Monthly Archives: September 2021

(Source: Faraday Future)

Los Angeles-based EV startup Faraday Future on Wednesday announced that the annual 919 Futurist Day will be held on September 19. Participants in the event consist of FF employees and their friends and family members, charity project participants, investors, media, paid reservation holders, and potential users who actively participate in FF co-creation projects.

The FF executive team will update 919 visitors on the latest developments at the firm, especially highlighting positive progress on the FF 91 models production and delivery targets.

The companys Futurist value chain co-creation and sharing is the core concept of FFs user operations. Through deep participation in the startups entire value chain business, including product design, research, development, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing communication, sales, services and operations, users create and share value together with FF.

FF is also partnering with a non-profit organization called The Purist Group to support a joint FF Toy Drive which benefits underprivileged and less fortunate children and families in Southern California communities. 919 participants are encouraged to bring an unwrapped toy to the 919 event valued at $25 or more. All items will be donated to local charities through The Purist Group.

SEE ALSO: Faraday Future Expands Global Hiring Following Business Combination

The EV firms recent SPAC transaction through which the companys shares were listed on the Nasdaq raised capital to finance the release of the FF 91. The FF 91 Futurist Alliance Edition and FF 91 Futurist models have an industry-leading 1050 horsepower, a 130kWh battery pack with immersive liquid cooling technology and 0-60 mph performance in 2.4 seconds. In addition, both employ tri-motor torque vectoring and independently driven rear wheels controlled by dual rear motors.

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Faraday Future to Host Annual 919 Futurist Day and Announce Progress of FF 91 Production and Delivery - Pandaily

I hope what the section does is show the complex nature of how each of us might envision the future, says Wassan Al-Khudhairi, the curator of the Focus section at this years Armory Show. The works are informed more by the idea of looking into the future as a place to start rather than making work about the future. Works are often interdisciplinary, the curator says, and engage in notions of cross-cultural collaboration, environmental stewardship, mutualism, care and the power of communities coming together. Al-Khudhairi says she wants to create a space that captures the ideas of a group of artists that consider the future in the context of our current conditions. For example, a solo presentation by the Crow Nation artist Wendy Red Star entitled A Float for the Future, with the New York gallery Sargents Daughters, draws on the traditional Crow Fair Parade, held in Montana since 1904, creating a continuity between the Native American tribes past and future. Likewise, Carla Jay Harriss series Celestial Bodies (2018-ongoing) at the Los Angeles gallery Luis De Jesus depicts ancient gods inhabiting the spaces where heaven meets earth, in the guise of peaceful and empowered Black characters.

Kajahl, Ocean Guardian (2021) Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago

The present moment, it seems, is all about the future, and the Armory Show is not the only organisation tapping into it. Over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, preparations are underway for the unveiling of Before Yesterday We Could Fly, an Afrofuturist period room slated to open on 5 November. Unlike other such displays at the museum, which recreate the domestic aesthetics of a specific point in time or a decorative movement, this iteration seeks to embrace the interconnected nature of the past, present and future of the African diaspora and Black communities. But such a different take on the period room also required a new curatorial and organisational approach.

The collaborative curatorial process has been integral to the realisation of this project, say Ian Alteveer and Sarah Lawrence, curators at the Met, who partnered with Hannah Beachler, the production designer on Marvels Black Panther, and Michelle Commander, an expert on the history of the Transatlantic slave trade, on the project. Alteveer and Lawrence say they also engaged with a range of creative practitionersceramicists, graphic novelists, film-makers, artists and designerswho variously understand Afrofuturism in terms of their particular medium, their distinctive culture.

In January 2020, they sought to further disrupt the usual hierarchy within the Mets own community by holding a staff-wide conversation to share the project and its process with colleagues. [We invited] not only our curatorial colleagues, but every single person employed at the museum, the curators say. This is something that had never been done at the Met, and the response was extraordinary.

Meanwhile, kicking off in February 2022 at Carnegie Hall, an Afrofuturism festival will involve a string of cultural organisations presenting multidisciplinary programming rooted in African and African-diasporic philosophies, speculative fiction, mythology, comics, quantum physics, cosmology, technology, and more. There will also be online film screenings, exhibitions and talks with leaders within this eclectic and growing cultural sphere.

Afrofuturism values humanity, the Earth and the universe at large, says Ytasha Womack, speaking on behalf of the Afrofuturism festivals curatorial team, which includes King Britt, Sheree Rene Thomas, Reynaldo Anderson and Louis Chude-Sokei, as well the designer Quentin VerCetty and the Carnegies director of festivals and special projects, Adriaan Fuchs. I dont see a great deal of hierarchy in how people approach the work, although hierarchies are often deconstructed within such works, Womack says. The narrative usually feels both of the times and in some way transcends it, stretching into futures and histories.

Carla Jay Harriss Ways of Gods (2020) shown by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in the Focus section Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

The inclusive nature of Afrofuturism, and other kinds of non-European futurisms, creates a kind of open-source aesthetic with points of departure as well as attachment for creators of all stripes. Theres something about seeing oneself as part of a larger continuum and a universe that is empowering, Womack says.

Detroit ever was and always will be the city of tomorrow, and the Afrofuturist bedrock has given rise to new, expansive forms of POC futurism. Important figures now working in the city include the writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown and her collectively produced science fiction book Octavias Brood; the artist and curator Ingrid LaFleur, who made a mayoral bid in 2017 and designs Afrofuturist experiences that have travelled worldwide; the writer Zig Zag Claybourne, whose experimental The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan and its sequel, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe, inject beguiling narrative devices and campy colour commentary into the sci-fi convention circuit; and the poet and revisionist historian Casey Rocheteau, whose Masters studies at the New School included a thesis on the two Black Panther parties in New York City.

At a recent workshop in Detroit on Habibi Futurism, the organisers Levon Kafafian and Kaymelya Omayma Youssef led participants through an immersive pageant of futurist thought, including the writing of Zaina Alsous, Angela Davis, Sun Ra, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler and Kyle Carrero Lopez, the art of Serge Mouange and Etel Adnan, and the films of Bong Joon Ho. Following the presentation, participants responded to writing prompts delivered in the form of a card game that shuffled jumping-off points to generate SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) and non-SWANA future visions. We want a more inclusive futurism, says Kafafian, who also characterises POC futurisms as inherently rhizomatic in structure: connecting people and practices through a web of related roots.

Because there tends to be a premium placed on tangible objects or results in the art industry, people sometimes miss the fact that artists are, on a very fundamental level, problem-solvers. The problems of artists may be variously esoteric, logistic, material, historic or existential, but the process of art making is about grappling with these problems and finding resolutionor at least critique. It is not so far-fetched, then, to believe that artists can offer valuable perspectiveand crucially, imagine what it is we need to do right now to get to any possible future.

Janet Biggs, Crew 181 (2017/21) Courtesy the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York

As we emerge from a year of so much challenge, much of which is ongoing, I wanted to invite conversations about how we might look forward into the near or distant future, Al-Khudhairi says. My intention was to consider the future on a spectrumso it can be tomorrow or 100 years from today. I am interested in how artists can imagine ways to look at, think about, or desire futures. The urgency of whats next? was more about thinking of how to move forward in relation to all that has happened in the past year or so.

The current interest in artists future visions also seems to be in destabilising the march of time, whether by critiquing the institutional norms of the period room, flattening the distinction between past and future, or seizing on the present day. The future may be yet to come, but Afrofuturism is now, and there is no time like the present for art to forge new pathways through reality.

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When the present does not add up, artists look to the future - Art Newspaper

919 Futurist Day, to be held on September 19th, 2021, at FFs Los Angeles HQ, will showcase a unique and exceptional day to celebrate FFs successes, products, technologies, people, innovation, and user-centric philosophy

919 Futurist Day is an important platform for FF to co-create its products and services with its users, and this year will include FF 91 product and technology demos as well as important business updates on FF 91 progress from FF management

FF will also use this special day to partner with the non-profit organization "The Purist Group," to support a joint FF Toy Drive which benefits underprivileged and less fortunate children and families in Southern California communities

LOS ANGELES, September 09, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. ("FF") (NASDAQ: FFIE), a California-based global shared intelligent mobility ecosystem company, today announced that the annual 919 Futurist Day will be an all-day co-creation festival at the FF HQ in Los Angeles, Calif. on September 19th. Participants at the event consist of FF employees and their friends and family members, charity project participants, investors, media, paid reservation holders, and potential users who actively participate in FF co-creation projects.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210908006193/en/

Faraday Future 919 Futurist Day (Graphic: Business Wire)

"Were incredibly excited to be hosting this annual FF event where all the participants will be able to experience the FF culture, co-creation projects, and the FF 91," said Global CEO Carsten Breitfeld. "From cars, technology, and user-focused activities to FF 91 delivery related updates throughout the day, this 919 day is an exciting annual event for our company."

FF Futurist value chain co-creation and sharing is the core concept of FF user operations. Through deep participation in FF's entire value chain business including product design, research, development, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing communication, sales, service and operation, users create value and share value together with FF.

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FF offers an unparalleled experience through an interactive exchange between users and the FF products. The 919 event brings that idea to life, with activities from Cars & Coffee to letting kids co-create with FFs top designers and engineers. The FF executive team will update 919 visitors on the latest developments at FF, especially highlighting positive progress on the FF 91 production and delivery targets.

FF is also partnering with the non-profit organization The Purist Group to support a joint FF Toy Drive which benefits underprivileged and less fortunate children and families in Southern California communities and gives kids an early Christmas. 919 participants are encouraged to bring an unwrapped toy to the 919-event valued at $25 or more. All items will be donated to local charities through The Purist Group. As a global company born and rooted in Southern California, Faraday Future and The Purist Group are united in supporting the local communities and families.

Faraday Futures recent SPAC transaction through which the companys shares were listed on NASDAQ (ticker symbol: FFIE) raised capital to finance the release of the companys ultimate intelligent techluxury flagship vehicle, the FF 91. The FF 91 Futurist Alliance Edition and FF 91 Futurist models represent the next generation of intelligent techluxury EVs. They are high-performance EVs, all-in-one all ability cars, and ultimate robotic vehicles that allow users to experience the third internet living space. The models also encompass extreme technology, an ultimate user experience and a complete ecosystem.

Both models have an industry-leading 1050 horsepower, a 130kWh battery pack with immersive liquid cooling technology and 0-60 mph performance in 2.4 seconds. In addition, both employ tri-motor torque vectoring and rear wheels independently driven and controlled by dual rear motors. Both models are also equipped with the industry's only super access point for internet connection at "light speed", video streaming on the passenger information display, a rear intelligent internet system, an in-car video conferencing system, intelligent seamless entry, FFID face recognition, multi-touch eyes-free control, and zero gravity rear seats with the industrys largest seating angle of 150 degrees.

Users can reserve an FF 91 Futurist model now via the FF intelligent APP or FF.com at: https://www.ff.com/us/reserve.

Download the new FF intelligent APP at: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1454187098 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.faradayfuture.online.

ABOUT FARADAY FUTURE

Established in May 2014, FF is a global shared intelligent mobility ecosystem company, headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since its inception, FF has implemented numerous innovations relating to its products, technology, business model, profit model, user ecosystem, and governance structure. On July 22, 2021, FF was listed on NASDAQ with the new company name "Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc.", and the ticker symbols "FFIE" for its Class A common stock and "FFIEW" for its warrants. FF aims to perpetually improve the way people move by creating a forward-thinking mobility ecosystem that integrates clean energy, AI, the Internet and new usership models. With the ultimate intelligent techluxury brand positioning, FFs first flagship product FF 91 Futurist is equipped with unbeatable product power. It is not just a high-performance EV, an all-ability car, and an ultimate robotic vehicle, but also the third internet living space.

FOLLOW FARADAY FUTURE:

https://www.ff.com/ http://appdownload.ff.com https://twitter.com/FaradayFuture https://www.facebook.com/faradayfuture/ https://www.instagram.com/faradayfuture/ http://www.linkedin.com/company/faradayfuture

NO OFFER OR SOLICITATION

This communication shall neither constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release includes "forward looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words "estimates," "projected," "expects," "anticipates," "forecasts," "plans," "intends," "believes," "seeks," "may," "will," "should," "future," "propose" and variations of these words or similar expressions (or the negative versions of such words or expressions) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, many of which are outside FFs control, that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Important factors, among others, that may affect actual results or outcomes include: FFs ability to execute on its plans to develop and market its vehicles and the timing of these development programs; FFs estimates of the size of the markets for its vehicles; the rate and degree of market acceptance of FFs vehicles; the success of other competing manufacturers; the performance and security of FFs vehicles; potential litigation involving FF; the result of future financing efforts and general economic and market conditions impacting demand for FFs products. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the "Risk Factors" section of the preliminary registration statement on Form S-1 filed by Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. with the SEC. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and FF does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210908006193/en/

Contacts

For Faraday FutureInvestors: ir@faradayfuture.com Media: John Schilling, ff@finnpartners.com

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Faraday Future (FF) to Host Annual 919 Futurist Day Co-Creation Celebration on September 19th That Will Include Announcements Highlighting Positive...

Both the fire and smoke alarms were triggered early Thursday morning on board the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station, according to a report by Russian state-owned news agency RIA.

The crew reportedly noticed smoke and the smell of burnt plastic a terrifying prospect for anybody trapped inside a tiny outpost in the vastness of space. Its especially worrying considering that materials can combust at lower temperatures in microgravity, according to NASA research.

According to RIA, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky first noticed an odor wafting in from the Russian segment around 5 am Moscow time (10 pm Eastern) and we still dont know what caused it.

Pesquet, however, has yet to note the incident on his relatively active Twitter account.

Fortunately, according to an update by Roscosmos, situation was contained, with air filters activated and crew being able to get back to bed last night.

All systems operate normally, the composition of the air on board the station corresponds to the standard parameters, the Roscosmos statement reads, as translated by CBS News reporter William Harwood.

The incident didnt even end up postponing a space walk scheduled for today, the agency claimed.

Its a serious incident thats bound to raise eyebrows especially considering Russias recently announced plans to abandon the station by 2025. Russias state news has also increasingly discussed the worrying state of the aging orbital outpost.

Just last week, Vladimir Solovyov, the chief engineer of the Russian space company Energia, warned that portions of the ISS may be beyond repair.

Literally a day after the [in-flight] systems are fully exhausted, irreparable failures may begin, Solovyov told Russian state media at the time, according to the BBC.

Its still too early to draw any conclusions, but the timing of Solovyovs comments certainly are at the least intriguing. We have yet to find the exact cause of the smoke, but if recent events are anything to go by, coming to a conclusion may take some time.

Russian authorities noted the existence of several cracks and air leaks causing air to slowly vent into open space but both Roscosmos and NASA have maintained that crews were never in any danger.

Superficial fissures have been found in some places on the Zarya module, Solovyov told state-owned news agency RIA late last month, as quoted by Reuters. This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time.

Russia certainly seems to be ready to look beyond the ISS. On the one hand, there is a real chance that the outpost is starting to show its age. On the other, Russias state news seems rather keen to paint the ISS as a foregone conclusion that isnt worth saving.

The country has its own plans to establish an entirely separate space station in the upcoming years.

All the while, NASA is still trying to come to an agreement with its international partners as to how to dispose of the station when its days are numbered within the next ten years.

Incidents like this certainly appear to show up more frequently as the ISS enters its 22nd year of continuous operations. What the future will hold for the outpost is anything but certain. All we can do is hope that its crews will never be in any serious danger.

READ MORE: Smoke and fire alarms go off on International Space Station [The Guardian]

More on the ISS: Picky Astronauts Refuse to Put Pineapple on Space Pizza

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Smoke Alarms Go Off, Fire Reported in Russian Segment of Space Station - Futurism

Chicago's longest running late-night show, The Neo-Futurists' The Infinite Wrench, kicks off the company's 2021-2022 Season of programming with a return to weekly in-person performances on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021, 19 months after its live shows paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The signature production resumes its 33-year-long run and takes place every Saturday at 10:30 p.m. and every Sunday at 7 p.m. with enhanced health and safety measures. Tickets are $10 and are available at neofuturists.org.

"We are thrilled to bring our late-night, high-energy assemblage of sports, poetry and living newspaper back to the stage, where the audience determines the order of thirty plays written, directed and performed by the Neo-Futurist Ensemble," said Artistic Director KR Riiber. "And for our opening weekend, all thirty plays will be world premieres!"

The Infinite Wrench is The Neo-Futurists' ongoing and ever-changing attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes for a live audience. Each play offers something different, be it funny, profound, elegant, disgusting, topical, irreverent, terrifying or musical. All are truthful and tackle the here-and-now, inspired by the lived experiences of the performers.

The Infinite Wrench will also be refreshed for this return to the stage as the company welcomed four new ensemble members in 2020 making their Neo-Futurist debut during Infinite Wrench. Ensemble members performing during the reopening of The Infinite Wrench include Neil Bhandari, Ida Cuttler, Nick Hart, Cat Huck (2020), Joanna Jamerson, Abby Pajakowski (2020), Ale Ramirez (2020), KR Riiber, Annie Share (2020), and Connor Shioshita Pickett.

"We have taken this time to give our theatrical home some much needed care and we are excited to welcome a broader audience to a refreshed Neo-Futurist Theater," said Managing Director Jorge Silva. "The plays themselves will be created with conscientiousness with the health and safety of our audiences in mind, while maintaining that unconventional theatrical experience for which the Neo-Futurists are so famous."

During the performance of The Infinite Wrench, actors will be un-masked. For the safety of the actors and audience members, all audience members will be required to show proof of vaccination and will be required to wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status. More information about updated health and safety measures can be found at neofuturists.org/health-safety.

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The Neo-Futurists' THE INFINITE WRENCH to Return to the Stage - Broadway World

Enough is enough: They're making the canal wider.Knot Again

It happened again: Another gigantic shipping vessel temporarily blocked the Suez Cana on Thursday, temporarily stopping traffic at whats one of the most important waterways for global trade.

A ship from Panama called the Coral Crystal got stuck after traveling about 33 miles into the canal, as originally reported by the Arabic language news outlet Al-Ain, blocking one lane and forcing authorities to divert four ships that were stuck behind it. The temporary blockage was resolved thanks to the canals tugboats, according to Metro but not without serving as a brief reminder of how one glitch in the global shipping industry can cause a financially-devastating chain reaction.

Its a relief that the Coral Crystal didnt get stuck as badly as the Ever Given, the ship that blocked the entire canal for about a week back in March. Compared to that fiasco, the Coral Crystal seemed like a cakewalk not unlike when another ship called the Maersk Emerald got stuck in the canal in Maybut thankfully didnt block any others from passing by.

At 738 feet, the Coral Crystal is only about half as long as the Ever Given, making it far easier for authorities to refloat and send on its way. Thats even with its 43,000 tons of cargo, according to Metro.

Still, canal authorities seem to be fed up with this years string of ship failures and unintentional blockades. As Metro notes, theyre now working on a huge project to widen key parts of the canal in hopes that some of the larger ships passing through manage to avoid getting stuck and breaking down.

READ MORE: Deja vu as container ship runs aground in Suez Canal but is quickly refloated [Metro]

More on the Suez Canal: Watch the Amazing Moment as the Giant Ship Finally Gets Unstuck

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Oh Great, Another Giant Ship Blocked the Suez Canal - Futurism

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew higher and orbited longer than Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos combined aboard Vostok 1, the worlds first piloted space flight. Upon his return to Earth, Gagarin became a global celebrity, traveling the world and recounting what it felt like to drift weightless and see the planet from above. For a brief moment, he transcended the boundaries of the Cold War, greeting cheering crowds in both Soviet and US-allied countries, capturing our collective fascination with the cosmos.

The Vostok mission was meticulously planned and engineered, its cosmonauts trained for years. Its successor, Soyuz 1, was a different story. The 7K-OK spacecraft had been hastily constructed, its three unmanned flight tests all ending in failure. According to one account, Gagarin helped detail over two hundred structural concerns in a report urging the flight be called off. Its rumored that he even tried to take his fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarovs place piloting the doomed mission. In the end Komarovs parachute failed to deploy and he burst into flames on reentry, plummeting at forty meters per second into the Earth.

In aeronautics, the margin between triumph and tragedy is narrow. While hubris may have been Soyuz 1s fatal flaw, the pursuit of profit has similarly incentivized corner cutting in the US space program. NASA, once the crown jewel of the public sector, has been slowly sold off to private contractors in the neoliberal era.

Since 2020, NASA astronauts have ridden SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets into orbit, a model that has raised safety concerns among engineers and logged more failures since its debut in 2006 than the space shuttle did in thirty years. Recently, another NASA contractor, Virgin Galactic, was grounded for investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration after its pilots failed to notify the agency that its celebrated Unity flight was veering into commercial airspace.

Mission objectives have changed as well. While perhaps always mythic, the once allegedly valiant aspirations of the space program have given way to openly touristic and militaristic goals. Corporations pursuing commercial space flight have received billions in public financing, and the US Space Force alone already has nearly three quarters the total budget of NASA.

The true ethos of space exploration, however, is one of public works and education. Peering into the void of space inspires the deepest questions facing humanity: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? While a space program catering to the science fiction fantasies of billionaires is decidedly dystopian, conceptualizing space exploration as an educational mission to remotely probe the depths of the galaxy can help animate a more equitable vision of futurism.

How can space exploration serve society?

Our first priority must be to decarbonize space flight. Without achieving this, the emissions that space flight generates are hardly justifiable given the state of our planet. Like the space blanket and cochlear implant, the applications of zero-carbon jet fuel would go far beyond the space program that developed it. Commercial aviation contributes an estimated 3.5 percent of effective radiative forcing a figure that space tourism could skyrocket.

Due to the weight of batteries and other logistical challenges, hydrogen fuel cells are considered one of the few viable pathways to decarbonizing long-distance flight. While some private space corporations have begun incorporating hydrogen, the fuel production is likely emissions-intensive and the technology remains proprietary. A publicly directed moonshot research program, coupled with tight restrictions on fossil-fueled rocket launches, could greatly accelerate the implementation of green hydrogen fuel cells in aviation and other difficult-to-decarbonize sectors.

In addition to our atmosphere, we must respect the sanctity of orbital space, which we have littered with trash. The Defense Departments Space Surveillance Network currently estimates there are more than twenty-seven thousand pieces of debris orbiting Earth. Yet even as their own ships run a gauntlet of garbage, billionaires are trashing space more than ever.

While perhaps none match the vanity of the Tesla Roadster, competing commercial satellite networks like Musks Starlink and Bezos Project Kuiper actually pose a much greater collision threat and are also egregious sources of light pollution and electromagnetic interference. These redundant and dangerous monuments to the egos of oligarchs ought to be taken down from our skies along with other forms of space trash.

Rather than granting billions in subsidies to enable this pollution, governments should instead collect the taxes that corporations like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic have evaded and use them to create public sector careers cleaning up their mess. To the extent that it is useful, publicly sponsored infrastructure in private hands should be nationalized and made accessible to all.

The trade-offs between telecommunications infrastructure and preservation of dark skies highlight another core failure of NASAs past: the lack of a planetary internationalism. In 2013, the Bolivian Space Agency and the China National Space Administration collaboratively launched the Tpac Katari 1 satellite (TKSat 1), demonstrating how easy it could be to close the space infrastructure gap between the Global North and South.

The same year that the United States proposed to desecrate a Hawaiian sacred site for a telescope, Bolivia used space technology to bring internet and cell service for the first time to millions of Andean and Amazonian citizens. Since then, TKSat 1 has boosted education and development initiatives and even helped defend Bolivian democracy by relaying the transmissions of campesinos resisting the US-backed coup government in real time.

Satellites can serve many other public interests, such as facilitating research that helps scientists monitor problems like climate change, deforestation, and forced labor. While todays satellite infrastructure is used to commercialize communication and fuel mass surveillance, an international consensus to treat telecommunications and information access as public rights could instead provide free global broadband coverage with minimal infrastructure, balancing scientific advancement with our collective view of the stars.

Finally, a socialist vision for space exploration could enable us to reach our full potential to venture into the unknown. History enshrines the intrepid explorers, but the true heroes of the space age are the workers at ground control. Yuri Gagarin made it home safely because of his command crews stationed from Baikonur to Khabarovsk. Apollo 13 famously called on Houston when they had a problem. Today, many of our brightest astrophysicists and aerospace engineers are swept up by military departments and weapons manufacturers. We should use their talents for science and education instead.

That doesnt mean, however, colonizing Mars. The Red Planet is a cosmic wonder, but a dreadful place for Earthlings. It has very little carbon dioxide, and no amount of terraforming will reinstate the magnetic dynamo that once deflected the solar winds now stripping away its depleted atmosphere. In fact, everything we have learned from researching Mars has reinforced the importance of protecting the fragile atmosphere of our home planet. While piloted space flights may be useful in some situations, we should place far more emphasis on collaboratively building robots like the ones that have taught us about our planetary neighbors.

In todays space race, these initiatives compete for funding. By prioritizing cooperation over colonization, however, we could pursue them all. We could attempt to retrieve raw materials for green energy infrastructure from decommissioned satellites and uninhabited asteroids instead of mines in the Global South. We could search the solar system for extraterrestrial life by flying rotorcrafts into the hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere of Titan and boring submarines into the icy subsurface ocean of Europa. We could strive for the first landing on Pluto, Eris, or even beyond not to plant a flag, but seed a concept of what we can collectively achieve.

In his final years of reflection on our Pale Blue Dot, astronomer Carl Sagan pondered, Where are the cartographers of human purpose? Where are the visions of hopeful futures of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads? Sagans legacy including the worlds first and only interstellar mission offers a glimpse of this vision.

We can choose to collaboratively probe into the depths of the cosmos, conveying collections of human knowledge, or to taxi billionaires to spend four minutes at the edge of space, indulging their fantasy of escaping the planet theyre poisoning with the very fuel propelling them. In either case, the financial, intellectual, and human costs will be borne by the public.

Fortunately, if theres one thing that space exploration has taught us, its that fate isnt written in the stars. That happens down here on Earth.

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We Need a Socialist Vision for Space Exploration - Jacobin magazine

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Climate change scientists don't like to use the term "prediction." Rather, they're making "projections" about the future of the planet as sea levels rise, wildfires sweep the West and hurricanes become more ferocious.

There's a good reason for that.

In a world awash in misinformation about medicine, politics and climate, and pretty much everything else part of a scientist's job now involves teaching the public about how science works. Convincing the public to have faith in science means making precise, measured projects about the future.

They've got to overcome the big question: Can you really make accurate projections about what the planet will look like in 50 years, a century from now?

Climate scientists think they can, based on the past five decades of climate science that has proven accurate. Futurists, such as Jamais Cascio, a distinguished fellow for the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit foresight group based in Silicon Valley, study present trends and available data to lay out plausible outcomes for the future.

Today, a lot of Cascio's work is centered around climate change, helping people prepare for the future and make informed decisions for a warming world.

"Everything in the world," Cascio said, "every future outcome will have to be examined through the lens of climate."

In the future, climate change may only get worse. But how much worse will it get?

Scientists have relied on climate models for over 50 years. To people who aren't scientists, it's challenging to understand the calculations that go into these projections. So, what exactly is a climate model?

Meteorologists can make weather predictions for the next hour, or even week, based on weather data and forecast models that use humidity, temperature, air pressure, wind speed, among other current atmospheric, land and oceanic conditions. But with climate, a specific region's weather averaged over decades, is a little more challenging to project and understand.

An extension of weather forecasting, climate models factor in even more atmospheric, land and oceanic conditions to make longer-term forecasts. Using mathematical equations and thousands of data points, the models create representations of physical conditions on earth and simulations of the current climate.

Climate models predict how average conditions will change in a region over the coming decades as well as how the climate appeared before humans recorded it.

Researchers can then understand how these changing conditions could impact the planet, which is useful especially for understanding climate change, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center based in the Bay Area.

"Perhaps the most important (purpose) is to try to suggest the types of changes that might occur as the world continues to emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases," Hausfather said.

The first climate model, developed over 50 years ago in the early days of climate science, helped scientists gauge how the ocean and atmosphere interacted with each other to influence the climate. The model predicted how temperature changes and shifts in ocean and atmospheric currents could lead to climate change.

Today, these models are much more complicated and run on some of the world's most powerful supercomputers. A decade ago, most models broke up the world into 250-kilometer segments, but now the models are 100 square kilometers. More regional patterns emerge when simulations are at a finer scale.

"People aren't drawing a picture of temperature and carbon dioxide and drawing a line through it and then extrapolating that into the future," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a senior climate adviser at NASA.

Through these advancements in technology, these models are becoming even more useful to scientists in understanding the climate of the past, present and future.

"Fortunately, they don't do such a terrible job," Schmidt said.

All of this works toward convincing the public and businesses to take action.

A majority of Americans already notice the effects of climate change around them, according to a Pew Research Center survey from 2020. But individuals, businesses and politics must "adapt to a radically and dangerously changing climate," Cascio said.

On the individual level, people must consider the climate in all of their monumental decisions: whether to have children; which car to buy; how to invest; when and where to buy a house. Governments are tasked with climate decisions that impact the future of entire nations, such as whether to invest in alternative energy or write policy curbing emissions.

Are climate models useful?

Instead of thinking about climate models as whether or not they are right, Schmidt said climate models should be considered as to whether they provide useful forecasts.

"Do they tell us things? Do they get things right more than you would have done without them?" Schmidt said.

Usually, the answer is yes, and what these models inform scientists is crucial for their understanding of the future climate.

Hausfather knows this better than anyone, as he led a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters analyzing the accuracy of early climate models. Some of the findings were included in the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in August.

Hausfather, along with co-author Schmidt, compared 17 model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007 with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017.

Hausfather and his colleagues found promising news: Most of the models have been quite accurate. More specifically, 10 of the model projections show results consistent with observations. Of the remaining seven model projections, four projected more warming than observed while three projected less warming than observed.

But Hausfather and his colleagues realized this wasn't telling the whole story. After accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other factors driving the climate, it turns out 14 of 17 model projections were "effectively identical" to warming observed in the real world.

"That was strong evidence that these models are effectively right," Hausfather said. "They're doing a very good job of predicting global temperatures."

The accuracy was particularly impressive in the earliest climate models, Hausfather said, especially given the limited observational evidence of warming at the time.

But not all of the early models were error-free. One of the first climate models, created in 1971 by climate scientists Rasool and Schneider, projected that the world would cool due to the cooling effect of atmospheric aerosols.

"(The researchers) thought that the cooling effect of these aerosols from burning fossil fuels that would reflect sunlight back to space would be much stronger than the warming effects of the greenhouse gas," Hausfather said.

While the 1970s were still in the early days of climate research, most of the scientific literature of the time was still pointing toward a warming future as much more likely. Yet, Rasool and Schneider's model still spurred a slew of news stories about a potential ice age. Even today, the model "still gets trotted out every now and then by folks trying to discredit climate science today," Hausfather said.

Now the model is proven to be wrong. It's a consensus among climate scientists that the planet is not cooling instead it's warming at an alarming rate.

Even today, despite the promise of climate models shown by Hausfather's study, these models still have their limitations, especially with regard to the uncertainty of future emissions. Climate scientists are physicists not economists or political scientists, and it's challenging to understand how policy will shape emissions standards.

"We don't have a crystal ball that can predict the future human behavior in terms of how much our emissions will change," Hausfather said. "We can just predict how the climate will respond to the emissions."

Issues of accuracy in climate models also still arise when models are pushed outside of their specific parameters. To combat this, climate models focus their projections on physical conditions seen in the natural world, instead of statistical probability, Schmidt said.

Researchers have more confidence in the predictability of physics than statistics, because physics doesn't change into the future. Researchers can have confidence that they can use these models outside of the time period where they have observational data, such as looking at climate during the last ice age, Schmidt said.

"How things get expressed might be different but the basic physics ... the underlying processes don't really change," Schmidt said.

Hausfather said there's still a lot of work still to improve climate models, but they are consistently getting better over time. Simulations of the Earth become sharper as more physical processes are added and computer power grows.

Why make projections for the future?

While climate scientists focus on physics to make forecasts for the future climate, Cascio and other futurists place scientific data in a larger context, making foresight based on climate change, new technological developments, as well as political and social movements. Futurism is "essentially anticipatory history," Cascio said.

"The idea is to take the science and embed it into a historian's understanding of how the world works to try to get a sense of what are the possible outcomes that we see going forward," Cascio said.

But, just like with climate models, uncertainty is inherent to the nature of projections. Futurists do not want to over-promise, but they provide a forecast of what could happen and reasons why it could happen, Cascio said.

Most of Cascio's work with climate change projects a grim future. In his perspective, an "absolutely radical" and "transformative" climate plan is necessary to make the necessary change. Plans that are "sensible and acceptable (are) almost definitely not enough."

"I really want to be wrong about all of this stuff," Cascio said, "because there are no futures that are not really depressing for the next generation."

Despite the despair projected by many climate scientists and futurists, there's still hope. If global emissions can be brought down to zero, Hausfather said the best climate model estimates illustrate that the world will stop warming.

"It's not too late to act," Hausfather said. "The world is not locked into a particular amount of warming."

Cascio still tries to consider himself a long-term optimist for the future, because the changes necessary to mitigate climate change will also lead to a much more "transparent and equitable" world, he said.

"If we can make it through the second half of this century, there's a very good chance that what we'll end up with is a really wonderful world," Cascio said.

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What will the planet look like in 50 years? Here's how climate scientists figure it out - The Bakersfield Californian