module, where they will install them into a deployer for release into orbit through an airlock.

The 2-pound (1-kilogram) NARSSCube 1 nanosatellite was developed by Egypts National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Science in partnership with the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan. It carries a low-resolution imaging camera.

The AQT-D CubeSat, which weighs 8.1 pounds (3.7 kilograms) and is about the size of a shoebox, will demonstrate a water-based satellite propulsion system. The AQT-D mission is led by the University of Tokyo.

Rwandas first satellite, named RWASAT 1, also launched aboard the HTV. Officials say the satellite will aid agricultural and environmental monitoring.

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Today’s the Last Chance to Send Your Name to Mars on NASA’s 2020 Rover – Space.com

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Update: The deadline for to send your name to Mars has passed. NASA's student contest to name the Mars 2020 rover is still under way through Nov. 1.

If you want your name to hitch a ride to Mars with NASA's next rover in 2020, you better act fast. Today's the last day to add your name to the more than 10 million that have already signed up.

"It's the final boarding call for you to stow your name on NASA's Mars 2020 rover before it launches to the Red Planet," NASA officials wrote in a statement last week. "The Sept. 30 deadline for NASA's 'Send Your Name to Mars' campaign gives the mission enough time to stencil the submitted names - over 9.4 million so far - on a chip that will be affixed to the Mars 2020 rover."

As of 2 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) today, more than 10.4 million people have signed up.

NASA began collecting names for the new Mars rover on May 21, with entrants filling out a short form with their name and earning a souvenir boarding pass and "frequent flyer" points in return. You can add your name to the roster here: https://go.nasa.gov/Mars2020Pass.

Note: NASA will stop collecting names tonight at 11:59 p.m. EDT (8:59 p.m. PDT, 0359 Oct. 1 GMT).

Related: NASA's Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures

"This is part of a public engagement campaign to highlight missions involved with NASA's journey from the Moon to Mars," NASA officials wrote in the statement. "Miles (or kilometers) are awarded for each 'flight,' with corresponding digital mission patches available for download."

Even Brad Pitt, star of the science fiction space epic "Ad Astra," has added his name to the list. NASA shared a photo of Pitt posing with this Mars boarding pass and a rover mockup last week.

Actor Brad Pitt (right) shows off his Mars "boarding pass" with Jennifer Trosper (left), the Mars 2020 project systems engineer, at JPL on Sept. 6, 2019.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

After Sept. 30, engineers with the Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California will stencil all the names onto a tiny silicon chip with an electron beam, writing the lines of text about 75 nanometers tall. That's smaller than one-thousandth the width of a single hair on your head.

"At that size, millions of names can be written on a single dime-size chip," NASA wrote. "The chip will ride on the rover under a glass cover."

More than 2 million names rode to Mars on NASA's InSight lander, which touched down on the Red Planet in November 2018. So far, the 2020 Mars rover project has blasted way beyond that record.

While NASA's "Send Your Name to Mars" program is closing, there is still one last name needed for the 2020 Mars rover: the name of the rover, itself.

NASA is currently running a contest for students in grades Kindergarten through grade 12 to name the rover. The entry period ends Nov. 1. For details on how to submit a name for the 2020 Mars rover, visit: https://go.nasa.gov/name2020.

The 2020 Mars rover is scheduled to launch to the Red Planet on July 2020 and land inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater. The 2,300-lb. (1,040 kilograms) rover, with its nuclear power source, will search for signs of past microbial life, study the climate and geology of Mars, and collect samples that may be returned to Earth on a future mission.

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@SpacedotcomandFacebook.

Need more space? You can get 5 issues of our partner "All About Space" Magazine for $5 for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

(Image credit: All About Space magazine)

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Today's the Last Chance to Send Your Name to Mars on NASA's 2020 Rover - Space.com

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