Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Story by David Condos

But for Bahr, the cable running beneath his feet is off-limits. Its owned by a neighboring internet service provider and is merely passing through on its way to a nearby town.

Its just maddening, Bahr said. Were at the end of the line basically.

Bahrs story illustrates just how out-of-reach broadband remains for tens of millions of people in rural America. Nearly 9% of Kansas households roughly 130,000 still dont have access to high-speed internet.

Yet the promise of a future with broadband for all Kansans, no matter how remote, might rest in the wide-open skies over the Bahrs home and a plan to send Wi-Fi to a future Mars colony.

Beaming the internet down from satellites might leapfrog the logistical and financial barriers that leave so many rural homes and those just outside the city limits on the wrong side of the digital divide. But to do that, the next generation of satellite internet service will need to be better than the space-based stuff thats been around for a while.

Existing satellite internet is better than nothing, said Daniel Andresen, a computer science professor at Kansas State University, but thats about all you can say about it.

He said customers often have to deal with web pages that load slowly due to bottlenecked bandwidth and video calls that appear choppy because of high latency, or lag times. They sometimes lose service completely if there is rain or snow.

Left behind

Andresen said Kansans who live in towns even very small towns can generally skip satellite internet and connect their homes with fiber, cable or DSL.

But if somebody wants to live ... two miles outside of town, Andresen said, good luck getting any of the above.

The basic problem is that its not usually worth it to internet providers to string broadband lines out to places where people dont live close to each other. Each mile of fiber costs more than $27,000 to install. That might pay off in Wichita, which has 2,300 potential users per square mile, but not so much in Great Bends Barton County, with only 31 people per square mile.

Andresen says that leaves rural Kansans behind, especially as the pandemic moves so much of Americans personal and professional lives online.

It used to be that, Internet access is kind of nice, but you go into town once a week and use the librarys and its fine, Andresen said. Now, its vital.

New 5G cellular technology might improve wireless internet speeds for some rural homes, but Andresen said its only likely to help someone who already has good 4G coverage. The high-frequency wavelengths that enable 5Gs fast speeds dont travel as far as 4G waves. And a tree or hill in the wrong place could block the signal.

5G could turn kind-of-haves into haves, but wont turn have-nots into haves, Andresen said. You end up with a situation where good connectivity tends to be pretty much no matter how much money youre willing to fling at it unavailable.

But the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, has a plan to send humans to Mars. And almost accidentally, that plan might just open the door to getting a better YouTube feed to the ranches and farms of Kansas.

To the stars

For Elon Musks aerospace endeavor, SpaceX, the Starlink project is part fundraiser, part test run. The company needs money from internet customers to fund its ambitions in the heavens, like space tourism and colonizing the red planet. SpaceX also wants to deliver high-speed internet to those future Martians who, like the people of rural Kansas, will be spread across a sparsely populated landscape.

Unlike traditional satellites that sit roughly 22,000 miles out into space, Starlink satellites beam data from a mere 340 miles above the Earth. Theoretically, these low-Earth orbit satellites could provide even better speeds than wired internet because light travels 50% faster through the vacuum of space than it does through the glass of fiber-optic cables.

So far, SpaceX has launched about 1,000 satellites floating above a thin strip of the U.S.-Canadian border. Kansans should be able to try Starlink for themselves later this year when SpaceX activates another belt of satellites over the Midwest.

But travel three states to the north of here, and that internet future already exists.

The speeds and the latency theyre advertising appear to be holding true, said North Dakota Chief Technology Officer Duane Schell. So, yeah, theres a lot of excitement about it.

Schell is talking with SpaceX about testing Starlink in state parks and wildlife management areas in North Dakota, where Starlink satellites already cover most of the state. But he also sees it as a way to shore up the future of the states rural economy, from telecommuting to high-tech farming.

Without that broadband, Schell said, youre simply not going to be able to compete.

The space rush

Starlink isnt alone on the mission to bring satellite broadband to remote places like western Kansas. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hired a former SpaceX executive to lead his companys satellite internet venture, Project Kuiper. HughesNet, already a major satellite internet provider in rural America, partnered with OneWeb to power a network of 650 satellites by the end of this year.

Derek Smashey, a financial analyst with Scout Investments in Kansas City, said satellite internet could eventually serve 15-20% of the population. So, Starlinks $99 monthly fees could cover the projects estimated $10 billion price tag.

It looks to us like that could be a $20 billion-plus dollar market just in the United States alone, Smashey said. I wouldnt want to bet against people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Eventually, SpaceX plans to build a constellation of Starlink satellites that deliver broadband not only to rural America, but also to arctic research stations, tanker ships at sea and other remote locations around the globe. The company has federal approval to launch 12,000 satellites and has already filed paperwork for 30,000 more 10 times the number in the sky now.

But that worries some people who like the sky the way it is.

It will be everywhere

The thought of having to see the stars through a grid of crawling satellites, thats pretty horrifying to me, said Samantha Lawler, an astronomy professor at the University of Regina in Canada. This isnt like light pollution from a city where you can go camping in the mountains and see the stars perfectly. ... It will be everywhere.

Lawler lives on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, where shes teaching classes via video using a home hotspot similar to what Joey Bahr uses in Kansas. But shes afraid that advancing our connection to the internet could come at the expense of losing our connection to the stars.

Humans have looked up at the stars since the dawn of humanity, Lawler said. Thats just such a huge part of being human that we are very much in danger of losing.

In Barton County, Joey Bahr said living in a place where his three sons can gaze up at the night sky was one of the reasons he and his wife, Anita, moved out here seven years ago. But living here means they have to connect to the internet through a cell tower a few miles away and try to stay under their data cap of 15 gigabytes per month. It would take about six of those gigabytes to stream a single two-hour HD movie.

If they go over that limit, he said their internet speeds can slow down to 600 kilobytes per second roughly 2% of the minimum speed in the federal definition of broadband.

The family reached a breaking point when their son tested positive for COVID-19 in the fall. Bahr and his wife suddenly needed to work from home, and their son used an iPad from school to keep up with his lessons. They decided to spend $200 on a second mobile hotspot just to get through the four-week quarantine.

Its a beautiful place. I love it, Bahr said of their property. Unfortunately, we are in kind of an internet no-mans-land right now.

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David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter@davidcondos. The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of Kansas Public Radio, KCUR, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio - focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link toksnewsservice.org.

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How Elon Musk and a Mission to Mars Might Boost Internet Speeds in Rural Kansas - kansaspublicradio.org

Elon Musk has a meme dealer and we must find out who it is.

Musk has been in news for all the right reasons lately. Be it his comments on Bitcoin and Dogecoin, revelations about his kids' education, or his plans for colonizing Mars, the Tesla CEO's recent appearance on an audio-only chat show on the new social media app Clubhouse has led to a flurry of interest in the American millionaire and pop culture icon.

But one of the things that stood out in the now-viral QnA session was Musk's take on memes and his confession to having a "meme dealer".

"I think memes are a complex form of communication," Musk said in the interview.

"A picture says 1000 words, and maybe a meme says 10,000 words, the SpaceX CEO said, adding, "Its a complex picture with a whole bunch of meaning in it".

Elon Musk Says His Kids Were Educated by YouTube and Reddit. Now He's Ready to Send Them to Mars

Clearly a fan of the complex "artform", Musk further substantiates his love for memes by stating they have symbolic value for our times. "Memes aspire to be funny, I dont know, I love memes. I think they can be very insightful. Throughout history, I think the symbolism has positively affected people.

Musk, who is both a creator and subject of viral memes, also said that he had a "meme dealer".

"I dont really follow memes. I make some of them. Some of them are sent to me. I have some pretty kickass meme dealers...I am the lucky recipient of very interesting memes," Musk said.

He added that his friend "Mike" was a good "meme dealer".

While Musk's confession cracked the hosts of the QnA up, ardent Musk followers will note that this is not the first time Musk has used the term but often tweets the same from his official handle. Exhibit A - this tweet from 2018.

Since the Tesla chief's appearance on Clubhouse, stocks of Bitcoin have surged since he made a comment in support of the cryptocurrency. And this isn't the first time.

Elon Musk Wiring a Monkey's Brain Has Everyone is Predicting Same 'Planet of Apes' Scenario

Musk sent Bitcoin stocks flying earlier toward the end of January with an update in his Twitter bio that simply read "#bitcoin". On his Monday appearance on Clubhouse that has the internet janta across the world hooked, Musk said that he fully supported Bitcoin.

"I'm late to the party but I'm a supporter of Bitcoin," Musk said. The millionaire, however, said that he did not vouch for all cryptocurrencies. "Dogecoin was made a joke on cryptocurrency. But fate loves irony. The moth ironic outcome of this would be if Dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth in future," the Tesla CEO said.

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Elon Musk Thinks Memes are 'Complex' Form of Communication. He Even Has a 'Dealer' for Regular Supply - News18

Mumbai, Music label Saregama on Tuesday said it has inked a music licensing deal with homegrown short-video app Josh by VerSe Innovation.

With this deal, users of Josh can now access old and new songs from the Saregama library with over 1.3 lakh songs to create innovative content.

Saregama said it will license its entire catalogue to Josh allowing users to create content inspired from its music library in diverse Indian languages like Hindi, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi and Gujarati, amongst many others.

"Saregama has music to offer to all generations and age groups across languages. It's great to associate with Josh and see such innovative content getting created."

Saregama holds the catalogue spanning genres like film/non-film songs, devotional music, ghazals and indipop in more than 25 languages.

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"This partnership is a great reminder of that focus - one that makes sure there's a song for every user, creator and moment on Josh, today."

Over 77 million monthly active users on Josh can now create content to songs by legends like Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle, Gulzar, Jagjit Singh, R.D Burman, Kalyanji Anandji, Geeta Dutt and Laxmikant Pyarelal making their experience on the platform even more engaging and fun.

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Josh app expands its musical library with 1.3 lakh songs from Saregama in 25 different languages - Business Insider India

It also proposed global legal framework for mining on the moon, called the Artemis Accords, encouraging citizens to mine the Earths natural satellite and other celestial bodies with commercial purposes.

The directive classified outer space as a legally and physically unique domain of human activity instead of a global commons,paving the way for mining the moon withoutany sort of international treaty.

Spearheaded by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Artemis Accords were signed in October by Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy and the United Emirates.

Unfortunately, the Trump Administration exacerbated a national security threat and risked the economic opportunityit hoped to secure in outer spaceby failing to engage Russia or China as potential partners, says Elya Taichman, former legislative director for then-Republican Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Instead, the Artemis Accords have driven China and Russia towardincreased cooperationin space out of fear and necessity, he writes.

Russias space agency Roscosmos was the first to speak up, likening the policy to colonialism.

There have already been examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interest everyone remembers what came of it, Roscosmos deputy general director for international cooperation, Sergey Saveliev, said at the time.

China, which made history in 2019 by becoming thefirst countryto land a probe on the far side of the Moon, chose a different approach. Since the Artemis Accords were first announced, Beijing has approached Russia to jointly build a lunar research base.

President Xi Jinping has also he made sure China planted its flag on the Moon, which happened in December 2020, more than 50 years after the US reached the lunar surface.

China has historically been excluded from the US-led international order in space. It is not a partner in the International Space Station (ISS) program, and a US legislative provision has limited NASAs ability to cooperate with it in space since 2011.

America and China should cooperate in space, say policy experts Anne-Marie Slaughter and Emily Lawrence. If the US managed to coordinate with the Soviet Union on space policy during the Cold War, it can find a way to cooperate with China now, they note.

Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department from 2009 to 2011, believes that President Joe Bidens team should distance from Trumps accords and instead pursue a new course within the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Biden can restore some of Americas global legitimacy by working to establish a multilateral framework, negotiated with all relevant parties that protects areas of common interest while granting internationally accepted commercial opportunities, Slaughter and Lawrence wrote.

It will not be an easy task, they say, but a necessary one. Without an international framework that includes all major spacefaring countries, the moon could become the next Wild West.

The race is on. It has been for a while. So much so that NASA has laid out a $28 billion plan to launch an unmanned mission around the moon in 2021, followed by a crewed moon flyby in 2023, then a lunar landing in 2024.

NASA plans to build a permanent moon-orbiting base called the Gateway, similar to the ISS. From there, the agency hopes to build a base on the lunar surface, where it can mine the resources required to fly the first astronauts to Mars.

Russia has been pursuing plans in recent yearsto return to the moon, potentially travelling further into outer space.

Roscosmosrevealed in 2018plans to establish a long-term base on the moon over the next two decades, while President Vladimir Putin hasvowedto launch a mission to Mars very soon.

The US, Russia and China are not the first nor the only nations to jump on board the lunar mining train.

Luxembourg,one of the first countriesto set its eyes on the possibility of mining celestial bodies,created in 2018 a Space Agency (LSA)to boost exploration and commercial utilization of resources from Near Earth Objects.

Unlike NASA, LSA does not carry out research or launches. Its purpose is to accelerate collaborations between economic project leaders of the space sector, investors and other partners.

The tiny European nation announced in November plans to create a European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC), in charge of laying the foundations for exploiting extra-terrestrial resources.

Luxembourg is also supporting a program to begin extracting resources from the Moonby 2025.

The mission, in charge of the European Space Agency in partnership with ArianeGroup, plans to extract waste-free nuclear energy thought to be worth trillions of dollars.

Both China and India have also floated ideas about extracting Helium-3 from the Earths natural satellite. Beijing has already landed on the moon twice in the 21stcentury, with more missions to follow.

In Canada, most initiatives have come from the private sector. One of the most touted was Northern Ontario-basedDeltion Innovations partnership with Moon Express, the first American private space exploration firm to have beengranted government permissionto travel beyond Earths orbit.

Space ventures in the works includeplans to mine asteroids, track space debris, build thefirst human settlement on Mars, and billionaire Elon Musks own plan for an unmanned mission to the red planet.

Geologists, as well as emerging companies, such asUS-based Planetary Resources, a firm pioneering the space mining industry, believe asteroids are packed with iron ore, nickel and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, making up a market valuedin the trillions.

On December 5, 2020, a metallic asteroid 140 miles wide and worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion made its closest approach to our planet.

With NASA and other companies investing in and developing nuclear power for use in space travel and colonization, the reality of mining asteroids is closer than ever before, says Bob Goldstein, CEO of US Nuclear Corp.

With proven successful fusion energy experiments under their belt, US Nuclear and Magneto-Inertial Fusion Technologies (MIFTI) believe they are only a few years away from building the worlds first fusion power generator.

Fusion power releases up to four times as much energy as fission, and uses fuel that is lightweight, low-cost, safe, and sustainable.

A spacecraft with fusion-powered propulsion systems could reach the asteroid belt in as little as seven months. According to Goldstein, it could be powerful enough to transport the asteroid to an earth orbit where it would be much more efficient to mine and transport these valuable resources to earth.

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Experts warn of brewing space mining war among US, China and Russia - MINING.COM - MINING.com

Science fiction loves to try to predict the future, but what do old sci-fi movies set in our contemporary time get right or wrong about this era?

The second-coming of the roaring '20s has been a strange time, and surely, no one could have predicted the current state of affairs whether in terms of the pandemic, politics or technology. Or, did someone? Sci-fi films seem to be the main source for predictions about the distant future. So, were any predictions made by old sci-fi films even remotely correct?

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Although it is unlikely that any screenwriters or other moviemakers were clairvoyant enough to predict the future, it's worth checking the many sci-fi films that take place in the 2020s for any signs of prescience. As audiences have seen in the past, sci-fi films tend to get too far ahead of themselves (possibly for entertainment's sake), but believe it or not, some films have made accurate predictionstoo.

Reign of Fireis a sci-fi action/adventure featuring a cast of megastars in Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale and Gerard Butler. The film is set in a 2020 world where dragons have been awakened by industrial tunneling projects and have dominated humans.

The film did not exceed expectations at the box office, but still profited. Nonetheless, the film gained a cult following when released on DVD and other home-entertainment mediums. One could go out on a limb and say the film's inclusion of invasive fire-breathing dragons was a sign of the spike in wildfires in the Amazon rainforestand other parts of the world as a result of climate change, but that's sort of a weak connection to our present day.

Originally made in '27 by German director Fritz Lang and then restored and edited in '84 by Giorgio Moroder and partners, this sci-fi/drama is downright creepy. The film's premise is industrialists and their employees have (literally) risen above the rest, living in gigantic skyscrapers while the general population underneath strain and struggle to operate advanced technology that keeps their lives going.

Moroder's '84 version clearly sets the film in 2026, while the '20s version is thought to be set in 3000. The film predicted metallic humanoid robots, which currently exist. The film also demonstrates the surge of wealth inequality that would accompany technological advances in the 21st century.

The Gary Sinise-starring outer space sci-fi/adventure makes the bold prediction of 2020 being the year man steps foot on Mars. Clearly, humans aren't quite there yet, and the more recent The Martianhas delayed the possibility until 2035.

Mission to Marsdidn't do particularly well in critics' eyes, and the film has been greatly forgotten in favor of the many spectacular space-exploration flicks released since 2000. It remains unclear whether The Martianis correct in its prediction, as NASA wants to send astronauts to Mars within the next decade.

Soylent Greenis a sci-fi/horror with a very bleak outlook on humanity in the 21st century. The filmmakers predicted that world hunger would continue to be a problem the idea potentially stemming from the world food crisis '72'75. The premise consists of a civilian uproar after finding out food manufacturer Soylent Green is selling products made with human remains.

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A conspiracy theory regarding cannibalism and American society's upper-tiers was posed by the infamous, discredited, and viral Plandemicdocumentary. Although, there is no feasible proof of such madness occurring, so most likely,Soylent Greendidn't get much right about the current time period suffering from behind-the-curtain cannibalism.

The sound barrier was first broken by an aircraft in '47 by Chuck Yeager, and this sci-fi/romance plays off that idea, having a pilot crash through the 'time barrier' and into 2024. The pilot finds the last remnants of society after being swept with a plague.

The argument forBeyond the Time Barrierbeing a correct prediction of COVID-19 in the current time period is not very prevalent online. However, search engines are fairly crowded with COVID-related news, so any theories related to the film are difficult to find.

The Soviet sci-fi filmVoyage To The Prehistoric Planetis amostly forgotten time-and-space-traveling fiasco that suffers from awful ratings on every site onthe internet. The "Prehistoric Planet" is Venus in the film, and astronauts encounter all sorts of extinct species.

The film is set in the year 2020 but really only gets one prediction right in NASA's future use of robots to support exploration. American director Roger Corman rereleased the film for American audiences, but it remains as one of his lesser pictures.

Alien Intruderis not part of theAlienfranchise (which includes films by directors Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher such an unfathomable lineup for one franchise). Instead, the sci-fi/fantasy flick is a crude ripoff that makes for an unpleasant watch.

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The film is set in 2022, where convicts are sent on a deadly mission into the dark, gaping depths of space. There is not much significance to draw from this film in terms of predicting our present time, but it makes for a good watch if anyone is looking for an old film that's comically bad.

Taking place in 2021, this British sci-fi/adventure opera plays with the idea of colonizing the moon. Audiences follow a freelance spaceman played by James Olson. Olson's character, Bill, is hired by a massively wealthy businessman plotting to sell land on the moon despite it being utterly valueless.

Moon Zero Twois another old sci-fi film that people weren't too high on when released, and it hasn't seemed to age well either. The film's soundtrack seems to be its best quality.

The Terminator is mainly set in the year of its release. However, Schwarzenegger's character arrives from the year 2029. One thing the classic sci-fi/action got right was the prevalence of military drones in the present, and that technology should only evolve throughout the decade.

It is yet to be seen whether time-travel will be possible in 2029. It's obviously unlikely, especially the idea of traveling to the past according to the "grandfather paradox," "causal loops"and other proven fallacies of time-travel.

Based on the book written by Stephen King under his alternate pen name Richard Bachman five years before the release of the film, both the book and film wrestle with the idea of 'entertainment-consumers' participating in the very shows they enjoy.

The film's premise is fairly applicable to the surging popularity of reality TV in the current period. The Running Mancould also be a foreshadowing social-media as well. Nevertheless, the book and film seem to question a human's aptness towards entertainment that comes at the expense of others. Although, modern humans are far from the point where the most popular reality show in the country becomes a battle royale.

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Undergraduate studying English and Business at the University of New Hampshire

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10 Old Sci-Fi Movies That Take Place In The Present Time Period - Screen Rant

SpaceXs newest Starship prototype, SN9, is on deck to take off for another high-altitude test flight as soon as Tuesday following an almost perfect test of SN8 in December.

SN9 has undergone a series of static fire tests in recent weeks and was scheduled to launch on Monday. But, unsurprisingly, the test was scrubbed at the last minute due to strong winds near the launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.

SN9 is the ninth prototype of SpaceXs future Mars-colonizing spacecraft. The final version of Starship will have six Raptor engines and be able to launch itself off Mars and the moon. (To escape Earths gravitational grip, Starship will need to be launched by a booster called Super Heavy with 30 Raptor engines.)

Like SN8, SN9 only has three engines. The goal is to fly to a suborbital height of 8 miles (12.5 kilometers), about the same altitude as commercial airplanes, and come back on Earth in one piece. In the December test, the SN8 prototype achieved every flight and data collection goal but exploded in the final seconds of a hard landing.

Starship is the largest spacecraft ever built by SpaceX. The 165-foot-tall (50 meters) stainless steel winged cylinder almost filled with liquid propellent was once thought to be impossible to get off the ground. The SN8 flight was a huge milestone and raised hope for an actual orbital flight by a future Starship prototype.

As for SN9, while no one can tell how the test will go, space enthusiasts on the internet have created vivid renderings of what an ideal flight will look like and details of the workings inside the spacecraft.

For example, this three-minute animation by C-bass Productions on YouTube visualizes the entire flight of SN9, from take-off to engine shutoff to landing.

This one, also by C-bass Productions, showcases the fuel movement (blue is liquid oxygen and red is methane) during an actual flight.

This even more detailed rendering (created by Kimi Talvitie on Twitter) shows how yaw, pitch and roll controls work in a triple-Raptor-engine configuration inside a Starship during a flight.

And in case things dont go as expected, this old (and funny) animation of the many ways SN8 could have landed serves as a useful reference for what might happen to SN9 this week.

Read more here:
SpaceX Is Launching Its Giant Starship SN9 Prototype, The Next Step To Visiting Mars - Observer

An American real estate investor, a Canadian investor, and a former Israeli Air Force pilot are paying $55 million each to be part of the first fully private astronaut crew to journey to the International Space Station. The trio will hitch a ride on SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule early next year, with a veteran NASA astronaut as the commander.

The Ax-1 mission, arranged by Houston, Texas-based space tourism company Axiom Space, is a watershed moment for the space industry as companies race to make space travel more accessible to private customers instead of governments. Private citizens have trekked to the space station in the past, but the Ax-1 mission marks the first to use a commercially built astronaut capsule: SpaceXs Crew Dragon, which flew its first two crews to the ISS last year.

As the first fully private mission to go to the ISS, we feel an enormous responsibility to do it well, Michael Lpez-Alegra, a veteran astronaut and the missions commander, told The Verge on Tuesday. We realize that this is the trend-setter, the bar-setter for the future, and so our goal is to really exceed all expectations.

Larry Connor, an entrepreneur and nonprofit activist investor; Mark Pathy, the Canadian investor and philanthropist; and Eytan Stibbe, the former Israeli fighter pilot and an impact investor, were revealed by Axiom on Tuesday morning as the companys inaugural crew. Connor, 71, is president of The Connor Group, a luxury real estate investment firm based in Ohio. Hed become the second-oldest person to fly to space after John Glenn, who flew the US space shuttle Discovery at 77 years old.

The crews flight to the space station, an orbital laboratory some 250 miles above Earth, will take two days. Theyll then spend about eight days aboard the stations US segment, where theyll take part in research and philanthropic projects, Axiom said in a statement. Living alongside working astronauts from the US, Russia, and likely Germany, the private crew members will roll out sleeping bags somewhere on the station.

There arent any astronaut crew quarters for us, which is fine. Sleeping in Zero-G is pretty much the same wherever you are once you close your eyes, Lpez-Alegra said.

NASA updated its policies in 2019 to allow private astronaut flights to the ISS as part of a broader push to encourage commercial opportunities in space. The agency had previously opposed private visits to the ISS on US spacecraft. Seven private citizens flew to the station as wealthy tourists on separate missions in the early 2000s aboard Russias Soyuz vehicles.

Private stays on the space station will have a hefty price tag, according to NASAs 2019 announcement. Itll cost $11,250 per astronaut per day to use the life support systems and toilet, $22,500 per day for all necessary crew supplies (like food, air, medical supplies, and more), and $42 per kilowatt-hour for power. That tallies to a nightly rate of about $35,000 per person, which, for the four crew members on the Ax-1 mission including Commander Lpez-Alegra totals to $1.1 million for an eight-night stay.

Those nightly costs are included in the $55 million price the private astronauts are already paying, Axiom says. The company bills itself as a turnkey, full-service mission provider that interfaces with all other parties (e.g. NASA) for the astronauts, an Axiom spokesman said. Any and all necessary costs are part of Axioms ticket price.

The Ax-1 mission will have to be approved by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, the space stations managing body of partner countries that includes the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, and others. That approval process kicked off today, Lpez-Alegra said. I dont think that theres any doubt that the background and qualifications of the crew are more than adequate to be accepted by the MCOP, so I feel good about that, he added.

SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule, an acorn-shaped pod with seats for seven, was approved last year by NASA under its Commercial Crew Program to fly humans to the space station. Under that roughly $4.5 billion program, SpaceX developed Crew Dragon alongside its rival Boeing, which is about a year away from certifying its Starliner capsule for human flights. Both companies have contracts with NASA to fly six missions carrying US astronauts to space.

The Ax-1 mission was announced early last year. It is the second space tourism effort for SpaceX, which announced around the same time that it is also working with space tourism company Space Adventures to send up to four private citizens into orbit around the Earth sometime in 2022.

Space tourism in recent years has sparked a wave of interest from the ultra-wealthy and investors as a growing field of space companies prove out hardware and ramp up uncrewed test flights in and around space. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, now the richest person in the world, has made normalizing space travel and colonizing Mars SpaceXs top priority. Billionaire businessman Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic, which offers groups of four a few minutes of weightlessness in its massive spaceplane for a few hundred thousand dollars, became the first publicly traded space tourism company in 2019. And billionaire Amazon owner Jeff Bezos space firm Blue Origin will soon offer similar suborbital experiences with its vertically launched New Shepard rocket.

Axioms chief executive Mike Suffredini co-founded the company in 2016 after spending 10 years as NASAs ISS program manager. Already, the company is building its own modules called Axiom Station designed to attach to the ISS, offering room for science experiments and more tourists. Ax-1 is just the first of several Axiom Space crews, he said in a statement.

Lpez-Alegra, who has flown four times to space as a NASA astronaut, said hes met with Connor, Pathy, and Stibbe a few times at SpaceXs California headquarters and in Florida during SpaceXs Crew-1 mission last year. Hell be in charge of training them in person beginning a few months prior to the flight.

Theyre very individual, but they all have a very common thread, and that is they really want this to be a successful mission that paves the way for future private astronaut missions, Lpez-Alegra said. Its a good crew.

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Axiom names first private crew paying $55 million for a trip to the ISS - The Verge

An artist's illustration of a world that would be classified as a rocky super-Earth. If you're hot ... [+] enough to boil off the atmosphere of a large planet, you can wind up with a rocky Super-Earth, but the temperatures will be so high that you'll roast your planet. If you're more than about 30% larger in radius than Earth, you'll collect a large envelope of volatile gases, and be more like Neptune than Earth.

Here in our Solar System, we have two very distinct types of planets:

The terrestrial worlds include Earth, and are generally regarded as the best places to look for life around stars other than our own. The gas giants we have in our Solar System, however, are both too cold and shrouded in thick layers of hydrogen and helium, strongly disfavoring the life that we know from surviving and thriving there. Given how successful life has been on our own planet but nowhere else weve looked, so far, it makes sense to seek out worlds that might have similar conditions.

However, when we look at our most successful exoplanet-hunting missions Kepler and TESS the most abundant class of world that they found is an in-between type: commonly known as super-Earths. Despite the allure of a planet that might be Earth-like, only larger and with more room for life forms on it, super-Earths are nothing like our science fiction imaginings. Heres why you must never try and colonize one.

This artist's rendition, of a protoplanetary disk such as the one expected around TW Hydrae, shows ... [+] that even with the best optical and near-infrared telescopes we have, we can only hope to infer the locations of the most prominent, massive planets forming in these protoplanetary environments.

To understand how planets get to be the way they are today, we have to go back to the beginning: to the protoplanetary disks that give rise to modern-day solar systems all across the galaxy. Typically, what winds up happening is that a cloud of gas will collapse under its own gravity, with pockets of that gas fragmenting into individual clumps. If a gas clump is both massive enough and also cool enough (or efficient enough at cooling), it can collapse to give rise to one or more new stars, with a large disk of material encompassing the entire proto-star system.

Over time, that disk will gain instabilities, as small imperfections will gravitationally grow. This carves empty paths in the disk, as these early masses can swallow up the matter in their orbit and gravitationally influence the other masses around them. This leads to a chaotic scenario, where a combination of mergers, gravitational migration, ejection, and additional heating from the central star(s) eventually boil away the remaining matter. After a few tens of millions of years, its all over, and a newly-formed solar system will emerge.

The Solar System formed from a cloud of gas, which gave rise to a proto-star, a proto-planetary ... [+] disk, and eventually the seeds of what would become planets. The crowning achievement of our own Solar System's history is the creation and formation of Earth exactly as we have it today, which may not have been as special a cosmic rarity as once thought.

Typically, there are a few features that most solar systems have in common. They usually wind up possessing:

Before we began finding planets around other stars, we had speculated that there was some overarching reason why the planets in our Solar System were distributed as they were: with rocky worlds close to the central star, gas giants far from the central star, and an asteroid belt between them. Now that weve identified thousands of stars with planetary systems around them, and characterized many of those planets by mass, radius, and orbital period, we know that solar systems come in an enormous variety of configurations, and ours is only one example of whats possible.

Today, we know of over 4,000 confirmed exoplanets, with more than 2,500 of those found in the Kepler ... [+] data. These planets range in size from larger than Jupiter to smaller than Earth. Yet because of the limitations on the size of Kepler and the duration of the mission, the majority of planets are very hot and close to their star, and are biased towards planets that are larger than Earth and closer to their Sun than Mercury.

Planets of any mass and radius can be located close to their parent stars. Weve discovered planets smaller than Mercury with very tight orbital periods, completing a revolution around their central star in under a day. Weve also discovered planets many times the mass of Jupiter that orbit their central stars in just a few days or even less: the hot Jupiters of the galaxy. And, of course, the most common type of world we found mind you, because those are the worlds that our planet-finding techniques are most sensitive to are the so-called super-Earths, which range from about two to ten Earth masses.

Its kind of unfortunate that we were so quick to give them such an ambitious name like super-Earth, because theres an assumption encoded in that name that theyre somewhat Earth-like. But we have to be very, very careful with that assumption. While it may be a tantalizing possibility to consider that there are plenty of planets out there that are a bit larger than Earth that offer similar conditions to our world, thats something we have to examine in detail: both observationally and theoretically.

A schematic of a protoplanetary disk, showing the Soot and Frost Lines. For a star like the Sun, ... [+] estimates put the Frost Line at somewhere around three times the initial Earth-Sun distance, while the Soot Line is significantly further in. The exact locations of these lines in our Solar System's past is hard to pin down.

In theory, the way planet formation works is that it starts off as a gradual process, and then will undergo runaway growth once certain conditions are met. Planets should begin forming from these gravitational imperfections in a protoplanetary disk, growing slowly by attracting the matter around them. Initially, this will be a combination of very dense, metallic material, along with the mantle-like rocky material that makes up most of the material found today in the Kuiper belt. Over time, the denser (metallic) material will sink to the center, forming a core, while the less-dense (rocky) material will float atop it.

Once a certain mass threshold is reached, however, the third ingredient the volatile gases and ices scattered throughout the newly-forming solar system will start to matter for these worlds as well. As long as the mass remains below a certain threshold, the radiation from the nearby star(s) will hit these easily-boiled gases and hit them with enough energy that theyll escape from the planet in question. But rise above that threshold, and even the ultraviolet radiation and solar wind particles emitted from the star(s) within the Solar System wont be able to kick those light atoms and molecules away.

A cutaway of Jupiters interior. If all the atmospheric layers were stripped away, the core would ... [+] appear to be a rocky super-Earth, but would in fact be an exposed planetary core. Planets that formed with fewer heavy elements can be a lot larger and less dense than Jupiter, but once you cross a certain mass threshold, you'll inevitably hang onto a hydrogen/helium envelope.

The big question, of course, is how massive you have to be before you can start hanging onto an envelope of gases that are easy to boil away, and it mostly depends on four factors:

The more massive and more compact your planet is, the harder it is to achieve escape velocity. The hotter your nearest star is, the greater the amount of energy that incoming photons and solar wind particles have for kicking those volatiles away. And the closer to the star a planet is, the greater the flux of radiation and solar wind it receives, making it more difficult to hang onto those volatile atmospheric particles.

We know, from our own Solar System, that if youre too low in mass and too close to the Sun, youll lose the entirety of your atmosphere; this happened to Mercury. We know that if youre low in mass and dont have some sort of protection, like Mars, youll lose your atmosphere as well, but it will take some time. Based on the geology of Mars, it had a watery past for at least a billion years before it lost the overwhelming majority of its atmosphere.

The Mars Opportunity Rover discovered the 'Martian blueberries' shown here: hematite spheres that ... [+] are occasionally found fused together. This should be impossible unless they formed in an aqueous environment. Dried-up riverbeds, reservoirs of subsurface ice, polar caps, clouds, and sedimentary rock all point to a watery past on Mars.

On the other hand, you can imagine that if you brought any planet close enough to the Sun like Neptune, Saturn, or even Jupiter that unrelenting source of heat and particles could be efficient enough to strip even these giant planets of their gas.

What we expect then, theoretically, is that most planets will remain rocky so long as their mass remains below a certain value. Raise their mass beyond a particular threshold, and theyll be able to start holding onto volatiles: very light gases like hydrogen and helium. Gather enough total mass together in one place, and that planet will start growing much more rapidly than the others around it, like a cosmic vacuum cleaner clearing out the material from anywhere in proximity to its orbit. With so much mass in one place, the very atoms inside that planet will start to compress; this gravitational self-compression should create a new population of gas giant planets. And if that mass gets too large, rising above another critical threshold, it will ignite nuclear fusion in its core, transitioning from a planet to a full-fledged star.

Sure, there will be outliers: planets of very high or low-density, planets very very close to their parent star, planets that has thick atmospheres that later boiled away, and planets that have migrated to new positions in their orbit. But when we measure the masses and radii of the planets out there, we expect that there should only be a few major classes.

The mass-radius relation between the objects we've discovered around other stars shows a population ... [+] of four separate categories: terrestrial worlds like Earth, worlds with large gas envelopes like Neptune, worlds with self-compression like Jupiter, and full-fledged stars. Note that the idea of a 'super-Earth' is unsupported by the data.

This categorization was first accomplished only a few years ago by the research duo of Chen and Kipping, who published their groundbreaking work in 2016. In one of the most influential studies in the history of exoplanet science, they showed that there are, in fact, four populations of planet out there:

The important realization that we had in the aftermath of this work, which was the decisive observational study that brought real data to the theoretical conjectures that dominated the field, is that we observe a real transition between terrestrial-like worlds (like Earth) and gaseous worlds (like Neptune) at much lower masses than most people expected: just about double the mass of Earth.

Many illustrations show a comparison between Earth (L) and super-Earths (R) like they're similar. ... [+] They cannot be, as a world that's more than about ~30% larger than Earth will be more like a mini-Neptune, with a large volatile envelope of gases, unless it's close enough to its parent star to transition to become an exposed planetary core instead.

For a comparable density to our planet (a little over ~6 g/cm3), that means a planet can only have about a ~30% larger radius than ours does and still be rocky. Beyond that, it will have a substantial envelope of volatile gases around it, with thousands to millions of times the atmospheric pressure of Earth at its rocky surface. Theres a little variation expected here, as denser planets can achieve higher masses (and less-dense planets might achieve larger radii) and still be rocky, but the only outliers expected are planets so close to their parent star that their volatiles have boiled away.

In an exciting first, an ultra-short-period planet was found with NASAs TESS, and not only is it very old coming in at 10 billion years of age, or more than double the age of our Solar System but the innermost planet is precisely consistent with one of these boiled-away volatile planets weve been expecting. With 3.2 times the mass of Earth and 1.45 times our planet's radius, it completes a revolution around its star in just 10.5 hours. The other worlds are definitively in the Neptune-like category, but this terrestrial, significantly larger-than-Earth world should only exist very close to its parent star.

The exoplanet TOI-561b, the closest planet to the star TOI-561 observed by NASA's TESS, has at least ... [+] two other planetary companions that are farther out. While those other worlds are consistent with being mini-Neptunes, with large volatile envelopes, this world is likely an exposed planetary core, completing an orbit in just 10.5 hours.

Although its fascinating to know that rocky planets and hence, possibly life existed so long ago, it would be absolutely foolhardy to go looking for life on the worlds that we call super-Earths. Once you get to be about twice as massive as Earth, or just about 25-30% larger in radius than our planet, youre no longer rocky with only a thin atmosphere, but are overwhelmingly likely to be Neptune-like, with a full fledged large envelope of hydrogen, helium, and other light gases.

Unless youre close enough to a star to boil your entire atmosphere away, leaving only an exposed planetary core, these worlds that weve called super-Earths for years are more like mini-Neptunes, or as astronomer Jessie Christiansen poetically calls them, Neptinis. If you want to colonize another planet, look for one with a surface you can land on. That means, unless youve got your sights set on a boiled-off planetary core, to steer clear of the super-Earths. Even if you make it down to the surface, you wont last long under those crushing atmospheric conditions!

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This Is Why You Must Never Try And Colonize A Super-Earth Planet - Forbes

Cast your mind back to 2017, and you might remember the arrival of a Wipeout-clone called Redout. It strutted in with little fanfare, and we were pretty savage in our review of it: the promising experience quickly dwindles to nothing more than a headache inducing lightshow, said our reviewer. It tumbled out of our mind faster than you could say bring back F-Zero.

Fast-forward to 2021, and you can imagine our bemusement to find Redout surfacing again. Its not a game that really deserved a sequel, but then we took a look at the trailer and were taken slightly aback. Rather than another go at bringing Wipeout to console, this was taking aim at a different 90s stalwart: Starfox.

Redout: Space Assault is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Switch and PC.

Its all there: the over-the-chassis viewpoint, the barrel rolls, the wingmen, the chatting over the intercom and the wild, bigger-than-your-screen bosses. We half-expected Peppy to start buzzing in over the speaker. The thing is, while it may be an homage, its a brand of game that we havent played in a long, long while, and we are more than a little up for taking it for a spin again.

Its certainly having a bold go at creating its own universe. You play as Leon Barnett, a maverick fighter pilot (arent they all?) of the Poseidon Security Forces. You are in control of a Super Orbital Recon Fighter, and your job is to protect and escort the various settlers who are looking to make a life on Mars, as Earth has become all but inhospitable. The trouble is that pirates and other malcontents are eager for spoils, and its up to you to take them down.

Redout: Space Assault has a couple of things going for it that might push it further away from the Starfox comparisons. For one, its porting in Redouts penchant for super-fast gameplay. For all its great moments, Starfox was never particularly speedy as a game, so this might make for an interesting diversion. You also get to find cards in battle, which can be used to unlock boosts for your fighter. Theres a promise that you will become so overpowered that you can take on destroyers and entire fleets, which sounds fun.

If theres one thing its missing, its multiplayer. Theres no mention of it in press materials, and the emphasis is on the single player campaign. Its not a dealbreaker for a game of this type, but coming off the back of STAR WARS Squadrons, it feels a hell of a miss.

Features include:

Redout: Space Assault is out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S and starts at 8.39 from the Xbox Store. Its also out on PS4, PS5, Switch and PC through Steam. Keep an eye out for our full review its coming soon.

Game Description:

THE NEXT GENERATION OF ARCADE SPACE SHOOTERS IS HERE Redout: Space Assault puts you in control of a Super Orbital Recon Fighter during the 2395 Colonization of Mars: dive in the fastest, most epic and exciting arcade space battle you can experience. Outsmart, outmaneuver, overpower, outclass your opponents in lightning-fast, adrenaline-inducing single-player space combat. You play as Leon Barret, ace fighter pilot of the Poseidon Security Forces. Here at Poseidon Corp., we are trying to pave the way for the colonization of Mars, as mankind is struggling for survival, split between a depleted hot Earth and a cold, claustrophobic Lunar colony. Your job is to maintain order by eradicating rebels and space pirates, facilitate our scientists research while keeping them safe, and protect all our personnel from the numerous external threats. Dive down into gigantic asteroid mining plants, shoot down Rebel drones and fighters, roll left and right avoiding enemy fire, unleash impossibly powerful missile volleys, but also race against stray pilots and space scavengers at breakneck speed for the sheer thrill of it. By completing missions you will unlock Cards and Tokens to upgrade your fighters Hull, Shields, Energy Weapons and Missiles until you are able to go up against massive Capital Ships and single-handedly shift the tide of the war. In an interplanetary struggle where nobody is good or bad, you will experience Leon rising through the ranks, the meaning of necessary evil, the cost of integrity and ultimately, what it means to take a stand.

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Redout: Space Assault brings the nostalgic joys of Starfox to Xbox One, Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Switch and PC - TheXboxHub

Infectious foreign direct investment (FDI) fell by 42% globally by 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCDAT) announced on Sunday, which does not predict a recovery before 2022.

Foreign investment, which totaled $ 1.5 billion (2 1.2 billion) in 2019, fell to $ 859 billion (70 706 billion) last year, down from at least 30% in 2009 during the global financial crisis.

This year, the company maintains earlier forecasts of a 5% to 10% drop in foreign investment, underlining James John, Director of Companies and UNCTADs Investments, at a press conference to present these data.

Foreign direct investment is likely to recover in a U format, which is slower than foreign trade and GDP. [produto interno bruto] Globally, the V is expected to recover, as international investment plans are reacting somewhat too late to the crisis.

The contraction of foreign direct investment, especially in developed countries, has fallen to 69% its worst in 25 years and in developing economies to fall to only 12%.

This random trend has increased the share of investment in developing countries to 72% worldwide ($ 616 billion or 50 506 billion), the highest rate ever.

According to the regions, the European Union (EU) is one of the worst-hit areas, down about 70% to a total of $ 110 billion (90 90 billion).

Of the 27 EU economies, 17 foreign investment fell, including in Germany, Austria, France and Italy, while in Sweden it doubled and in Spain it grew by 52%, John said.

In the Spanish case, the director of companies and investments at UNCDAT said that this was due to the fact that Spanish companies were bought by a large number of foreign competitors.

An example of this is the acquisition of 86% of Operator Masma (owner of Portuguese operator Novo) by a consortium of US funds Providence, KKR and Sinven for $ 2800 million (00 2300 million).

Latin America was the growing region most affected by the health crisis in terms of investment, as FDI inflows fell by 37% to $ 101 billion (83 83 billion) by 2020, according to John.

In Brazil, foreign investment fell by 46% and in Peru by 76%. Colombia is down 49%, Argentina foreign direct investment is down 47% and Chile is down 21%.

In this region, Mexico is the country that recorded the lowest fall in foreign direct investment at 8%.

In Africa, the fall in foreign direct investment was 18% lower, while Asia was the best-resisting region, down only 4% last year, more than half of foreign investment ($ 476 billion). Or 39 391 billion).

China is also one of the few major economies to grow by 2020-23%, even increasing its investment by 4% to $ 163 billion (4 134 billion) compared to 2019.

This was due, among other factors, to policies that supported the entry of foreign capital recognized after imprisonment, which lasted less than other latitudes in this country.

In India, investment grew by 17% to US $ 57 billion ($ 46 billion), with the country benefiting from capital inflows into the digital economy.

In the United States, the index fell 49% to $ 134 billion ($ 110 billion), hit by a drop in investments by key partners such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

Investments Greenfield [primeira entrada de uma empresa num pas estrangeiro]This is a good indicator of future prospects, which totaled $ 547 billion (44 449 billion) last year, down one-third (35%) compared to 2019.

John concluded this year that investors will be cautious, indicating that the gradual recovery of the indicator depends on factors such as vaccination campaigns, new waves of Govt-19, state crisis recovery plans and the current weak situation. Large emerging markets.

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Global foreign investment falls by 42% | Govit-19 - haveeruonline