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SpaceX has caught a massive rocket. So what’s next?
Spoiler alert: The company still has a massive amount of work to do to reach the Moon.
The stupefying and stupendous capture of a Starship rocket earlier this month by two mechanical arms marked a significant step forward in SpaceX’s efforts to forever alter humanity’s relationship with the heavens.
Yet as remarkable as the rocket catch was, it represents but a single step on a long path. SpaceX seeks to make launch cheap, frequent, and reliable with Starship, and the company is working toward a day when rockets are routinely caught by the launch tower, set back on a launch mount, refueled, and flown again within hours. SpaceX says these efforts will one day culminate in Starships landing on the Moon and Mars.
Critics of the Starship architecture say it is inefficient because of the mass refueling that must occur in low-Earth orbit for the spacecraft to travel anywhere. For example, fully topping off a Starship that can land humans on the Moon and return them to lunar orbit may take a dozen or more tanker flights. But this only seems stupidly impractical under the old space paradigm, in which launch is expensive, scarce, and unreliable. Such criticism seems less salient if we imagine SpaceX reaching the point of launching a dozen Starships a week or more in a few years.
Are Boeing’s problems beyond fixable?
A new CEO promises a culture change as the aerospace titan is struggling hard.
As Boeing’s latest chief executive, Kelly Ortberg’s job was never going to be easy. On Wednesday, it got harder still.
That morning, Ortberg had faced investors for the first time, telling them that ending a debilitating strike by Boeing’s largest union was the first step to stabilizing the plane maker’s business.
But as the day wore on, it became clear that nearly two-thirds of the union members who voted on the company’s latest contract offer had rejected it. The six-week strike goes on, costing Boeing an estimated $50 million a day, pushing back the day it can resume production of most aircraft and further stressing its supply chain.
A how-to for ethical geoengineering research
The American Geophysical Union releases a framework for getting it right.
Over the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, the world’s temperatures hovered near 1.5° C above pre-industrial temperatures, and the catastrophic weather events that ensued provided a preview of what might be expected to be the new normal before mid-century. And the warming won’t stop there; currently, our current emissions trajectory is such that we will double that temperature increase by the time the century is out and continue beyond its end.
All of this has led many people to argue that some form of geoengineering is necessary. If we know the effects of that much warming will be catastrophic, why not try canceling some of it out? Unfortunately, the list of “why nots” includes the fact that we don’t know how well some of these techniques work or fully understand their unintended consequences. This means more research is required before we put them into practice.
But how do we do that research if there’s the risk of unintended consequences? To help guide the process, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has just released guidelines to guide people toward ensuring that geoengineering research is conducted ethically.
40 years later, The Terminator still shapes our view of AI
The film has an outsize influence on the existential danger of AI.
October 26, 2024, marks the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator—a film that popularized society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop… until you are dead,” as one character memorably puts it.
The plot concerns a super-intelligent AI system called Skynet that has taken over the world by initiating nuclear war. Amid the resulting devastation, human survivors stage a successful fightback under the leadership of the charismatic John Connor.
In response, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984—before Connor’s birth—to kill his future mother, Sarah. Such is John Connor’s importance to the war that Skynet banks on erasing him from history to preserve its existence.
Astronaut hospitalized after returning from 235-day space mission
NASA says the astronaut is in “stable condition under observation as a precautionary measure.”
NASA said Friday one its astronauts is in a hospital in Florida for medical observation after a “normal” predawn splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico inside a SpaceX capsule.
The mission’s other three crew members were cleared to return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston after their own medical evaluations, NASA said.
The hospitalized astronaut “is in stable condition and under observation as a precautionary measure,” a NASA spokesperson said in a statement. The agency did not identify the astronaut or provide any more details about their condition, citing medical privacy protections.
Ars Live: What else can GLP-1 drugs do? Join us Tuesday for a discussion.
Dr. Daniel Drucker will discuss what ahead for these blockbuster drugs.
News and talk of GLP-1 drugs are everywhere these days—from their smash success in treating Type 2 diabetes and obesity to their astronomical pricing, drug shortages, compounding disputes, and what sometimes seems like an ever-growing list of other conditions the drugs could potentially treat. There are new headlines every day.
However, while the drugs have abruptly stolen the spotlight in recent years, researchers have been toiling away at developing and understanding them for decades, stretching back to the 1970s. And even since they were developed, the drugs still have held mysteries and unknowns. For instance, researchers thought for years that they worked directly in the gut to decrease blood sugar levels and make people feel full. After all, the drugs mimic an incretin hormone, glucagon-like peptide-1, that does exactly that. But, instead, studies have since found that they work in the brain.
In fact, the molecular receptors for GLP-1 are sprinkled in many places around the body. They’re found in the central nervous system, the heart, blood vessels, liver, and kidney. Their presence in the brain even plays a role in inflammation. As such, research on GLP-1 continues to flourish as scientists work to understand the role it could play in treating a range of other chronic conditions.
For the first time, beloved IDE Jetbrains Rider will be available for free
Among other things, it could fill a gap left when Visual Studio abandoned macOS.
The integrated development environment (IDE) Rider by Jetbrains is now available for free for the first time ever.
After trialing non-commercial free licenses with other products like RustRover and Aqua, Jetbrains has introduced a similar option for Rider. It also says this is a permanent situation, not a limited-time initiative.
In a blog post announcing the change, Jetbrains’ Ekaterina Ryabukha acknowledges that there are numerous cases where people use an IDE without any commercial intent—for example, hobbyists, open source developers, and educators or students. She also cites a Stack Overflow survey that 68 percent of professional developers “code outside of work as a hobby.”
Why is Elon Musk talking to Vladimir Putin, and what does it mean for SpaceX?
NASA chief says ties between SpaceX CEO and Putin should be investigated.
In a blockbuster story published Friday morning, The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about two years, with the discussions covering a range of issues from geopolitics to business to personal matters.
There are no on-the-record sources confirming the regular conversations between Musk and Putin, and Musk did not comment to the news organization. A Putin spokesperson said the Russian leader and Musk have had just one telephone call. However, the report is plausibly true, and the Journal cites “several current and former US, European, and Russian officials.” This is also not the first time there have been reports of contact between Musk and Putin.
The new story about Musk’s direct links to an avowed enemy of the United States immediately raised concerns among some prominent US officials who work with the billionaire entrepreneur, including NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers
“Spreading misinformation suddenly becomes a noble goal,” Redditor says.
A trend on Reddit that sees Londoners giving false restaurant recommendations in order to keep their favorites clear of tourists and social media influencers highlights the inherent flaws of Google Search’s reliance on Reddit and Google’s AI Overview.
In May, Google launched AI Overviews in the US, an experimental feature that populates the top of Google Search results with a summarized answer based on an AI model built into Google’s web rankings. When Google first debuted AI Overview, it quickly became apparent that the feature needed work with accuracy and its ability to properly summarize information from online sources. AI Overviews are “built to only show information that is backed up by top web results,” Liz Reid, VP and head of Google Search, wrote in a May blog post. But as my colleague Benj Edwards pointed out at the time, that setup could contribute to inaccurate, misleading, or even dangerous results: “The design is based on the false assumption that Google’s page-ranking algorithm favors accurate results and not SEO-gamed garbage.”
As Edwards alluded to, many have complained about Google Search results’ quality declining in recent years, as SEO spam and, more recently, AI slop float to the top of searches. As a result, people often turn to the Reddit hack to make Google results more helpful. By adding “site:reddit.com” to search results, users can hone their search to more easily find answers from real people. Google seems to understand the value of Reddit and signed an AI training deal with the company that’s reportedly worth $60 million per year.
McDonald’s E. coli outbreak grows by 50% in 3 days as lawsuits mount
The CDC believes the risk is now low, but cases could continue to rise.
Twenty-six more cases have been identified in a multistate E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.
The 26 new cases represent a 50 percent increase in the case count from October 22, bringing the total to 75 cases. With the new cases, health officials also reported 12 more hospitalizations, including one new adult case of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a severe complication to an E. coli O157:H7 infection. Three more states are also newly affected: Michigan, New Mexico, and Washington.
In all, the outbreak now stands at 75 cases, including 22 hospitalizations and two cases of HUS, across 13 states. The number of deaths linked to the outbreak remains at one. The most recent illness onset for the cases identified so far is October 10.