Category Archives: Boca Chica Texas

Its Texas or bust for Californians as a recent study is suggestive that the Lone Star State is their go-to place for them to relocate. This has been going on for a few years now and the route between the two states has grown to become one of the busiest in terms of relocating individuals.

Texas has enticed residents from California with the former piquing the interest of 82,000 residents of the latter in just a matter of a year, according to Storage Caf. The study also revealed that homes in Texas are 59 percent cheaper than their Golden State counterparts.

Study shows that Harris County in the City of Houston tops the list of places where Californians prefer to relocate to. Meanwhile, among the California counties, Los Angeles County got the top spot as the place of origin.

In 2019, Harris County has lured in the most relocators coming from L.A. County with 3,263. This is followed by the counties of San Diego and Riverside with 840 and 698 respectively.

One of the main reasons why California residents opted to relocate to Texas is the housing cost. The study detailed the 2020 median price difference between a Los Angeles County home and in Harris County amounting to $482,010.

In line with this, Rice Universitys Kinder Institute for Urban Research Director William Fulton said that whenever theres a surge in housing prices in California, relocation to Texas goes up as well. If housing prices go down, expect the same with migration.

For the uninitiated, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk packed his bags and relocated to Texas. Another thing worth noting is that in Texas, theres no personal income tax compared to California which has the highest income tax imposed on its residents.

Back in June, Musk tweeted that his home in Boca Chica is a $50,000 house that is near SpaceXs rocket facility for Starship. As for his electric car company, Tesla is also putting up what is described as itsgigafactoryin Austin.

Musks girlfriend the musician Grimes is said to have also moved in in the Texas capital.

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Most California Residents Prefer To Move In To This County In Houston, Texas Study - Texas Breaking

By Morgan Conley (October 13, 2021, 1:56 PM EDT) -- Texas's state land office has been accused of violating the state constitution by frequently and unpredictably closing a beach along the Gulf of Mexico so that Elon Musk's SpaceX can launch rockets at a nearby facility.

Community group SaveRGV on Monday asked a Cameron County District Court to invalidate portions of the Texas Open Beaches Act that were amended in 2013 to allow publicbeaches to be closed for "for space flight activities," arguing the changes violate its right to unrestricted access to public beaches along the Gulf of Mexico. It sued the Texas General Land Office, Texas Land Commissioner George P....

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Texas Residents Say SpaceX Can't Kick Them Off The Beach - Law360

Gov. Greg Abbott showed a lot of restraint when Elon Musk announced that Tesla would move its headquarters from Palo Alto, Calif., to Austin.

Abbott could have portrayed Musks decision as an endorsement of the radical direction he and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are taking Texas.

They and Republican state lawmakers have been busy scapegoating undocumented immigrants and transsexual Texans, warring with the states big cities, effectively banning abortion, fighting face-mask mandates, blocking businesses from requiring their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and suppressing minorities access to the ballot.

Abbott had used Musk as a political sock puppet before, telling CNBC on Sept. 2 that Musk was just fine with the states social policies.

But the governor went low-key, blandly addressing the electric-car maker in a tweet: The Lone Star State is the land of opportunity and innovation. Welcome.

Not even a swipe at California.

Its as if Musk had asked Abbott in advance of his Oct. 7 announcement at Teslas annual shareholders meeting not to plunge him once again into the Texas GOPs culture-war mongering.

On ExpressNews.com: Elon Musk announces Tesla moving its headquarters from California to Texas

Whatever his reason, Im glad Abbott didnt bend it to his political agenda because what Musk, the second-richest person on the Forbes 400 list, is doing in Texas will outlast this shameful period in our states history.

Lets return to Tesla, which is building a $1.1 billion factory in Austin to manufacture Cybertrucks.

Before the companys arrival, the state was already playing a strong hand in the automotive industry. A chain of plants and supplier networks stretches from North Texas to northern Mexico. The links include the General Motors assembly facility in Arlington, Toyotas South San Antonio pickup plant and Caterpillars Seguin operation, which manufactures engine blocks and heads for earth movers.

Navistar International will join the automotive corridor when it opens its $250 million heavy-duty truck plant, paint and body shops and a logistics center on the South Side next year. The facility will be capable of assembling both diesel and all-electric trucks.

And dont forget San Antonios nonprofit Southwest Research Institute, whose automotive engineering division conducts cutting-edge research for car and truck manufacturers.

Love him or hate him, Musk commands attention, and so does Tesla. Having its headquarters in Austin will only raise Texas profile in the industry, which is breaking quickly to the manufacture of electric cars and trucks due in part to Teslas influence.

And then theres SpaceX.

Musks money launched Tesla in 2003. But Martin Eberhard, who made a fortune from the sale of his eBook development firm NuvoMedia Inc. in 2000, conceived and founded the company in Palo Alto. Musks unquestioned dominance over Teslas development came later.

Not so with SpaceX. That was his brainchild, and he built it from nothing.

His immediate goal was to build rockets that could put satellites into orbit at a lower cost than any of his competitors and to capitalize on the death of NASAs Space Shuttle program. Early on, company executives said their aspiration was to become the Southwest Airlines of Space, Ashlee Vance reported in his 2015 book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

Musks long-term goal was, and remains, grander: to build a rocket powerful enough to reach Mars, opening the red planet for colonization.

Musk arrived in Texas in late 2002 when his then-tiny company took over an engine testing site in McGregor, near Waco, according to former Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Bergers recently published book Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX. Beal Aerospace, founded by Dallas banker Andrew Beal, had blasted its engines at the facility before going out of business in 2000.

Twelve years later, SpaceX began building its spaceport and rocket production facility in Boca Chica, close to Brownsville. As originally planned, it was to serve as the launch site for SpaceXs Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. But plans changed and the budding spaceports sole focus is now the next-generation Starship.

As we reported earlier this year, SpaceX is not a great neighbor in South Texas.

On ExpressNews.com: This is not SpaceX property - this is my property: SpaceX looks to recast South Texas town as Starbase

It closes public roadways more than allowed by the federal government, frequently cutting off access to Boca Chica Beach. And a Starship explosion on March 30 damaged the fragile ecosystem near the site.

As Express-News contributor Richard Webner wrote: Thousands of hunks of twisted metal, and whatever remained of the liquid oxygen and methane in the rockets tanks, plummeted onto the federally protected wetlands, tidal flats, coastal prairie and sand dunes that surround the launch site, home to endangered species of birds, sea turtles and wild cats.

Musk has earned many of his detractors. He relentlessly hypes Tesla and SpaceX, and his tech-bro antics on Twitter are grating.

Theres this, too: both of his companies owe their existence largely to government subsidies, loans and contracts. Based in Hawthorne, Calif., SpaceX might not have survived without a key NASA contract in 2006 that Musk elbowed his way into.

Describing its importance to the company, Berger wrote: The contract value of $278 million would allow Musk to accelerate his plans to build the big orbital rocket, and ensure the companys future while his team worked out its problems with the Falcon 1 vehicle ... Perhaps most significant, with the contract award NASA had endorsed the company.

Yet, for all the caveats about Musk and his companies, the fact remains hes a visionary and an innovator.

He made out nicely in the 2002 sale of PayPal, which he co-founded with Peter Thiel, now a venture capitalist and the public face of the otherwise shadowy data analytics firm Palantir. EBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion and Musk enjoyed a $180 million payday.

He soon committed $100 million of his payout to launching SpaceX. Tesla ate up most of the rest.

Tell me that didnt take guts and fidelity to two sweeping visions.

Musk is reviving our long-dormant excitement about space exploration. And hes making Texas a power center in the private-sector space industry.

Hes also making the mass production of electric vehicles a reality, lessening our dependence on fossil fuel. And hes now planting Tesla firmly in Texas.

All of which makes his apparent partnership with Gov. Abbott a mystery.

We dont know what the long-term fallout of Abbott and companys authoritarian turn will be for the states economy. But we do know that their vision for Texas is rooted in resentment and fear mostly of white Texans losing their political and cultural preeminence, outpaced by the explosive growth of minority populations.

So the question is, How long can a pearls-clutching, backward-looking state claim to welcome and foster innovation, as Abbott did in his Tesla tweet last week?

What drives genuine innovators like Musk are the twin beliefs that the future can be better than the present and that they can help make it so. Theyre optimists with plans.

Musk may have a lot of reasons for moving Teslas headquarters to Austin, including freedom from a state income tax. But Abbotts haunted, pessimistic politics isnt one of them.

greg.jefferson@express-news.net

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Jefferson: Musk has his reasons for moving Tesla to Texas, but guvs culture war isnt one of them - San Antonio Express-News

Tesla will soon get a new home, as the company announced plans to relocate its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas.

"I'm excited to announce that we're moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas," said Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, during the company's annual shareholder meeting on Oct. 7.

CNN reported that Musk cited housing affordability and long commutes as two burdens Tesla employees are facing at its current location as reasons for the announced move.

Its tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away Theres a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area, reported CNBC.

Despite the move, Tesla still has plans to increase production and expand activities in California.

This is not a matter of Tesla leaving California, said Musk.

Our intention is to increase output from Fremont... by 50%, he added.

Tesla is just the latest large, multimillion dollar corporation to move its headquarters from California to Texas.

Over the past year, Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise both announced plans to move its headquarters from The Golden State to The Lone Star State.

The proposed move to Texas has likely been in the works for well over a year.

During the beginning of the pandemic, Musk mentioned the possibility of leaving California due to the states strict pandemic-related restrictions that made it difficult for the electric car company to restart its operations.

Musk himself moved to Texas from California in Dec. 2020 to focus on the electric-car makers new plant in the state, the Gigafactory, as well as his SpaceX aerospace company.

The move to Texas was to help reduce his personal tax burden and be closer to a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.

Musk is the richest person in the world, according to Bloombergs Billionaires Index, as his personal wealth is currently at $224 billion. His wealth skyrocketed an extra $10.6 billion after a share sale by existing investors valued SpaceX at over $100 billion.

At the moment, there is no word on when Teslas headquarters move to Texas will officially take place.

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From California to Texas: Tesla announces plans to move its headquarters - AL DIA News

The upper stage spacecraft of Starship visualized with a layer of ionized air around it during reentry. Image: Alexandar Svan/Twitter

Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s (SpaceX) next-generation Starship launch vehicle platform is a part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) to study surface temperatures on vehicles traveling at several times the speed of sound. The program, referred to by NASA as the Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) program, will use a NASA aircraft to study Starship's heat tiles when it reenters the Earth's atmosphere after a planned orbital test flight next year. The details were revealed through a presentation shared by NASA's Langley Research Center and spotted by sharp-eyed SpaceX followers on the social media platform Reddit.

The short presentation, which consists only of two slides, reveals a handful of details about both NASA's plans for studying Starship as it renters the Earth's atmosphere and SpaceX's plans to develop the world's first fully reusable spacecraft.

Outmanned & Outgunned: Musks Starlink Fights 3 Rivals For New Satellites

At NASA's end, the space agency will develop a new imaging system that it refers to as "A high-resolution observation during reentry using calibrated infrared cameras will be used to monitor surface temperature of the entire lower surface of the Starship spacecraft during hypersonic reentry."

In this excerpt, "Starship" refers to the upper stage of the 120-meter tall spacecraft that will eventually be responsible for ferrying crew and cargo to a multitude of destinations, including the lunar and Martian surfaces. SpaceX dubs the lower stage of the vehicle as the Super Heavy, and collectively, the pair is also referred to as Starship.

The imaging system will be flown on NASA's WB-57 aircraft, operated by the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. This aircraft has been used to previously observe SpaceX missions, such as the Dragon DM-1 mission, which tested SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule in 2019 before the DM-2 mission flew astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley and resumed flights to the International Space Station (ISS) from U.S. soil a year later.

The aircraftcan fly up to altitudes of 60,000 feet and at sea level, and it has a range of 2,500 miles with a payload capacity of 8,800 lbs.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon viewed from NASA's WB-57 aircraft as it returned from the International Space Station (ISS) during the Dragon DM-1 mission in 2019. Image: NASA TV

The presentation relates to a new camera system that NASA will develop specifically to monitor Starship during atmospheric reentry. This system is called SAMI (SCIFLI Airborne Multispectral Imager), and NASA Langley describes it as:

SpaceX Investigates Whether To Reuse Heat Shields For Dragon Spacecraft

To perform the thermal observation, the NASA is developing an advanced multispectral imaging system that will be flown on a NASA high- altitude WB-57F research aircraft. The resulting calibrated measurements will inform modeling efforts and anchor surface temperatures inferred from embedded thermocouples.

The space agency then shares important details about Starship's heat shield tiles, which are referred to as Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles in the aerospace world. This reveal comes a handful of days after SpaceX's director Dragon mission management Ms. Sarah Walker shared her company's ongoing research into reusing the heat shield components for its operational Dragon spacecraft. During a NASA press conference, Ms. Walker confirmed that her company had already reused a lamenting material for the spacecraft's body.

An excerpt from NASA Langley's presentation outlining the benefits of reusing heat shield tiles for the aerospace industry. Image: NASA SCIFLI Starship Reentry Observation (SSRO) ACO (SpaceX Starship)

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is not fully reusable, as the company has to add new heat shield tiles to each spacecraft before a new mission. This is because the tiles are partially ablative, which means that they dissipate heat by shedding their mass during reentry.

However, NASA's Space Shuttle used a different variant of heat shield tiles, which were fully reusable. These tiles do not shed their mass during reentry. Instead, they work by transferring the heat to the surrounding environment through convection. The Shuttle's mission profile aimed to target and return from altitudes only as high as 550 kilometers, also known as the Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Therefore, it could have afforded to use the reusable, non-ablative heat shield tiles, which is a luxury that Starship cannot afford since it is designed to be an interplanetary transport vehicle.

Through the SAMI program, NASA hopes to let SpaceX drastically reduce the launch costs of the Starship program. SpaceX's chief Mr. Elon Musk has also mentioned low costs several times, with the executive hoping that a 150-ton Starship launch to LEO will cost as low as $1.5 million, resulting in a per-kilogram cost of $10.

For comparison, through its rideshare program that uses the Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX gives potential customers an estimate of $1 million for payloads as heavy as 200 kilograms. This results in a cost to LEO of $5,000. It also outlines the sheer optimism which fuels Mr. Musk's goal of eventually making humans an interplanetary species. The $10/kg estimate assumes an aggressive launch cadence, which will only be established once the Starship program has matured and is fully operational.

Until then, SpaceX will have to amortize its development costs and contracts to LEO, lunar orbit, and its satellite internet service Starlink will serve to recover the capital expenditure. Musk has also shared hopes of conducting a hypersonic flight test for point-to-point travel on Earth, with speeds starting from 3,000 miles-per-hour.

Starship is currently awaiting the culmination of an Environment Assessment from the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) who is soliciting the public's input for the vehicle's launch facilities in Boca Chica, Texas.

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SpaceXs Reusable Heatshield Will Be Studied By NASA At 3,000 Mph - Wccftech

Tesla could be leaving its longtime Silicon Valley home for Austin, Texas, a city that has attracted a flood of tech companies and remote workers over the last year and a half.

The automaker's annual shareholder meeting on Thursday is taking place not in the Bay Area as usual, but in the Texas capitol. It's the latest sign that after moving much of his life and business to the Lone Star State, Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be moving Tesla's headquarters there as well.

Tesla did not return Insider's request for comment.

Following a very public spat with local public health officials over coronavirus restrictions that forced Tesla's Fremont factory to close temporarily, Musk said in May 2020 that he would move Tesla's "HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately." Tesla is currently headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

That summer, Tesla chose Austin as the site for its next US manufacturing plant, which is under construction and is set to begin building Model Y cars at scale in 2022. Tesla says it will eventually build the Cybertruck pickup and Semi tractor-trailer there.

In October 2020, Musk relocated his charitable foundation to Texas, Bloomberg first reported. And in December, Musk announced that he had moved to the state, later saying he lives in a $50,000 home in Boca Chica, Texas, the location of SpaceX's launch site. (Musk is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX.)

Tesla's two latest press releases in late September and early October came from Austin rather than Palo Alto, perhaps indicating that an official exit from California is imminent or has already happened.

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Elon Musk could move Tesla's headquarters to Austin - Business Insider

Oct. 1, 2021Updated: Oct. 1, 2021 10:38a.m.

South Padre Island and Boca Chica can be seen in this image shared by NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough from the International Space Station. SpaceX is developing and testing its Super Heavy rocket and Starship spacecraft from Boca Chica.

Can you see Elon Musk from this photo?

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough recently captured Boca Chica from the International Space Station. This area of South Texas, located across the ship channel from South Padre Island, is where SpaceX is developing the Super Heavy rocket and Starship spacecraft that could one day take humans to the moon and Mars.

SPACEX PLANS: Environmental review brings SpaceX one step closer to entering orbit from South Texas

"Hello South Padre Island, Port Isabel, and Starbase, Texas! Can you find @SpaceXs South Texas facility and launch site in the pic?" Kimbrough said on Twitter.

Starbase is what Musk likes to call the Boca Chica area. He's erected a massive Starbase sign and hopes to incorporate it into the city of Starbase, Texas, though this has not happened yet.

He was quick to respond to Kimbrough.

"Hello @Space_Station, great pic!" Musk said. "(Thats me waving)."

Kimbrough arrived to the space station on April 24 in a different SpaceX vehicle -- the Crew Dragon capsule. He will return to Earth next month.

Andrea Leinfelder is the space reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

Andrea writes about NASA and the commercial space sector, where her coverage spans human spaceflight, robotic exploration and operations in low-Earth orbit. For six months of the year, she keeps an eye on the Atlantic hurricane season. Andrea graduated from the University of Florida in 2012 and has lived in Houston since 2014. She enjoys traveling, eating her way across Houston and walking her dog Lizzy.

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Zoom in and try to find Elon Musk in new space station photo of SpaceX - Houston Chronicle

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Coronavirus can transform pancreas cell function; certain genes may protect an infected person's spouse

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that have yet to be certified by peer review. Coronavirus transforms pancreas cell function

England's Isle of Wight was Isle of Fright, with two big dinosaur predators

Fossils found on a rocky beach show there was double trouble on England's Isle of Wight about 127 million years ago, with a pair of large previously unknown dinosaur predators living perhaps side by side, both adapted to hunting along the water's edge. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of fossils of the two Cretaceous Period meat-eaters - both measuring about 30 feet long (9 meters) and boasting elongated crocodile-like skulls - on the southwest of the island, one of Europe's richest locales for dinosaur remains.

U.S. extends environmental review for SpaceX program in Texas

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Thursday it would extend the public comment period for the draft environmental review of the proposed SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy program in Boca Chica, Texas, to Nov. 1. The extension comes after federal and state agencies participating in the review made the request to extend the period for public input in the environmental assessment. SpaceX, the space company led by Elon Musk cannot launch the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle until the FAA completes its licensing process, which includes the environmental review.

FAA allows Virgin Galactic to resume launches after mishap probe

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday said it closed its mishap investigation into the July 11 Virgin Galactic Unity 22 launch, which deviated from assigned airspace on descent, and lifted a grounding order the regulator imposed earlier. The FAA said Virgin Galactic had implemented changes the agency required on how it communicates during flight and that the company will be allowed to resume operations.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Science News Roundup: Coronavirus can transform pancreas cell function; certain genes may protect an infected person's spouse; England's Isle of Wight...

Marvin Adams, his peers believe, is peerless in his field. The 62-year-old nuclear engineer and Texas A&M professor is the lone academic on the Stockpile Assessment Team of U.S. Strategic Command, which briefs Congress on the nations nuclear capabilities. He has designed complex computational algorithms that can assess whether the weapons in the nations stockpile will work duringheaven forbidan actual war. So its saying something when Adams says theres a problem he doesnt think he can solve: Americas declining faith in science.

I dont know how we get out of it, Adams told Texas Monthly last week, shortly after he and two other Texans were named by President Joe Biden to serve among thirty members of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. I dont think we get out of this problem quickly.

Part of the problem, of course, is politics. This summer, only 64 percent of Americans polled told Gallup they had a great deal of confidence in science. That was a six-point drop from the last time Gallup asked that questionback in 1975. And that dip mostly came from one side of the countrys partisan lines. While 79 percent of Democrats had strong faith in science, just 45 percent of Republicans shared the sentiment, down 27 points from 1975.

Bidens GOP predecessor, Donald Trump, was often dismissive of top scientific minds, and he lagged behind other presidents when it came to naming his own science and technology advisory panel, a group first created by President Eisenhower after Russias launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. PCAST has been a key sounding board and study group for nearly all presidents ever since. (Richard Nixon is another Republican exception; he actually abolished a version of the council.) Trump didnt name his science and tech advisers until October 2019thirty-three months into his presidency. Writing for the FixGov blog of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, academics Marc Hetherington and Johnathan Ladd concluded last year that Trump has gutted scientific expertise and administrative capacity in the executive branch. Trump also, infamously, suggested that injecting disinfectants into the body might be one way of treating or preventing coronavirus infections.

But even those who dont side with Trump have balked at some of the governments top scientific minds as the pandemic has gone on, frustrated at the changing guidance on lockdowns, masks, and disease transmission from experts at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. Adams sees that shifting advice as less a failure, though, than the way science works. Its just that its a complicated problem, and we didnt have much data, he said. People were having to make their best guesses based on really skimpy data. But over time, the truth comes out.

Thats exactly what Biden has promised when he pledged to follow the science on the campaign trail and continued the mantra into his presidency. Even so, Biden has garnered criticism lately for getting ahead of the science, especially with his push to get booster vaccine shots to all Americanssomething the Centers for Disease Control has not endorsed.

Thats not a concern for Adams or for William Press, a 73-year-old astrophysicist and computational biology expert at the University of Texas at Austin who was also appointed to PCAST by Biden. (Lisa Su, the Austin-based CEO of AMD, a Santa Clara, California, maker of computer processors and software, is also on the council but was not available for comment.) Both Adams and Press express confidence that the president means what he says when he says he trusts in scientists. Every administration is different, and its up to the president how he wants to use his science advisor and his PCAST, Press said. I think its too early to know the answer with President Biden on PCAST. But we clearly see science as important in his decision-making.

Lisa Su, president and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices.

Mark Lennihan/AP

William Press.

Courtesy of University of Texas

Left: Lisa Su, president and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices.

Mark Lennihan/AP

Top: William Press.

Courtesy of University of Texas

Press has worked with Biden before. A former deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Press was the vice chair of Barack Obamas council of science and tech advisors from 2009 to 2016. That panel met with Obama and Biden more than two dozen times and completed 36 reports on topics ranging from drinking water safety to using technology to foster social connections among older Americans. (Trumps council met four times, and he is not recorded as having attended any of its meetings.) Press recalls that Obama usually left the meetings exactly 45 minutes after they began, but Biden would stay behind. Hed say, Do you have some extra time? I have some questions Id like to ask you, Press said.

Biden has touted his science and tech advisory panel as the most diverse in history and has given it specific tasks, including coming up with ways to prevent future pandemics, exploring solutions to climate change that directly lead to economic growth, using technology and science to best China, and sharing benefits produced by technology and science more equitably.

Those complex challenges, though, might seem easy compared with the panels unofficial task of rebuilding some of the confidence in science and scientists that both the pandemic and politics have erodeda task Press believes has serious economic implications. I think well see an outflow of the economic benefits of technology from the United States to elsewhere in the world and specifically to China, he said. Theres no guarantee that we will stay preeminent in the world.

Press has made groundbreaking discoveries about black holes, galaxies, and supernovas, and authored books that form the building blocks of knowledge for students learning how to use numbers to solve problems. Im very concerned with this general drift in the U.S. and the world away from fact-based decision-making, he said.

Texas has had its own topsy-turvy relationship with science of late.Governor Greg Abbott has welcomed and celebrated high-tech companies, from Elon Musks SpaceX in Boca Chica to Oracle in Austin, but hes also spurned some scientific advice during the pandemic. Abbott reopened the state and dropped the mask mandate in March without consulting all of his chosen medical advisers, some of whom opposed the decision. Biden described Abbotts decision as Neanderthal thinking.

Adams wouldnt discuss the states stance on science, and Press declined to get into specifics about the governors handling of the pandemic. (Understandable, considering they are employees of state-funded universities.) But Press did say that hes been dismayed at how politics, particularly the recent six-week abortion ban and election bill, seem to negatively affect Texass opportunities for improving its technology and higher education sectors. When he moved to Texas in 2007 it was in part because he believed the state held its universities, burgeoning tech industry, and business in a high-enough regard that it wouldnt let politics get in the way. Now hes not so sure. Texas politics has always been tough, he said. But this is politics potentially killing the golden goose.

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Biden Pledged to Follow the Science. Now Hes Following These Three Texans. - Texas Monthly

municipality in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Boca Chica is a municipality (municipio) of the Santo Domingo province in the Dominican Republic. Within the municipality there is one municipal district (distritos municipal): La Caleta.[5] As of the 2012 census it had 123,510 inhabitants, 70,184 living in the city itself and 53,326 in its rural districts (Secciones).[4]

Boca Chica has a popular beach with the same name, located about 30 kilometers east of Santo Domingo de Guzmn in the south-east region of the country.

Boca Chica was originally developed by Dominican businessman and politician Juan Bautista Vicini Burgos, who established sugar plantations there in the early 1900s. Vicini was very fond of the place but the golden era of Boca Chica came decades later in the 1950s, when dictator Rafael Lenidas Trujillo ordered the construction of a modern hotel named "Hotel Hamaca", which subsequently became an icon in the area. The hotel became more famous after Trujillo granted political asylum to the dictator Fulgencio Batista after the Cuban Revolution. During the 1950s and the 1960s, prominent families of the Dominican Republic built several summer properties along the beach only accessible by private transportation.

After the 1970s, the beach became increasingly more popular and public transportation helped to make Boca Chica a very crowded place; it was no longer a secluded beach for the elites as it had been during the '50s and '60s. The Hamaca hotel was closed after Hurricane David in 1979, and it remained closed and abandoned for more than twenty years which caused an economic decline in the area. It was reopened in the early 1990s, and the public beach remains popular among people of different classes.

Boca Chica's proximity to the city of Santo Domingo, its clear blue waters and white sand have made it one of the busiest beaches in the Dominican Republic, especially on weekends and holidays, because it is 30km away from Santo Domingo. Boca Chica has two small islands Los Pinos, which were made with sand from the dredging of the Andrs port in the 1950s and La Matica and La Piedra, mangrove cays, submerged vascular plants and habitat for various species of birds. The beach has a natural breakwater, as well as a fresh water spring, coming from the Brujuelas underground river.

The short distance from the capital city (19 miles), the crystalline waters and the white sands turned Boca Chica into the most crowded beach of the Dominican Republic, especially on weekends and holidays. Boca Chica beach has immaculate fine sand. You can walk in the water and the depth will barely change, the water will be to your waist (or a little bit over) all the time. Boca Chica has two small islands, Los Pinos and La Matica, and two marinas.

There are several bars, restaurants, pizza stands, souvenirs stalls and loud music throughout most of the day; all this along the beach sand very close to the shore. In the evening, Boca Chica transforms itself into a town of party bars.[6]

Notes

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Boca Chica - Wikipedia