Monthly Archives: October 2021

One way to minimize such delays is by cutting a path through the Internet, one that takes into account the traffic conditions up ahead. My company, Subspace, has built such a network using custom hardware and a proprietary fiber-optic backbone. And we've shown it doesn't have to be complicatedusers don't have to do anything more complicated than logging onto a Web portal. Put together, Subspace has created a "weather map" for the Internet that can spot choppy or stormy parts of the network and work around them for better, faster real-time data movement.

The online transformation occasioned by the current pandemic can be seen in a single statistic. In December 2019 the videoconferencing company Zoom had 10 million daily participants, and by April of the following year it had 300 million. Most of those new recruits to the real-time Internet were taken by surprise by problems that have been plaguing online gamers for decades.

Subspace was founded in early 2018. When we started, we anticipated that Internet performance for real-time applications wasn't optimal, but it turned out to be far worse than we had imagined. More than 20 percent of Internet-connected devices experienced performance issues at any given time, and 80 percent had major disruptions several times a day.

We initially focused on multiplayer games, where a player's experience depends on real-time network performance and every millisecond counts. In the second half of 2019, we deployed our network and technology for one of the largest game developers in the world, resulting in an order-of-magnitude increase in engagement and doubling the number of players with a competitive connection.

Internet performance directly affects online gaming in two ways: First you must download the game, a one-time request for a large amount of datasomething that today's Internet supports well. Playing the game requires small transfers of data to synchronize a player's actions with the larger state of the gamesomething the Internet does not support nearly as well.

Gamers' problems have to do with latency, variations in latency called jitter, and disruptions in receiving data called packet loss. For instance, high-latency connections limit the speed of "matchmaking," or the process of connecting players to one another, by restricting the pool of players who can join quickly. Slower matchmaking in turn can cause frustrated players to quit before a game starts, leaving a still smaller matchmaking pool, which further limits options for the remaining players and creates a vicious cycle.

In 2020, when COVID-19 pushed the world to videoconferencing and distance learning, these performance issues suddenly began to affect many more people. For example, people who worked on IT help desks began working remotely, and managers had to scramble to find ways for those workers to answer calls in a clear and reliable way. That's far harder to do from a person's home than from a central office that's on a robust fiber-optic cable line. On top of that, call volume at contact centers is also at an all-time high. Zendesk, a customer-service software provider, found that support tickets increased by 30 percent during the period of February 2020 to February 2021, compared with the previous year. The company also estimates that call volume will stabilize at about 20 percent higher than the prepandemic average.

The shifts in online usage created by the pandemic are also strengthening the case to further democratize the Internetthe idea that there must be a universal, consistent standard of use to everyone, regardless of who or where they are. This is not an unqualified good, because email has very different requirements from those of an online game or a videoconference.

In the 1990s, Internet access was expanded from the world of the military and certain educational organizations to a truly universal system. Then, content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai and Cloudflare democratized data caching by putting commonly requested data, such as images and videos, into data centers and servers closer to the "last mile" to the ultimate users. Finally, Amazon, Microsoft, and others built cloud-computing data centers that put artificial intelligence, video editing, and other computationally intensive projects closer to last-mile users.

Connections between nodes are designed around delivering as much data as possible, rather than delivering data consistently or with minimal delay.

But there's still one final stage of democratization that hasn't happenedthe democratization of the paths through which data is routed. The Internet connects hundreds of millions of nodes, but the actual performance of the paths connecting these nodes varies wildly, even in major cities. Connections between nodes are designed around delivering as much data as possible, rather than delivering data consistently or with minimal delay.

To use the analogy of a highway: Imagine you're in the middle of a road trip from Los Angeles to Chicago, and a prolonged blizzard is raging in the Rocky Mountains. While driving through Denver would typically be the most direct (and quickest) route, the blizzard will slow you down at best, or at worst result in an accident. Instead, it might make more sense to detour through Dallas. In doing so, you would be responding to the actual current conditions of the route, rather than relying on what their capabilities should be.

Democratized network elements wouldn't necessarily choose the best route based on the lowest cost or highest capacity. Instead, as Google Maps, Waze, and other navigation and route-planning apps do for drivers, a fully democratized Internet would route data along the pathway with the best performance and stability. In other words, the route with the most throughput or the least number of hops would not be automatically prioritized.

The traditional emphasis on pushing more data through the network ignores all the things that cause latencyissues like instability, geographic distance, or circuitous paths. This is why you can have a Wi-Fi connection of 100 megabits per second and still have a choppy Zoom call. When that happens, the network elements connecting you to the others in your call aren't delivering a consistent performance.

Internet routing often takes circuitous pathsfollowing national borders, mountain ranges, and morejust as driving cross-country often requires several highways. Even worse, ISP and carrier networks don't know what exists beyond themselves, and as they pass packets to one another, they often backtrack. The last mile in particularakin to pulling off the interstate and onto local roadsis thorny, as traffic changes hands between carriers based on cost, politics, and ownership. It's this indirect routing, networks' lack of awareness of the entire Internet, and last-mile inconsistency that make delivering data with minimal delay extremely difficult.

A better solution is to reroute data to the path with the best performance at the moment. This may sound simple enough in theory, but it can be complicated to implement for a few reasons.

For one, the emergence of Netflix and other video-streaming platforms over the past 20 years has tended to impede real-time applications. Because such platforms prioritize putting often-requested data closer to network edges, these networks have become less conducive to latency-sensitive video calls and online games. At the same time, while ISPs have advertisedand providedfaster upload and download speeds over time, established network infrastructures have only become more entrenched. It's a perfect case of the adage "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

A more significant problem is that ISPs and CDNs have no practical control over data after it's been routed through their networks. Just because you pay a particular ISP for service doesn't mean that every request you make stays confined to the parts of the network they control. In fact, more often than not, requests don't.

One operator might route data along an optimal path in its own network, and transfer the data to another operator's network, with no idea that the second operator's network is currently clogged. What operators need is an eye in the sky to coordinate around potential and emerging delays that they themselves might not be aware of. That's one aspect of what Subspace does.

In essence, Subspace has created its own real-time mapping of Internet traffic and conditions, similar to the way Waze maps traffic on roads and highways. And like Waze, which uses the information it gathers to reroute people based on the current traffic conditions, Subspace can do the same with Internet traffic, seeing beyond any one portion controlled by a particular operator.

Subspace uses custom global routers and routing systems, as well as dedicated fiber mesh networks, to provide alternative pathways for routes that, for one reason or another, tend to suffer from latency more than most. This hardware has been installed inside more than 100 data-center facilities worldwide. An IT administrator can easily arrange to route outgoing traffic through the Subspace network and thus get that traffic to its destination sooner than the traditional public domain name system (DNS) could manage.

In essence, Subspace has created its own real-time mapping of Internet traffic and conditions, similar to the way Waze maps traffic on roads and highways.

Subspace uses custom software to direct the traffic around any roadblocks that may lie between it and its target destination. In real time, the software takes network measurements of latency (in milliseconds), jitter (in latency variation), and packet loss (in the number of successfully delivered data packets within a time interval) on all possible paths. Whenever there is an unusual or unexpected latency spikewhat we like to call "Internet weather"the software automatically reroutes traffic across the entire network as needed.

Enterprises have tried to avoid bad Internet weather by building private networks using technologies such as SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) and MPLS (multiprotocol label switching). However, these methods work only when an entire workforce is reporting to a handful of centralized offices. If large numbers of employees are working from home, each home has to be treated as a branch office, making the logistics too complex and costly.

Besides random bad weather, there are some traffic problems on the public Internet that arise as side effects of certain security measures. Take the act of vandalism known as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, in which malicious actors flood servers with packets in order to overload the systems. It's a common scourge of multiplayer games. To thwart such attacks, the industry standard "DDoS scrubbing" technique attempts to separate malicious traffic from "safe" traffic. However, getting traffic to a scrubbing center often means routing it through hairpin twists and turns, detours that can add upwards of 100 milliseconds in latency.

Subspace instead protects against DDoS attacks by acting as a traffic filter itself, without changing the path that packets take or in any way adding latency. In the last two years, we estimate that Subspace has already prevented hundreds of DDoS attacks on multiplayer games.

The tricks that helped the Internet grow in its early decades are no longer delivering the expected bang for their buck, as people now demand more from networks than just bandwidth. Just pushing large volumes of data through the network can no longer sustain innovation.

The Internet instead needs stable, direct, speed-of-light communication, delivered by a dedicated network. Until now, we've been limited to working with large companies to address the particular network needs they might have. However, we've recently made our network available to any application developer in an effort to give any Internet application more network performance.

With this new, improved Internet, people won't suffer through choppy Zoom calls. Surgeons performing telemedicine won't be cut off in mid-suture. And the physical, augmented, virtual-realities-merging metaverse will at last become possible.

This article appears in the November 2021 print issue as "The Internet's Coming Sunny Days."

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What Computing Tech Will Drive Future Space Exploration? - IEEE Spectrum

After more than two decades in orbit, NASA is preparing to retire the International Space Station. The habitable satellite only has permission to operate until 2024, and while its likely that the space stations funding could be extended until 2028, NASA plans to decommission the ISS and find a replacement by the end of the decade. Cue Jeff Bezos.

The billionaires spaceflight company, Blue Origin, has released its proposal for a new, commercial space station called Orbital Reef. With the help of several other companies, including Sierra Space and Boeing, Blue Origin plans to build a satellite thats slightly smaller than the ISS and houses up to 10 people. The design includes desk space, computers, laboratories, a garden, and 3D printers. The goal, the company says, is to bring the mixed use business park concept into orbit and lease out office space to interested parties, including government agencies, researchers, tourism companies, and even movie production crews.

Get the best of Recode's essential reporting on tech and business news.

Blue Origins plan is predicated on the idea that the end is coming for the ISS, which NASA is still figuring out how exactly to remove from orbit. While space stations have been helpful for space exploration, Blue Origin senior vice president Brent Sherwood argued in a recent op-ed that private companies now have the capabilities to take over much of the burgeoning economy in low-Earth orbit, or LEO. Blue Origin is even building a space tug, a transport vehicle that moves cargo between different orbits, that could reportedly be used to salvage parts from the ISS and incorporate them into Orbital Reefs systems.

NASA doesnt mind the corporate takeover of low-Earth orbit. The agencys first space station, SkyLab, was only in orbit for a few months before NASA let the vehicle descend and decompose into the atmosphere. The space agency has been weighing defunding the ISS, which is full of aging hardware, for several years, and has already set aside up to $400 million to fund new, privately built and operated space stations through its Commercial LEO Destinations program. Eventually, NASA hopes that it can send its astronauts to these stations instead of paying to maintain the ISS. Overall, the plan could save the government more than $1 billion every year.

This is technology that is over 20 years old at this point. When you expose that infrastructure to radiation, solar weather... things are going to break down, Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor at the US Air Forces School of Air and Space Studies, told Recode. Having these commercial space stations will be a way of America keeping their foot in low-Earth orbit while focusing more of their resources on moon and Mars exploration.

In the meantime, NASA is currently focusing on the Artemis program, an ambitious plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon. The agency intends to send people to the moon for the first time in decades as soon as 2024, and hopes the project will eventually serve as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars. Private companies, including Blue Origin, have desperately fought for a role in this prestigious mission, and especially a lucrative contract to develop pivotal moon landing technology. SpaceX won that contract earlier this year, prompting Bezoss company to sue NASA and lobby the Senate to reverse the decision. Those efforts have yet to bear fruit, so Bezos now seems to be turning his attention back to the low-Earth orbit economy, where there are more customers and less competition from Elon Musk.

But theres reason to believe that the Orbital Reef project may not succeed in the near future or at all. Blue Origin still hasnt launched humans into orbit, a feat SpaceX achieved last month during the Inspiration4 mission. Blue Origin also lists its New Glenn reusable launch system and Boeings Starliner crew vehicle as pivotal parts of the Orbital Reef plan, but both vehicles have yet to conduct a problem-free space flight.

Blue Origin isnt the only company vying to replace the ISS. About 12 other firms have already sent space station proposals to NASAs Commercial LEO Destinations program. Just last week, a space company called Nanoracks announced that it was also developing a space station, in partnership with its majority owner Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin. At the same time, NASA has already agreed to pay the space company Axiom Space $140 million to help build at least one module, or detachable space station component, that will be conjoined to the ISS. That module will eventually be spun out and attached to several other modules to form a separate, fully functional space station when the ISS winds down operations. That approach is supposed to make it easier to transfer the hardware thats currently aboard the ISS onto a new vehicle.

In a statement, a NASA spokesperson described the current moment as a renaissance for human spaceflight. They added, As more people fly to space and do more things during their spaceflights, it attracts even more people to do more activities in low-Earth orbit and reflects the growing market we envisioned when we began NASAs Commercial Crew Program 10 years ago.

For NASA, its also critical that at least one of these companies succeeds, and the agency told Recode it could fund up to four of the proposals. After all, time is running out on the ISS, where malfunctions and outdated technology and equipment are common. Without private companies stepping in to build an alternative, the US government risks a future where it has a human presence on the moon and Earth, and nowhere in the middle.

This story first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you dont miss the next one!

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Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin Orbital Reef space station could replace the ISS - Vox.com

On a farm in Chesapeake, Virginia, an 8-year-old Michael Bolt sat in his familys garage prying open his dads old laptop, determined to build something new.

That desire to learn and build new things established a mindset that hasnt left him. Instead, it led him to Auburn University and then on to SpaceX, Elon Musks space exploration corporation.

I remember being a kid and getting my dads old laptop, and I was convinced like any 8-year-old that I was going to take this thing apart and make a robot, Bolt said. I remember being amazed by how the things that are easy to use as a human are really little pieces of plastic with electricity running through them.

When it came time to choose which college he was going to attend, Bolt was accepted into all three of his top schools: Auburn, Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama. Bolts father had attended Auburn for electrical engineering, so deciding on a college came down to his Auburn roots.

I think the choice was pretty clear, Bolt said.

Time on the Plains

Bolt arrived on the Plains and began his coursework in electrical engineering, which led him to become even more passionate about the field and the possibilities it presented.

I started going to the classes, and the more I learned about it, the more I became really interested in it, Bolt said. I was just really amazed that people could make new things and invent all of this cool stuff using electricity. I wanted to stick around and learn as much as I could.

During his sophomore year, Bolt entered into SpaceXs Hyperloop pod design competition. The competition required college students to design Hyperloop pods, a concept for high-speed mass transportation championed by Musk.

Bolt served as the sensor team captain and helped design and build a functioning scale model of the teams lateral stability control system to showcase at the national competition held at Texas A&M University. Bolts team went on to win awards for both Design Concept Innovation and Best Overall Subsystem Design.

It was pretty cool and got me very interested in that scene and following [SpaceX] around, Bolt said. I think it was around the same time that they landed their first rocket, too, which was pretty cool.

After finishing his undergraduate degree a year early, Bolt stayed at Auburn to earn his masters and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering. His goal was to learn as much as possible about both the software and hardware side of the industry.

Bolt researched with the Sensor, Transducers, Optics, RF and MEMS, or STORM, lab at Auburn building weather sensors, which he likened to the sensors in the movie Twister.

We were working on really tiny light-weight weather sensors that you could throw out of an airplane, drone or balloon, and then they would fall really slowly and transmit a bunch of data, Bolt said. I spent a couple of years doing all the software that went on the little sensors themselves, and we ended up getting to go out to New Mexico and drop a couple hundred of them from a big weather balloon, which was really cool.

Bolts work in the lab was forced to go remote due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, which is when he applied to SpaceX. He got a job offer in 2020 the same week that SpaceX sent two astronauts to the International Space Station, or ISS, marking the first time a private company had ever accomplished such a feat.

I remember packing boxes in my apartment and watching that on TV, and then we flew out to Los Angeles a week or two later.

Working for SpaceX

As an avionics test engineer, Bolt helps develop and write software for production test systems.

Anything from a computer to a radio to a fan, anything that is electronic and goes on the vehicle we are responsible for making test systems for them, because you have to be sure, Bolt said. My job is to build big test systems, hook those up to run all the software tests and try to make them as easy to use as possible.

Bolt takes pride in working to build rockets that are safe and built for space flight.

If something does fail, I look at the failure reports and throughout the data and decide if its OK, Bolt said. We have to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on whether we would trust a rocket that might have a human on it with this. Its really cool to know that the things I am working on are going directly onto rockets.

Bolt believes his time in graduate school at Auburn helped prepare him for this role by allowing him to broaden his engineering knowledge by working on various projects.

My job is interesting, in that I have to understand a lot of high-level programming languages to run these big test systems, but I also have to have a really deep technical understanding of the things we are testing, the designs we are doing and why they work, Bolt said. I dont think Id have that broad skill set without having the advisor I had and being able to work on all the different projects I got to work on.

My advisor, Dr. Mark Adams, was great about letting me work on a lot of different things. A lot of people go to graduate school and just kind of get shoehorned into one specific project that lasts a long time and end up having a really deep, but narrow understanding of their field, but I got to work on all sorts of stuff.

For Bolt, one of the coolest things about working for SpaceX is the company-wide mindset that anything can be built and anything is possible.

Its crazy to hear a lot of the ideas that are thrown around, even though SpaceX does a whole lot of things never done before, Bolt said. Its always funny to hear some crazy idea that somebody throws out and not really knowing if it might happen and end up being one of the things we do, so that is really cool.

The moon, Mars and moving forward

As a child, Bolt dreamed of being an astronaut, and now he looks forward to working every day to help put more people in space. For the Auburn engineer-turned-SpaceX employee, the possibility of being part of the mission to expand mankinds domain to include cities on the moon and Mars is exciting.

I love the thought of going to Mars and establishing a city, but right now I think weve got a much closer target of the moon, Bolt said. Anything I can do to make that happen is a good thing.

Most recently,SpaceXsentfour civilians into orbit for three days inSeptember,markingthe worlds first all-civilian orbital mission. Thetravelers returned safely, splashingdown in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. The missions websitestated,This milestone represents a new era for human spaceflight and exploration.

Bolt looks forward to the future of space exploration and hopes he can help bring that future closer.

If in 30 years I can say I was a part of putting more people on the moon or launching that thing to Mars, it would be a really fun thing, Bolt said. I have all sorts of space memorabilia on my wall, so itd be cooler to know Id been directly a part of them instead of just having old newspapers from the 60s.

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Auburn graduate looks to stars, builds vessels to reach them at SpaceX - Office of Communications and Marketing

RJ Pierce, Tech Times 28 October 2021, 02:10 am

NASA conducts missions with rovers and space probes millions--and even billions--of miles away from Earth. And somehow, despite the monumental distances, these probes and rovers can still send data back to scientists on Earth.

(Photo : Getty Images )

Have you ever wondered how NASA does it? In this article, you'll learn about the basics of how space exploration manages to keep itself tethered to Earth.

According to NASA themselves, they're using an international network of antennas which are part of what they call the Deep Space Network (DSN).

The antennas are strategically placed all over the world, and they're part of three major hubs under DSN which are located exactly 120 degrees apart. The locations are as follows: Goldstone, in the Mojave Desert in California; and undisclosed locations near Canberra, Australia, and Madrid, Spain.

(Photo : Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)Photograph of the Deep Space Network (DSN) Beam Waveguide antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, Mojave Desert, California, 1990. Image courtesy National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

With the placement of the DSN hubs, NASA ensures that they can still track all their active space probes throughout the cosmos even as if the Earth rotates.

That iconic line from the film "ET: The Extraterrestrial" fits this situation perfectly, even if the modern Mars rovers don't exactly use a phone.

According to WIRED, the rovers use two different types of antennas: a high-gain microwave antenna for sending big chunks of data directly to Earth, and a low-gain one intended for sending data to other orbiters around our world or Mars.

Those probes will then relay the data they received from the Mars rovers back to scientists on the ground.

(Photo : Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)PASADENA, CA - FEBRUARY 18: In this handout image provided by NASA, members of NASA's Perseverance rover team react as the first images arrive moments after the spacecraft successfully touched down on Mars, February 18, 2021 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The rovers are able to send data by "anticipating" when the orbiters are right above them. Once the orbiter is in the optimal position, the Mars rover will transmit data to it at a speed of 250 Kbps.

Read also: NASA Perseverance Rover's New Mission-Critical Images as Latest Evidence of Water's Existence on Mars

Technically, NASA is able to transmit and receive data fast enough despite the distance between Earth and Mars--over 242 million miles. However, it's still not real-time data transfer.

In fact, even at light speed, a signal containing data will still take over 10 minutes to reach scientists on Earth for Mars, as per the original WIRED report.

NASA technically has built two of the farthest-located, man-made space probes ever: the Voyagers. As of late, Voyager 1 is located 141 astronomical units (AUs) from Earth, writes Space.com. That's a total of 13.2 billion miles away.

And yet, Voyager space probes (there are two of them) are still able to transmit data to scientists, even if the tech on them is technically outdated.

(Photo : Katherine Young/Getty Images)Illustration (by Pounds) shows one of the two Voyager spacecrafts as it examines the rings of Saturn during its 'Grand Tour' of the Solar System, late 1977. The two crafts were launched in late 1977 and reached Saturn in 1980 and 1980.

These space probes are using 23-watt radios connected to big satellites 14 feet in diameter, which are pointed directly at a corresponding antenna on our planet's surface. That antenna is a gargantuan 100 feet in diameter, according to HowStuffWorks.

Furthermore, the satellite can transmit data at 8 GHz, and in space, there's barely any interference. This might be an oversimplification, but it's basically how things work.

Space exploration technology still has a lot of advancements to go through. This includes better, faster communication systems that might allow scientists to communicate with space probes or rovers on different planets in real time.

But until then, this is the reality of current tech.

Related: NASA: Galileo Space Probe Captures Image of Moon's Colorful Shades

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by RJ Pierce

2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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How Do NASA Rovers And Probes Communicate With Earth From So Far Away? - Tech Times

Artist and engineer Xin Liu put herself out there for her Living Distance project literally. The New York- and Beijing-based artist packed up her wisdom tooth and sent it into outer space in a custom machine built from robotics materials. The tooth launched from Van Horn, Texas, in May 2019 aboard an early iteration of Blue Origins New Shepard rocket. In zero gravity, the machine and the tooth floated around, freely, inside the rocket.

Wait, what?

Its all in the name of art. The tooth is part of the sculptural installation Synthetic Wilderness, on view at Culver Citys Honor Fraser Gallery through Dec. 18. The three-artist show, which includes L.A.-based Nancy Baker Cahill and New York-based LaJun McMillian, blends digital media with more traditional art forms. It toggles between augmented reality, performance, immersive drawings, and video and digital photography, among other areas. The exhibit occupies a hybrid space, both analog and digital, meant to reflect the new terrain, as exhibition curator Jesse Damiani puts it, that is the 2020s a tumultuous and uncertain period marked by trauma, pronounced bewilderment and rapid change.

Liu who is arts curator of the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative and an advisor to the Art + Technology Lab at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art used the launch of her tooth as a springboard for other works in Synthetic Wilderness. Theres also a two-channel video documenting the making of her tooth sculpture; a digital photograph of the sculptures disassembled parts, forming what looks like a scientific cross-section; and a more than 1,000-page, accordion-style book, made of rice paper, featuring Lius sequenced X chromosome from her DNA data.

Xin Lius A Book of Mine.

(Xin Liu / Honor Fraser Gallery)

The work explores geographic and phenomenological boundaries between the self and the other, between Earth and outer space and it asks what it means to have part of me leaving, so far away, and how to give birth to another being? as Liu explains in this edited conversation.

Why launch your tooth into space and whats the larger Living Distance project about?

Living Distance is both a personal fantasy and a serious space mission. A wisdom tooth is sent to outer space and back down to Earth again. Carried by the crystalline robotic sculpture, the tooth becomes a newborn entity in outer space.

The material and the texture of the tooth seem to be a perfect fit to me. It is essentially a bone (quite hard, like ceramic) but also visually so fragile. It is part of my body but also a separate piece itself.

Did you remove your tooth for the piece or you already had it? And how did you arrange for its journey into space?

I had it already at the time. I had an impacted tooth and had to have it pulled out.

I was and am still working with MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative. The initiative has various mission opportunities that students and researchers can apply for. I applied for this suborbital launch opportunity to test my spider-mimicking locomotion technique something I incorporate into performance in actual outer space. The opportunity I got was for technical innovation, not for my artistic vision. I had just graduated from MIT then, and there was no way a young artist like me would have had such support for an art project.

How is the piece a continuation of your previous performance work related to space exploration?

In 2017 I did a performance work, Orbit Weaver, in a zero-gravity flight in Florida with a company called zero-G. I was performing like a spider woman moving around and trying to connect with the surroundings using threads. In that performance, I feel that I was in a simulated outer space, and in this one, it was reversed: I created a simulated me, an avatar of myself, and performed in the real outer space.

How does the work, conceptually, explore the idea of boundaries, passage and ceremony?

In many ways, the distance created geographically or physically is a metaphor and is reflected in the emotional and spiritual experience. I think that the desire to leave and the destiny to return echoes with my personal journey. I was born in Xinjiang, China, and moved to Beijing when I was 18 and I moved to the U.S. in 2013. Hopefully it speaks to the shared history and experience of many people.

The action of sending a tooth to outer space is very much a ceremony and a performance for me. It is not a fiction, its an act that I am conducting as Im thinking about the questions mentioned above.

Xin Lius Living Distance Exploded, a digital photograph of the sculptures parts.

(Xin Liu / Make Room L.A.)

Can you tell us about other works in the show?

The photography of the sculpture is to show how its parts are designed, the details inside. It is a very elaborate electromechanical system. The book is the X chromosome of my DNA. I printed out the whole X chromosome sequence on Japanese rice paper. Then I handmade (folding, cutting, gluing) this accordion book of mine. These two works are very much connected as they both ask the question about what were made of and what we will become.

DNA is the source code of all creatures on Earth. But as we set sights on outer space, this organic body isnt the most suitable of forms anymore. Our body isnt made for the extreme environments out there. So, as we are longing for the departure, leaving Earth, arent we also abandoning ourselves, our body? Perhaps the humanity that finally leaves Earth isnt human anymore. How do we feel about that? Is there a point where we shall return?

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Why artist and engineer Xin Liu sent her wisdom tooth into outer space - Los Angeles Times

While OGS-2 was developed specifically for the LCRD mission, OGS-1 is based at JPLs Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory, which prior to LCRD was used for previous laser communications demonstrations. To get OGS-1 ready for LCRD support, engineers had to upgrade the ground station, modifying the system to bring it up to a higher standard. One such upgrade involved replacing the mirrors to have better reflectivity and higher laser thresholds so that the telescope can receive and send laser signals to and from LCRD.

Prior to mission support, LCRD will spend about two years conducting tests and experiments. During this time, OGS-1 and OGS-2 will act as simulated users, sending data from one station to LCRD then down to the next. These tests will allow the aerospace community to learn from LCRD and further refine the technology for future implementation of laser communications systems.

After the experimental phase, LCRD will support in-space missions. Missions, like a terminal on the International Space Station, will send data to LCRD, which will then beam it to OGS-1 or OGS-2.

LCRD is a hosted payload on the Department of Defenses Space Test Program Satellite-6 (STPSat-6). While LCRD is a laser communications payload, the spacecraft will still have a radio frequency connection to the ground. The Payload to Ground Link Terminal (PGLT) located at the White Sands Complex near Las Cruces, New Mexico, will communicate tracking, telemetry, and command data to the spacecraft over radio waves.

NASA manages LCRDs ground elements OGS-1, OGS-2, and PGLT out of LCRDs mission operations center at White Sands.

The mission operations center is the central brains of the LCRD system, said Miriam Wennersten, LCRDs ground segment manager of NASA Goddard. It coordinates the configuration of the payload and all three ground stations at the same time, scheduling the various optical services and links.

Without ground infrastructure, extraordinary science and exploration data would not make it to researchers on Earth. LCRDs ground segment will be critical to the success of the mission, providing engineers with the opportunity to test and refine laser communications. In turn, LCRD will usher in a new era of laser communications, where missions will have unprecedented access to insights gleaned from satellites and probes in space.

More About the Mission

STPSat-6, part of the Space Test Program 3 (STP-3) mission, will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida no earlier than November 22, 2021. STP is managed by the United States Space Forces Space Systems Command.

LCRD is led by NASA Goddard and in partnership with JPL and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. LCRD is funded through NASAs Technology Demonstration Missions program, part of the Space Technology Mission Directorate, and the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program at NASA Headquarters. NASA Goddard manages OGS-2, while JPL manages OGS-1.

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Getting NASA Data to the Ground With Lasers - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

On July 20, not long after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos returned to earth after an 11-minute space flight aboard one of the rockets his Blue Origin space exploration company had manufactured, he faced the cameras, still wearing his blue spacesuit but now sporting a cowboy hat, to make a surprise announcement. He was inaugurating a Courage and Civility awardWe need unifiers and not vilifiers, he saidand the first winners were celebrity chef Jos Andrs and TV news analyst Van Jones, each of whom would get $100 million.

Andrs and Jones were understandably ecstatic, but among philanthropy analysts, the gifts reception was mixed. Sure, $200 million is a lot of money (though perhaps not to a centi-billionaire), but some commentators (myself included) noted that the post-flight charity announcement had a slapdash quality to it. It appeared to be a hastily contrived PR move to address the grumbling that the worlds richest man wasnt focusing his philanthropic attention on problems confronting the planet he currently inhabits. Still others interpreted Bezoss celebration of civility as pushback against mounting critiques of Amazons corporate practices.

General Photographic Agency

Then there was the unconditional nature of the donations. No bureaucracy. No committees. They just do what they want, Bezos said. On the one hand, this no-strings-attached approach to large scale giving is now widely applauded by nonprofit advocates. Yet its most prominent recent champion has been MacKenzie Scott, Bezoss ex-wife, who has given away some $8.6 billion over the last year, to widespread acclaim. Much of the coverage of Scotts torrent of giving has hinted that it compares favorably with her ex-husbands. MacKenzie Scotts generosity puts to shame Jeff Bezoss billions, the New York Daily News trumpeted last December. So Bezoss own no-strings gifts raised the question: Was this the sincerest form of flattery, or flex to an ex-turned-philanthropic rival?

In a sense, the same tangle of competitive impulses and high-minded ideals characterized the billionaire space race more broadly, which pitted Bezos against Virgin Atlantics Richard Branson and SpaceXs Elon Musk. Bezos, Branson, and Musk often described in grand, stratospheric terms what was ultimately an effort to catalyze the high-end space tourism business. Talking to reporters after he had become the first of the three billionaires to take a space trip himself, Branson celebrated Virgin Galactic as an instrument of egalitarianism. Imagine a world where people of all ages, all backgrounds, from anywhere, of any gender, of any ethnicity have equal access to space. And they will, in turn, I think, inspire us back here on Earth. Back in February, Musk had announced that his Inspiration4, which launched in September, would carry with it a humanitarian message of possibility.

Bettmann

Yet all this high rhetoric was drawn back down to earth by the unmistakable sense that the three moguls were driven as much by the compulsion to go first and farthest as by any humanitarian ideal. Competitive machismo can be powerful rocket fuel. Branson had moved up the launch of his SpaceShipTwo by several months, seemingly to beat Bezoss planned departure. And the run-up to the launch of Bransons ship brought with it a kind of aeronautical trash-talking on social media, with Blue Origin mocking Bransons airplane-size windows via Twitter and pointing out that, unlike Bezoss craft, Bransons would not actually fly to outer space, per one conventional marker. None of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name, the company sniffed.

So it turns out you can ask questions about the motives that drove Bezos into space similar to the ones you could ask about what fueled his philanthropy once he returned: How important is competition as a goad to good acts? And how should the fact that a philanthropic mission or gesture might have been spurred by competition with a rival shape our assessment of the deed itself?

"How important is competition as a goad to good acts?"

The history of large scale philanthropy provides some answers. Its full of selfless givers and donors who disdained attention and cared little for the recognition their gifts received. But that history is also marked by the spirit of competition, by donors whose need for distinction and honor fueled their generosity. Indeed, for millennia, elites have turned to philanthropy as a means of securing and affirming social status and distinguishing themselves from their peers. In ancient Greece that competition led to the funding of lavish public banquets, grand civic works, and spectacular gladiatorial contests. During the Middle Ages it led to the construction of cathedrals and religious houses.

In the United States, the Gilded Age was the first major high-water mark of philanthropic competition. This was the case for two interrelated reasons. First, those decades saw the creation of gigantic industrial and financial fortunes, which generated a wave of philanthropy that established or endowed a bumper crop of colleges, universities, museums, and hospitals.

Second, the public began to pay attention to these giftstracking them, scrutinizing them, praising them, and sometimes criticizing them. Some of the most notable philanthropists, such as Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, sought to resist this philanthropic publicity, preferring that his giving be conducted in a realm of privacy and discretion. But the publics demand for information about the nations leading benefactors was too powerful, and even Rockefeller ultimately succumbed, releasing data on his giving to inquiring reporters.

The major philanthropic rivalry of the first Gilded Age was between Rockefeller and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. The two were polar opposites in temperament and mien: Rockefeller tall, angular, and taciturn; Carnegie, short, cherubic, and garrulous. Plus, they didnt like each other much; in private Carnegie referred to Rockefeller as Wreckafellow, while Rockefeller considered Carnegie a publicity-mad blowhard, so their competition carried an extra edge. As the two emerged as the wealthiest individuals of the age, and as the leading philanthropists, newspapers began to offer running tallies of their gifts, like the baseball box scores featured in local papers, noting who had given more. Cartoonists depicted the two industrialists as racers in a millionaire marathon, with coins spilling from their pocketsand with a crowd presumably watching.

"And how should competition shape our assessment of the deed itself?"

The implication of such depictions was clear: Philanthropy had become a spectator sport. And this highlighted an important dimension of philanthropic competition. Yes, giving provided a way for the wealthy to burnish their egos and boost their status. But it also provided some framework for public accountability.

This has certainly been the case at the turn of the 21st century, during which our Second Gilded Age has generated its own colossal private fortunes and its own surge of large scale philanthropy. Even more than in the last century, megagiving is now a spectator sport, conducted before a scrutinizing public. And so the field is once again set for philanthropic competition.

Two developments have made the terrain especially fertile. The first is the more sophisticated means of tracking, analyzing, and ranking philanthropic gifts that journalists who focus on philanthropy have adopted. One of these is giving lists, those annual tallies of the largest donations and the most generous benefactors. A small handful of such lists appeared during the first Gilded Age, but they were rudimentary and irregularly tabulated. Giving lists became a fixture of the analytic landscape only in the past few decades. Their rise can be traced to an interview New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd conducted with CNN co-founder Ted Turner in August 1996. The media mogul admitted that when he had recently made several $100 million donations, what worried him most was not that the money would be spent ineffectively but that the gifts would take such a chunk out of his total net worth that he would plummet down the Forbes 400 roster of the nations wealthiest men and women. Extrapolating from his own experience, Turner suggested that similar concerns among the nations billionaires might be preventing them from giving big.

His remedy wasnt to repudiate status consciousness but to channel it in a more constructive direction by calling for the creation of an alternative ranking system, one that would spotlight the biggest givers. This list would harness the self-regard and competitive nature of the wealthy in service to the greater good. Turner even suggested that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, at the time the two richest men in the U.S., had let him know that if there were a list of who did the giving rather than the having, they might be inclined to give more.

Bobby Bank

Soon after the publication of the interview, Fortune took up Turners call and released what it declared the most rigorous and comprehensive philanthropy list yet created, ranking the top 25 gift-givers of 1996. Over the next several years, other publications developed giving lists of their own. The top donors often cooperate only grudgingly with the researchers who compile these lists, but many of them are deeply invested in their positions in the rankings. At the very least, these lists help legitimize and draw attention to philanthropic competition.

The second development encouraging philanthropic competition has been the spread of peer pressure to promote large scale giving among high-net-worth individuals. The most famous example of this is the Giving Pledge, the campaign begun in 2010, led by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, to convince the worlds billionaires to give at least half their wealth to charity. (As of the beginning of 2021, the pledge has 216 signatories from 27 countries.) One of the most significant elements of the pledge is its evangelical aspect: Signatories are asked to make a public statement of their reasons for signing, and this is meant to encourage their wealthy peers to join them. As at least one of the signers acknowledged in his pledge letter, by fostering this sort of public spectacle, the pledge also sets the stage for competition. Directing the same competitive instincts that these driven people employed to achieve the pinnacle of financial and social success, noted real estate tycoon Sylvan Adams, the Giving Pledge is encouraging us to outdo one another in giving our wealth away. Brilliant!!!

Adam Berry

Of course, very few donors would ever publicly acknowledge the extent to which they are driven by the spirit of competition. But sometimes they cant help themselves. In a recently published book on Facebooks battle for domination, for instance, the authors include a telling scene in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg complains to his advisers that the philanthropy he established with his wife Priscilla Chan, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and to which he pledged 99 percent of his Facebook wealth, hasnt received enough positive attention. Why dont people think of me the same way as Bill Gates? he huffs to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks COO.

The outburst wasnt one of Zuckerbergs finest moments, but when it comes to assessing his giving, should it matter? Should the public care whether a donor is driven by a desire for social status and recognition, alongside whatever purer humanitarian motives are compelling him or her?

The competitive philanthropic drive can certainly lead to showy, meretricious donations. But the history of philanthropy demonstrates that it can lead to worthy ones, as well. That history is a good reminder that the philanthropic endeavors of the rich and powerful has long been a tangle of the highest elements of human nature and the meanest, the principled and the petty, the stuff of the heavens and of more earthy materials.

This story appears in the November 2021 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW

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History of Competitive Philanthropy From Carnegie to Mackenzie Bezos, Bill Gates, & Warren Buffett - TownandCountrymag.com