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‘Star Trek’ exhibit relives 50 years of the future

Image: Starship Enterprise
A model of the Starship Enterprise hangs from the EMP Museum’s ceiling. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

From several yards away, the bridge of the Starship Enterprise looks as if it was beamed down from the 23rd century into the “Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds” exhibition that opens Saturday at Seattle’s EMP Museum.

But up close, you can tell it’s a 50-year-old movie prop, with rocker switches from the ’60s and bits of plastic peeling off the control console.

In a weird way, that’s a big part of the golden-anniversary exhibition’s appeal. When the TV show had its premiere in 1966, “Star Trek” was all about a bright and shiny future. It still is, but the exhibition also casts a spotlight on the social issues and foibles that have shaped the saga over the course of five decades.

“Star Trek” is famous not only for its optimistic vision of spaceflight and technology, but also for its allegorical references to the civil rights movement and cultural diversity, East-West tensions and the rise of environmentalism, gender identity and same-sex relationships.

“All these are ingredients that you can see get funneled into ‘Star Trek,’” museum curator Brooks Peck said today during a preview of the exhibit. And they’re funneled into the exhibition as well.

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First Mars crews will steer robots from orbit

Image: Mars orbital habitat
Is this how the first human missions to Mars will unfold? NASA’s chief favors doing extended operations from orbit, rather than starting out with a crew landing on the surface. (Credit: NASA)

The first humans to reach Mars almost certainly won’t go down to the surface, but will manage fleets of rovers from Martian orbit.

That’s the view of Andy Weir, the author behind a wildly popular space saga titled “The Martian.” But it’s also the view of NASA’s administrator, Charles Bolden, and lots of other mission planners. NASA’s current plan calls for the first crews to set up shop around Mars and its moons in the 2030s.

The landing vs. orbiting issue came up today during a space-themed session at Transformers, a daylong conference organized by The Washington Post in the nation’s capital. Weir’s novel (and the movie it inspired) focuses on an astronaut left behind on the Red Planet’s surface, but the engineer-turned-author said the initial flights to Mars would probably follow a safer storyline.

He noted that robotic missions to Mars, such as the ones involving NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, require a long latency period between sending commands and getting back the results coming out of those commands. That’s due to the distance between the rovers and their controllers on Earth.

“The biggest benefit to having an astronaut on the surface, in terms of the science, is that that astronaut has a brain,” Weir said. “An astronaut doesn’t have a five- to 20-minute latency in communicating what he or she wants to do on the surface of Mars. So the very first humans-to-Mars-area mission, I suspect, will be a whole bunch of rovers on the surface of Mars, and humans in orbit controlling them. What do you think?”

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Astronauts reflect on future final-frontier films

Image: Terry Virts on ISS
NASA astronaut Terry Virts aims his camera through the Cupola, the best window on the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

“A Beautiful Planet” is a 3-D visual feast for the eyes, but the astronauts who filmed the IMAX space extravaganza made sure that’s not all it is.

For example, NASA astronaut Terry Virts said he recalled the feeling of life on the International Space Station as he watched the movie today at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. “When I was going down into the Soyuz to say goodbye, I can feel what that suit felt like. Just how to move in weightlessness,” he said.

His crewmate, Kjell Lindgren, was struck by the sounds of a spacewalk.

“The microphone captured the sound coming through the structure of the suit,” he told GeekWire. “The anchors banging around, the sound of the breathing, just the suit flexing, the joints slipping on each other. Just the sensation of what it’s like to move outside, and to see these guys moving around outside. That’s what it feels like. It’s very visceral.”

When a spacewalker’s tether pulled taut, the resulting twang drew a gasp from the audience – as if they were watching a “Gravity”-type thriller, not a real-life documentary about the space station and our planet below.

That’s the kind of scene that producer/director/editor Toni Myers, who’s been in on 10 IMAX movies, loves to spring on filmgoers. “There’s such a thing as a golden eight seconds, and that was one of them,” she said.

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Experts weigh in on genetically engineered crops

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Corn is one of the best-known genetically engineered crops. (Credit: NIEHS)

A scientific analysis backed by the National Academies finds no evidence that genetically engineered crops pose heightened health risks or environmental problems, but points up subtler concerns about the technology.

Today’s 420-page report says the impact of genetic engineering for resistance to insects and herbicides has been mostly positive, due to a decrease of pests and crop losses. The outcomes vary widely, however. If proper pest management practices aren’t followed, insects and weeds can evolve to overcome the crops’ built-in resistance. That presents a “major agronomic problem,” the report says.

“Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects” was drawn up by a committee comprising more than a dozen experts, with the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. The experts delved into nearly 900 publications about genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton, which account for almost all of today’s commercial genetically engineered crops.

The experts also heard from 80 speakers during a series of public meetings, and read through 700 comments from members of the public.

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How to train your robot: Treat it like a dog

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A virtual dog has to be taught to move the red bag to the blue room. (Credit: Peng et al. / WSU)

To figure out the best way for a robot to move, designers have turned to snakes,cheetahs, fish and even mermaids for inspiration. But to figure out the best way for a robot to learn, they’re going to the dogs.

A team led by computer scientists at Washington State University’s Intelligent Robot Learning Laboratory set up a robot training program that builds in the kinds of fits and starts that a dog might employ when it’s learning a task from its human master. When the virtual robot is unsure what to do, it slows down and looks for feedback. But once it’s figured out the task, it runs through the job lickety-split.

The “Strategy-Aware Bayesian Learning” model, which was laid out in Singapore last week at the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, was developed in anticipation of an age when regular folks rather than programmers would have to teach robots what to do.

“We want everyone to be able to program, but that’s probably not going to happen,” WSU Professor Matthew Taylor said today in a news release. “So we needed to provide a way for everyone to train robots – without programming.”

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Space station celebrates its 100,000th orbit

Image: International Space Station
The International Space Station has circled Earth more than 100,000 times. (NASA photo)

The International Space Station registered its 100,000th orbit around the planet today, providing NASA with a news hook for looking at what humanity’s farthest-out outpost has done over the past 17 years.

“During that time, over 1,922 research investigations have been performed,” NASA said in a Tumblr post marking the occasion. “More than 1,200 scientific results publications have been produced as a result.”

Among the best-known studies are those documenting the long-term health effects of spaceflight – findings that serve as cautionary tales for future trips to Mars. Even before the first elements of the space station were launched in 1998, researchers knew that extended stays in weightlessness resulted in bone and muscle loss. But space station studies showed that long-term spacefliers suffered vision impairment and headaches as well.

Future research will look at ways to mitigate or compensate for such health issues, including electromagnetic shields to guard against space radiation.

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737 MAX jet gets drawn into labor dispute

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An artist’s conception shows a Southwest Airlines 737 MAX taking to the air. (Credit: Boeing)

Is Boeing’s 737 MAX just a 737 jet, or is it something new? That question figures in a years-long battle between Southwest Airlines and its pilots union.

The fuel-efficient 737 MAX made its maiden test flight in January, and Southwest is due to receive the first plane of that breed in the first half of next year. The airline has put in firm orders for 30 of the MAX 7 variant and 170 of the MAX 8.

The issue is that the yet-to-be-delivered 737 MAX isn’t specifically named in the current labor agreement between the airline and the 8,300-member Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association. The two sides have been negotiating over a new contract for more than four years, and dispute has become increasingly bitter. The pilots are seeking higher pay and an improved retirement package, while Southwest is seeking more flexible work rules and improvements in productivity.

The negotiations are currently in federal mediation.

For months, Southwest pilots have been saying that they won’t fly the 737 MAX when it’s delivered, because it’s not listed among the planes covered by the existing contract. Today the union filed a lawsuit asking a federal court in Dallas to block Southwest from flying the 737 MAX until the plane is officially listed in a new contract.

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Magnetoshell gets in on NASA’s way-out funding

Image: Magnetoshell aerocapture concept
MSNW’s magnetoshell aerocapture concept could help ease spaceships into orbit. (Credit: MSNW)

A system that would use magnetic fields to ease a spacecraft into orbit after an interplanetary journey has won a $500,000 grant from NASA’s advanced research program for MSNW, a company based in Redmond. Wash.

The money for MSNW is one of eight Phase II awards made through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, also known as NIAC. Other projects look into such way-out ideas as suspended animation, beamed energy for interstellar travel and a satellite-airplane hybrid that could stay up in the air for months at a time.

MSNW’s magnetoshell aerocapture system is designed to take advantage of aerodynamic drag as well as magnetized plasma to slow a spacecraft down and as it dips through a planet’s atmosphere.

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Gates commits $100M to microbiome project

Image: Microbes
Humans are hosts to a diverse microbiome, including these organisms. Clockwise from top left are Streptococcus (Credit: Tom Schmidt); a microbial biofilm of mixed species, from human body (Credit: A. Earl, Broad Institute/MIT); Bacillus (Credit: Tom Schmidt); and Malassezia lopophilis (Credit: J.H. Carr, CDC). Image credit: Jonathan Bailey / NHGRI.

The White House has unveiled more than half a billion dollars’ worth of public and private programs aimed at unraveling the mysteries of microbes – and Seattle’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be contributing more than $100 million to that National Microbiome Initiative over the next four years.

The initiative, announced May 13, will take advantage of the key role that microbial communities, also known as microbiomes, play in our gut as well as in agriculture and global ecosystems. Research into the workings on microbiomes could lead to new treatments for diseases, better crops and a healthier environment. Microbial transplants are already being used to treat conditions such as C. difficile, a debilitating bowel disease.

“Clearly, applications are critical. Ultimately the promise of the microbiome has to be realized,” microbiologist Jo Handelsman, associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at the White House kickoff briefing.

U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat who is also a trained microbiologist, said the scientific payoff “is going to be like splitting the atom, I think, when you get all this done.”

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Solar Impulse makes Rocky flight to Oklahoma

Image: Solar Impulse in Oklahoma
The Solar Impulse 2 plane lands in Tulsa, Okla.,, after an 18-hour flight. (Credit: Solar Impulse)

After crossing the Himalayas and the Pacific, the fuel-free Solar Impulse 2 plane overcame the Rockies on May 12 during the Arizona-to-Oklahoma leg of its round-the-world odyssey.

“As you can imagine, flying over the Rocky Mountains is a challenge for an aircraft like Si2,” the Solar Impulse team said in a blog post. “But perhaps not for the reasons you would expect.”

The altitude wasn’t the biggest concern, although pilot Bertrand Piccard used an oxygen mask to cope with altitudes ranging up to 22,000 feet. Rather, it was the weather. Solar Impulse 2 is designed to soak up enough sunlight during the day to keep flying during the night, but it doesn’t do well during cloudy and stormy weather. That’s just the sort of weather that tends to build up during this time of year in the Rockies.

May 12 provided a window of opportunity for Piccard to make his way over the mountains in northern New Mexico and head eastward. Until this week, the plan was to stop over in Kansas City, Mo., but the Solar Impulse team said “we had to find a different solution” due to difficult weather conditions over the Kansas plains. So Piccard targeted Oklahoma’s Tulsa International Airport instead.

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