Daily Archives: December 7, 2021

Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said he could barely contain his excitement a day ahead of blasting off to the International Space Station in a prelude to a more ambitious trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX planned in 2023.

The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector has been training at a space centre outside Moscow in recent months before becoming the first space tourist to travel to the ISS in more than a decade.

Maezawa will travel aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, which will launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, accompanied by his assistant Yozo Hirano, who will document the journey, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

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Speaking from Baikonur ahead of his 12-day space journey, Maezawa said flying into space had been a childhood dream.

"I'm excited. I feel like an elementary school student about to go on a outing," Maezawa said at a news conference. "I didn't think I would be able to go to space. I used to like the starry sky and heavenly bodies. I feel fortunate to have this opportunity and to finally fulfil my dream."

The billionaire has been chronicling his preparations, including demonstrating his space suit and riding a centrifuge, in social media posts, with plans to post more from space.

During his 100 days in training, Maezawa said he had enjoyed parabolic flight, where weightlessness is induced for short periods on an adapted plane, but found training in a spinning chair tough.

The entrepreneur, who was wearing a blue flight suit with a badge reading "world peace", said he had struggled to learn Russian to communicate with his trainers and looked forward to eating sushi when he returns to Earth.

Maezawa will become the first private passenger on the SpaceX moon trip, as commercial firms including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin usher in a new age of space travel for wealthy clients.

The billionaire, who sold his online fashion business Zozo (3092.T) to SoftBank in 2019, is searching for eight people who will join him in his moon voyage in 2023, requiring applicants to pass medical tests and an interview.

Maezawa has become a household name in Japan through his penchant for private jets and supercars, cash giveaways to Twitter followers and celebrity girlfriends in a country known for its conformist, corporate culture.

Maezawa will be the first Japanese private citizen in space since TV journalist Toyohiro Akiyama visited the Mir space station in 1990.

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Reporting by Shamil Zhumatov in Baikonur; Additional reporting by Sam Nussey in Tokyo and Gabrielle Ttrault-Farber in Moscow; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Japan billionaire Maezawa to fulfil childhood dream with space flight - Reuters

Space travel will only be a game for rich people if its cost can not be reduced, said a founder at a Chinese rocket launch startup on Friday.

If every trip to space costs $1 million, it wont be a commercial market, Cheng Wei, founder of Chinese space company Rocket Pi said at the Beyond Expo event held in Macau on Friday. (our translation).

Cheng said that the first step for the commercial exploration of the universe would be sending animals into space.

We first have to develop the ability to send lifeforms other than humans, like cells or primates, to travel in space to gather data before human exploration can be fully achieved, said Cheng.

Companies in the emerging market also have to consider regulatory challenges, the entrepreneur said. This is a long march and we still have a lot of hurdles to overcome, he added.

Co-founded by Zhuang Fengyuan, an academic at the International Academy of Astronautics, Rocket Pi is among the early movers in the private space exploration sector in China, developing and operating space launch systems for in-orbit experiments for biopharmaceutical studies.

The company is currently on track to launch a biological payload carried by a satellite, called Sparkle-1, later this month, and put several more into orbit next year, Cheng told TechNode. It has set a long-term goal of building a space lab to enable human space travel after 2025.

China has just started constructing its own space station and the countrys research in space life sciences is still at an early stage, Cheng said. He added that there is significant work to be done in helping commercial space travel become a reality, such as reducing the acceleration load for less experienced space travellers so that they can have a safer, smoother ride.

In April, China began building its first permanent space station, Tiangong-1. SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk,made history in September by successfully launching the first orbital flight with four amateur space travelers, marking the first time that an all-civilian crew reached space.

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Beyond Expo | Chinese rocket launch startup pioneer explains the future of space travel - TechNode

New commercial space company coming to Cape Canaveral

In an exclusive interview, FOX 35 News spoke with a new company that will bring more launches to the Space Coast. Astra hopes to launch its first rocket from Cape Canaveral next month.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - SpaceX who? Now, theres another player in town. Astra Space Inc. is yet another private company launching from the Space Coast. Its a clear sign that the space industry is booming.

Just one month after its successful commercial launch for the Space Force, Astra Space Inc. announced its coming to Cape Canaveral.

"We can service more customers, more launches, more inclinations and to be able to do it from a place that is certainly the gold standard for space travel, its very exciting for us," said Matt Ganser, vice president of business operations for Astra Space, Inc.

Theyll be launching from the Space Coast for the first time in January.

"Theyre a small launch company with a small vehicle to put small launch satellites into orbit. Thats a new part of the growing industry," said Space Florida Vice President Dale Ketcham.

Ketcham says their smaller satellites are less expensive to put into orbit, and thats helped them operate at lightning speed.

It took less than a year for the Space Force to approve and prepare the launch site for the new commercial partner.

Astra Space says its the fastest privately-funded company in history to reach space.

"We have an informal motto that were going for which is daily space delivery. We think the Space Coast could be a really large part of that," Ganser said.

Ketcham says more companies operating from the Space Coast means more launches, and more launches means more business in the long run.

"If were able to convince them that this is the place they really want to be, then theyll make the investment and more sustained infrastructure that will enable them to establish permanent jobs here."

"Companies like Astra or if its like Cape Canaveral that make space travel more affordable, that make launch services more affordable for everybody, that is going to transform our planet in a really positive way," Ganser said.

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Another private company to launch rockets from Space Coast in 2022 - FOX 35 Orlando

Imagine one day a satellite falls back to Earth carrying something it didnt leave with: a microscopic stowaway unlike anything life on Earth has ever encountered. After realizing that Earth can supply it with everything it needs, it rapidly begins a search for the best possible environment to multiply in and food to eat, which could be anything from the bloodstream of the dominant species on the planet to plastics.

This scenario the plot of The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton reflects a fear that likely dates back, in some form, to the ending of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells: that the effects of biological contamination are the real danger in space travel, far more dangerous than the threat of, say, flying saucers.

In a paper recently published in Bioscience, Anthony Ricciardi, of McGill University, and his coauthors discuss the risk of planetary cross contamination. The paper details how the risks of interplanetary cross-contamination dont just run one way, and how we might come to better understand and handle the problem.

The authors point to a new interdisciplinary field of study known as invasion biology as a guide to understanding the problems facing us as we begin to venture out into the cosmos with plans to bring objects home with us. It focuses on what happens when an organism moves beyond the area it evolved in and then works forward.

The field, while new, has some interesting ideas about how invasions of this kind might play out. For example, it proposes that:

But, what would an extraterrestrial biological invasion look like?

First on most peoples minds is the problem of some kind of space germ getting back here after, perhaps, hitching a ride on rock samples collected from the surface of another world. Such a thing, called forward contamination, could be disastrous if the introduced organism makes its way into an environment where it can thrive.

But this effect could go both ways. In 2019, the Israeli lunar lander Beresheet crashed on the Moon with cargo that contained, among other things, dormant tardigrades. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are tiny organisms that are able to endure extremely inhospitable conditions, including the vacuum of space. While their arrival on the Moon was caused by an accident, the risk of such accidents can never be lowered to zero.

Now, imagine that happening but on Mars, where there is still some discussion about the ability of bacterial life forms to survive under its surface, or on Europa, whose subterranean sea may be home to multiple forms of life. The effects of an invasive species from Earth could be catastrophic on these alien ecosystems.

Luckily, concerns about biohazards in space have existed for decades and were considered in the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. One clause of that treaty instructs parties to be guided by the principle of cooperation and mutual assistance and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.

Space agencies have adopted precautions since that was signed. The Apollo 11 astronauts famously were unable to enjoy a cake prepared for their return to Earth because they had to quarantine in a specially built trailer. NASA was so concerned about the possibility of Moon germs that the trailer had a lower pressure than the building around it to ensure that air, and any bacteria, would flow into the trailer rather than out of it.

It has been proposed that we know a bit more about biohazard control than we did in 1969, though there is room for doubt. The authors of the paper suggest that protocols for early detection, hazard assessment, rapid response, and containment procedures currently employed for invasive species on Earth could be adapted for dealing with potential extraterrestrial contaminants.

And before you worry too much about an invasion of little green microorganisms, the odds of any contamination of this kind are thought to be very low, because the distances and extreme conditions of the travel from one astronomical body to another are likely to kill off most stowaways. But very low isnt zero: The authors suggest that, as space travel becomes more common, our standards for biological security should be improved.

So, while the problem of keeping contaminants away from Earth and any place we decide to travel to in the near future is being addressed, there is more we can do to keep everything where it belongs. Until tickets to Europa start going on sale, you dont have too much to worry about.

Maybe wash your hands extra long after a trip to space to be safe, though.

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Invasion biology: Why intelligent alien life is not the biggest threat from space - Big Think

Jeff Bezos laughs as he speaks about his flight on Blue Origins New Shepard into space during a press conference on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Jeff Bezos left his fellow humans on Earth for about 15 minutes in July when he shot himself up to the edge of space. But that doesn't mean he's leaving his home planet behind.

On Monday, the founder of Amazon announced a $443 million donation to organizations focused on climate justice, nature conservation, and tracking climate goals. Bezos' organization, the Bezos Earth Fund, wrote in a press release that it awarded 44 grants to organizations that fit that criteria, including $140 million to President Joe Biden's Justice40 initiative, which helps fight climate change in disadvantaged communities, along with $51 millionto support land restoration in the US and Africa.

These grants are part of Bezos' $10 billion commitment to his Earth Fund to fight climate change funds of which he promised would be fully disbursed by 2030.

"The goal of the Bezos Earth Fund is to support change agents who are seizing the challenges that this decisive decade presents," Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, said in a statement. "Through these grants, we are advancing climate justice and the protection of nature, two areas that demand stronger action."

As the world's second richest person, Bezos has been using his money to not only fight the climate crisis his fund gave $791 million to 16 climate organizations last year but to venture into space. On July 20, Bezos boarded a rocket made by his aerospace company Blue Origin and spent about three minutes in outer space a form of travel, and way of life, he anticipates will become the norm.

"Over centuries, many people will be born in space. It will be their first home," Bezos said during a recent conference. "They will be born on these colonies, live on these colonies. Then, they'll visit Earth the way you would visit, you know, Yellowstone National Park."

After his space flight, Bezos also expressed the need to preserve the Earth and move the "polluting industry to space," adding that his quick trip "reinforces my commitment to climate change, to the environment."

"We live on this beautiful planet. You can't imagine how thin the atmosphere is when you see it from space," Bezos said in July. "We live in it, and it looks so big. It feels like, you know, this atmosphere is huge and we can disregard it and treat it poorly. When you get up there and you see it, you see how tiny it is and how fragile it is."

The billionaire has been criticized for focusing too much on outer space when there are many pressing problems down here on Earth. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, recently criticized Bezos for his fixation on space travel while managing to avoid paying his fair share in taxes.

"The richest guy on Earth can launch himself into space while over half the country lives paycheck to paycheck, nearly 43 million are saddled with student debt, and child care costs force millions out of work," Warren tweeted. "He can afford to pitch in so everyone else gets a chance."

But Bezos responded to claims he doesn't focus enough on pressing issues on Earth, saying at the same conference that those critics miss the fact that "we need to do both, and that the two things are deeply connected."

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Jeff Bezos donates over $400 million to help save the planet he blasted off from just months ago - Markets Insider

At any of these space stations, NASA will be the anchor tenant, Mastracchio says. But as the commercial space travel market grows, the station will host other visitors, which could include those coming for tourism, sports, entertainment, and advertising. In fact, how the ISSs successor takes shape and which additional modules get prioritized for development could depend on market forces. In practice, that could initially create competition for the limited space available: Astronauts from the US, Europe, Russia, Japan, and Canada could end up vying for legroom and space for their research-focused experiments while private customers do the same for their activities.

But as the station is built up over time, different kinds of activities will be spread out through the various modules, so no ones sleeping in the lab, and tourists who just want to enjoy the view and zero-G life wont be in the way of the astronauts. The easiest thing to imagine is essentially a dormitory, where all the habitation functions, like exercising and eating and socializing and sleeping, occur separately from laboratory functions or manufacturing functions, Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, said at the press conference.

But to have the first stages of a new space station in orbit by the late 2020s, NASA and its commercial partners have their work cut out for them. NASA faces significant challenges with fully executing the plan in time to meet its 2028 goal and avoid a gap in availability of a low-Earth orbit destination, states the agencys Office of Inspector General report, published on November 30. The ISS costs about a third of NASAs annual human spaceflight budget. Its currently slated for retirement in 2024, but agency officials expect that date to be extended until 2030. In the meantime, astronauts will have to monitor cracks and leaks in hopes that the ISS remains safe until new modules start coming up.

These three new contracts fall under NASAs Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development Program. Axiom Spaces modules, designed for research and other applications, do as well. These include a habitation module, planned for launch in the second half of 2024, and lab and observatory modules. Theyre designed to connect to the ISS, and when the station finally retires theyll detach and become a free-flying commercial station.

Ultimately, NASAs competition could yield more than one winner, Jeffrey Manber, president of international and space stations for Voyager Space and chair of the board at Nanoracks, argued at the press conference: At the end of this decade, there will be multiple privately owned space stations, maybe in different orbits.

More Great WIRED Stories

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Here's How 3 Space Companies Aim to Replace the ISS - WIRED

Blue Origin is located in Van Horn, a town with just over 2,000 residents. The space travel company not only focuses on sending people off to space, but also on those who live there in particular, Van Horn students from pre-K all the way through college. There will be several of the engineers or different programmers,theyll come out to work with our little ones, in kindergarten,help them out with their postcards, said Ken Baugh, the superintendent of Culberson County Allamoore Independent School District.Theyre very good abouthow they teach them to think critically, plan.

For the older students, they hope to influence them to stay in Van Horn, and work at Blue Origin. The involvement of Blue Origin volunteers is helping to introduce kids to STEM education at an early age, and shows them their dreams can be as infinitely big as space.

They came to us and said they would like a mailbox. Wed like you to design and build a mailbox. They were with us every step of the way, because you need to know how to build something like this. And so they did that project and we now have a mailbox to space, the superintendent said.

The Blue Origin volunteers have started robotics projects, as well as creative design projects for the older students. These give students a chance to learn about the advanced science that the Blue Origin workers do. One of the more notable projects is when Blue Origin asked Van Horn students to design and build a mailbox that would hold letters and postcards to send off to space and back. They are very serious about how do we design a pipeline from high school to Blue Origin, Baugh added.

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As Blue Origin prepares for the third space flight, it is creating the next generation of scientists. - BollyInside

On December 9th, a Blue Origin flight will be making a journey to space. Aboard it will be Laura Shepard, who is the daughter of the first American to fly to space, Alan Shepard. But given this is a furry news site, one of the paying passengers has piqued more interest within fandom circles. Cameron MeepsKitten Bess, a modest furry content creator of around 2,500 subscribers on YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter, will be riding aboard with his father, Lane Bess.

The video "I'm Going to Space" on MeepsKittens YouTube channel shows how he is both excited and anxious about this opportunity. He discusses how he plans to bring the paw of his fursuit along with a pansexual flag, which is his sexual identity, with him on the spaceflight.

MeepsKitten is a fursuiter and content creator in the fandom. Hes been posting videos since around 2019 on his YouTube channel. He recently started to stream on Twitch around two months ago. While he is mostly known in the fandom for his pending space venture, the content in the videos are of a more standard furry fare: Omegle chat reactions, gaming moments, and fursuit activities of the both mundane and unusual variety.

On that note if youre interested in furries talking about space as a subject, I would recommend Hiyus YouTube channel which is more oriented toward the STEM subject manner than MeepsKittens more social oriented channels.

His father, Lane Bess, has noted that he is accepting of his son for who he is. The wealth of MeepKittens father, who will be joining him on the space venture, is where the funding for this endeavor is coming from. Lane Besss fortunes comes from his leadership of companies within the sector of cyber security. So if some furs believe that MeepKittens father is merely accepting of their sons eccentricities because he doesnt know what a furry is, there may be some room for doubt. He has a masters degree and works in cyber security, he probably knows.

Two of the major companies he worked for on the board, Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks, have gone parabolic during the coronavirus period. The young investors seem to call this exponential price change in an equity going to the moon, but I will note that despite Lanes stocks in Zscaler doing just that, their tickets to space dont get them that far. This upturn in those stocks are due to technology sectors getting a boost due to the increase in work-from-home and greater dependence on tech. Thus the security of our more decentralized world seems to have many investors believing the cyber security sector to be a strong one for the future.

As far as how wealthy Lane is, it is public knowledge that Lane Bess bought a 1.75 million dollar chunk of Zscaler stock back in March of 2018 soon after it went into trading publicly (called an IPO or Initial Public Offering). Should he have held the entire stack of shares to this day that 1.75 million dollar investment would now be worth around 750 million dollars.

We do not know if he continues to hold these Zscaler equities or not, so he may not be a near billionaire. However, the internet only has information on one asset and no sane person with a business degree would put all their eggs in one basket. Though Bill Hwang and his insanely jacked Viacom position that got margin called remind me thats not a certainty. I doubt that Mr. Bess is nearly so foolish, though. Going to space is certainly less crazy than buying a ton of one telecommunication stock on borrowed money.

Social media had its say on the situation, some besmirching the luxury that the furry YouTuber was about to partake in, others simply getting agitated on him using the noun of astronaut to describe his activity.

As society advances, words that once were used to describe an activity become too broad, and thus need reworking. Some indicate that MeepsKitten should be considered more of a Space Tourist than an Astronaut. The logic being how being a passenger on an aircraft does not make one a pilot or stewardess, so being a passenger on a spacecraft does not make one an astronaut, which is seen as more of a job than activity.

Not everyone agreed with this need for a distinction. Firstly you have the article from Blue Origin itself about the space flight, linked earlier, denoting all 6 on this journey as astronauts. Secondly, a furry raccoon by the name of Drenthe posted a short thread under which he noted that just because someone is an astronaut doesnt necessarily mean that they need to be active pilots of the vessel. His example included the situation surrounding the crew of the Mercury mission, NASAs first manned rocket to break into outer space.

Today I heard a furry is going to outer space and thats pretty cool. Then I heard people making fun of him for having rich parents, and thats not cool. Cant you just be happy for someone doing something cool?

I saw a complaint that hes not going to even do anything so why call him an astronaut? Let me remind you, Mercury astronauts werent even supposed to touch anything on their rockets. Unless told to.

At one point NASA seriously debated sedating Mercury astronauts so they wouldnt get cute and start touching the controls. They were there to sit in their chairs and ride the rocket.

Chuck Yeager called them Spam in a can.[Drenth]

But as I performed lateral reading against the above thread to find out the truth of it, I found that this thread is the ultimate of ironies. Our raccoon friend used Yeagers phrase spam in a can to highlight how ultimately that the Mercury astronauts were mere passengers as well. And so that present furries are unjustified for belittling those going up to space by calling them something other than astronauts. However, when you read into the quote by Chuck Yeager, it is actually him being no different than those on Twitter calling for MeepsKitten to not be called an astronaut.

In fact, these words from the mid 20th century are far more demeaning and spiteful toward the space goers in the Mercury project than any phrase furries have uttered on Twitter in the year of 2021 toward the furry with a ticket to ride the upcoming Blue Origin flight.

You see, Chuck Yeager was a distinguished air force pilot that became renowned as being the first human to break the sound barrier. For the Mercury mission to space, NASA was looking for distinguished air force pilots. However, there was a catch. They also desired those with a college background in a STEM field. Yeager, unfortunately, did not fit within that criteria. So when he called the Mercury crew spam in a can he basically was saying that they were not pilots, nor astronauts, but just meat bags in space. It would be hard pressed to think he would have used that wording if he were given the opportunity to be a part of the crew himself.

So if anything can be gleaned of this it is that sour grapes do not have an expiration date. Jealousy of opportunities that our fellow species are given that we are not is nothing new. Its just that in the modern era we have been given a platform to present bitterness in real time. It also shows that these emotions of envy are not isolated simply based on class, but can occur wherever a limitation is placed that restricts opportunities. Even amongst those considered elites in our society.

History is anything if not recursive. As work in space expands, there is no doubt there will be an expansion of roles that will be defined with new words, just as there has been with any other profession and utility developed in the last century. Space Tourist or Interstellar Passenger will probably become canon lexicon, and the term Astronaut regulated to those whose careers revolve around crewing spacecraft.

And then even further down the timeline when the novelty of space travel has worn off, the words will simplify and be reverted back to passengers and crew respectively.

The most fleshed out response of this situation was made by a fur within the aerospace field. Within it he discusses how those in the aerospace industry feel about this new space tourism industry, and highlights the positive impact it makes on the governmental programs whose purposes in space are more utilitarian. It notes with private capital pushing for the rockets and tourism, the government can focus on the more practical tools instead. It is well written and worth the read.

There is a major juxtaposition with the kitten who is going to space and the stoat who works within aerospace, and that is they are furs of different classes. Where the kitten had a father who gained massive abundance, the stoats family barely got by. Yet when push came to shove, both parents allowed their children to grow freely and with their support.

While most may look on in envy of the fur going to space because of the financial wealth he had been born into, the message that the fur who works in aerospace with more humble origins shows that the greatest wealth for both has been the support of those who came before them. To have parents that allow their children to boldly move forward where their ancestors never tread.

Things would have been much different had their parents not been the roots they needed to succeed. Toxic parents are the greatest detriment that one can have when transitioning into adulthood, should they allow you to make it that far. Class is irrelevant in this. Rich parents can be toxic to their children, just as much as impoverished ones can.

The wealthy toxic parent, wishing for their offspring to merely be an extension of their life, shove their descendant into learning the family business with an iron fist. That if they dont continue, or go beyond their accomplishments, that they will deem them a failure in their eyes. Treating them no different from the items they buy as tools to be used for their purposes. Even beyond the grave. Donald Trump may be a good example of being a child of a toxic wealthy parent. Though in his case Trump may have benefited by leaning into the toxicity himself, which is why he was given the keys instead of his other sibling rivals. Those siblings of course, continued dealing with their fathers scorn through his child.

On the other side of the class lines, the impoverished toxic parent sees the potential in their child to go further than they had. But instead of feeling blessed for their success, they become angry at their own shortcomings and eye their child with envy. They start to sabotage their youth, in hopes that they will remain the failure they see themselves as. They will restrain them so they never get the opportunities they failed to reach. Even if that means their childs death. Judith Eva Barsi, the late voice actress of Ducky from Land Before Time, is a prime example of being the child of a toxic impoverished parent, yup yup yup.

In the end, those of us who are given fathers and mothers who dont restrain their children to succeed and offer support in any way they can are far more a source of privilege than the material of the spoon which we are born into. If we as a society start to push towards being the best parents we can over what we have stewardship over, whether it be our businesses, community, or actual children should we rear them, then maybe one day humanity will be worthy and find the strength to join the stars.

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Furry to be aboard Blue Origin space flight - December 9th - Flayrah