Quantum fluctuations in science, space and society
Author:Alan Boyle
Mastermind of Cosmic Log, contributor to GeekWire and Universe Today, author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Space Launch System in flight. (NASA Illustration)
The federal government’s watchdog agency says getting NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket off the ground is likely to take longer and cost more than the space agency says it will.
Any issues that crop up in the months ahead could push the first uncrewed SLS launch, known as Artemis 1, from its planned mid-2020 timetable to mid-2021, the Government Accountability Office said in a study issued today.
What’s more, the GAO says NASA has been shifting costs forward to make it look as if expenses for the first launch have grown by $1 billion, when the actual adjusted cost growth is $1.8 billion.
Schedule and cost issues for SLS are particularly problematic because the rocket has been selected to carry NASA astronauts to the moon by 2024.
An artist’s conception shows the next-generation Polar Security Cutter. (VT Halter Marine Illustration)
When the Coast Guard starts rolling out a new generation of heavy icebreakers on the Gulf Coast, the ships will be heading for a familiar port in the Pacific Northwest.
“I am pleased to announce that Seattle, Washington, will be the home of the Coast Guard’s new Polar Security Cutters,” Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the Coast Guard, said June 17 in a statement. “The Pacific Northwest has been the home of our icebreaking fleet since 1976, and I am confident that the Seattle area will continue to provide the support we need to carry out our critical operations in the polar regions.”
Heavy icebreakers come into play for guaranteeing access to Antarctica for supply deliveries, and supporting U.S. maritime security interests at high latitudes in the north as well as the south. But the current state of America’s fleet of heavy icebreakers is a source of concern.
That fleet has dwindled to one aging ship, the 43-year-old Polar Star, which has suffered through a string of breakdowns in recent years. During last year’s deployment to Antarctica, the ship experienced two flooding incidents and the loss of a gas turbine. This March, a team of Coast Guard and Navy divers had to patch a breach in the hull.
Meanwhile, the Polar Star’s sister ship, the Polar Sea, is out of commission and kept around only for spare parts. And the Coast Guard’s medium icebreaker, the Healy, isn’t capable of taking on Antarctic missions.
Tethers Unlimited’s Androgynous Robotic Tool-change Interface, or ARTIE, is a hot-swappable tool-change interface for the Kraken robotic arm. (Tethers Unlimited Illustration)
NASA today awarded up to $45.4 million for 363 aerospace projects proposed by small businesses and research institutions — including Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited, which snagged five of the awards.
Phase I grants of up to $125,000 each will go to the latest crop of winners in NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, also known as SBIR and STTR.
Tethers Unlimited traditionally does well in the SBIR/STTR competition. In the past, the company has won NASA’s backing for research into technologies ranging from in-space construction to 3-D printing and plastic recycling in zero gravity.
Eviation’s Alice electric airplane makes its debut at the Paris Air Show. (Eviation Photo)
An Israeli startup called Eviation Aircraft unveiled its first prototype electric airplane today at the International Paris Air Show, with flight testing planned at Moses Lake in central Washington state.
Eviation CEO Omer Bar-Yohay told reporters that his company hopes to win certification for the Alice airplane from the Federal Aviation Administration by late 2021 or early 2022.
Redmond, Wash.-based MagniX plans to provide one of two electric propulsion options for the nine-passenger plane, which is designed to serve regional routes.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan speaks at an event presented by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (Department of Defense Photo)
President Donald Trump announced in a tweet that former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan is leaving his post as acting defense secretary, hours after reports about a 1990 domestic dispute involving Shanahan and his ex-wife came to light.
Trump didn’t refer to those reports. He said Shanahan would not be going through with the Senate confirmation process to take on the top Pentagon post permanently, but would instead “devote more time with his family.”
Army Secretary Mark Esper will be named acting defense secretary in Shanahan’s stead, Trump tweeted.
Svitlana Volkova, a data scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is part of a team of researchers who analyzed cryptocurrency discussions on Reddit. (PNNL Photo)
Computer scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have mapped the ebb and flow of Reddit’s discussions about cryptocurrency — not only to see how online chatter can predict market behavior, but also to gain insights into how disinformation goes viral.
“Cryptocurrency is a very good proxy program for disinformation,” said PNNL data scientist Svitlana Volkova, one of the authors of a study presented at the Web Conference 2019 in San Francisco.
Tracking disinformation scientifically can be a challenge, however, because the perpetrators tend to blend in with the crowd. On a broad topic like presidential politics, it’s hard to come up with an algorithm that focuses in on what’s true vs. what’s false.
It’s easier to look at how information gets passed along on well-defined Reddit discussion forums devoted to specific cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero. So Volkova and her co-authors — Emily Saldanha and Maria Glenski — conducted an analysis of tens of thousands of Reddit comments made on the forums for those three crypto coins between 2015 and 2018.
Stratolaunch’s plane soars during its first test flight in April. (Scaled Composites Photo)
Sources say Vulcan Inc. is looking to sell Stratolaunch, the space venture founded by the late Seattle billionaire Paul Allen, and one report says the asking price could be as high as $400 million.
That price tag was reported today by CNBC, quoting unnamed sources who were said to be familiar with the discussions.
Vulcan had nothing new to say about Stratolaunch’s fate, which has been the subject of rumors for months. “Stratolaunch remains operational,” Alex Moji, manager of corporate communications at Vulcan, told GeekWire in an emailed statement. “We will provide an update when there is news to share.”
OceanGate’s Titan submersible is designed to withstand Titanic pressures. (OceanGate Photo)
Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate has had to postpone this summer’s deep-sea dives to the Titanic shipwreck, just as they were about to start, due to complications relating to the expedition’s intended mothership.
The complications have to do with the status of the Norwegian-flagged MV Havila Harmony under Canadian maritime law, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told GeekWire today. The ship’s operators at Reach Subsea feared that the ship might be impounded if the expedition went forward as planned, Rush said.
Rush said that the issue cropped up on June 7, and that the resulting complications couldn’t be resolved in time to do this year’s Titanic Survey Expedition. The first departure from St. John’s, Newfoundland, had been scheduled for June 28.
Elysian Brewing’s Space Dust IPA will be sporting space-themed labels this summer. (Elysian Brewing Photo via Museum of Flight)
Want a little space history in your beer? Or soda pop? Or chocolate? Seattle brands are banding together to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, with the Museum of Flight leading the charge.
For instance, take Elysium Brewing Co.’s Space Dust IPA, one of the Seattle brewery’s standards: This summer, Space Dust bottles will be sporting a series of three Apollo 11 labels celebrating the mission’s liftoff, moonwalk and splashdown in July 1969.
If your tastes run more toward the softer side, check out the collectible Apollo 11 labels that’ll be part of Jones Soda’s 50th-anniversary lineup.
A computer-generated image represents zones of space debris. The two main debris fields are the ring of objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit. (NASA Illustration)
What can be done with the thousands of dead satellites orbiting Earth? Some commercial ventures are hatching plans to get rid of them, but one expert has laid out a scheme for turning them into building materials … for the moon.
And the Blue Moon lunar lander being developed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture could play a part in the scheme. “The Blue Moon fits into my plan perfectly,” Keith Volkert, CEO of California-based Satellite Consulting Inc., said last week at Amazon’s re:MARS conference in Las Vegas.
The fact that Volkert presented his satellite salvaging plan at re:MARS doesn’t suggest that Bezos has endorsed the idea. But it does suggest Volkert has put enough thought into his seemingly crazy idea to win a share of the Vegas spotlight.
