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(Ross, Editor@RealClearScience, , 1-16)

In 2020, scientists with the European Space Agency announced that they had successfully used bacteria to extract rare earth minerals from basalt inside a small bioreactor onboard the International Space Station. The experiment was meant to simulate the microbial harvesting of elements from rocks similar to those found on the Moon and Mars, a process called biomining. Its success suggested genuine potential for what may seem like a science fiction future: using microbes to extract useful materials on the Moon, Mars, and beyond that can sustain space colonies. If humans ever hope to establish permanent settlements elsewhere in the solar system, we are going to need a steady supply of water; oxygen; essential nutrients for plant nutrition as well as our own; gaseous elements like hydrogen, nitrogen, and helium to make fuel; and metals like iron, copper, and vanadium for structures and electronic components. Luckily, these all can be obtained from extraterrestrial rocks, and microorganisms can help. Biomining Right now on Earth, specialized microbes are used to leach precious metals from rocks. Around 20-25% of copper and 5% of gold are harvested with biomining. Bacteria can also extract zinc, nickel, cobalt, uranium, and various other elements straight from mineral ores. What if we could do the same thing in space? The process would require relatively little energy and mitigate the need to import materials from Earth. Charles S. Cockell and Rosa Santomartino, scientists at the UK Centre for Astrobiology and the University of Edinburgh, along with Luis Zea, an assistant research professor in aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado, are a few of the thinkers trying to lay the groundwork for space-based biomining. In a recent article published in the journal Extremophiles, they explained how it might work. For starters, any biomining would require liquid water and need to take place in sophisticated bioreactors where internal conditions can be controlled. Bioreactors would protect microbes from damaging radiation, hold in oxygen if the microbes require it, maintain internal pressure, and keep a suitable temperature. Regolith and rock would be loaded in, then microorganisms added depending upon the material type and what elements users seek to extract. After a certain amount of time, the bioreactor is opened and the materials inside removed for use. Thanks to new, exciting advances in bioengineering, microorganisms could be engineered to improve their biomining abilities. “Although synthetic biology applications to biomining are still young, approaches to ameliorate resistance to space conditions, to enhance extraction of elements under these, or overcome issues, could be an excellent opportunity for space biomining,” Cockell, Santomartino, and Zea write. As biomining has already been demonstrated to work in small quantitites in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station, a next logical location to try it would be on the surface of the Moon in a larger bioreactor. After all, water is widely available on the lunar surface and lunar regolith (soil) contains heaps of useful elements. Such a specialized experiment would be difficult to perform robotically, however, and thus would likely require human boots on the ground, a tall task in and of itself. A blueprint for long-term habitation If we want those boots to stay there long term, however, we will probably need to sort out biomining. Maintaining a constant supply line from Earth would be taxing and treacherous, but biomining has the potential to make space colonies self-sustaining. Pair the practice with advanced 3D printing, and we may just have a blueprint for long-term human habitation of the solar system.

(Passant, Passant is is an award-winning journalist from Cairo, Egypt, who relocated to New York to pursue a master's degree in science journalism at New York University. , 1-22)

The 2020s are shaping up to be a new era of human space exploration. The industry has set its eyes on a return to the Moon by the year 2024, followed by the first human mission to Mars. The ultimate goal is to build human colonies on the lunar surface, which would serve as a kind of rest stop for future missions to Mars and other deep-space destinations. The most-ambitious plan comes from private aerospace company SpaceX, which hopes to colonize the Red Planet by the year 2050. But as we inch closer to making human colonies in outer space a reality, we're getting some of our first solid ideas of how these lunar habitats and Martian ecosystems might look. It's also becoming clear that to be sustainable, these space cities will have to rely on some rather unusual tech — from mushroom homes to a lunar nuclear reactor. Here are three tools that could help us make our space-colony dreams a reality sooner rather than later. FUNGHI ARCHITECTURE Our imagination paints a picture of futuristic space cities composed of modern, sleek buildings. Just a glimpse at some of the mock-ups from Blue Origin or SpaceX envisaging these cityscapes demonstrates that the expectation for future space cities is that they will be modern and sleek, composed of glass buildings and impressive steel structures. But in reality, future buildings on the Moon and Mars may actually require us to revert back to one of the most basic elements in nature. NASA’s myco-architecture project is prototyping a technology that uses mushrooms to grow habitats in space. The idea behind the project is instead of carrying your entire house with you on your journey to Mars, future human settlers of the planet would be able to bring a compact habitat made of mycelia, which is the vegetative part of the fungus which forms fungi colonies through underground threads. Once humans have landed on Mars, they would grow their own home by adding water and letting the fungus grow. COOKING UP OXYGEN ON THE MOON The Moon’s atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth's. And while it does contain some oxygen, it is certainly not enough for humans to breathe long enough to get on a ride to Mars. But lunar samples returned to Earth during past missions reveal there may be another source of this crucial element for humans to exploit. Lunar bedrock is made up of 40-45 percent oxygen, bound chemically as oxides in the form of minerals or glass. Mining the bedrock may help future lunar colonizers survive and sustain new habitats. Currently, the European Space Agency is working on creating an oxygen plant to extract oxygen from the Moon’s bedrock. The oxygen plant works by placing the moon dust in a metal basket with molten calcium chloride salt to serve as an electrolyte. By heating the bedrock material to 950 degrees Celsuis, and passing a current through it, the oxygen would be extracted and migrate across the salt to be collected at an anode. A prototype of the plant is currently in place at the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. GENERATING ENERGY OFF-EARTH One of the ultimate challenges for lie in a space colony is being able to power all of that machinery. There's an idea that solar power could offer a renewable and sustainable energy source — especially in places where the Sun always shines. But solar panels may be inefficient in areas where there is little to no sunlight. On the Moon, this would quickly become a problem — the surface is dark for 14 days at a time, so there would be no constant source of power. In order to address that challenge, NASA is developing a mobile nuclear reactor as part of Project Kilopower. The reactor would work is by splitting atoms and releasing energy in the form of heat, which is would then be converted into electricity. The reactor would be able to produce 10 kilowatts of electrical power on a continuous basis, and can last for up to 10 years. NASA demonstrated the reactor in action in May 2018 — four Kilopower units would provide enough power to several households. “Safe, efficient and plentiful energy will be the key to future robotic and human exploration,” said Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at the time. “I expect the Kilopower project to be an essential part of lunar and Mars power architectures as they evolve.” As we continue to meet new challenges in bringing humans into space for the long-term, these three tools are likely only the start of a new era of innovation. Watch this space.

(Tony, , 2-8, this article has no date listed but is commenting on this https://phys.org/news/2022-02-laser-mars.html)

One of the biggest challenges that we need to solve to colonize Mars is how to resupply astronauts on the Red Planet quickly. To that end, a team of researchers came up with a clever plan using a laser to send a spacecraft to Mars in just 45 days — cutting the travel by months. The team from McGill University designed a system that uses a 10-meter wide laser array on Earth to power up an orbiting spacecraft, Phys.org reports. The laser would heat hydrogen plasma in the ship until it creates enough superheated hydrogen gas to propel it to Mars. Basically, it would allow us to supply interplanetary thrusting power from down on Earth — without worrying about launching all that heavy fuel into space. “Laser-thermal propulsion enables rapid transport missions of one ton with laser arrays the size of a volleyball court,” Emmanuel Duplay, lead author of a paper and former student at McGill University’s Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering Program, told the website. Express Trip The team created the concept after NASA issued an engineering challenge to design a method of getting to Mars that could carry a 1,000 kilogram payload in no more than 45 days. Their system, detailed in a paper in the journal Acta Astronautica, would be able to take crucial supplies and astronauts to Mars colonies in a trip that would typically take months in traditional chemically-fueled rockets. Once it gets to Mars, it’ll use the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere to “aerobrake” — a delicate and potentially dangerous maneuver that rapidly decelerates the ship. While traditional spacecraft would use chemical propellents to stop, that requires more weight in the payload to carry the fuel. Using Mars’ atmosphere circumvents that. The design is incredibly fascinating and offers a lot of promise, but it’s still very much in the conceptual stage. For now, we’ll just have to deal with pesky rockets that can potentially explode on the launch pad.

(Robert, interviewed by Charles Monroe-Kang , for the date at the end it says this Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 Post date: February 15, 2022, but its not Feb 15 yet so…)

CMK: How would this work, exactly? What’s the plan? RZ: The way to go is with a few small exploration missions to find the right place for a permanent outpost. Then you send lots of cargos with habitations. Then you send a few groups of people to set up greenhouses for food production and facilities to manufacturer plastics, steel, propellant, and oxygen. And once you create the capacity for people to be self-supportive, you can send more and more of them. So it won’t be like the Normandy landing, with 100,000 people the first day and another 100,000 in the second wave. It’ll be more organic growth. CMK: What about water? RB: There's water on Mars — and not just at the poles. That’s one of the discoveries to come out of NASA’s very successful robotic planetary exploration program. We have now discovered glaciers on Mars at about the same latitude as San Francisco on Earth. They contain more water than the American Great Lakes and they're covered by only a few feet of dust and sand. So they're within shoveling distance.

(Flinders University, https://scitechdaily.com/experts-say-humanity-faces-a-grim-and-ghastly-future-state-of-planet-is-much-worse-than-most-people-understand/)

The state of the planet is much worse than most people understand and that humans face a grim and “ghastly future” unless extraordinary action is taken soon. A loss of biodiversity and accelerating climate change in the coming decades coupled with ignorance and inaction is threatening the survival of all species, including our very own, according to the experts from institutions including Stanford University, UCLA, and Flinders University. The researchers state that world leaders need a ‘cold shower’ regarding the state of our environment, both to plan and act to avoid a ghastly future. Lead author Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia says he and his colleagues have summarised the state of the natural world in stark form to help clarify the gravity of the human predicament. “Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth’s ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization” Professor Bradshaw says. “In fact, the scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. “The problem is compounded by ignorance and short-term self-interest, with the pursuit of wealth and political interests stymying the action that is crucial for survival” he says. Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University says that no political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. “Stopping biodiversity loss is nowhere close to the top of any country’s priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability. “While it is positive news that President Biden reengaged the US in Paris Climate accord within his first 100 days of office, it is a minuscule gesture given the scale of the challenge. “Humanity is running an ecological Ponzi scheme in which society robs nature and future generations to pay for short-term economic enhancement today.” “Most economies operate on the basis that counteraction now is too costly to be politically palatable. Combined with disinformation campaigns to protect short-term profits it is doubtful that the scale of changes we need will be made in time” Professor Ehrlich says. Professor Dan Blumstein from UCLA says the scientists are choosing to speak boldly and fearlessly because life literally depends on it. “What we are saying might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But we need to be candid, accurate, and honest if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future. “Without political will backed by tangible action that scales to the enormity of the problems facing us, the added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of the Earth’s life-support system upon which we all depend. “Human population growth and consumption continues to escalate, and we’re still more focused on expanding human enterprise than we are on devising and implementing solutions to critical issues such as biodiversity loss. By the time we fully comprehend the impact of ecological deterioration, it will be too late.

(Meghan is a senior writer at Space.com and has more than five years' experience as a science journalist based in New York City. , 9-13)

Two conservation scientists have published an editorial in the prestigious scientific journal Nature today (Sept. 13) calling for more space on Earth to be set aside for wildlife. But what does that mean for space exploration, and what does our history in space teach us about the wisdom of such an effort? Space exploration and the environmental movement have long been intertwined, with the latter galvanized by space-based imagery like the Apollo 17 crew's Blue Marble photo of the full Earth disk and the Voyager mission's Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken across 4 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) of our solar system. Before space exploration began, "there was no perception of Earth as a single entity and certainly no context for it in space," Lisa Ruth Rand, a historian of science, technology and the environment who is currently the American Historical Association and NASA fellow in space history, told Space.com. [Wild! Scientists Are Watching Baby Turtles from Space] "That was revolutionary at the time," she said of the sentiments inspired by the Blue Marble image. "Not only are we alone in space in this hostile, barren void, but also we are all in it together," she said. Now, the view of Earth from orbit has become commonplace, but space is still changing the way we think about Earth. Over the past two decades, as exoplanet studies have blossomed, the connection has taken on a new spin as we identify more and more worlds around other stars — but still find ourselves liking Earth best. That's true closer to home as well, where even as we continue to learn about the worlds around us, we fail to find life, much less vibrant, complex ecosystems. "This is a wonderland," John Rummel, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute and a former planetary protection officer at NASA, told Space.com of Earth. "We have been ignorant about the things that we have been doing to the Earth's biosphere and it is much more complex and amazingly interdependent than anything we're likely to see in this solar system." Can we build a biosphere? The new editorial calls for meeting the goals that governments around the world have already agreed upon at a 2010 conference, of protecting at least 17 percent of land and 10 percent of ocean areas by 2020 — goals that humans currently fall far short on, at just 14.7 and 3.6 percent, respectively. But those targets may not be what we need to keep Earth's ecosystems functioning, some planetary scientists fear. "Now we are talking about a bioengineered world, we are not talking about a planet anymore; we are talking about a national park on a planetary level and it's not a biosphere anymore," Nathalie Cabrol, an astrobiologist at the SETI Institute, told Space.com. "We are going to create an artificial bubble when what we had was a beautifully working natural system." Cordoning off land and seas to manage all the creatures around us isn't so different from building the type of artificial biospheres would-be explorers have dreamed up for other planets and moons. The similarity could mean that space endeavors offer lessons for managing life here on Earth — but those lessons may not be as encouraging as we might wish. "I think in understanding how to build an artificial biosphere and make it work we will provide more information about how to keep this one going," Rummel said. That said, there won't be an easy solution. "Even at best, any biosphere that we could construct for centuries to come is going to be a mere shadow of what we have every day on the Earth," he said. [NASA's Best Earth-from-Space Photos by Astronauts (Gallery)] And even without ever having laid a brick or planted a seed on another world, humans have dipped their toes in the world of biosphere construction. Perhaps the most enthusiastic experiment came in 1991, when a crew of eight stepped foot inside a facility dubbed Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 being Earth, of course) in the middle of the Arizona desert. The two-year experiment was meant to be a self-sustaining miniature replica of Earth with 3,800 species, but while all eight crewmembers survived, it was a troubled experience. One crewmember briefly left the biosphere for emergency medical care. Sweet potatoes thrived so much better than most crops in the high carbon levels that crewmembers' skin picked up a faint orange sheen from eating so many of them. A whopping 40 percent of the species humans had carried with them went extinct. "It didn't turn out well for a majority of the species — including the humans — that were living there," Rand said. "Ultimately, there's a lot of challenges to creating life in microcosm elsewhere, even here." She used the term "hellish" to describe a video of life in the facility, which was overrun by invasive ants and cockroaches and bereft of species crewmembers had wanted to retain. One of the first to go was the honeybees, which unbeknown to the humans who built the biosphere, couldn't see in most of the facility. They were found dead, clustered near an emergency exit, the only place where the biosphere's glass let in the ultraviolet light bees use to navigate, Rand said. "Even this seemingly very controlled experiment still had problems with biodiversity," Rand said. That's a powerful lesson the history of this sort of endeavor can offer about the limitations of our power to build ecosystems ourselves. "If we can take advantage of what's already here and work with nature instead of trying to recreate it somewhere else, we have a much greater chance of success," she said. While space offers a new perspective on Earth and its problems, space scientists cautioned against the common viewpoint that other planets can offer refuge if Earth becomes untenable for human existence. That's the wrong approach, according to some. "We are not going to fix any of the problems that we have on Earth by going to Mars," Cabrol said. "If we are not capable of understanding our problems here on Earth," she said, "we are just going to transfer this mentality onto another planet." (Rand added that such projects would almost certainly perpetuate the same power relationships and inequities that have shaped terrestrial societies for millennia.) [The BFR: SpaceX's Mars-Colonization Architecture in Images] And fleeing is particularly risky given how grim life on another planet is likely to be for the foreseeable future. "Maybe what Mars is going to give us is a consciousness of how beautiful, precious, fragile Earth is." Cabrol said. "We should not use planetary exploration as an escape." That isn't to say there's nothing space can offer us when it comes to solving our problems, Cabrol said. She said that one of the gifts of planetary exploration is that it puts new challenges in our path and forces us to solve them promptly, creatively and often remotely. That's the sort of skill with obvious implications for life on a fast-changing Earth. And if we continue to lose biodiversity here on Earth, space exploration may slip out of reach, Rummel said, as species losses ripple through food webs and cause accelerating change. "The very basis of the economies and support systems on the Earth that allow us to envision going elsewhere with both robots and people, those are the things that are in jeopardy." He points to the host of ecosystem services we rely on without blinking an eye, from insects that pollinate crops to plants that filter air and soil that retains stormwater. The same is true of climate change, which is raising temperatures and strengthening storms around the world. NASA satellites have spent the week monitoring Hurricane Florence and a host of other tropical storms that will leave death and destruction in their wakes — and one of which has also delayed a cargo launch to the International Space Station. Last year's hurricanes Irma and Harvey damaged Kennedy Space Center and shuttered Johnson Space Center. But biodiversity loss and climate change are both massive, incremental, depressing problems — precisely the sort of challenge humans hate to tackle. "Innovation is sexy and fixing things that already exist that can be repaired is not," Rand said. "It's much more fun and glitzy to imagine trying to build something new in a new place." But here, the history of space exploration may be able to offer a more productive mindset, despite the temptation of looking to the next horizon and the next mission. NASA has a long track record of extending missions and reprogramming damaged telescopes or robots already at work. Perhaps those examples, coupled with the nitty-gritty data and big-picture views that the agency offers of our home planet, can teach us to embrace a culture of conservation.

(Annalee, , 5-15)

When the Russian asteroid became a fireball in the air over Chelyabinsk, destroying buildings and injuring hundreds, we were lucky it wasn’t worse. What about when the next one hits? Just for fun, let’s say a 10-kilometer-diameter asteroid—much larger than the one over Chelyabinsk but close to the size of one that hit the planet 65 million years ago—smashed into central California. It wouldn’t just destroy Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It would punch a hole in the atmosphere. That’s what surprises people the most. Every disaster-from-space movie we’ve ever seen prepares us for fire and explosive destruction. Instead, blowback from the strike would be so powerful that it would hurl millions of tons of debris back into space. A thick, toxic cloud layer would settle over our upper atmosphere, wrapping itself around the world within hours after the impact, cutting off the sun. We’re not talking about an ordinary cloud, either. Packed with carbon, dust, and sulfur particles, it would reflect a lot more sunlight than a normal cloud would. Our satellites would record images of a once-blue planet gone brilliant white, like a pool ball. On Earth, it would be twilight for months. Temperatures would plummet. Crops would die, and then the forests. ADVERTISEMENT There would be fires the whole time, of course, especially around the impact site. Plus earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But most of the 5 billion people who are likely to be killed by an asteroid strike like this would die of famine. In many parts of the world, permanent dusk would mean nothing to feed our animals, let alone our families. Food supplies would dwindle. And that’s when the riots would start. This is an all-too-plausible scenario for the near future if we suffered an asteroid strike comparable to the one that killed most of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It wasn’t a giant explosion that exterminated Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and their kin. In reality, most of those giants died out over thousands of years, their numbers winnowed down to nothing as their food-rich, tropical environments grew barren and cold. Today, we have solid evidence that confirms environmental changes like these can be blamed directly or indirectly for most mass extinctions that have scourged the Earth. And that’s why our space program isn’t just something educational we’re doing to learn more about the universe. It’s vital to our survival as a species, because the Earth isn’t going to be a safe place for us in the long term. I learned about the many pathways to mass death while researching my book published this week: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. There is a pattern to how mass extinctions happen. A calamity like an asteroid strike or an enormous volcanic eruption causes an initial disaster that kills a lot animals and plants at once. And this leads to climate changes that eventually kill more than 75 percent of all species on the planet, usually in less than a million years—the blink of an eye in geological time. There is a pattern to survival, too. Every mass extinction has its survivors. A group of furry, mouselike mammals took over the planet after the dinosaurs’ heyday and eventually evolved into us. What these survivors have in common are three abilities encapsulated by the title of my book: They are able to scatter to many places in the world, adapt to them, and remember how to avoid danger. Humans are exceptionally good at all three, but perhaps our greatest strength is an ability to reconstruct the deep history of our planet—and to plan for the future. Because we know Earth is inherently dangerous, any long-term plan for humanity has to involve building communities on other worlds, or maybe in vast, artificial environments in space. But the process of doing so will take a lot longer, and be a lot weirder, than what you see in most science fiction stories. It’s likely we won’t have bustling cities the size of San Francisco on Mars or Titan in the next hundred years, so in the meantime we need to come up with a plan to deal with threats to Earth from space. Already, the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and space agencies like NASA monitor the skies for potentially deadly asteroids in our neighborhood, called near-Earth objects (NEOs). These groups have already proposed simple solutions to the asteroid problem, all of which are within our technological grasp. Currently we are using powerful telescopes to map NEOs in the heavens that are bigger than a kilometer—a task that, thanks to NASA, the European Space Agency, and others, is largely complete. If we see an NEO that’s headed our way, we can deploy a small group of spacecraft to nudge it out of the way. As long as we catch an NEO when it is still years away, it is easy enough to push it just enough to change its trajectory so that it misses Earth by tens of thousands of miles. Again, we have the technology to do this today, and a growing space economy to support our efforts. Next, we need a cost-effective way to leave the planet on a regular basis. Rockets just aren’t going to cut it. Rocket fuel is expensive, heavy, and injects huge amounts of carbon and other toxins into the environment. It’s worked pretty well for our first baby steps into space, just as reed boats worked really well for our ancestors 50,000 years ago when we were first engaging in intercontinental ocean travel. But it’s not a good long-term solution.

(Chris, , 7-13)

With such soap opera shenanigans, it's no surprise many observers on Twitter rolled their eyes. The same argument deployed against the Apollo moon shots in the 1960s — space is too expensive when we have problems at home — were rolled out again. (Never mind that the Pentagon's bloated $705 billion budget is more than eight times larger than the entire planet's spending on space.) This time the argument came layered with an extra assumption, that the Virgin Galactic vs. Blue Origin vs. SpaceX race represents nothing more than rich boys playing with their toys. However, that argument makes about as much sense as claiming that Juan Trippe ordered his first batch of Boeing 707s just so he could go on joyrides with his rich friends. In fact, what the Pan Am vs. TWA rivalry did in the 1950s would change air travel forever. The more Boeings they bought, the more ticket prices plummeted. The more people could afford to fly, the more service scaled up, until a trip to Paris was no longer completely out of reach for a U.S. middle-class household budget. That's the long-term plan for these companies' orbital rides too, with the added challenge of building infrastructure in our solar neighborhood so that we don't have to come back to Earth so soon. (Imagine if Trippe and Hughes also had to create Paris from scratch.) Space tourism isn't all about providing joyrides for the rich and famous (Tom Hanks and Lady Gaga are among the celebrities who have signed up for $250,000 Virgin Galactic tickets); it's about using that revenue as seed money for our brave new cislunar world. I have previously argued that the space economy in the next century will mint trillions of dollars to the benefit of us all; this is how it begins. Jeff Bezos noted way back in his high school valedictorian speech that more space-based industry will take the pressure off Earth's environment, and he was right about that. Industries like Big Pharma may do better making its products in zero G — and solar satellites can provide the entire planet with clean energy in one fell swoop. In the long run, growing the space economy might be capitalism's single best response to our climate emergency. Does this mean Bezos, Branson, and Musk are immune to criticism? Absolutely not. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I've written about how Bezos' wealth has turned him into a raging asshole (to his own detriment; Blue Origin might have gotten off the ground faster if he'd had a better handle on how disgruntled his employees were). Branson demanded a bailout for his airline, Virgin Atlantic, even as he furloughed its staff. And Musk, of course, seems to spend as much of his life being a Twitter troll who pisses off the cryptocurrency crowd as he does doing actual business. Meanwhile, it's as clear as a space telescope that this trio of wealthy white dudes need to pay more than they are currently paying in taxes. Back when Trippe and Hughes were buying Boeings in the 1950s, they were on the hook for 91 cents out of every dollar over their first million. There were deductions and loopholes then as now, of course, and it's estimated that the actual top effective tax rate in the 1950s was a less sky-high 46 percent. Still, that was a lot more helpful to all of us than the average 3.4 percent tax rate the richest Americans — including Musk and Bezos — paid on $400 billion in new wealth between 2014 and 2018, according to a ProPublica investigation of IRS files. With the pandemic lifting billionaires' wealth by $1.6 trillion, there's even more of a crying need to legislate that these guys pay their fair share. Again, this would not impede their space activities, and would actually benefit their business in the long run by creating more customers. America's rising middle class in the 1950s, aided by government investment, was the source of its booming economy. We have enough data now to know that trickle-down economics is not a thing, not on this or any planet. So no, we shouldn't freak out about space billionaires who are at least helping to build out the infrastructure of the future. But they too can walk and chew gum at the same time, using their immense wealth to lift more of us off the planet at the same time as they contribute to our social security and our infrastructure. Their increasingly sprawling wealth can pay for universal healthcare even as we explore the universe. Branson, Bezos, and Musk can boldly go where air pioneers went before — by sending larger checks to the IRS.

(Alice, , 7-14)

My Instagram feed is shouting at me today with reasons to hate on billionaires who go to space, the latest of whom is Sir Richard Branson. Elon Musk has been working to send rockets into space since 2002 and Jeff Bezos is set for his own personal space launch this Monday, July 20th. Why don’t they invest that money into building communities for the unhoused? Insta-activists assert. Why aren’t they solving the increasing problems of climate change? How dare these rich white men compete to see who gets to space first while the rest of us wave at them from a burning, freezing earth? Fair questions. Except, like life, they’re not fair. Sir Richard Branson and charity fundraiser Omaze partnered with Space for Humanity, a nonprofit seeking to send citizen astronauts of diverse racial and economic backgrounds into space, to give away two seats on a Virgin Galactic commercial flight. Branson’s extensive list of donations supporting LGBTQ rights, climate conservation, and countless other causes ought to put any critic of his to shame. Elon Musk is giving away $100 million to entrepreneurs who can come up with a way to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lock it away permanently. This is on top of the nearly $150 million Musk has donated directly to charities this year alone supporting schools, coronavirus research, and food banks. Jeff Bezos, perhaps today’s most-hated billionaire, donated $10 billion to combat climate change when he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO and launched Bezos Earth Fund. $100 million of that has already been donated to The Nature Conservancy where it will be used to fund reforestation in partnership with local Indigenous and Tribal communities. This is on top of the $100 million Bezos donated to Feeding America during the height of spring 2020’s pandemic and the $100 million he gave to independent charities combating homelessness. I found these stats with a five-minute Google search. Are Insta-activists just not looking to see if the billionaires they critique have already donated to the causes they say would be better alternatives to give to than space? Or are they willfully ignoring such donations with dismissals like, “Well, it’s through their own charity, so they’re still benefiting from it,” which, um, the donation receivers are, too? But sharing the charity work of space-bound billionaires isn’t actually why I started writing this article. What I really want to tell you about is this… We all benefit from rich people going to space. Critique the 1% and talk about wealth redistribution all you want, but please don’t overlook the countless benefits space exploration has given humanity. Many articles have been written about the everyday items that we have space exploration to thank for. I’m going to share with you ten of my personal favorites. 1. Do you have a smartphone? Odds are you’re reading this from your iPhone or Android, and odds are, you take selfies and videos with its built-in cameras. Odds are you have a social media account where you share your photos and vids, and odds are, said social media accounts wouldn’t exist without the plethora of photos enabled by camera phones. None of this would be possible without the space invention of Dr. Eric Fossum. In 1992, Dr. Fossum worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and invented the CMOS active pixel sensor (APS) camera-on-a-chip technology. He did this to make space photography more lightweight. Its development led to the smartphones, backup cameras, Go Pros, HD televisions, medical imaging machines, and more that we have today, forever changing industries far beyond space travel. 2. Are you or is anyone you love augmented by technology? Is there anyone in your life with a prosthetic limb? NASA’s artificial muscle systems that were originally designed for space vehicles led to today’s artificial limbs that are far more comfortable and utilitarian than their predecessors. Know a diabetic? If they use an insulin pump, it’s because it was developed for astronauts first. If you’ve ever used Invisalign braces, it’s because NASA needed a material to protect heat-seeking missile trackers, leading to the translucent polycrystalline alumina that eventually allowed invisible braces to be manufactured. Cochlear implants, cardiac implants, CT and MRI scans, LASIK eye laser surgery, and drugs and devices helping conditions from osteoporosis to heart transplants are all made possible thanks to space-first engineering. ravi-palwe-H0FHpRQVh1A-unsplash.jpg 3. Do you use Apple or Google Maps to navigate? It is because of—gasp!—an ego battle between rich white men that we have GPS navigation. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into space on October 4th, 1957, it lit a fire under the United States’s ass to track it utilizing Doppler effect technology. By 1960, TRANSIT was developed as the first satellite navigation system. Its objective? To launch nuclear missiles more precisely. But by 1996, this technology became operational for civilian use and now we don’t have to use paper maps from AAA anymore. We can simply say, “Hey Siri, take me home.” Photo by Maria Di Lorenzo 4. Do you drink filtered water? As space flights became longer in the 1970s, astronauts needed a way to have safe drinking water. NASA partnered with family-owned business Umpqua Research Company to develop the microbial check valve cartridge, which used iodine to purify the water supply on space shuttles instead of chlorine. That space technology now purifies municipal water systems in developing nations, bringing safe drinking water to thousands of people. Photo by Danny G 5. Do you sleep on memory foam? If, like me, you’ve gotten some of the best sleep ever on a memory foam mattress, pillow, or Tempur-Pedic topper, we have aeronautical engineer Charles Yost to thank for it. In the mid-1960s, NASA contracted Yost to create a seat padding that would increase astronauts’ odds of survival during landings and crashes. Yost invented what he called “temper foam,” an open-cell, polymeric memory foam that was energy-absorbing, pressure-contouring, and extremely pliable. It made its way from space shuttles to wheelchairs and into our bedrooms. 6. Do you wear sneakers? The spacesuits made in the Apollo Era were designed to cushion the soles of astronauts with shock-absorbing air hollows known as “blow rubber molding.” The insoles were so effective that a former NASA engineer named Frank Rudy pitched the idea for similar shock absorption in everyday athletic gear to a corporation called Nike. In 1978, the Nike Tailwind runners were born, which evolved into Nike Air, and tennis shoes have never been the same since. shutterstock_1734612494.jpg 7. Do you prefer your vacuum—and other tools—cordless? My cordless Dyson is all I use—seriously, worth all the money—and I have Black and Decker’s collaboration with NASA to thank for it. Although cordless tools predate space travel, it wasn’t until NASA told Black and Decker they needed a self-powered drill for moon exploration that wireless technology took a giant leap forward. The DustBuster vacuum followed the cordless drill and soon households everywhere had wire-free appliances and tools as a matter of course. Lonnie Johnson with an early prototype of his water gun. | Photo by Mike McGregor Lonnie Johnson with an early prototype of his water gun. | Photo by Mike McGregor 8. Do you remember the Super Soaker? Of course you do. Any American kid who grew up in the ’90s does, and if you didn’t grow up in the ’90s, there is much to feel sorry for, but your loss that is the Super Soaker is in the top three. NASA engineer Dr. Lonnie Johnson came up with the idea of a hand-pumped, air-pressured water gun when he was experimenting with ideas for refrigeration systems. He hooked a nozzle to his bathroom sink and, “I accidentally shot a stream of water across the bathroom,” he told Popular Mechanics, “and thought to myself, ‘this would make a great gun.’” don-delfin-almonte-KymTanwide0-unsplash.jpg 9. Do you wear glasses? Whether they’re sunglasses or prescription, did you know they’re 10 times more scratch-resistant than they’d be before 1983? This is because NASA developed scratch-resistant plastics to make the visors of astronauts’ helmets clearer. In 1983, NASA awarded Foster-Grant a license to replicate their scratch-resistance technology on everyday eyewear and other plastics that help keep us safe today. Bottle-feeding a baby formula | Creative Commons License 10. Do you know a baby who was formula-fed? Maybe their mother died or was herself starving of hunger. Maybe the baby struggled with latching issues, or was adopted by non-nursing parents. Maybe you were this baby. There is no telling how many lives have been saved because of baby formula, which we have NASA to thank for. In the 1980s, NASA explored the potential for algae to be used as a recycling agent for long-duration space travel. This led to the creation of algae-based vegetable oil which led to Formulade in 1994. Today, over 90% of baby formulas contain nutritional enrichment as the result of NASA-sponsored research. All of these transpired because humans with big egos wanted to go to space and were funded by billions of dollars. I know you can retort that these benefits to humanity were perhaps unwitting gifts, accidental byproducts of capitalism that shouldn’t be lauded as selfless acts of charity. Go for it, I’ll wait for your mentions to roll in telling me that donations from the uber-rich are tax write-offs and therefore self-benefiting. I’ll read your arguments about why billionaires should be taxed into non-billionaire-hood because of socio-democratic visions of economic equality (but let’s not call it Communism). I anticipate your comments about why no one should have a billion dollars when there are so many people, animals, and climates literally dying out there that wouldn’t be if fractions of said billions were given to help. But surely you know that it takes more than money to solve the horrors of the world. You know that people aren’t starving in Yemen because Bezos didn’t feel like donating money to feed them—you know Yemenis are being starved because Houthi rebels are obstructing aid in their conflict with Saudi Arabia, which is being armed by the United States with the steady sale of guns, aircraft, and bombs. You know that the lack of safe drinking water in rural communities and the extinction of forests and animals worldwide are due to problems far greater than money can solve, right? Problems like cultural differences, religious differences, and political differences, all of which have historical domino effects that will likely take centuries to reroute or reverse? Because you’re informed. You want to talk about unfairness and inequality? Blaming today’s wealthy for the millennia of conflict that have led to our world’s suffering isn’t fair. Demanding wealth redistribution won’t bring racial equality because belief is stronger than evidence. Ideas are mightier than dollars. Culture cannot be bought. Time, innovation, and individual responsibility are what lead societal shifts. Money and other resources are among the help facilitating the changes we so wish to see implemented, but ignoring the other factors at play by conveniently blaming billionaires and capitalism isn’t helpful. It’s short-sighted and ignorant. But what do I know? I’m just another 30-something, big city-dwelling, privilege-wielding American with access to Google in her pocket. So call me Ayn Rand, but I observe that the pursuit of selfishness often has benefits for all. Kind of like how loving yourself first helps you love others, or how taking care of your needs allows you to better care for someone else’s. Why shouldn’t this philosophy apply to wants, too? So what if some rich people want to go to space? Why shouldn’t they? History shows their pursuit of happiness will lead to improved lives for us all. That, in my awed observation, is to be celebrated. So thank you for Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson. Thank you for Space X, Elon Musk. Thank you for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. I can’t wait to see what new prosthetics, household items, safety improvements, and fun gadgets come our way because of your pursuits of wealth, innovation, and personal delight. My hat is off to you all and I am honored to be alive at the same time you are.

(Valerie, https://www.forbes.com/sites/valeriestimac/2021/07/11/virgin-galactics-historic-flight-wasnt-just-space-tourism/?sh=232e7816792f)

However, despite grumblings on social media about billionaires and their billion-dollar space hobbies, the Unity 22 mission was not solely focused on proving the commercial readiness of Virgin Galactic. Nor was it an excuse to finally send Branson to space after nearly two decades in business. One of the four specialists on the mission was onboard with the primary focus of conducting scientific research. Sirisha Bandla, an astronaut, who serves as vice president of government affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic was traveling with a special goal. She wanted to evaluate the ability to conduct human-tended research aboard Virgin Galactic flights. Bandla’s experiment was supported by NASA and was conducted on behalf of a research team at the University of Florida. Co-investigators Dr. Robert Ferl and Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul were in attendance for the mission and day’s festivities at Spaceport America. Her research looks into a plant’s gene expression at different stages of flight: 1 g during ascent, just before microgravity, and at the conclusion of microgravity. The research is similar to previous studies supported by NASA on other suborbital flights; this aimed to be the first human-tended (rather than passive) research as part of the Flight Opportunities program. (For those interested, the research has its own social media: @UF_Space_Plants) “My role was to demonstrate the capability,” Bandla shared after landing. “I actuated all three of the Kennedy fixation tubes that I went up to space to do.” From the research project’s perspective, the mission was a success and Drs. Ferl and Paul will have specimens and data to study. When asked about her suggestions to improve future experiments, Bandla shared that timing (of experiment protocols) is key. “I think it’s really important to actually look out the window, and I’d work with [future] researchers to ensure that they can conduct everything they need to do an also enjoy the experience.”

(Javier E., , 10-17)

After decades of space exploration and countless movies on the subject, why exactly does Mars continue to inspire such high levels of cultural and scientific fascination? Both the red planet and NASA are coasting on a wave of newfound popularity, taking center stage in big-budget Hollywood productions. Whether by coincidence or design, the favorable treatment of NASA by Tinseltown comes at a time when the space agency recently discovered evidence for flowing water on Mars, and last week openly declared colonizing the planet within the next 20 years "an achievable goal." And at least a few scientists think the survival of humanity may hinge on finding a new, hospitable planet to colonize. Just a few years ago, NASA critics and even some supporters were openly questioning whether the Mars science laboratory was worth its $2.5 billion price tag. Fast forward a few years, and the space agency is moving full speed toward establishing a human presence on the planet — a quest that looks less and less quixotic by the day. "Mars is obviously the logical next place to expand our capabilities and getting Earth crews there," Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin told CNBC in a recent interview. The famed astronaut and second man to walk on the moon's surface said sending humans to the planet would be an accomplishment "that's unparalleled in humanity." In a document outlining its rationale for sending humans to the far-flung planet — which lies 140 million miles from the Earth — NASA invoked the 1969 Apollo voyage, adding that unlike the moon, a mission to Mars would involve "going to stay." Mars' atmosphere is noted for its thin, carbon dioxide-filled air and ferocious dust storms that last for months. But given the right conditions, some think Mars could eventually be capable of sustaining humans. "We need to keep public interest stimulated and demonstrate to our leaders ... this is a most historical opportunity," Aldrin said, speaking from a conference in Israel. He added the human race was in a prime position to become "pilgrims in setting up permanence on Mars." In fact, the prospect of humans pioneering on Mars is gradually becoming more and more of a reality — and in some ways may be a necessity, a top-ranking NASA scientist told CNBC recently. "If the human species is going to survive, is it going to survive solely on Earth or not," asked Jim Greene, NASA's director of planetary science. "The appeal has been that as we explore, the next frontier beyond our atmosphere is Mars. That captures a lot of imagination in science, but also in science fiction." Yet Greene also underscored the inherent dangers of outer space, and the imperative to discover other systems capable of sustaining human life. He characterized Earth as existing in "a dangerous part of the solar system" that runs the outside risk of being hit by a "planet-killing" asteroid. Although it may sound like a plot from a science fiction movie, Greene explained that NASA has identified 876 out of more than 12,000 near-Earth objects that the agency is "really monitoring carefully." "In the last 500 million years of the Earth's history there have been five mass extinctions of species. The last one was the end of the dinosaurs," Greene said, referencing the event that scientists surmise brought about the extinction of dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago. Within the known range of potential "planet killers" — asteroids that are at least 2 km in size — that the space agency monitors, "there are more than 150 that we're really watching carefully," Greene said. These "potentially hazardous asteroids" will come within 5 million miles of the planet over the next 100 years. “They cross our orbit frequently, and we know we're going to get hit again," Greene said. "It’s not a matter of if, but when." Within the last several decades, there have been minor brushes with asteroids, but none that have the potential to endanger human life on a large scale — at least not yet. Recently, NASA disclosed it was monitoring a 480-meter asteroid that could collide with the Earth sometime within the next four decades. British astronomers have been even more stark in speaking of the likelihood that a space rock of large enough size could create pandemonium around the world. Read More from CNBC: Forget Rockets, This 'Space Elevator' Could Loft You Into Orbit Asteroids "cross our orbit frequently, and we know we're going to get hit again," Greene said, underscoring that factors such as trajectory and conditions in space can determine whether asteroids hit the earth or pass it by. However, "it's not a matter of if, but when. This planet won't have a planet killer hit it for many hundreds of years, but it will happen," he added. The panoply of risks makes it important to seek out viable alternatives to ensure humanity's survival. Likening the idea of an extraterrestrial colony to a computer's external hard drive, Greene told CNBC that "If we're going to live as a species, we're going to have to 'back up' in other places ... and that place is Mars."

(CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI is an associate editor at Reason. , 7-12)

The idea of billionaires launching themselves into space on their own rockets has provoked apoplexy from some progressives, who view the spectacle as an ostentatious display of economic inequality that must be fixed with a wealth tax. Witness the response to Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's successful journey to the edge of space yesterday on his company's Unity spaceship. The flight—which carried Branson and five other crew members more than 50 miles above the Earth's surface—represents an important milestone for the nascent private space tourism industry. But several commentators were only concerned with what the British billionaire's money could have funded instead. On Twitter, Mother Jones' Clara Jeffery declared it an "advertisement for a wealth tax": Journalist Teddy Schleifer said on CNN that the press should cool its jets when covering billionaires' space travels, saying that "it's impossible to talk about the billionaire's success without talking about the system that creates this in the first place." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) struck a familiar dyspeptic note: Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) asked, a few days before Branson's launch, whether that money could be spent on health care and education rather than "space travel fantasies." Khanna doesn't see such a stark trade-off with the government's own resources, given his co-sponsorship of the "Endless Frontiers Act," the initial version of which would have given $100 billion to the National Science Foundation to research such sci-fi ideas as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Surely that money could be spent on health care too? And Khanna is a member of Congress' "NASA Caucus," so he isn't objecting to spending money on space exploration per se. In any case, billionaire-backed space companies—which includes not just Branson's Virgin Galactic but also Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX—can help to eliminate wasteful space spending. That's certainly the case with SpaceX. Back in May 2020, the company's Crew Dragon vehicle ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time since 2011, when the accident-prone Space Shuttle was retired. To develop and launch Crew Dragon, SpaceX received a $2.6 billion contract from NASA through the agency's Commercial Crew Program. In comparison, the Constellation program run directly by NASA—which had a similar goal of developing a launch system for putting astronauts in low-earth orbit—was estimated to cost closer to $34.5 billion. SpaceX was "effectively doing what the Constellation Program was doing with about the same amount of money, total, that they were burning in a single month," NASA engineer Mike Horkachuck told ArsTechnica's Eric Berger. The billionaire class is going to space decades after government did it first, using surplus resources that should have gone to finance that government but didn't, and then using that dubious achievement as proof that they are more efficient than government. — Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) July 12, 2021 In time, the competition between these various private ventures will put yet more downward pressure on prices while spurring the development of new, better space technology—helping the government's space efforts as well as the private sector's. Even if you aren't convinced of the value of space travel, given that we've yet to reach a utopia free of poverty, disease, and war here on Earth, there's something to be said for a private space industry soaking up the legions of engineers and other aerospace professionals who might otherwise be spending their careers designing faster-flying missiles for traditional military contractors.

(Maggie Bringhurst is an opinion writer for The Daily Utah Chronicle in her third year studying communications and journalism. She likes to spend her free time hiking and camping. She loves movies and music, with a sweet spot for 90s ska-punk. , 11-5)

Space exploration is an increasingly profitable sector and billionaires are cashing in. Since Elon Musk’s success with SpaceX, other entrepreneurs have hopped on the train — Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos started Blue Origin. Many are upset billionaires are investing in space while climate change remains a growing concern. Though the ultra-rich investing in space travel is a blatant display of wealth, it’s actually one of the better ways they are using their money. Commercialization of the space industry is good. The fact that billionaires are leading this change has larger implications of labor exploitation and a poor tax system. Our government is the guilty party, for allowing the wealth divide in America to become so dramatic and polarized. Billionaires Shouldn’t Fix Climate Change Many argue that billionaires should be spending their money on saving our planet before investing in space exploration. I agree with this general sentiment, but billionaires spending their excessive wealth on unnecessary things isn’t a billionaire problem. It’s a government problem. We need to tax the rich to prevent excessive wealth accumulation. We can’t rely on billionaires to solve the world’s problems because they won’t. Billionaires profit from the working class’s struggle. The top 1% increased their profits during the 2008 recession and flourished similarly during the COVID-19 pandemic. While 40 million Americans filed for unemployment during the pandemic, billionaires’ net worth increased by half a trillion dollars. This is due to disproportionate financial aid and tax evasion through loopholes. Why would you work to fix inequality when you are actively profiting from it? Dependence on billionaires to solve problems like climate change will only increase opportunities for exploitation. Billionaires like Bezos, Bill Gates and Musk are investing in and donating to renewable energy because it is profitable and good for PR. If we rely on them to fix the climate crisis, they could change their minds as soon as something more lucrative comes up. The purpose of government is to act in the interest of the public. CEOs act in the interest of their wallet. Billionaires make money. It’s what they do. Bezos is investing in space travel because it’s profitable. We can’t expect the rich to give that up out of the goodness of their hearts because to become a billionaire, you likely don’t have much good in your heart. We must pressure the government to fix problems that matter. Privatizing Space Travel is Good Compared to other things tech billionaires could be doing with their money, space travel is worth the investment. Paul Sir, an educator at Clark Planetarium, suggested that the privatization of the industry will have positive effects on the progression of technology, even if it stems from corporate greed. He said the moon landing “was more politics than anything, but we did get a lot of good things out of it.” The private sector will progress space technology faster and more sustainably than the government. NASA spent nearly $20 billion on the Space Launch System, a rocket that has been in the works since 2011. The private sector should fund space projects, instead of our taxes being funneled into expensive, unnecessary projects. Musk estimates that his rocket will cost only $2 million per mission. Additionally, his rocket will be reusable, which is more sustainable than any current NASA rocket. The space industry is progressing fast. It is a lucrative field, so our tax dollars are better spent on things that need government funding to advance like sustainable agriculture or renewable energy. Space exploration could offer answers to questions we’ve been asking for centuries. Space travel led to discoveries that improved technology on Earth, like smartphones’ GPS capabilities, weather tracking services and climate change research. Yes, our government should prioritize legislation to mitigate climate change and they should absolutely address the wealth divide. But until those changes happen, we can’t expect private corporations to stop innovating. That said, our government should take its role as regulators seriously and should create legislation for the space industry. The Government’s Role Feeling upset at people with excessive wealth for spending it on unnecessary things is completely good and natural. We should be upset. But we should direct those emotions towards the people who affect change.

(Julia, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/20/nothing-says-tax-rich-recreational-billionaire-space-race-critics-denounce-bezos , 7-20)

Economic justice advocates recoiled on Tuesday at the sight of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest person, launching himself into space--momentarily leaving behind a planetary emergency; a global pandemic that's disproportionately affecting poor countries without access to vaccines; and rampant wealth inequality in the U.S. and around the world--all of which could be eradicated or mitigated with a wealth tax imposed on Bezos and other billionaires. The New Shepard launch came days after business magnate Richard Branson launched his own spacecraft, beginning what the news media has called a "billionaire space race." Both flights made the latest powerful argument for a wealth tax, said critics like Public Citizen, which tweeted Tuesday: "Nothing says tax the rich like a recreational billionaire space race." Warren Gunnels, policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), tweeted that "if there was any economic justice in the world, we would impose a $100 billion re-entry tax on Jeff Bezos upon his return from outer space."

(Katherine, is editor in chief of Reason magazine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/24/bezos-branson-musk-space/ 7-24)

Before both flights, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — a member of the NASA Caucus — tweeted: “Should billionaires play out their space travel fantasies, or should we invest in schooling, provide healthcare, and create prosperity for everyone? We need a wealth tax.” This week, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), said he’ll introduce legislation that would tax wealthy passengers on space flights that don’t have scientific goals, in order to “support the public good.” They’re not wrong that there are plenty of problems here on Earth that need attention, and resources. But what’s wrong with letting the billionaires take a turn at tackling outer space? You or I might not choose to spend money the way Bezos, Branson or SpaceX’s Elon Musk have. But it’s one giant leap from there to suggesting that Congress is better at spending money, or that a private space race, which right now looks like a game of one-upmanship between famous rich guys, can’t ultimately redound to the public good. In a country where there is ever-increasing disagreement about policy priorities (on Wednesday, a Senate procedural vote to advance a putatively bipartisan infrastructure package failed), the proper role of the state, and the trustworthiness of our elected officials, it’s time to take seriously the idea that government may not always be primed to take on some of our biggest problems. Sure, if we instituted a wealth tax or started “abolishing billionaires,” as some on Capitol Hill seem eager to do, legislators might better build consensus around spending some of that money to strengthen a safety net that helps people in crisis, while also prudently acting in the short term to stave off long-term existential threats. Might. But they’re definitely going to spend a pile of money on forever wars, handing out corporate welfare and incarcerating minor offenders as part of the misbegotten war on drugs. They’d fund a space program, too. Bezos, Branson and Musk have all made it clear why they’re willing to invest in space: They think having a new frontier (and a possible escape hatch) are worth a lot to mankind in the long run. Clearly, they all want to add to their billions — that’s just what they do. But as Bezos explained to CNBC, there’s a broader vision: “What we’re really trying to do is build reusable space vehicles. It’s the only way to build a road to space, and we need to build a road to space so that our children can build the future.” Americans appear to agree: 72 percent of them telling Pew Research that it’s essential for the United States to be world leader in space exploration. But on this challenge, and so many others, too many of the politicians — who well know that they have no hope of getting on the same page with their counterparts — still seem to prefer scoring points on Twitter. If we can’t have consensus, though, maybe it’s time we tried competition. There’s an old saying among space nerds: Space is a place, not a program. The Apollo Program was an inspiring feat, something Americans deserve to brag about until the heat death of the universe. Yes, the Soviets beat us to orbit, but we got men to the moon and back with a repurposed pen and 32,768 bits of RAM. Over time, the U.S. space agency relinquished its early dominance of manned spaceflight, pivoting to expensive, cumbersome shuttles that were akin to space buses, loaded with science projects involving roundworms. The program was shelved a decade ago. This left a bunch of folks who came of age during the Apollo era hanging. A few became billionaires who figured if they were going to realize the spacefaring dreams of their youth, they’d have to do it themselves — and they might as well sell tickets while they were at it. They began to realize those ambitions and to dramatically bring down the cost of launch. According to one 2018 analysis: “NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg. Commercial launch has reduced the cost to LEO by a factor of 20.” What if philanthropy isn’t the best way for rich people to help others? It’s easy to see how a roughly 10-minute round-trip space flight that takes passengers from Earth to Earth strikes many as a vanity project. There’s no guarantee that every luxury good will eventually become a commodity. And competition ought to be a fair fight: No regulators playing favorites, no subsidies — right now, the private space sector is too reliant on government infrastructure and government contracts. But billionaires are helping turn a pricey, ineffective government initiative into a competitive industry, and they’re doing it following an ego-powered, grandiose template that has worked before. The eccentric interests of prominent, sometimes wealthy weirdos trying to outdo each other brought us electric light, the automobile, commercial airlines, personal mobile phones and more. One day: passenger berths for regular schmos. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Branson launched before Bezos, or if Musk thinks it would be cool to be “born on Earth and die on Mars. Hopefully not at the point of impact,” as he’s fond of saying. What matters is what the rest of us will do when we can buy tickets to use their tech, something Congress isn’t putting on offer. Billionaire antics aren’t the point. While politicians are pointing fingers, they’re getting us one small step closer to where so many of us already agree we’d like to go.

(Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? , as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/bidens-wealth-tax-would-undermine-his-space-and-environmental-goals 4-15)

Finally, any effort to fleece the wealthy of their riches would tend to undermine both space and environmental goals championed by the Biden administration. Private individuals such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are providing the means by which people can travel to and explore space. Musk’s SpaceX is providing rides to and from the International Space Station for both crews and cargo. SpaceX’s Starship rocket has been assigned the goal of landing America's astronauts on the lunar surface by 2025. Bezos’s Blue Origin is due to compete for the second Human Landing System. Blue Origin is also developing the New Glenn orbital rocket that will help launch satellites and other payloads and the BA4 rocket engine that will replace Russian-made engines. The wealth tax would also undermine Biden administration policies designed to combat climate change. The dirty little secret is that private entrepreneurs are investing in technologies that will lessen the emission of greenhouse gases. Musk owns an electric car company called Tesla, is building solar and battery systems to supplement power grids, and is getting into the carbon capture business. Bill Gates is developing new nuclear power technology that is cheaper and safer than conventional nuclear power plants. Bezos, Gates, Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg, billionaires all, are investors in a company called Commonwealth Fusion . Commonwealth Fusion, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has recently had a breakthrough in developing a superconducting magnet that will be crucial for bringing solar power to Earth and turning it into clean, carbon-free electricity. The Biden administration seems not to have thought things through when it ventured into "soak-the-rich" territory. The proposal is obviously a sop to Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and members of "the Squad" who have targeted wealthy, successful taxpayers as enemies of the people. However, the more money that people such as Musk, Bezos, and Gates must pay to the government, the less they will have to invest in innovative technologies that will address the problems of space travel and climate change. The situation is a feature and not a bug to Sanders. Recently he offered a bizarre tweet : “Jeff Bezos is worth about $180 billion. If he wants to go to the moon or to Mars, hey, that's his business — knock yourself out. But in my view, the taxpayers of this country do not need to subsidize his space travel.” Bezos, while he has taken a suborbital jaunt on his New Shepard rocket, has not to anyone’s knowledge expressed an interest in going to the moon or Mars personally. His proposed Blue Moon lunar lander would, if accepted, provide NASA with a second means of sending astronauts and cargo to the lunar surface. On his official website on the "Green New Deal," Sanders dismissed technologies such as nuclear power and carbon capture as “false solutions.” He seems more interested in ending the oil and gas industries than proposing real solutions to climate change, especially if they come from the hated billionaire class. Hopefully, Congress will keep in mind the Biden wealth tax’s downsides when considering it.

(Anthony, https://news.yahoo.com/spacex-smashes-reusable-rocket-record-105359373.html)

SpaceX has broken its own record for launching reused rockets after successfully completing a mission to deliver its Starlink satellites into orbit. The company launched 22 of its internet satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday night, before landing the first stage booster on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 16th launch and landing for the B1058 Falcon 9 rocket booster, with SpaceX hoping it can achieve another four launches before finally being scrapped. The Starlink satellites were deployed into low-Earth orbit roughly one hour after lift-off, further boosting SpaceX’s space-based internet network. There are now more than 4,000 active Starlink satellites in orbit around Earth, delivering high-speed internet to users. The latest Starlinks are V2 Minis, which despite the name are larger than SpaceX’s previous generation Starlinks. The upgraded satellites include “4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations”, according to SpaceX. They are “mini” versions of the V2 Starlink satellites, which are set to launch aboard SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket as soon as it is operational. SpaceX recently completed a six engine static fire test of its Starship rocket at its Starbase facility in Texas, having failed in its first ever orbital mission earlier this year. The private space company has already secured multi-billion dollar contracts with Nasa to use the rocket as part of its Artemis lunar program, while SpaceX plans to use a fleet of the rockets to establish a permanent human colony on Mars before 2050. Shortly after the latest satellites were deployed, SpaceX boss Elon Musk provided an update for its next-generation space craft, which is the biggest rocket ever built. “Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20 per cent to reach 9,000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level... And deliver over 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit with full and rapid reusability,” he wrote on Twitter. “Fifty rockets flying every three days on average enables over a megaton of payload to orbit per year – enough to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.” There is no fixed date for the next major orbital flight test of the Starship rocket, though Mr Musk has previously said that it will likely take place before September.

(Anan, https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/07/33159201/elon-musk-says-starship-will-provide-the-meaning-of-life-heres-why-the-space-entrepreneur-has-high-h)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, on Sunday, termed its Starship ‘the meaning of life' and said that it will have three more engines. What Happened: Musk shared a picture of a Starship showing its six raptor engines and said, "3 more engines for the meaning of life." SpaceX's Starship, composed of the super heavy rocket and the starship spacecraft, aims to create a fully reusable transportation system for crew and cargo missions to Earth's orbit, the Moon and Mars. According to the SpaceX website, the super heavy will be powered by 33 Raptor engines and Starship by 6. However, as per Musk's latest update, the Starship will now have 9 engines. "Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20% to reach 9000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level," Musk said. He added in a later tweet that the Starship could deliver 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit, meaning they could enable over a megaton of payload to orbit per year if 50 rockets flew every 3 days on average. According to the CEO, that would suffice to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. Why It Matters: SpaceX conducted the first test launch of Starship on April 20. The rocket exploded in less than four minutes after take-off. Late last month, SpaceX said that Ship 25, the prototype that will make the second flight test, has completed a six-engine static fire test at Starbase; a key milestone before the second test flight. In a discussion with journalist Ashlee Vance, Musk said that significant changes have been made since the first test flight and he now estimates a 60% probability for the next flight to reach orbit, contingent on the success of stage separation. He then predicted the second flight test to occur in six weeks. Musk has talked about adding more engines to at least some Starship vehicles before as well. In 2021, Musk said that the Starship is being upgraded to nine engines. Starship is key to realizing Musk's dreams of making life "multi-planetary". In 2020, he said that he would send a million people to Mars by 2050 aboard Starship and that it is the key to "protecting the light of consciousness."

(Jason is editorial director of Singularity Hub. He researched and wrote about finance and economics before moving on to science and technology. 10-19)

Why blow billions of dollars on space exploration when billions of people are living in poverty here on Earth? You’ve likely heard the justifications. The space program brings us useful innovations and inventions. Space exploration delivers perspective, inspiration, and understanding. Because it’s the final frontier. Because it’s there. What you haven’t heard is anything to inspire a sense of urgency. Indeed, NASA’s struggle to defend its existence and funding shows how weak these justifications sound to a public that cares less about space than seemingly more pressing needs. Presumably, this is why SpaceX founder Elon Musk, in a fascinating interview with Ross Andersen, skipped all the usual arguments in favor of something else entirely. Space exploration, he says, is as urgent as easing poverty or disease—it’s our insurance policy against extinction. As we extend our gaze back through geologic time and out into the universe, it’s clear we aren’t exempt from nature’s carelessly terrifying violence. We simply haven’t experienced its full wrath yet because we’ve only been awake for the cosmological blink of an eye. Musk says an extinction-level event would, in an existential flash, make our down-to-earth struggles irrelevant. “Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved,” he says, “but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.’” We’ve got all our eggs in one basket, and that’s a terrible risk-management strategy. We should diversify our planetary portfolio to insure against the worst—and soon. Musk’s line of reasoning isn’t completely novel. It’s what led science fiction writer Larry Niven to say, “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.” And it drives Ed Lu’s quest to save humanity from a major asteroid hit. But while we may spot and potentially derail asteroids, not every cosmic threat can be so easily predicted or prevented—a blast from a nearby supernova; a gamma ray burst aimed at Earth; a period of extreme volcanism. Any of these could wipe us out. Musk says he thinks a lot about the silence we’ve been greeted with as our telescopes scan the sky for interstellar broadcasts from other civilizations. seti-fermi-paradoxGiven the sheer number of galaxies, stars, and planets in the universe—it should be teeming with life. If even a tiny percent of the whole is intelligent, there should be thousands of civilizations in our galaxy alone. So where are they? This is known as the Fermi Paradox, and Musk rattles off a few explanatory theories (there are many). But he settles on this, “If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilizations, and I mean strange in a bad way. It could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilizations.” That something strange might be an evolutionary self-destruct button, as Carl Sagan theorized. We developed modern rockets at the same time as nuclear weapons. But the Fermi Paradox and its explanations, while philosophically captivating, haven’t settled the question of intelligent life. SETI’s Seth Shostak cautions, “The Fermi Paradox is a big extrapolation from a very local observation.” That is, just because we don’t see compelling evidence of galactic colonization around here doesn’t mean there is none. But even without the Fermi Paradox, our planet’s geologic record is enough to show that, as Sagan phrased it, “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” So, if you buy Musk’s argument—what next? Well, he didn’t start SpaceX to boost telecommunication satellites into orbit or shuttle astronauts to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX is Musk’s vehicle to another planet, and he isn’t shy saying so.

(Robert, interviewed by Charles Monroe-Kang , for the date at the end it says this Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 Post date: February 15, 2022, but its not Feb 15 yet so…)

Fear about the future of the planet keeping you up at night? Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin has a solution: it’s time to settle Mars. "We’re entirely ready," he said. "We're better prepared today to send people to Mars than we were to go to the moon in 1961. Given a serious decision, we could have people there within 10 years." Zubrin has been trying to get to Mars for a long time. He spent decades with Lockheed Martin and Martin Marietta Astronautics, working on knotty problems in space propulsion and making plans for interplanetary colonization. At 67, he’s putting his hope in Elon Musk’s Space X program. "If it keeps moving forward at the rate it currently is" Zurbin told Charles Monroe-Kane for "To The Best Of Our Knowledge," "I’d say they’ll land before the end of the 2020s." His prediction? It’ll be the best thing that could happen to Planet Earth. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Charles Monroe-Kane: What’s in this for Earthlings? Why colonize Mars? Robert Zubrin: A number of reasons. There’s the one NASA gives — for science. There’s the positive stimulus of the challenge, especially for the youth. But here’s the thing: what is the greatest danger humanity faces? What caused the disasters of the 20th century? Bad ideas! In particular, variants of one continuous bad idea, which is that there isn’t enough to go around, so we have to push other people aside and even exterminate them in order to take what there is. I know for a fact — because I've spoken with them — that there are people in the Pentagon who look at the rise of China and say "this has got to be stopped; if they all become middle class, there won’t be enough oil in the world." If that kind of thinking prevails, it will lead to more wars. Human exploration and settlement of Mars is a disproof of this theory. We can open up whole new worlds of resources if we exercise our creativity. It’s the only positive answer.