Monthly Archives: March 2022

Fauci warns COVID-19 infection rates likely to increase – WGN TV Chicago

Posted: March 18, 2022 at 8:12 pm

(The Hill) White House adviserAnthony Fauci is warning that COVID-19 infection rates are likely to rise in the next few weeks in the United States after their dramatic drop following the omicron variants rapid spread across the country.

I would not be surprised if in the next few weeks, we see somewhat of either a flattening of our diminution or maybe even an increase, Fauci said on theABC News podcast Start Here,ABC News reported.

Whether or not that is going to lead to another surge, a mini-surge or maybe even a moderate surge, is very unclear because there are a lot of other things that are going on right now, he added.

Cases have fallen heavily across the nation over the last two months, with the average number of new cases totally just over 30,000.

Faucis prediction is based on the United Kingdom, where cases have slightly started to go up, although their intensive care bed usage is not going up, which means theyre not seeing a blip up of severe disease, Fauci added.

The increase in cases comes as the BA.2 variant is seeing an uptick in the U.S., with Fauci predicting on the podcast the variant will overtake omicron in the future.

The U.S. has just begun easing COVID-19 restrictions after two years of pandemic policies such as masking and social distancing.

All U.S. states have dropped their mask mandates as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said most areas in the U.S. did not need to require masks indoors.

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How should the world respond to the next pandemic? – The Guardian

Posted: at 8:12 pm

Last November, having alerted the world to the new and highly transmissible Omicron variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, South Africa-based scientist Tulio de Oliveira saw that country hit with travel bans.

Already smarting at what he saw as wealthier nations hoarding of vaccines, antiviral drugs and test reagents, his frustration spilled over. If the world keeps punishing Africa for the discovery of Omicron and global health scientists keep taking the data, who will share early data again? he tweeted.

Two years into this pandemic, as the World Health Organization (WHO) mulls the tricky question of when to call it over and some countries, including the UK, pre-empt that decision, the worlds attention is turning to the future.

How do we improve our response to the next pandemic?

There are two main challenges: improving the surveillance of pathogens; and ensuring vaccine equity.

And as De Oliveira intimated, these are linked. Not only morally, but for the first time in pandemic history, legally.

It used to be that living organisms, including pathogens, were considered humanitys common heritage, and sharing them for scientific purposes happened informally.

That changed with the UNs 1992 convention on biological diversity (CBD), which states that countries have sovereign rights over genetic resources found on their territory.

Under an annex to that convention, the Nagoya protocol, the host country can set terms for accessing those resources and for ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from them.

Covid-19 is the first pandemic since Nagoya entered into force in 2014, but the spirit of the protocol has not been respected. Starting with China in January 2020, countries have shared Sars-CoV-2-related data freely, demanding nothing in return.

That data has driven revolutions in vaccinology, pathogen sequencing and data collection. But the fruits of those revolutions have not been shared equitably.

Just 14% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose, compared with about 80% in high- and upper middle-income countries.

The WHO is now proposing several separate initiatives to improve surveillance, including two Europe-based hubs for the international sharing of pathogen data and samples. But these proposals, too, effectively ignore Nagoya.

The WHO expects countries to contribute to the hubs for the common good, possibly even on pain of sanctions. Though it has been vocal about the need for vaccine equity, none of the current proposals explicitly address benefit-sharing.

Were treating pathogen-sharing as a common good, but were not treating vaccines and medical countermeasures as a common good, sayslegal scholar Mark Eccleston-Turner of Kings College London.

Eccleston-Turner says human pathogens should be excluded from Nagoya and vaccines should be similarly reclassified.

Practically, he suggests, this might be enshrined in a pandemic treaty the WHO is working on, that could apportion intellectual property (IP) rights according to the ratio of public-private investment in vaccine development.

The three or four leading coronavirus vaccines all took a different route to market, but one thing they have in common, according to IP law specialist Luke McDonagh of the London School of Economics, is that the public bore most of the risk and the drug companies maintained most of the IP.

More of the IP should stay in the public domain, he says, reflecting taxpayers investment. McDonagh points to research showing private-sector claims that reducing their IP dominance would dilute innovation do not hold up, and gives the example of antiretroviral drugs for HIV the subject of an earlier IP battle.

The fact of generic production in the global south has not affected incentives for HIV research in the rich countries, he says.

But changing the status quo via a new treaty may not be easy without government backing, he admits, and the UK and EU are among those whose current stance on patents suggests they might oppose it. Sharing knowhow and building up vaccine manufacturing capacity globally are also vital for achieving vaccine equity, he says, and the WHO is promoting both.

There may be a radically different solution: leave pathogens in Nagoya and respect its insistence on equitable benefit-sharing.

There is a precedent, says Edward Hammond, a Texas-based consultant who has advised low- and middle-income countries on the implications of Nagoya. He points to a successful implementation of Nagoya in the WHOs own pandemic influenza preparedness (PIP) framework.

Through PIP, WHO member states share samples of flu viruses that have human pandemic potential, and the WHO receives a share of the benefits. It has generated over $250m [190m] in cash payments from vaccine [and other] companies, Hammond says.

Some have said applying Nagoya to pathogens would at best create delays in sharing and at worst give control to bad actors. In the event of another pandemic, some country might assert its rights over virus samples, keeping the rest of the world in the dark, Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, wrote in a blog post at Stat last November.

It is not just drug companies expressing that view. It is shared by some in public health. Three years ago, Vasee Moorthy, a senior science adviser at the WHO, worked on a study into the impact of Nagoya on public health. Certain people were worried that there might be delays, but we havent seen that, Moorthy says.

If anything, the study found that the protocol encourages pathogen-sharing by building trust that benefits will be fairly shared. As Moorthy says: Sharing is in everyones interests.

De Oliveira agrees. With its history of fighting HIV, he says, South Africa would never withhold crucial data whose rapid release it knows could potentially save millions of lives, but unfortunately not every country has this long-term experience or transparent government and they might withhold.

To avoid that, he says, containment measures including travel bans should be balanced by financial or other support.

Nagoya is not perfect, Hammond admits. For one thing, it only covers physical samples, not the digital sequence data that is increasingly all that is needed to make vaccines, tests and drugs though he and others are lobbying to change that.

But it does embrace the spirit of the era, with its accent on reciprocity. It allows for multilateral benefit sharing, as befits a pandemic. It could, he feels, have prevented or at least mitigated vaccine nationalism.

And PIP could provide the model for a better instrument that covers many pathogens, including the one that causes the next pandemic.

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How should the world respond to the next pandemic? - The Guardian

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What Happened to Hong Kong? – The Atlantic

Posted: at 8:12 pm

Two years on from the start of the coronavirus pandemic, let me tell you what life is like in my Hong Kong neighborhood. Playgrounds are wrapped in red-and-white caution tape and barricaded with plastic fencing to keep children out, and the swings have been tossed over the crossbar to ensure that no illicit amusement takes place. The governments disastrous public messaging about a possible citywide lockdown has led to widespread panic-buying, so gossip swapped while Im out walking my dog focuses on which shops have restocked.

All restaurants have to close at 6 p.m., and bars arent open at all. A restaurant down the street from my apartment now offers happy-hour deals starting at 10 a.m. Gyms, movie theaters, campsites, and beaches have been shut down entirely. If I want to take a walk on my own in a remote country park, I am legally required to wear a mask.

This situation feels all the more shocking because in early 2020, Hong Kong was ahead of the COVID curve, not lagging behind it. As soon as news emerged of a still-mysterious virus, everyone here began wearing masks and adapted to social distancing almost immediately; I wrote article after article about what life would look like in the weeks to come in America, having seen the future myself. While the West was caught off guard, Hong Kong felt prepared.

Now medical facilities are overwhelmed with sick patients, and because morgues have struggled to keep pace, body bags are piled up in hospitals alongside patients still receiving treatment. Coffins are being shipped in to meet the demand. Construction workers are racing to build isolation facilities, including one that looks like a wartime field hospital on the border with the mainland. Some 300,000 people are in isolation or under home quarantine. After recording only 213 deaths and about 13,000 cases of COVID-19 from January 2020 to early 2022, the city is swamped by the current Omicron wave, which began at the start of the year and has led to more than 960,000 cases and more than 4,600 deaths.

Hong Kong was lauded for controlling the coronaviruss spread with its zero-COVID strategy. It has ample vaccine doses. It is wealthy enough to support its poorest people if it chooses to. It has effectively shut down swaths of its economy, including its lucrative tourism sector, to battle the virus.

And yet this month, it recorded one of the highest COVID death rates in the world. What just happened?

Hong Kong has employed its zero-COVID strategy since the onset of the pandemic. The approach has not been as restrictive as the one used in mainland China, which calls for shutting down whole metropolises and testing their population over a handful of COVID cases. The city has an aggressive test-and-trace program, as well as toughened border controls, to catch infections and break transmission lines, and enacts social-distancing measures when cases spike. All of this helped Hong Kong buy itself time in the early stages of the pandemic, when vaccines were not available, keeping deaths to a minimum.

But now it clings to measures not based on sound science, and which experts have dismissed as largely performative (while also being heavily damaging to its travel- and service-based economy). It has neither pivoted to a more flexible approach nor prepared for an outbreak that analysts repeatedly warned was inevitable.

The missteps are almost too numerous to recount, but the worst ones have to do with Hong Kongs singular inability to vaccinate its population. The governments efforts were from the start imbued with politics and marred by poor messaging. It initially rushed through approval of the China-made Sinovac vaccine, and city leaders made a show of being inoculated with it, despite a better optionBioNTechs mRNA jabbeing available. (The large majority of deaths have been among the unvaccinated, but officials refuse to disclose data on which vaccine was administered to those who died after being vaccinated.) Press releases highlighting, with little context, the vaccines adverse effects were amplified by the media, leading to intense skepticism. Distrust in the government, still lingering from its handling of prodemocracy protests in 2019, did not help the cause. And most troubling has been the poor vaccination rate among the citys elderly population, a persistent problem. Today, just 55 percent of people older than 80 have received one vaccine shot, and 36 percent have received two.

Lam Ching-choi, a physician and a member of Chief Executive Carrie Lams cabinet, told me that the governments early reliance on family doctors to advise patients on vaccination was a mistake: Many warned the elderly to be cautious about receiving the vaccine. Predictably, COVID has swept through residential care homesmore than 29,000 elderly care-home residents have been infected during the current wave. Lam also told me that the government should have offered at-home vaccination for residents with mobility issues, and said the authorities would soon begin implementing that program. Yet it will start only next week, more than two months into the surge and more than a year after the vaccine rollout initially began.

The 21-day hotel quarantine required for all arrivals into Hong Kong, even for those without COVID, is dangerous and unscientific, experts told me, but the government has continued the practice anyway, leading to cross infections and a spike in cases. A government-funded study published last year warned about vaccine hesitancy, but officials did little beyond sloganeering and a perfunctory poster drive. The government also insisted on issuing compulsory testing notices to residents even when testing and quarantine facilities were already overloaded, leading to more stress on a teetering health system. Flight bans from countries including the United States and Britain are scheduled to be in place until next month, though the governments own advisers say there is no reason for this to continue.

In sum, decision makers ignored public-health expertise, driven instead by politics and overly enthusiastic efforts to show fealty to Beijing. The result has been an embarrassingly shambolic effort that has created a preventable public-health disaster, yet another glaring failure of governance from an administration whose defining characteristic is catastrophic ineptitude.

The question to ask, not unreasonably, would be: How come we either didnt have a good plan or didnt execute a good plan? Gabriel Leung, the dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong and a pandemic-response adviser to the government, told me. When I asked whether he had any thoughts on the answer to that question, Leung responded, Suffice to say that we have done our very best to generate the best science to inform policy decisions. And, as Margaret Thatcher once said, Advisers advise; ministers decide. Lets put it at that.

Much of the world has struggled with various phases of the pandemic, but Hong Kongs difficulties are in no small part due to the fact that the city no longer has even its previous limited democratic accountability to push the government to review public-health decisions, thanks to a crackdown by Beijing and the imposition of a draconian national-security law. For varying reasons, many residents believed the governments fiction that only a small minority of people would be affected by these changes, but the mishandling of COVID has highlighted how the reengineering of Hong Kong will touch all aspects of life.

With opposition voices silenced, Hong Kongs rulers claimed they could more efficiently govern. But in the city legislature, overhauled last year to ensure that nationalism and obedience are valued over competence and political know-how, suggestions on how to tame the outbreak have included the wildly impractical (using cruise ships as temporary isolation facilities) and the patently absurd (dropping fresh food into Hong Kong by drone). Even this newfound sense of urgency on the part of lawmakers and the government has emerged only after Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke last month of the overriding mission to bring the current outbreak under control.

At the same time, pro-Beijing pundits and mainland officials have cast pandemic response, and adherence to dynamic zero COVID, as a loyalty test. (Determining what exactly dynamic zero COVID means is futile; the description shifts from official to official and day to day. Nevertheless, authorities insist that it shouldnt be questioned.) The director of Chinas Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said this month that patriotic forces must forcefully expose, criticize, and sanction with laws the anti-China destabilizing forces who launched smearing attacks, spread rumors, and created panic to disrupt the anti-pandemic efforts. Addressing the United Nations, a Hong Kong doctor said that the idea of living with the virus was tantamount to the U.S. creating biological terrorists, in a melodramatic screed that seemed scripted for a comic-book villain. Hong Kongs civil service has become a targeted group, fingered as being polluted by Western ideas for questioning the COVID strategy.

Hong Kongs pandemic response definitely shows the NSL [national-security law] new order is not only about election and activists, but extends to all realms of life, Ho-Fung Hung, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of the forthcoming book City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule, told me by email.

As they did with the imposition of the national-security law, mainland officials felt the need to step in to address COVID-related problems that the Hong Kong government had created for itself, a move that has been met with slavish praise. Newspapers controlled by the Chinese government here have splashed their pages with adoration for workers arriving from over the border. Pro-Beijing lawmakers have rushed to social media to post their gratitude to the motherland for its support. My inbox fills up daily with statements thanking Beijing for taking control. The citys secretary of health applauded the mainlands donation of traditional Chinese medicine. (Authorities in Singapore, by contrast, have warned that there is no scientific evidence that one such remedy, called lianhua qingwen, can be used to prevent or treat COVID-19, while Australia has banned the sale of the treatment entirely.) The endless, unrestrained flattery seems akin to the celebration of an arsonist who lights his house on fire, cuts the water hose, and then cheers as the fire brigade arrives to extinguish the flames.

All the while, the broader political purge and repression of rights that was already under way in Hong Kong has carried on undisrupted. Half a dozen people were arrested and charged with sedition last month. In early March, the former head of the bar association, a British lawyer, was questioned by national-security police before he left the city, followed through the airport by reporters from Chinese state media. Authorities accused a U.K.-based rights group of endangering national security and demanded that it take down its website. Carrie Lam, the citys chief executive, employs wartime rhetoric as an excuse to exercise emergency powers. The longer the coronavirus outbreak persists, the more policies to combat it become intertwined with the ever-expanding security apparatus.

Listing Hong Kongs mistakes triggers a sense of dj vu: a politicized and inept response, an unwillingness to adapt existing strategies to the viruss mutations, an inability to overcome vaccine skepticism, long-running fissures in society torn open by COVID. For years, we were told by pro-Beijingers that these were the Wests problems, not ours.

Two years ago, we looked at the U.S. and Europe, dumbstruck at how badly they were managing the pandemic. Two years on, we are experiencing what Siddharth Sridhar, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, describes as a plane crash in slow motion, having apparently learned little from the Westsor our ownexperience.

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You can watch SpaceX launch a Falcon 9 rocket for a record 12th time tonight. Here’s how. – Space.com

Posted: at 8:11 pm

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will fly for a record-setting 12th time tonight (March 18), and you can watch the historic action live.

The two-stage Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch 53 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight at 11:24 p.m. EDT (0324 GMT on March 19). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company. Coverage is expected to begin about 15 minutes before liftoff.

It will be the 12th launch for this Falcon 9 first stage, setting a new record for SpaceX rocket reusability. The booster previously lofted the RADARSAT Constellation mission for the Canadian Space Agency in June 2019; SpaceX's first crewed flight, the Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station, in May 2020; the SXM-7 satellite for SiriusXM in December 2020; and eight other Starlink missions, SpaceX representatives wrote in a mission description.

Related: SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation launches in photos

The first stage will try to ace its 12th landing as well: SpaceX aims to bring it down on the droneship Just Read The Instructions, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.

SpaceX has launched 2,282 Starlink satellites to date, 2,033 of which are currently operational, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

The broadband constellation is providing service to customers around the world, including in Ukraine, whose communications infrastructure has been damaged by invading Russian forces. SpaceX has sent Starlink terminals and other hardware to the war-torn nation, a move that has been applauded by grateful Ukrainian government officials.

The Starlink network isn't done growing, as tonight's launch shows. SpaceX wants it to get much bigger, in fact: The company has permission to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites, and it has applied for approval from an international regulator to launch 30,000 more on top of that.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.

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SpaceX tests fully stacked Starship rocket for the first time – Teslarati

Posted: at 8:11 pm

After rapidly stacking Ship 20 and Booster 4 the evening prior, SpaceX appears to have begun testing a fully stacked Starship rocket for the first time ever.

Though the test SpaceX subjected Starship to was by no means ambitious and in spite of the fact that it no longer appears that Ship 20 and Booster 4 will ever fly, the first test of the first fully integrated prototype of a new rocket is still an immensely significant achievement particularly so for the largest rocket ever built.

Standing around 119 meters (~390 ft) tall, Starship is unequivocally the largest and most voluminous rocket ever built. With its 29 Raptor V1 engines, the fully assembled Ship 20 and Booster 4 (B4) stack would have likely weighed around 4000-5000 tons (9-11M lb) and been able to produce around 5400 tons (11.9M lbf) of thrust at liftoff substantially heavier and more powerful than Saturn V or N1, the largest rockets ever successfully and unsuccessfully launched.

For its first fully-integrated test, though, SpaceX appears to have put Starship through a fairly limited cryogenic proof a test where flammable propellant is replaced with a similarly cold (cryogenic) fluid thats similar enough to subject a rocket to similar thermal and mechanical stresses. For Ship 20 and Booster 4s combined debut, Super Heavy was filled maybe 10-20% and Starship around 25-50% of the way with either liquid nitrogen (LN2) or a combination of LN2 and liquid oxygen (LOx). Its difficult to tell but its unlikely any methane (LCH4) fuel was involved.

Back on the ground, Starship S20 completed five separate cryogenic proof tests before its first test on top of Super Heavy. More importantly, Ship 20 successfully completed several static fire tests, each of which also functioned as a wet dress rehearsal with LCH4/LOx propellant. Booster 4 had also passed several cryogenic proof tests. In that sense, its unlikely that SpaceX had a great deal of uncertainty as to whether either prototype would be able to complete yet another test.

Beyond the basic mechanical demonstration that Super Heavy Booster 4 is strong enough to support a partially loaded Starship, which probably wasnt in doubt, its likely that the main purpose of this first full-stack cryoproof was to ensure that all the systems required to fuel Starship on top of Super Heavy were working as expected. Thats no small feat given that Starship is both the tallest rocket and largest upper stage ever assembled. To fully fuel a Starship for an orbital launch, around 1200 tons (~2.65M lb) of propellant (or LN2 for a cryoproof) equivalent to the weight of more than two entire Falcon 9 rockets must be pumped around 85 meters (~275 ft) up Starbases integration tower.

That requires thousands of feet of plumbing and a symphony of giant valves and pumps, all of which must work in concert without leaking, jamming, or freezing to fuel Starship. As such, the first full-stack cryoproof was just as much or more of a test of the orbital launch sites launch/integration tower and tank farm. That first test is just the start of a long process, though, and its likely that SpaceX will attempt an increasingly ambitious series of tests with Booster 4 and Ship 20 over the next week or two.

That could involve simply filling the rocket further and raising its tank pressures or it could potentially culminate in a partial wet dress rehearsal with methane and oxygen propellant in place of liquid nitrogen. Theres an even smaller chance that SpaceX could attempt to static fire Super Heavy B4 for the first time, although sources like NASASpaceflight are no longer confident that Booster 4 will be static fired before retirement. More to the point, it would be uncharacteristically risky behavior from SpaceX to perform the very first static fire of a new prototype with an already proven Starship sitting on top of it. An anomaly as small as an uncontrolled fire far from uncommon for Starships could easily risk the catastrophic destruction of both stages, which would itself run the risk of significantly damaging the orbital launch site, which could easily take months to repair.

Nonetheless, theres still a chance. SpaceX has opportunities for additional testing on March 17th, 18th, 21st, and 22nd.

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Elon Musk confirms a prediction for when humans will go to Mars – Interesting Engineering

Posted: at 8:11 pm

It happened again.

Elon Musk used his Twitter account to give his prediction for when humans will finally touch down on Mars replying to a tweet from Space Hub that asked him when in the 21st century we'd finally make it happen. Musk's guess?

"2029," he wrote in a tweeted reply on Wednesday, to a meme that connected the prospect of humans setting foot on Mars with the historic landing of humans on the Moon during NASA's Apollo missions in 1969.

But this isn't exactly a new guesstimation from the space baron, billionaire, and CEO of the leading commercial space firm, SpaceX. In December of 2021, he toldTime Magazine that he'd be surprised if humans aren't "landing on Mars within five years".

Musk's initial prediction came after he was named Time's "Person of the Year," and he spoke at great length on his plans for the Red Planet. For example, a self-sustaining city that uses solar-powered hydroponic farms capable of supporting a permanent human settlement not on Earth, but at an unconscionable distance of 34 million miles from the closest neighbor, on Mars.

"The next really big thing is to build a self-sustaining city on Mars and bring the animals and creatures of Earth there," said Musk in the Time interview. "Sort of like a futuristic Noah's ark. We'll bring more than two though it's a little weird if there's only two," he added, as if from experience.

But before Musk can make good on his prediction, his firm, SpaceX, needs to complete its work on Starship -- the next-gen interplanetary vehicle that made its first successful landing after takeoff in May, 2021. In an interview on the Lex Fridman podcast in 2021, Musk said: "Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made".

Crucial in the drive to perfect the Starship design "is minimizing the cost per ton to orbit and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars," added Musk. In the interview, Musk said present technology couldn't take someone to Mars with $1 trillion, which is why Musk wants to reduce the operating costs for Starship by roughly $100 billion, or even $200 billion per year.

That's a big discount. NASA had budgeted roughly $546.5 million for its Mars exploration program in 2020, when the Perseverance rover was initially launched. And another $6.88 billion was put aside for the Artemis program in 2021, with SpaceX receiving nearly $35 billion that same year.

Tall tales - Musk has also said that Starship would make its first orbital flight sometime this year. That will be a major step toward returning humans to the Moon in the next decade, to build a permanent settlement, but Mars? It could be a little longer, Elon (or, "Elona"). But we'll keep our fingers crossed.

This was a developing story and was regularly updated with new information as it became available.

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Humans on the Polaris Dawn space mission will be like lab rats for radiation – Interesting Engineering

Posted: at 8:11 pm

On Wednesday, organizers of the first-ever private orbital spaceflight to the International Space Stationannounceda revised launch date. Still, the four-person crew that will leave Earth atop a SpaceX rocket on April 3 will not be doing any spacewalking. No, that historic first will be achieved during thesecondall-civilian trip to orbital space.

Polaris Dawnwill carry out several historic firsts, including the first commercial spacewalk after its November 2022 launch. The free-floating trip outside the crew capsule won't be merely for kicks: The crew members will be lab rats of a sort: Their bodies will be measured for effects of space radiation on human health.

Government agencies have carried out every spacewalk. The vast majority take place outside the International Space Station and are conducted by astronauts and cosmonauts from NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, and Japan's space agency, JAXA.

The Polaris Dawn team aims to carry out a spacewalk from a relatively tiny SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule orbiting Earth before reaching a record-high orbital altitude.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire behind SpaceX's first "all-civilian" space mission, Inspiration4,revealed the Polaris Program last month. It aims to advance human spaceflight capabilities simultaneously as raising funds and awareness for causes on Earth.

Polaris will be three separate missions, including two orbital spaceflights and the first crewed launch of SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle. "The Polaris Programis an important step in advancing human space exploration while helping to solve problems through innovative technology here on Earth," Isaacman explained in a February statement.

Isaacman, the 39-year-old founder of online payment processing company Shift4, was the commander for last September's Inspiration4 mission. He will be the commander for the Polaris Program's first mission, Polaris Dawn.

Inspiration4 was the first time an entire crew of civilians reached orbital space, a massive milestone for human spaceflight and space tourism. The mission saw Isaacman and a crew of three others launch aboard a Crew Dragon capsule atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on September 15, 2021, before spending three days orbiting Earth.

Now, Isaacman and a new crew aim to take things several further with the upcoming launch of Polaris Dawn.

The Polaris Dawn mission will take Isaacman and three crewmates pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet, mission specialist Sarah Gillis, and medical officer Anna Menon up into orbit. This time, they aim to achieve several historic milestones while they're up there.

"On Polaris Dawn, we endeavor to achieve the highest Earth orbit ever flown," Isaacman said in February. The current record is held by NASA's Gemini 11 astronauts,Charles Conrad and Richard Gordon, in 1966, both of whom reached an orbit of 853 miles above Earth.

Before reaching those heights, at approximately 300 miles above Earth, two of the Polaris Dawn crewmembers will attempt the first commercialextravehicular activity (EVA), orspacewalk, in history.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule doesn't feature an airlock, so the entire crew will have to get into their spacesuits as the cabin is depressurized for the spacewalk. The crew will wear newly-designed, pressurized SpaceX spacesuits.

When the Polaris Dawn team reaches its peak record altitude, the crew capsule will pass through parts of the Van Allen radiation belt, which are made up of highly energetic charged particles that originate from the solar wind. This will allow the team and ground control to carry out one of its mission objectives: to collect data on the effects of space radiation on human health.

Not only that, but Polaris Dawn will also be the first mission to test SpaceX's Starlink satellite network for laser-based communications in space, another part of the Polaris Program's plans for advancing human spaceflight capabilities.

The Polaris Program is named after the Polaris constellation, most commonly known as the "North Star." The program chose that name because it aims to be a guiding light, helping future space missions and people here on Earth toward a better future.In its latest update, the program announced that it was sending medical supplies and resources to Poland to aid Ukrainian refugees amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. A Ukrainian flag will also make the trip to orbit.

If all goes well, Polaris Dawn will launch later this year. The second Polaris mission will likely set several new milestone goals based on the learning of the first mission. The third launch will be the first human spaceflight of SpaceX's Starship, and its date will be set after SpaceX conducts the uncrewed maiden flight of the reusable rocket, which will launch at a fraction of the cost of NASA's own Moon-bound SLS launch vehicle.

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Why Relativity Space Rejected 100 SPAC Offers As It Challenges SpaceX – Business Insider

Posted: at 8:11 pm

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Deals made with special-purpose acquisition companies, also known as blank-check companies, have become wildly popular across all markets in recent years. But capital-intensive industries such as space have especially clamored for the deals, which often come with huge valuations and make going public easier and cheaper than a traditional initial public offering.

The space industry announced at least 13 SPAC deals last year, according to JD Supra. Simon Potter, the head of investment and financial consulting at the industry-research firm BryceTech, told Insider the space-SPAC craze had largely been driven by companies' need for capital, rather than a desire to go public.

But Tim Ellis, a cofounder of Relativity Space which has in its seven years become the second most valuable private space company, behind SpaceX said his company wouldn't be following in the SPAC fad. Ellis told Insider his company had been approached by about 100 SPACs offering to take the business public and rejected them all.

"I sort of just think of SPACs as funding of last resorts, to a certain extent," Ellis, formerly of Blue Origin, said.

The key reason Relativity Space hasn't gone public is that it hasn't needed to. The startup, founded in 2015 by Ellis and Jordan Noone (formerly of SpaceX), has raised more than $1.3 billion for an estimated valuation of $4.2 billion. Its investors include Mark Cuban and Jared Leto.

And, Ellis said, going public means changes to a company's operational and shareholder responsibility. If a company can do its fundraising privately, there's no need for it to go public. He said he believed so many space companies had taken the SPAC route to the public market because it was fast, easy, and cheap.

"It was so much money at such a cheap price that a lot of people were wooed into doing it because they couldn't get that amount of capital or that price privately," Ellis said. "I think people just did it because it was their only option."

He added: "A lot of people undervalued the operational trade-offs that were going to come with it."

A public listing can mean more scrutiny and, sometimes, pressure from investors eager for a quick return.

When asked about Ellis' decision to keep Relativity private, Potter said it "makes sense, on the basis that they have a range of options to choose from in terms of how they raise capital, given their success."

Chris Quilty, the founder and a partner at the boutique space advisory Quilty Analytics, agreed with Potter.

"I think they've avoided the SPAC path because they don't have to," he said.

But just because Relativity won't be the next space company to trumpet a billion-dollar SPAC deal doesn't mean it will never go public. Ellis said he wasn't opposed to taking the company public down the line through a more traditional route, like an IPO.

"I think there's lots of great public companies that let you be ambitious, so I don't see it as mutually exclusive," he said. "It definitely makes it harder in some ways, and you have to navigate it. For me, I care more about getting Relativity to a scale where then taking it public does not preclude that."

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Space Tourism Market Next Big Thing : Major Giants Space Adventures, SpaceX, Boeing – Digital Journal

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This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire

New Jersey, NJ (SBWIRE) 03/17/2022 The Latest research study released by HTF MI "Global Space Tourism Market" with 100+ pages of analysis on business Strategy taken up by key and emerging industry players and delivers know how of the current market development, landscape, technologies, drivers, opportunities, market viewpoint and status. Understanding the segments helps in identifying the importance of different factors that aid the market growth. Some of the Major Companies covered in this Research are Space Adventures, EADS Astrium, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, Excalibur Almaz, Space Island Group, SpaceX, Boeing & Zero 2 Infinity etc.

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Browse market information, tables and figures extent in-depth TOC on "Space Tourism Market by Application (Group & Individuals), by Product Type (, Suborbital Space Tourism & Orbital Space Tourism), Business scope, Manufacturing and Outlook Estimate to 2027".

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On the basis of report- titled segments and sub-segment of the market are highlighted below:Global Space Tourism Market By Application/End-User (Value and Volume from 2022 to 2027) : Group & Individuals

Market By Type (Value and Volume from 2022 to 2027) : , Suborbital Space Tourism & Orbital Space Tourism

Global Space Tourism Market by Key Players: Space Adventures, EADS Astrium, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, Excalibur Almaz, Space Island Group, SpaceX, Boeing & Zero 2 Infinity

Geographically, this report is segmented into some key Regions, with manufacture, depletion, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Space Tourism in these regions, from 2017 to 2027 (forecast), covering China, USA, Europe, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia & South America and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2022 to 2027

Informational Takeaways from the Market Study: The report Space Tourism matches the completely examined and evaluated data of the noticeable companies and their situation in the market considering impact of Coronavirus. The measured tools including SWOT analysis, Porter's five powers analysis, and assumption return debt were utilized while separating the improvement of the key players performing in the market.

Key Development's in the Market: This segment of the Space Tourism report fuses the major developments of the market that contains confirmations, composed endeavors, R&D, new thing dispatch, joint endeavours, and relationship of driving members working in the market.

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Some of the important question for stakeholders and business professional for expanding their position in the Global Space Tourism Market:Q 1. Which Region offers the most rewarding open doors for the market Ahead of 2021?Q 2. What are the business threats and Impact of latest scenario Over the market Growth and Estimation?Q 3. What are probably the most encouraging, high-development scenarios for Space Tourism movement showcase by applications, types and regions?Q 4.What segments grab most noteworthy attention in Space Tourism Market in 2020 and beyond?Q 5. Who are the significant players confronting and developing in Space Tourism Market?

For More Information Read Table of Content @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/3961509-2022-2030-report-on-global-space-tourism-market

Key poles of the TOC:Chapter 1 Global Space Tourism Market Business OverviewChapter 2 Major Breakdown by Type [, Suborbital Space Tourism & Orbital Space Tourism]Chapter 3 Major Application Wise Breakdown (Revenue & Volume)Chapter 4 Manufacture Market BreakdownChapter 5 Sales & Estimates Market StudyChapter 6 Key Manufacturers Production and Sales Market Comparison Breakdown..Chapter 8 Manufacturers, Deals and Closings Market Evaluation & AggressivenessChapter 9 Key Companies Breakdown by Overall Market Size & Revenue by Type..Chapter 11 Business / Industry Chain (Value & Supply Chain Analysis)Chapter 12 Conclusions & Appendix

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Space Tourism Market Next Big Thing : Major Giants Space Adventures, SpaceX, Boeing - Digital Journal

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The Meteoric Rise in Satellite Numbers – Union of Concerned Scientists – All Things Nuclear

Posted: at 8:11 pm

Between April 31 and December 31, 2021, 866 satellites were put into orbit. While not as dramatic as the 836 launched in the first four months of the year, it completes a meteoric rise of 1,702 satellites for the year. The graph below shows the incredible acceleration in the number, up to a total of 4,852 satellites as of the end of 2021.

The growth is astounding. For example, the number launched this year is more than thetotalnumber of operating satellites in 2016, just six years ago. Over the last six years, the number increased 20% annually on average, jumping to more than 30% the last two years.

Moreover, while the rate of increase almost certainly wont endure much longer, the number of operating satellites will continue to grow dramatically. Aswidely reported, the Starlink network already has permission to launch up to 12,000 satellites and Elon Musk would like to a second generation of 30,000 more satellites. Those numbers haveNASA worried. In a submission to the Federal Communications Commission, the agency wrote: NASA has concerns with the potential for a significant increase in the frequency of conjunction events and possible impacts to NASAs science and human spaceflight missions.

And Starlink isnt alone. If all the planned networks move forward perhaps a dubious proposition, but possible the total number of satellites wouldnear 100,000. At that point, not only would our database become unwieldy(!), the likelihood of adverse outcomes rises significantly, including increased risk of collisions, impacts on the International Space Station, and complications forearth-based astronomy.

As always, kudos to my colleague, Teri Grimwood,UCS Satellite Databaseresearcher, for tracking down 28 pieces of information for each of these 4,852 satellites. If youd like email notification when the updates are made, please sign uphere.

On November 15,Russia conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite test(DA-ASAT),destroying one of its own space objects, a defunct satellite, in low-earth orbit. Direct ascent means that the missile was launched from the ground, not from within space. The test createdthousands of pieces of debrisat an altitude that is widely used for space activities by many countries. The test was widely condemned by the international community.

There were some hopes that the international reactions to the Russian test could present awindow of opportunity, including the possibility ofa multilateral ban on destructive ASAT tests. Unfortunately, the current crisis in Ukraine will likely prohibit near-term progress but could if resolved diplomatically lead to a new chance to negotiate such a ban. Though somewhat dated now, in 2012 UCS produced this helpfulhistory of ASAT programsfrom the 1950s and onward.

The last six months of 2021 saw a massive race to space by billionaires. On July 11,Virgin Galactic launched its first tourist flight with its founder, Richard Branson, on board.The flight was launched from the companys facility in New Mexico,Spaceport America, with a four-person crew and two pilots.It flew just above the boundary of space (100 kilometers), where everyone experienced about four minutes of weightlessness.The cost of a spaceflight ticket with Virgin is now$450,000.

Blue Origin, with founder Jeff Bezos and three others,flew for the first time on July 20. The flight included Wally Funk, a Mercury 13 aviator. The vehicle, named New Shepard, flies autonomously, so there werent any pilots on board. The flight reached 107 kilometers above earth and lasted about 10 minutes.

On September 16 Elon Musks SpaceX joined the trend with athree-day orbital missionaround the Earth featuring an all-civilian crew on Inspiration 4. Paid for by Jared Isaacman, his guest, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, is a childhood bone cancer survivor and now a physician assistant at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, where she received treatment as a child. Isaacman has already donated $100 million to St. Judes and hopes to raise another $100 million in donations. The capsule, Inspiration 4, was fully automated, orbited the earth for three days at 160 kilometers, and then splashed down off the Florida coast for recovery.

On October 13,the New Shepard took its second flightwith four passengers, including William Shatner. The final flight for 2021 took place onDecember 11, with six passengers including Michael Strahan, host ofGood Morning America.

Finally, on December 9, Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire,arrived at the International Space Stationfor a 12-day stay after riding into outer space aboard a Russian-built Soyuz capsule. The capsule was launched from Russias Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This was the first self-funded tourism mission to the International Space Station in a decade.

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The Meteoric Rise in Satellite Numbers - Union of Concerned Scientists - All Things Nuclear

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