Category Archives: Moon Colonization

Kim Su-jeong

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.Attacking opponents by framing them as pro-Japanese is back in fashion. The past administration mustered support in this way. Former president Moon Jae-in claimed that eradicating pro-Japanese roots in Korea was long overdue. His senior secretary for civil affairs called on the public to choose between being pro-Japanese and patriotism.

The government under former president Moon revoked an inter-government agreement on compensations for former wartime sex slaves, and local governments under heads aligned to the Democratic Party (DP) championed a boycott on Japanese products following the Supreme Courts ruling on wartime forced labor. Loyalists to the DP accused a number of individuals and institutions of being associated with Japan even when one of its lawmakers was accused of embezzling donations for the survivors of sexual abuse by the imperial Japanese military.

This time, DP Chairman Lee Jae-myung is at the forefront of the anti-Japanese campaign. He described the joint South Korea-U.S.-Japan maritime drill to counter missile provocations from North Korea as an extremely pro-Japanese act and a defense disaster.

Reminding the public of President Yoon Suk-yeols remarks that the Japan Self-Defense Forces could be invited into the Korean Peninsula in case of contingency, Lee wondered why the tripartite joint drill was being conducted near the Dokdo islets, which Japan claims as its territory, and why the government drew the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force to the sea despite ongoing Japanese curbs on certain key exports to Korea. After DP Rep. Ahn Gyu-baek shared the confidential military location of the joint drill on social media with expression of being dismayed by the move, DP members are uniting fast.

From the reasoning, the arrival of three Japanese warships for a tripartite military drill in 2007 under former liberal president Roh Moo-hyun, the promise by Moon to reinforce South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation on security in his summit with U.S. president Donald Trump in Washington in the summer of 2017, and the joint statement among Moon, Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following the G20 meeting in Germany also should be deemed pro-Japanese.

It was liberal president Kim Dae-jung who promised in 1998 comprehensive cooperation with Japan in politics, security and economy as well as opening to Japanese pop culture. Using the same reasoning, why is Seoul staying so passive to Beijing, which has yet to lift the discrimination on Korean exports of goods and services since Koreas deployment of the U.S. Thaad missile defense system? But the DP stays mum to the claims that those practices also took place under former liberal presidents Roh and Moon.

To DP loyalists, anti-Japanese still sells. Two generations have passed since liberation from Japanese colonization. The Cold War aspect has reemerged in a more complicated form. The United States and China are warring over trade and technology. Since the Russian war with Ukraine, the authoritarian regimes are pitted more overtly against free democracy. Energy and global supply chains have been rattled. China, Russia and North Korea have not changed since the Korean War.

Distinguishing between friends and foes is essential for national security. It is a judgment to determine who shares the values of free democracy, market economy and human rights and who threatens our territory, sovereignty and history. Who we accompany for the present and future of national security and prosperity is a choice.

In his memoir, former national security advisor Chun Young-woo said that a past specter prevails over the present and future of Korea and that the South Korea-Japan relationship will only be normalized when national sentiment does not overwhelm national interests to call for future-oriented vision and practical diplomacy from the leader. Vietnam has turned to its past war enemy the U.S. to stop the overbearing influence of China. Poland and France support their war enemy Germany building up its defense capabilities after Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The DP probably fears the rise of ultra-right forces in Japan when the country invites Japanese warships to its waters. But security cooperation among Korea, the United States and Japan are essential in case of a nuclear missile attack from North Korea. Seven rear bases for the U.N. Combined Forces to back South Korea in case of emergency are all based in Japan.

While I was in university, movement for liberation for the Korean people swept the campus. Although there had been many pro-Japanese figures in the regime under North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and many independent fighters had been purged later in North Korea activists in South Korea attacked the Syngman Rhee administration for being pro-Japan. An argument for rooting out the legacy of the pro-Japanese is in line with a denial of the foundation of South Korea and support for the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. Will the debate over being pro-Japan in the South stop when relationship between North Korea and Japan improves? DP Chairman Lee demanded the government apologize and promise not to conduct a tripartite military exercise. But who would benefit from such a promise?

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Who's the enemy here? - The Korea JoongAng Daily

Avatar premiered in 2009 to massive successes both critically and at the box office. The epic science fiction film is written and directed by the world-class director James Cameron. You may know him from his other films such as Titanic, or the Terminator series.

Although Cameron finished the script for Avatar in 1994 (before he even began to film Titanic (1997)), he felt that the necessary technology for the creation of an entirely new world on screen was not available yet. The work on the fictional language in the film, Navi began almost a decade later in 2005. Finally, in 2006 the screenplay was finished and production began on one of the most expensive masterpieces ever produced. Estimates for the filming cost due to groundbreaking revolutionary steps in digital design, computer-generated imaging, and an array of new visual effects have reached numbers upwards of 280-310 million dollars and another 150 million for promotion and marketing for the film.

All of the new technology paid off. The film was critically acclaimed as a world-class performance in visual arts as well as on the screen. Critics and regular viewers alike agreed the film was nothing like anything that had come before and it showed in the box office. To this day it holds the worldwide box office record at 2.878 billion dollars. Thats a billion with a b. With its re-release in theaters this past month it is speculated that the film will end up breaking the 3 billion dollar mark.

I sat down to write this article as a refresher on the success, story, and shock of Avatar and the upcoming Avatar 2. Almost 15 years after the box office hit that was Avatar the world was shocked with the news that Avatar is back and not only for a single sequel but a trilogy (coming ~2024)

So, what happened in the first one and what can the viewer expect in the second?

The film is set in the mid-22nd century as humans begin to colonize new planets looking for natural resources to mine to support their growing population. The mineral they are looking for unobtanium ironic. However, this colonization poses a particularly great risk to the native population of the moon Pandora. The film is titled Avatar because it is the form the human population takes on to communicate with the native population. Characterized by their tall, strikingly blue skin color and braided locks, the human population can literally walk in the Navis shoes down to their very bodies. The film follows a soldier that is transformed into one of these Avatars and falls in love with the native populations culture and people and realizes he must do whatever it takes to defend their land.

Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. The films success also led to electronics manufacturers releasing 3D televisions and caused 3D films to increase in popularity.

When speaking to a fellow student this week about the upcoming release this is what he had to say.

Im so excited to see it, I still remember the feeling I had when I saw the original avatar for the first time. I cant even begin to imagine what James Cameron has up his sleeve for this one

Jack Radomski

I know many students feel this way as Avatar was well ahead of its time. With the prevalence of science fiction films in the past few years such as Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, and Dune we are all looking forward to what masterpiece James Cameron will follow up the original Avatar with.

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Avatar: Where We Were and Where We're at The Minnesota Republic - Kent Kaiser

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

Samuel Beckett in an interview with Tom Driver,Columbia University Forum, 1961

Time is a socio-technological system with profound organizing qualities. It feels, these days, exceedingly oppressive. Theres never enough time! For anything. Calendars are the earliest containing device with the purpose of determining a social order; the history of the Roman calendar reveals the role of international and national politics that play out across each new temporal infrastructure. Ours have been designed through the global proclamation of Greenwich Mean Time in 1884 by colonial empires, the apocalyptic anxiety provocations of the doomsday clock established in 1947, the insistent instant-ness of digital time since the 1970s exacerbated by strings of video chat meetings of the last couple years, and the frenetic branding of our social/professional lives demanded by transnational corporate technologys mediation of everyone and everything, all the time. Its a mess.

Temporal orders produce certain affects and engagements, ideas and beliefs. Now, we find ourselves living time across different scales in different contexts, from our own physiological cycles to overnight software updates to the long term consequences of ecological well-being. The scholar Achille Membe succinctly articulates how the layering of time has become more explicit of late:

In layered time, we can get confused about which scale is leading, guiding, and why. We often dont think about time, however, until something goes wrong. As Legacy Russell writes in Glitch Feminism (2020), A glitch is an error, a mistake, a failure to function. Within technoculture, a glitch is part of machinic anxiety, an indicator of something having gone wrong. As she continues across the book, the glitch therefore acts as a form of resistance. Im suggesting it can also disrupt the gasping sense of too much, too soon, too late of time. Heres the thing. No authoritative regime is going to suddenly grant any of us more time. To hope for more time is even, perhaps, to default again into capitalist excess. This is our time. Glitching it is a punk move to assert your own pace and engage alternatives.

Glitching produces a sense of wrongness that may be productive to countering hegemonic orders. We accept the ordering that time projects, until seeing it altered, manipulated, reset allows us to consider how our time might be conceived of differently. Artists formalize the cultural mess in their jabs at time and remind us to question what we mindlessly accept as the order of things.

In fall 2020, Sean Kelly Gallery presented the exhibition Existential Time by Joseph Kosuth, a canonical figure of conceptual art who frequently works with language, meaning, philosophy, and here brought our attention to temporality. Pandemic alienation made the show all too prescient. In contrast to many of Kosuths installations where words and objects intertwine, the works in Existential Time felt startlingly distinct. The eight quotes about time were spaced along the long gallery wall and none of the glow from the white neon lettering overlapped. That separation invited a slow pace, a meditative contemplation, while on the opposite wall, each 16 clock was stuffed with a similar quote and the hands spun at various rates. The rapid cycling disrupted a certain kind of self-seriousness that conceptual art can sometimes evoke and tempered the privileged pretentiousness of thinking about time in such philosophical terms. Standing between the two, I could laugh at my own effort to establish one time for all things. Time varies according to the moment.

As early as 1965, Kosuth was disrupting any stable notion of time with Clock (One and Five), English/Latin Version. The five-part work presented an object, its copy, and textual definitions: a photograph of a clock in proportion to the actual clock placed next to it, and three texts on time, machination/machine/machinery, and object seemingly photocopied and enlarged out of an English/Latin dictionary. The work doesnt evoke time-based mediatypically delimited to video, film, slide, audio, or computer technologiesbut as conceptual art, its engagement with temporal representations and infrastructures aligns it.

Kosuths photograph of the clock is an indexical appeal later expanded upon by Christian Marclay in The Clock (2010), a wonderful 24 hour film excerpting displays of clocks from cinema for each moment of the day. The media work makes evident the persistent representation of time in our lives, especially screen based lives, and its organizational influence. Time looms every minute of the day, with drives to be ever more productive, professionally and even personally. The notion of free time aims to distinguish it from the constant assignment of labor, except now we fill it with self-enhancing, self-improving labor. Its never enough.

Contemporaneity is inherently an issue of time, of being with time. Typically assigned the same starting period of the 1960s, time-based media arts come to the fore with contemporary art. And yet, so was it to be modern, from the Latin modo just now. It is worth noting that this compulsion to be present appears as a guiding concept at the end of the Victorian periods strictures to be timely. This modernity, this being here now, would however launch a constant disruption of that order.

Man Rays Object to be Destroyed (Objet dtruire) (1922-3) is a metronome with a photograph of an eye on the pendulum. He would set it to go faster and faster. One day its silence irritated him and he smashed it. In 1933, he remade it but it was lost in the exigencies of World War II. A reproduction in 1958 got a new title: Indestructible Object (1933). There is no destroying what captures the cultural imagination, be it object or a temporal order, even if both as physical artifacts might be smashed, lost, exploded, or eliminated. We can bring criticality to their influence, however, and glitch what doesnt work for us.

Time is a knowledge regime and industrial clock time was integral to colonization. Missionaries were donated clocks by wealthy patrons to ensure that people around the world would adopt and conform to the Protestant (and capitalist) virtues of timeliness, the organizing principle behind industrial labor. Charlie Chaplin opens Modern Times (1936) with a clock to launch his somewhat comical (depending on your perspective) depiction of automations requirement of punctuality, the increase in speed with any form of success, and the bodys inability to match progressive machine time.

Michael Mandiberg appropriated Chaplins classic by hiring gig workers from Fiverr to reproduce scenes for Postmodern Times (2017). The global site for one-off jobs introduces an international element into this film and a reminder that industrys response to desiring an inexhaustive labor force was to expand around the world for a 24hour labor force. By splicing scenes together, the film also enacts the cut and paste exactitude that is crucial to film as a medium and made me consider the fracturing of thought I can accept due to the cut and paste nature of writing now.

In 1970, UNIX time provided a centralized international standard for digital timekeeping that organizes all computers when they come online, except its doomed to fail. January 19, 2038 will be a new Y2K as UNIX time uses a 32 bit integer system that can't compute past a set number of seconds since the launch on January 1, 1970. I have argued elsewhere how digital time, presented in the Pulsar Time Computer wristwatch that launched in 1972, abandons duration for the instant and so atomizes our experience contributing to an alienated and hyper-individualist culture. Media culture emerged amidst that tension between centralized hierarchies and atomized individuals, and the artists of this period did wonders to showcase the effects we now decry.

Nam Jun Paiks T.V. Clock (1963/1981) presented an electric line across 24 televisions, each screen representing one hour of the day, in an allusion to the global technocratic connectivity enabled by this device even before the global broadcasts of Our World (1967) or the moon landing (1969). Lynda Benglis interacts with a prerecorded image of herself in Now (1973), dissolving the audiences ability to distinguish between the real and the virtual, which ironically occurs despite the fact that both are mediated. To be now, to be present, to be current is to be mediated. Even in person, we carry with us the mediated encounters of our shared histories. The static effects in color and sound of Benglis's work produce that glitch effect that problematizes the real we want to ascribe to the virtual and invokes the real that is in the virtual anyway. Its remarkable to think that Benglis made this work 50 years ago.

The writer Jeremy Rifkin wrote in 1987 about the impact of computer programs in Time Wars, arguing that astronomical timekeeping introduced the notion of cycles, mechanical timekeeping produced the concept of fixed, linear time, and computers unraveled that for associative relations, It is a stepchild of psychological consciousness, just as the concept of linear time was a stepchild of historical consciousness. Mandibergs Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance) (2016-7) includes the line I worked late, got caught in loops, and had a meltdown; zero progress, but no way to let go which speaks to the free associative wandering that the internet encourages with hyperlinks from which we force ourselves to return to the original point. How many have bemoaned lost time in a YouTube rabbit hole. Yes, it was designed that way. The quote also points to the cultural value of the looping aesthetic found in some digital art.

The LA-based artist Raphael Arar produced a sculpture called Capitalist Clock (2022) that uses a punch card metaphor for the labor we produce through our activity on social media sites. A live search pulls idioms including "time well spent," "serve time," "time is money," "invest time," "get time off," "borrowed time," "free time," "save time," "a waste of time," "no time to lose," "best use of time" to put it into a queue. It's displayed on the LCD screen and subsequently punched in by the solenoid, registering the labor of the tweeter for the data driven economy of social media. All the components are made visible to counter the opacity of tech capitalisms black boxes. Its a necessary reminder for NFT-Twitter whose quasi-anarchic stance against federal bank systems and global capitalism while shilling their works on this data capitalist platform is, at best, ironic.

Now, I see digital artists working with blockchain producing works about a variety of temporal orders in no small part because that emergent technology introduces and establishes an entirely new system of time, eloquently described by the artist Anna Ridler. These artists are glitching this temporal order by introducing other experiences of time. They reinstate corporal somatic time (Lauren Lee McCarthys Good Night 2022), transform the three months of corporate dividend quarters into a gift economy (Sara Friend, Lifeforms 2022), remember the persistent cycle of even obsolescent satellite surveillance (Xin Liu, Atlas 2022), and more. They compelled my musings on these times in which we live.

The current Feral File exhibition curated by Julia Kaganskiy, Harbingers, came out of conversations with artists Pinar Yoldas and Zach Blas. All were interested in the idea of having works disintegrate over time in opposition to the insistent speculation within the NFT market; this degeneration is a recurring theme that artists have been exploring, also perhaps due to the rhetoric of immutability that attaches to blockchains temporal ordering. Artist and coder Sage Jenson produced a custom JavaScript shader that progressively glitches the five participating artists works based on their respective blockchain transaction data. This disintegration helps unpack the ideologic notions surrounding finality in blockchain: on one hand, it may safeguard economic transactions but that urge to have something finalized, immutable, unchanging creates an aspiration for permanence that undermines the necessary cycles of change and review for democratic participatory engagement. New technologies create new relational situations that alter the social. Making sense of multiple temporal orders contributes to the sense that life is very messy, and that perhaps it once wasntback before we were thinking about it.

Shu Lea Cheang, LES MUTANTS, #2. Video (color, sound), 1920 1080 pixels. 1 minute, loop. Edition of 40, 1AP.

In an interview with The Observer, Kosuth noted how Existential Time "is a reflection on how we make meaning with the experience of our lives. The tension between the temporal disordering caused by quarantining alongside our newly zoom-ified connectivity was perfectly present in that exhibit. Making meaning has always been hard but it has been a notably existential period for many.

To be contemporary is to be with these times, convoluted as they are. The existentialist Camus wrote amidst the disorder of World War II in 1942 that the absurdist is one who is not apart from time. To be here now demands acceptance of our own absurd position. To avoid the oversimplifications of optimism or pessimism, of moral grandstanding or ends-justifying-the-means solutionism requires glitching hegemonic orders, including temporal systems. Some artists working with time-based media have a particular call to do this: to glitch, to move out of tunethe root meaning of absurd, to mobilize instead their own rhythm. But, we can all find ways to glitch the temporal orders that subsume us. The times perhaps even call for it.

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Glitching Time and Time-Based Media The Brooklyn Rail - Brooklyn Rail

Just a few days ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the iconic Toronto Sign has a new look.

At an event held today at Nathan Phillips Square, City of Toronto officials unveiled Rekindle a new wrap on the Toronto Sign created by Canadian-Indigenous artist, Joseph Sagaj, in recognition of UNESCOs International Decade of Indigenous Languages. City officials were joined by Sagaj, Elder Dorothy Peters, and 14-year-old Anishinabe singer and musician, Zeegwon Shilling, amongst others.

In a news release, the City provides some additional context for the new wrap.

The City recognizes the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, focusing on the preservation, revitalization and promotion of Indigenous languages. In Canada, more than 70 Indigenous languages are spoken. Worldwide, ongoing impacts of colonization threaten Indigenous languages. On Turtle Island (North America), some Indigenous languages are close to extinction, some are at a vulnerable stage and some nations have only a handful of people that hold and speak the language.

As such, Rekindle draws attention to how languages are vital to identity, voice and expression and pays tribute to the rights of Indigenous language speakers worldwide.

Sagajs design was selected in May by a community jury and will remain on the Toronto Sign until the fall of 2023. Rekindle is just a taste of his work he has been commissioned for numerous private and public logos, murals, illustrations, and painting projects over the course of his career and much of what he creates is dedicated to sharing his Anishinaabe ancestry and heritage through art.

Language is the essence and spirit of my identity and culture. However, it is not exclusive to the spoken word in the ways of storytelling I grew up hearing and speaking in my community, says Sagaj. In my later years, I realized that expression and voice are also reflected in art, poetry, song, dance, and storytelling through various mediums and genres. Language is also present in ceremonies; the spirit is expressed by way of the heart and its lifeways.

My art renderings and what is featured here in the TORONTO sign is a glimpse of expressions of these ways and reflection of values. From its presentations of syllabics, beaded designs, medicine berries, sacred scrolls, song, dance, and teachings; the seven-pointed star system of clans and governance to the 28-day, 13-moon calendar cycle; of the earth, air, water, to the sky world; of life, the androgynous viewing the vast universe, the poem, to the children, youth, young men, and women and the wisdom of our Elders and Knowledge Holders, are the significance of our traditions, heritage, and world view.

The Toronto Sign is frequently used to commemorate important persons and causes. Prior to today, the sign featured artwork by Danilo Deluxo McCallum honouring the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent and depicting portraits of African-Canadians.

Zakiya is a staff writer with STOREYS. Previously, she has reported on real estate for Post City Magazines, Apartment Therapy, and Curbed. She also writes a quarterly series for a Canadian design publication.

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New Artwork on the Toronto Sign Pays Tribute to the Rights of Indigenous Language Speakers Worldwide - Storeys

From cities in the sky to robot butlers, futuristic visions fill the history ofPopSci. In theAre we there yet?column we check in on progress towards our most ambitious promises. Read the series and explore all our 150th anniversary coveragehere.

Lately, all eyes are turned towards the moon. NASA has another launch attempt tentatively scheduled next week for the highly-anticipated Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to orbit Earths satellite, one of the first steps to set up an outpost on the lunar surface. But humansand science fiction writershave long imagined a moon base, one that would be a fixture of future deep space exploration. About five years before Sputnik and 17 years before the Apollo missions, the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, Arthur C. Clarke, penned a story for the 1952 April issue of Popular Science describing what he thought a settlement on the moon could look like. Clarke, who would go on to write 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, envisioned novel off-Earth systems, including spacesuits that would resemble suits of armor, glass-domed hydroponic farms, water mining and oxygen extraction for fuel, igloo-shaped huts, and even railways.

The human race is remarkably fortunate in having so near at hand a full-sized world with which to experiment, Clarke wrote. Before we aim at the planets, we will have had a chance of perfecting our techniques on our satellite.

Since Clarkes detailed moon base musings, PopSci has frequently covered the latest prospects in lunar stations, yet the last time anyone even set foot on the moon was December 1972. Despite past false starts, like the Constellation Program in the early 2000s, NASAs Artemis program aims to change moon base calculus. This time, experts say that the airand attitudesurrounding NASAs latest bid for the moon is charged with a different kind of determination.

You can talk to anyone in the [space] community, says Adrienne Dove, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. You can talk to the folks who have been around for 50 years, or the new folks, but it just feels real this time. Doves optimism doesnt just come from the Artemis 1 rocket poised for liftoff at Kennedy Space Center. She sees myriad differentiating factors this time, including the collaboration between private companies and NASA, the growing international support for the space governance framework, the Artemis Accords, and the competition from rival nations like China and Russia to stake out a lunar presence. Perhaps one of the biggest arguments from moon base supporters is the need for a stepping stone to send humans even deeper into space. We want to learn how to live on the moon so we can go to Mars, Dove says.

[Related: How Tiangong station will make China a force in the space race]

Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut who returned to Earth in March 2022 after spending a US record-breaking 355 consecutive days on the International Space Station (ISS), underscores the opportunity. Weve got this planetary object, the moon, not too far away. And we can buy down the huge risk of going to Mars by learning how to live for long durations on another planetary object thats relatively close.

Ever since Sputnik made its debut as the first artificial satellite in 1957, the Soviet Union deployed several short-lived space stations; NASAs Apollo Missions enabled humans to walk on the moon; NASAs space shuttle fleet (now retired) flew 135 missions; the ISS has been orbiting the Earth for more than two decades; more than 4,500 artificial satellites now sweep through the sky; and a series of private companies, like SpaceX and Blue Origin, have begun launching rockets and delivering payloads into space.

But no moon base.

Thats because exploring the moon is not like exploring the Earth. Besides being 240,000 miles away on a trajectory that requires slicing through dense atmosphere while escaping our planets gravitational grip, and then traversing the vacuum of space, once on the moon, daily temperatures range between 250F during the day and -208F at night. Although there may be water in the form of ice, it will have to be mined and extracted to be useful. The oxygen deprived atmosphere is so thin it cant shield human inhabitants from meteor impacts of all sizes or solar radiation. Theres no source of food. Plus, lunar soil, or regolith, is so fine, sharp, and electrostatically charged, it not only clogs machinery and lungs but can also cut through clothes and flesh.

Its a very hostile environment, says Dove, whose specialty is lunar dust. Shes currently working on multiple lunar missions, like Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS, which will deploy robotic landers to explore the moon in advance of humans arriving on the future crewed Artemis missions. While Dove acknowledges the habitability challenges, shes quick to cite a range of solutions, starting with the initial tent-pitching location: the moons south pole. That region seems to be rich with resources in terms of ice, which can be used as water or as fuel, Dove says. Plus, theres abundant sunlight on mountain peaks, where solar panels could be stationed. She adds that there might be some rare earth elements that can be really useful. Rare earth elementsthere are 17 metals in that categoryare, well, rare on Earth, yet theyre essential to electronics manufacturing. Finding them on the moon would be a boon.

A PopSci story in July 1985 detailed elaborate plans proposed by various space visionaries to colonize the moon and make use of its resources. Among the potential technologies were laboratory and habitat modules, a factory to extract water and oxygen for subsistence and fuel, and mining operations for raw moon mineralsa precious resource that could come in handy and provide income for settlers. While NASA may provide the needed boost to get a moon base going, its the promise of an off-world gold rush for these rare, potentially precious elements that could solidify and expand it.

My hope is that this is just the beginning of a commercial venture on the Moon, Vande Hei says. Hes looking forward to seeing how businesses will find ways to be profitable by making use of resources on the moon. At some point, weve got to be able to travel and not rely on the logistics chain starting from Earth, Vande Hei adds, taking the long view. Weve got to be able to travel places and use the resources.

[Related: Space tourism is on the rise. Can NASA keep up with it?]

And space is lucrative. In 2020, the global space industry generated roughly $370 billion in revenues, a figure based mostly on building rockets and satellites, along with the supporting hardware and software. Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, estimates that the industry could generate $1 trillion in revenue in less than two decades, a growth rate predicted to be driven in no small part by the US militarys new Space Command branch. But those rising numbers mostly reflect economic activity in Earths orbit and what it might take to get set up on the moonbut they do not reflect the potential to begin converting the moon into an economic powerhouse. What happens next is anyones guess. The big dollar signs are one reason, no doubt, that the tech moguls behind private ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing heavily in space now.

The progress towards deeper space traveland potential long-term human colonization on the moon or beyondbegs for larger ethical and moral conversations. Its a little bit Wild West-y, says Dove. Although the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the more recent Artemis Accords strive to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy, according to NASAs website, there are no rules or regulations, for instance, to govern activities like mining or extracting from the moon valuable rare earth elements for private profit. Theres a number of people looking at the policy implications and figuring out how we start putting in place policies and ethics rules before all of this happens, Dove adds. But, if the moon does not cough up its own version of unobtaniumthe priceless element mined in the film Avataror if regulations are too draconian, it will be difficult for a nascent moon-economy to sustain itself before larger and more promising planetary outposts, like Mars, come to fruition and utilize its resources. After all, the building and sustainability costs and effort have been leading obstacles of establishing a moon base ever since the Apollo program spurred interest in more concrete plans.

Doves not really worried that private companies will pull out of the space sectortheres little doubt they will find a way to profit. Rather, she views politics as the moon base programs chief vulnerability. Politics always concerns me with any of these big endeavors, she adds. Not only domestic politics but international politics will be at play. We see that with the ISS.

As a retired military officer who was living on the ISS with Russian cosmonauts when Russia invaded Ukraine, Vande Hei also worries about international conflicts derailing space programs. If we have a world war in Europe, if were just struggling to exist [on Earth], exploring space is not going to be at the top of the priority list. But he also sees a bright side. He views international competitionor a moon base raceas a healthy way to create a sense of urgency. Vande Hei estimates that a moon base is something we could do within [this] generation.

Dove also sees the opportunities that laboratory facilities on the moon could open up for future space researchincluding her own. The moon is very interesting in terms of understanding the history of Earth, she says. I would love to go do science on the moon.

Link:
Is it finally time for a permanent base on the moon? - Popular Science

Following The Young Pope, The New Pope, and The Two Popes, the time has officially come for the Woke Pope. In Viaggio, Gianfranco Rosis fascinating Rorschach test of a documentary, is also something of a Peoples History of Pope Francis, pontiff since 2013, in that it largely consists of television broadcast footage of the man on his sundry global travels, though the filmmaker wisely deigns not to visualize his popular Twitter account. We dont glimpse him from his own subjective point-of-view, as Fernando Meirelles and Jonathan Pryce attempted to show in their version; instead Rosi privileges what the global Roman Catholic membership and also what curious nonbelievers and secular onlookers observethe dignified outer surface. And intriguingly enough, its a fairly flattering picture as one of the worlds oldest, most powerful institutions attempts some crisis PR in front of the contemporary worlds gaze.

Rosi, a documentarian whos cemented a secure following after a decade of critical and industry success, offers light editorializing. He decided to pursue another arguably unnecessary docu-portrait of one of the worlds most documented people after realizing theyd both traversed some of the same ground over the past decade amidst their activist outreachnotably the island of Lampedusa, a flashpoint location in the refugee crisis, which Francis visited in 2013 before Rosi commenced filming Fire at Sea, and then the Middle East, the focus of his 2020 work Notturno, which was accused of providing an overly generalized view of the region after the fall of ISIL. What makes In Viaggio a valuable (as opposed to another negligible) study of the Pope is Rosis deft understanding of this subject, and his openness for the audience to decide what to make of all his rhetoric.

And to return to what can reductively be called wokeness: whats striking in all of Franciss words to his cross-continental flock is the absence of anything religiose; rather, he stands regally at his pulpit decrying under-regulated capitalism, harsh border policies, intolerance, and discrimination while promoting tolerance, inter-faith dialogue, and decolonizationa proud, if mostly inoffensive liberal humanist agenda. He offers variations on this from Havana to Nairobi to Occupied Palestine while also being profusely apologeticif not much more than thatabout the Churchs sex-abuse scandals and its historic role in the colonization of indigenous lands. Rosi really leaves it up to us to be fully persuaded by this or, contrarily, see it as a great illustration of the large gulf between saying and doing, especially where the vastly powerful and oligarchic are concerned.

Franciss nine years as the Catholic Churchs figurehead have seen him take 57 trips across 53 different countries; Rosi sees this dedication to travel as an intellectual and spiritual practice; a reverse pilgrimage, so rather than followers streaming from remote places to the Vatican, the pope himself travels to the people. Paolo Sorrentino, in his adroit HBO series, conceived of a pointed alternative, with St. Peters Square in the Vatican emptied of revelers and the young, Italian-American pope dedicated to a retrograde, authoritarian, and old-fashioned interpretation of the religion.

And what of the potentially short-lived downtown New York vogue for Catholic conversiona return to traditional values, however sincerely we want to interpret that? Though Rosis film might be overlooked by potential viewers as it leaves the comfortable environs of domestic festival showings, its still a greatly artful piece, a visual essay deeply attuned to how Catholicism is evolving in the modern world and how its chief corporeal symbol on Earth can alternately help with his avid faith, or instead hinder us with his lofty, untouchable manner. Which is par for the course as the symbolic, paramount representative of a religionsomething to think about in a week which saw the death of Elizabeth II, the UKs head of state.

In Viaggio premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival.

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Venice Review: In Viaggio is a Fascinating Rorschach Test of the Pope - The Film Stage

There was someone Joel Rivas had in mind when he started Heard, a wellness program for people in the food and beverage industry: himself.

Ive worked in the service industry since I was 17, and for a good few years I struggled with substance abuse, he says. I got clean later on, but it wasnt until the why of my life was addressed that I could really address the addiction part, the mental health issues I had.

Using his background in restaurants and bars along with his experience working in health care business development, Rivas launched his nonprofit, Saint City Culinary Foundation, in San Antonio in 2017, with Heard being his first initiative.

Our industry is full of workers who are wired givers, and chances are they are not filling their cup back up after hours of serving the public, Rivas says. They make $2.13 an hour, plus tips, so they cant afford therapy. A lot of people fill that with other things.

The first few years were slow going. Restaurant workers initially didnt take to the in-person support groups; sometimes Rivas had five to 15 people; other weeks there would be no one. Heard expanded to Austin and Houston, while also building out its telehealth counseling sessions and free programming: monthly educational mixers focused on anything from finance to sign language, yoga classes, and industry-run clubs. Once the pandemic hit, Rivas could sense Heard would be needed more than ever.

I knew it was going to be rough ahead, he says. I knew I had to listen.

Calls poured in, not only from restaurant workers but from therapists and therapy groups around the country offering to help. In 2021, Heard collaborated with Capital Area Counseling, an Austin-based mental health clinic that has a lot of experience supporting restaurant workers, to offer one-on-one therapy for $10 a session. That year, Rivas saw a big jump in the total number of restaurant workers reached through Heard: 400.

This is my third time in therapy, says Matt Garcia, chef and co-owner of GiGis Deli in San Antonio (which is currently on hiatus). The first two didnt mesh, but with Heard, these counselors understand our dynamic as people in food and beverage. Slim margins, tight labor, everything is day-to-day, and nothing is good enough. A lot of us felt like this for a long time, even before COVID.

Garcia began meeting with a Heard counselor last December, when he was recovering from a broken leg and figuring out where he was going next as a chef.

My whole world was changing and Im where I am today because of the work I have done with my therapist, he says. A lot of times it feels like there is no support from your job, your neighbors, your local government. Heard is there.

In partnership with Capital Area Counseling, Heard is now providing mental health first aid classes to local restaurants and bars, to train restaurant workers on how to identify and address mental health issues among their coworkers. Its also working to make affordable telehealth services available nationally by 2024.

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Bon Apptit's 2022 Heads of the Table Awards - Bon Appetit

Coast Salish sweat-lodge keeper Hwiemtun welcomes all to heal in his ceremonies on the Cowichan Tribes reservation on southern Vancouver Island.

For 40 years, Hwiemtun has been leading prayer and healing rituals in a sweat lodge beside his home. In his dome-shaped sanctuary, remade with fresh willow boughs every spring, participants sit shoulder to shoulder around a pit of steaming lava stones, sharing traumas, hopes and prayers.

More people than ever are seeking transformative sweat-lodge experiences, Hwiemtun says, as they try to heal from the traumas of residential schools, COVID-19 and dramatic changes in the natural environment. He spoke to Katharine Lake Berz.

Katharine Lake Berz: How did you become a sweat lodge healer?

Hwiemtun: As a young man, I followed the black road of drugs and alcohol. I was born into it on the reservation and was immersed in it. I didnt feel worthy of becoming a healer. But my Lakota uncle Melvin showed me unconditional love, helped me learn to love myself and passed his ceremonial role on to me. The lodge has become my way of life and I havent used drugs or alcohol since. I try and help others follow this teaching.

KLB: Can you explain the spirituality of the sweat lodge?

H: Sweat lodges are a ritual and a way of life for many Indigenous peoples. We connect with the Creator through fire, water, smoke and steam. A sweat helps purify and balance the body, mind, spirit and emotions.

Traditionally, Coast Salish people built sweat lodges on the side of a hill. The Lakota lodge tradition was brought to Vancouver Island by elders in the 1960s. Lodges have helped our people heal since contact and they are now gaining popularity across British Columbia.

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KLB: How does a sweat lodge ceremony work?

H: Women and men kneel on opposite sides of the lodge wearing loose-fitting clothes. A cedar fire outside the lodge heats the ceremonial stones and a firekeeper brings in freshly heated stones every 20 minutes. As we feed cedar, sage and tobacco to the stones, I share legends and wisdom from my elders and encourage participants to share their experiences too.

I play my drum and windpipe, pray and sing as the heat and smoke become more and more intense during the three-hour ceremony. Some people can transcend their thoughts and focus on their sense of being. Others are energized or feel closer to the Creator.

Stories and feelings revealed in a sweat lodge remain strictly confidential, but people say that the emotion and lessons shared during a sweat are like no others.

KLB: Are there guidelines for participating in a sweat?

H: Participants are not permitted to consume drugs or alcohol within four days of a sweat ceremony. This helped me with my sobriety years ago and I hope it encourages others to take care of themselves. Women must not participate in a sweat when they are on their moon cycle and are not permitted to sit cross-legged during the ceremony. Everyone must respect the sacred fire and never pass between it and the lodge.

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KLB: Why is the sweat lodge particularly meaningful now?

H: Todays society has many trials that we need to adapt to. We lament the traumas brought by colonization and the losses of COVID-19. We worry about Mother Earth. We long for peace and tranquility. By devoting to a sweat ceremony, people take time to care for themselves.

Mother Earth and the Creator are calling out to many now. My ancestors tradition of speaking with plants and trees is now better understood by white settlers. In the sweat, we rely on traditional plants and medicines and the natural environment of water, smoke and steam to cleanse ourselves. It is a way of humanity showing respect for nature.

KLB: Why do you feel it is important to welcome people from all cultures and religions to participate in the sweat-lodge ceremony?

H: I believe that what makes us human is to be accepting of everybody else. I have had the opportunity to share my tradition with people from many different nationalities. Sharing ceremony, we share spiritual reciprocity. Everyone is a teacher. We share the gratitude of being alive today. And no matter how many difficulties we have, we are not alone.

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Coast Salish sweat-lodge keeper welcomes all to share in healing - Broadview Magazine

As I write this, the US Department of Defense is ramping up the militarization of my homeland part of its $8bn scheme to relocate roughly 5,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam. In fact, ground has already been broken along the islands beautiful northern coastline for a massive firing range complex. The complex consisting of five live-fire training ranges and support facilities is being built dangerously close to the islands primary source of drinking water, the Northern Guam Lens Aquifer. Moreover, the complex is situated over several historically and culturally significant sites, including the remnants of ancient villages several thousands of years old, where our ancestors remains remain.

The construction of these firing ranges will entail the destruction of more than 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of native limestone forest. These forests are unbearably beautiful, took millennia to evolve, and today function as essential habitat for several endangered endemic species, including a fruit bat, a flight-less rail and three species of tree snails not to mention a swiftlet, a starling and a slender-toed gecko. The largest of the five ranges a 59-acre multipurpose machine-gun range will be built a mere 100 feet (30 metres) from the last remaining reproductive hyon lgu tree in Guam.

If only superpowers were concerned with the stuff of lowercase earth, like forests and fresh water. If only they were curious about the whisper and scurry of small lives. If only they were moved by beauty.

If only.

But the militarization of Guam is nothing if not proof that they are not so moved. In fact, the military buildup now under way is happening over the objections of thousands of the islands residents. Many of these protesters, including myself, are Indigenous Chamorros whose ancestors endured five centuries of colonization and who see this most recent wave of unilateral action by the United States simply as the latest course in a long and steady diet of dispossession.

When the US Navy first released its highly technical (and 11,000-page-long) draft environmental impact statement in November 2009, the people of Guam submitted more than 10,000 comments outlining our concerns, many of us strenuously opposed to the militarys plans. We produced simplified educational materials on the anticipated adverse impacts of those plans, and provided community trainings on them. We took hundreds of people hiking through the jungles specifically slated for destruction. We took several others swimming in the harbor where the military proposed dredging some 40 acres of coral reef for the berthing of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. We testified so many times and in so many ways, in the streets and in the offices of elected officials. We even filed a lawsuit under the National Environmental Policy Act, effectively forcing the navy to conduct further environmental impact assessments, thus pushing the buildup back a few years.

But delay was all we won and the bulldozers are back with a vengeance.

A $78m contract for the live-fire training range complex has been awarded to Black Construction, which has already begun clearing 89 acres of primary limestone forest and 110 acres of secondary limestone forest. Its bitterly ironic that so many of these machines bear the name Caterpillar when the very thing they are destroying is that precious creatures preciously singular habitat. To be sure, such forests house the host plants for the endemic Mariana eight-spot butterfly. But then again maybe a country that routinely prefers power over strength, and living over letting live, is no country for eight-spot butterflies.

While this wave of militarization should elicit our every outrage, indignation is not nearly enough to build a bridge. To anywhere. Its useful, yes. But we need to get a hell of a lot more serious about articulating alternatives if we hope to withstand the forces of predatory global capitalism and ultimately replace its ethos of extraction with one of our own. In the case of my own people, an ethos of reciprocity.

And nowhere is that ethos more alive than in those very same forests for it is there that our yomte, or healers, are perpetuating our culture, in particular our traditional healing practices. It is there on the forest floor and in the crevices of the limestone rock that many of the plants needed to make our medicine grow. It is there that our medicine women gather the plants their mothers, and their mothers mothers, gathered before them.

These plants, combined with others harvested from elsewhere on the island, treat everything from anxiety to arthritis. As someone who suffers from regular bouts of bronchitis, I can attest to the fact that the medicine Auntie Frances Arriola Cabrera Meno makes to treat respiratory problems has proven more effective in my case than any medicine of the modern world. Yet Auntie Frances, like so many other yomte I know, takes no credit for the cure. As she tells it, to do so would be hubris, as so many others are involved in the healing process: the plants themselves, with whom she converses in a secret language; her mother, who taught her how to identify which plants have which properties and also how and when to pick them; and the ancestors, who give her permission to enter the jungle and who, on occasion, favor her, allowing her to find everything she needs and more.

More than this, she tells me that I too am part of that process that people like me, who seek out her services, give her life meaning. That she wouldnt know what to do with herself if she wasnt making medicine. That the life of a healer was always hers to have because she was born breech under a new moon and thus had the hands for healing.

But such things are inevitably lost in translation. And no military on earth is sensitive enough to perceive something as soft as the whisper of another worldview.

This piece is an extract from Julian Aguons book No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, which was released this week by Penguin Random House in the UK and Australia, and by Astra House in the US. The extract originally appeared as an op-ed on the Wire in June 2020

Excerpt from:
In Guam, even the dead are dying: the US military is building on the graves of our ancestors - The Guardian

Getting humans back to the moon "this time to stay" will require the exploitation of lunar resources, NASA officials and exploration advocates say.

The most important resource, at least in the short term, is water ice, which is abundant on the floors of permanently shadowed polar craters. The ice found in these "cold traps" is thought to be stable and accessible.

But there may be other spots on the moon that could yield a mother lode of scientific data as well as the resources needed to sustain human occupation of Earth's celestial next door neighbor.

Related: Home on the Moon: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Infographic)

Researchers have identified "pits" on the moon, which are likely lava-tube "skylights" geological doorways to underground tunnels that were once filled with lava.

If they do indeed provide access to lava tubes, skylights could be a game-changer for human lunar exploration, said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green. Lava tubes are protected from the harsh environment of the lunar surface, which is bombarded by radiation and experiences temperature extremes. One lunar day lasts about 29 Earth days, meaning surface locations endure about two straight weeks of daylight followed by two weeks of darkness.

"There are a number of things on the moon that are going to be surprises," Green said.

"We need to get in there," he added, referring to lunar skylights. "We need to verify. Maybe there's a lot of water in these skylights? We don't know. We're finding them all over the moon."

A lava-tube network would suggest protected corridors, free of temperature swings, bombarding radiation and menacing meteoroids. They also might offer a much larger habitat capability for future moon explorers.

"We could actually build connective roads in them," Green told Space.com. "It could be a whole new world for us. That's another absolute game-changer."

We don't have enough information yet to ascertain if skylights on the moon represent an interconnected underground roadway, said Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. He is also chairman of the Mars Institute and director of the NASA Haughton Mars Project at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

"For starters, not all pits on the moon are necessarily lava tube skylights," Lee told Space.com. He said that some might be associated with isolated underground cavities.

"Secondly, not all lava tubes in a given region should be expected to be interconnected," he added. "Indeed, some might have formed at different times, and might run at different levels or depths underground."

Lee also said that while some lava tubes on Earth have smooth walls and floors, most have very rough surfaces and debris piles on their floors.

"We don't know how rough lava tubes on the moon might be, but the term underground roadway seems optimistic," Lee said. "In any case, in my view, it's not that pits on the moon would lead to a maze of underground corridors that makes them most interesting although that is fascinating but the fact that they give access to an environment that's radically different from the surface, whatever shape that underground environment might have."

Any underground cavity on the moon, after all, would provide shielding from temperature swings, space radiation, micrometeoritic bombardment and sandblasting from the rocket engines of landing or departing spacecraft.

Most intriguing to Lee are candidate pits recently identified inside Philolaus Crater near the north pole of the moon.

"They might be skylights associated with a network of lava tubes formed not in volcanic lava flows, but in an impact melt sheet, the temporary pool of molten rock that ponded inside Philolaus Crater following the large impact that created the crater," he said.

Interestingly enough, Lee said, the candidate pits inside Philolaus are located at such a high latitude that sunlight would never enter the underlying caves.

"These would be in perpetual darkness and so cold that ice could be cold-trapped in them, much like it is in the permanently shadowed regions at the actual poles of the moon," Lee said.

Exploring high-latitude pits on the moon might therefore offer an additional opportunity to harvest water on our lunar neighbor, Lee said.

Meanwhile, researchers have begun assessing the viability of underground lunar habitats.

Anahita Modiriasari, a postdoctoral researcher in Purdue University's Lyles School of Civil Engineering, and her colleagues have been appraising lunar imagery, reconstructed into a 3D model to evaluate lava tubes as a potential habitat for humans on the moon. This is a task that a rover or drone could potentially accomplish on the lunar surface.

The work is part of Purdue's Resilient ExtraTerrestrial Habitats (RETH), a project that investigates the value of future human habitats on the moon or Mars.

"All of this collected data is vital," Modiriasari said. "We are using it to build an advanced model of the size, strength and structural stability of the lava tube," she said. For example, what happens during seismic activity? What would happen if a meteorite strikes?

Related: Photos: The Search for Water on the Moon

In another development, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program recently awarded a Phase 3 contract to researchers developing robotic technologies to enable the exploration of lunar pits.

The "Skylight" concept mission is led by William Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University. The NIAC award will help Whittaker and his team flesh out ways to explore and model a lunar pit. Doing so will require fast, autonomous micro-roving, which achieves significant exploration in a single lunar daylight period.

According to Whittaker, descent into and exploration of the lunar subsurface will come, but "pit-specific" questions must first be answered from the surface: How navigable are the rims? Are there caves? Are there rappel routes? What is the morphology?

Specifically, a mission of this type would create and downlink the first high-resolution, science-quality, 3D model of a vast planetary pit, Whittaker said.

"This [Skylight] initiative matures and transitions that technology. The technology innovations are exploration autonomy, in-situ 3D modeling, fast, far micro-roving and the aggregate means to achieve mission-in-a-week," Whittaker said.

The unanswered questions of lava-tube exploration aren't just technological. Also looming large, as with all aspects of lunar resource use and settlement, are space-law issues.

"Potentially exciting research areas cannot be claimed by sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means," said Joanne Gabrynowicz, professor emerita of space law at the University of Mississippi and editor-in-chief emerita at the Journal of Space Law.

"Doing things like digging corridors and building roads could easily be interpreted as making a claim by use or other means. This is prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty," Gabrynowicz said. "The U.S. and all spacefaring nations are party to it. A location with high scientific value will require an international agreement regarding its use and who can access it."

Leonard David is author of the recently released book, "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Living Underground on the Moon: How Lava Tubes Could Aid Lunar Colonization