Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

[Suliso]

So Bezos made it to space, too.
Now you have three companies that can take you up. Obviously, Space X is the most developed, being able to reach the ISS. Virgin Galactic seems to be the less, with a barely sub orbital capability.
What will they be able to offer? Musk insists that he will die in Mars, which I say is a possibility (he is young). What will Bezos do with Blue Origin is something I don't know. Branson's plane is the simplest but I don't see too many people paying $200K just to go up and be weightless. It can be simulated by the Vomit Comet easily.
If nobody sets up a Space Statin for tourists, will this be all for the next decades? Small, short flights above he atmosphere?

I have a lot to say about this

Media like to lazily group all three together. Actually they're nothing alike other than being rich.

Branson is a flamboyant guy who sees it all as a yet another adventure in life. He might serve as an inspiration, but otherwise Virgin Galactic has nothing to offer beyond these pleasure rides. There is also Virgin Orbit, but it's only a small satellite launcher with no larger ambitions as far as I know. Branson also the poorest of the three.

Bezos sees the New Shepard with which he flew today as a stepping stone to New Glenn, an orbit capable partially reusable rocket under development. The problem is that they're slow and technologically well behind Spacex. However, due to generous funding by Bezos I'm not ready to write them off. Hopefully the new rocket gets to fly by 2023.

Finally Elon Musk's Spacex is where the real innovation lies. They're technologically miles ahead not just of the other two, but also NASA and any other government space agency. They have developed the first ever partially reusable orbital class rocket (first stage lands propulsively) and are currently dominating private satellite launch business. Not focusing on space tourism, however they'll have one such flight going in September with 4 people. They'll stay up 3 days not 10 min! Of course currently very expensive. The holy grail of rocketry is a fully reusable two stage orbital rocket with no refurbishment between flights. No such thing has ever been built by anyone, but Musk is now reasonably close with his Starship. If all goes well first test flight from South Texas in a month or two. The ship stands 120 m tall, twice as powerful as Saturn V and could take up to 100 people to space (Space Shuttle max 7) and it might cost as little as 5 millions to launch (NASA's SLS will be 800 million). If he succeeds it will be a true revolution. Lot's of technical challenges still to overcome.

[Suliso]

I should have added that not only no one has ever built a fully reusable space launch system, but also no one has even tried. So far only in science fiction.

[Suliso]

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Dreadnought moment in naval history. The moment Royal Navy launched HMS Dreadnought in 1906 every other large warship around the world became instantly obsolete. If Spacex succeeds with their Starship for both cargo and humans it will mean the same to every existing medium and heavy launch vehicle currently in use and development (including NASA's SLS and Bezo's New Glenn).

[JazzNU]

The Musk praise is a lot to me, but I can tell you're a fan.


As for Richard Branson, I think you're being a bit unfair in the way you framed him. He is the only one of the 3 who has built a large portion of his wealthy empire on tourism and this is about space tourism for him. His company's goals may not be as lofty as the other two, but that's a pretty genuine extension of his brand unlike the others unless I missed their heavy investments in other parts of tourism (which is possible).

[ponchi101]

I didn't know SpaceX was so far ahead. Have to start paying more attention. Txs

[Suliso]

The Musk praise is a lot to me, but I can tell you're a fan.

I'm a space technology fan and Spacex is currently the best in the world. The man himself is fine, but of lesser importance.

As for Richard Branson, I think you're being a bit unfair in the way you framed him. He is the only one of the 3 who has built a large portion of his wealthy empire on tourism and this is about space tourism for him. His company's goals may not be as lofty as the other two, but that's a pretty genuine extension of his brand unlike the others unless I missed their heavy investments in other parts of tourism (which is possible).

Actually Branson is probably the most fun guy among the three, but I was only evaluating the underlying technology. If you asked me instead who I'd like to have a beer with it would be him.

Not sure about Bezos, but Musk is not and has never been particularly interested in tourism. He is instead obsessed with colonizing Mars. Honestly I don't think that part is going to work, but I'm overlooking it because there are so many other benefits to drastically cheaper and more sustainable access to space. Imagine how much more space exploration we could do if launches cost 1/20th. Space based manufacturing and mining has a long term potential as well.

[ti-amie]

I found the Freedom Phone tweet(s) while looking for something else.

[JazzNU]

Bezos is interested in space tourism and is competitive with Branson. I know Musk is really tourism adjacent with SpaceX since it's so specialized, but he's basically doing space tourism for billionaires where it costs your firstborn to go, so though not his end goal, he's still in that realm with the others, just in an even more exclusive way.

For Branson, I wasn't saying you hated him and I understood you didn't care about his technology as much. I was just saying, while he may be a rich playboy playing in space, what he's doing is very fitting for his business empire.

Musk and Branson are apparently friendly and since they aren't taking up the same exact space in this race, encouraging of one another and Musk is going to be one of Branson's space passengers it would seem. No idea if it's anytime soon, but I'm sure we'll have minute by minute coverage when it happens.

[JazzNU]

I found the Freedom Phone tweet(s) while looking for something else.

Insanity. Visited the site (in incognito) and there isn't a single detail about the phone there so to think people are already giving over money is just proof positive of the deep levels of stupidity circling throughout this group and it's hard to feel bad that they will fall for this scam. Also, very obviously an Android phone so hilarious that they are acting like it's free from Google.

[Jeff from TX]

Sure hope this story pans out.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ricoh-develo ... tification
Ricoh Develops Strong, Flexible Plastic Alternative Using Plants and Air
The plastic lid on your next takeaway coffee could be made from PLAiR.

By Matthew Humphries
July 21, 2021

Plastic is such a useful material that it's used everywhere, but fossil-derived plastic, especially the single-use varieties, aren't environmentally friendly. Japanese electronics company Ricoh has created an alternative, though, and called it PLAiR.

PLAiR is a foamed polylactic acid (PLA) sheet that's both flexible and strong. It's manufactured using plant-derived starch and sugar combined with air (hence the name), which is turned into a foam consisting of uniform bubbles tens of microns in diameter. The foam expansion rate can be easily adjusted, allowing for a variety of uses, including cushioning, packing materials, and those single-use plastic lids on disposable coffee cups.


Ricoh has already started using PLAiR to help protect its multifunction printers as part of their packaging, so it looks to be a good alternative to polystyrene, which in its many forms takes hundreds of years to biodegrade. However, as it's also flexible there's a much greater range of potential uses.

As well as not using any fossil-derived plastic, PLAiR promises to be environmentally friendly as it decomposes. Adding it to compost results in PLAiR breaking down to water and carbon dioxide, but it doesn't increase the net amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it's carbon neutral. Burning PLAiR is also fine as it just releases the carbon dioxide it contained at the point of manufacture.

[Jeff from TX]

Not COVID related, but not good news:
Associated Press
'Superbug' fungus spread in two cities, health officials say
MIKE STOBBE
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials said Thursday they now have evidence of an untreatable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home.

The “superbug” outbreaks were reported in a Washington, D.C, nursing home and at two Dallas-area hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. A handful of the patients had invasive fungal infections that were impervious to all three major classes of medications.

“This is really the first time we've started seeing clustering of resistance" in which patients seemed to be getting the infections from each other, said the CDC's Dr. Meghan Lyman.

The fungus, Candida auris, is a harmful form of yeast that is considered dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. It is most deadly when it enters the bloodstream, heart or brain. Outbreaks in health care facilities have been spurred when the fungus spread through patient contact or on contaminated surfaces.

Health officials have sounded alarms for years about the superbug after seeing infections in which commonly used drugs had little effect. In 2019, doctors diagnosed three cases in New York that were also resistant to a class of drugs, called echinocandins, that were considered a last line of defense.

In those cases, there was no evidence the infections had spread from patient to patient — scientists concluded the resistance to the drugs formed during treatment.

The new cases did spread, the CDC concluded.

In Washington, D.C., a cluster of 101 C. auris cases at a nursing home dedicated to very sick patients included three that were resistant to all three kinds of antifungal medications. A cluster of 22 in two Dallas-area hospitals included two with that level of resistance. The facilities weren't identified.

Those cases were seen from January to April. Of the five people who were fully resistant to treatment, three died — both Texas patients and one in Washington.

Lyman said both are ongoing outbreaks and that additional infections have been identified since April. But those added numbers were not reported.

Investigators reviewed medical records and found no evidence of previous antifungal use among the patients in those clusters. Health officials say that means they spread from person to person.

[Jeff from TX]

But, for some happier news:
How nature has taken over Chernobyl
Since humans abandoned the area, nature has reclaimed the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
https://www.popsci.com/science/nature-a ... nt_Animals
BY NEEL DHANESHA | UPDATED JUL 21, 2021 7:00 AM

SCIENCE ENVIRONMENT
Chernobyl has a surprising amount of wildlife
People tend to think of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a nuclear wasteland. But 35 years after a reactor meltdown drove 350,000 people from the region (an area half the size of Delaware), flora and fauna thrive. Some believe the region’s biodiversity has actually increased with no one around.

As a coniferous forest reclaims the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, hundreds of species, from butterflies to bison, roam crumbling streets and abandoned buildings. Here’s what four of them tell us about how nature adapts once we’re gone.

Wild horses
The Przewalski’s horse lived only in captivity until researchers turned 36 loose in the territory between 1998 and 2004. The herd has more than doubled and shows no sign of mutation, which could mean the site is a good place to introduce other critically endangered species.

Predators at their apex
wolf
Wolves are seven times more abundant in the area than in similar woodlands. The canids fare well because they face little competition for abundant prey and few dangers to their young. That leads scientists to suspect human presence poses a greater threat to wildlife than an atomic accident.

Enigmatic amphibians
frog
Frogs within the region are darker than those outside it, which may indicate the croakers are developing defenses against radiation. Understanding these evolutionary quirks can help researchers better predict the impacts of other kinds of environmental upheaval, like climate change.

Toothy time travelers
beaver

The Pripyat River basin was marshy until industrialization intruded. Now a booming beaver population is restoring the ecosystem by felling trees and damming canals. The land eventually will return to its original state, underscoring the planet’s resiliency in the face of Homo sapiens.

This story originally appeared in the Calm issue of Popular Science. Current subscribers can access the whole digital edition here, or click here to subscribe.

[dryrunguy]

That was actually one of the themes of this year's Ukrainian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. It was my favorite song this year (in case you skipped our Eurovision thread). In any case, if you don't dig the song, just skip ahead to 1:40 to see how gorgeous the area surrounding Chernobyl is today.

[Suliso]

A good summary of where Blue Origin and SpaceX currently stand (from Quartz).

Blue Origin is still catching up to Elon Musk’s SpaceX

The first passenger-carrying flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard marks a major milestone for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezo’s space company. Does it mean that it’s finally caught up with its main rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX?

The answer, for now, is no.

The two firms share much in common: Aspirations to cut the cost of access to space with reusable rockets, wealthy founders who emerged from Silicon Valley, and even employees who have jumped from one company to the other. Their rivalry has played out in Twitter spats and fights over patents, launch site leases, and most significantly, lucrative government contracts for satellite launches and moon landers.

Now, Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle has finally demonstrated the ability to carry space tourists above the atmosphere, and executives are promising a move to a monthly flight cadence for paying passengers and experimental payloads. Blue has definitely come a long way since 2010, when it received development funding from NASA but wasn’t sure about how to obtain it.

“We said, ‘Give us an invoice,’ and they went ‘Huh?’” Dennis Stone, the NASA executive in charge of the program, said. “They never invoiced anybody; they never had to.”

Breaking down Blue Origin vs. SpaceX

Bezos’ company is still behind SpaceX on a number of key fronts. Above all, Blue Origin still doesn’t have a vehicle that can carry payloads up into space on a permanent basis by placing them in orbit. It is designing a rocket with a reusable booster called New Glenn—named after astronaut John Glenn—that was intended to debut in 2020, but now isn’t expected to fly until the end of 2022. In comparison, SpaceX’s orbital rockets, particularly the Falcon 9 and its reusable first stage, now dominate the launch industry.

When New Glenn does arrive, it has the potential to be a game-changer because it is will be much bigger than the Falcon 9. On the other hand, SpaceX is developing its own huge, totally reusable rocket, called Starship. It has already done test hops with the second stage, and test-fired the booster for the first time this week—two key demonstrations we haven’t seen from Blue Origin.

Or, consider human spaceflight: A day after New Shepard took four people to space for a few minutes, four astronauts hopped into the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that brought them to the International Space Station and took it for a nearly hour-long spin around the orbital habitat to park at a different port.

Or, satellites: SpaceX now operates the largest satellite network in the world, called Starlink, that it uses to deliver broadband internet to customers on earth. Amazon, not Blue Origin, is launching a similar satellite network, but has yet to put any spacecraft in orbit.

It’s not that outsiders lack confidence in Blue Origin. The company has the capital and the team to deliver innovative space hardware. United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin that is the US military’s preferred launch company, hired Blue Origin to build the engine for its next rocket, called Vulcan. But delivery of prototype engines has been delayed—which hasn’t escaped public attention.

Indeed, NASA officials and industry observers have long thought that Blue is the only likely competitor for SpaceX—and they’d like to see a competitor establish itself to help drive down the cost of going to space. That day has yet to arrive.

[ponchi101]

I was thinking about some the stats you posted a few days ago. SpaceX's Starship, as you said, is expected to be able to carry 100 passengers, at about $5MM per launch. That is $50,000 per person, which is not excessively over one of those DUBAI-LONDON flights from Emirates if you book their extra-luxury cabins.
There will be a market for that, almost instantly.