Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic, on June 3, announced that it will send researcher Kellie Gerardi into space to conduct experiments in weightlessness including the collection of biometric data during space journeys. Gerardi, a bioastronautics researcher is affiliated with the International Institute of Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and is a popular figure on social media with over 400,000 TikTok followers. With the trip planned as early as next year, the California based company aims to commence the regular commercial flights to orbit.

Gerardi has been involved in the commercial space industry, including working for the Commercial Space Federation, for about a decade. Throughout her upcoming space trip, the 32-year-old will don an astroskin that would monitor and collect her biometric data. While the process of placing sensors beneath the spacesuit to collect vital data has been done on the International Space Station (ISS), it is the first time if would be done on a moving spacecraft.

Founded in 2004 by British billionaire Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic aims to start an era of commercial space trips. Following the experiment, the spaceflight company aims to send its employees in a passenger cabin before finally placing Branson in the orbit. Once the service opens for common people, each of the rides is expected to be priced at $200,000.

Meanwhile, Space X CEO Elon Musk,blatantly claimed that it would just take another six years for SpaceX to land humans on Mars. "We dont want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species, he told reporters.Many times in the past, the tech billionaire has expressed his desire to establish a permanent human presence on the red planet with starship rockets carrying humans to and from Mars. However, in recent weeks, he went a step ahead by asserting that not only do humans need to colonize Mars but also have a present base on the moon in order to become a spacefaring civilization.

Its been now almost half a century since humans were last on the moon. Thats too long, we need to get back there and have a permanent base on the moon again, like a big permanently occupied base on the moon. And then build a city on Mars to become a spacefaring civilization, a multi-planet species, Musk told reporters.

Image:kelliegerardi/Twitter

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As the podcast industry continues to boom and Hollywood comes calling, its looking more and more like the summer binge listen will join the blockbuster or beach read as a highly anticipated seasonal escape. With the season two premiere of Motherhacker, starring Carrie Coon (The Nest, Fargo), and the brand-new series Red Frontier, starring Betty Gilpin (The Hunt, GLOW), podcast giants Spotify and Gimlet are hoping that a combination of high-intensity plotlines and dazzling vocal talent will have have listeners glued to their earbuds as they ease into the hot, hazy days of summer.

Gimlet, which Spotify acquired in 2019, has been leaning hard on dramatic audio storytelling in recent years. Scripted shows have included Sandra, an eerie A.I. romp starring Ethan Hawke, Alia Shawkat, and Kristen Wiig, and Homecoming, another star-studded fiction podcast that was eventually adapted into an Amazon Prime Original television series starring Julia Roberts and Janelle Mone.

Motherhacker follows the same formula, with the Emmy-nominated Coon starring as Bridget Landry, a frazzled mother turned hacker whose dabbling on the dark web forces her to confront the shadowy forces at play in her own life. Written by Sandi Farkas and executive produced and directed by Amanda Lipitz, the first season of Motherhacker was a zippy, fast-paced escapade buoyed by the performances of a stellar cast (and can be binged in its entirety, exclusively on Spotify). Coons performance as Bridget is a freewheeling delight; she careens between accents and occupations as her character methodically scams victims out of thousands of dollars, in a desperate effort to pay off her own debts.

Im eager for fans to enjoy the thrilling and comic perils that befall Bridget during a fictional pandemic, recorded in my apartment in a real-life quarantine, Coon said. Its moving to me that we were able to meet the challenge, even so far apart, and deliver Motherhacker season two to Spotify audiences around the world.

Season two will find Bridget trying to outrun a crisis, caught between her hacker life, the FBI, and her own family. She also happens to be navigating these multiple identitiesand motherhoodwhile attempting to survive a fictional pandemic. The new season will also feature a cast of stage and screen talent that includes Lucas Hedges (Lady Bird, Boy Erased), Tavi Gevinson (Gossip Girl), Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Manchester by the Sea), and Tony Award winners Celia Keenan-Bolger (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Katrina Lenk (The Bands Visit).

Listen to an exclusive trailer of Motherhackers second season below, ahead of its premiere on June 7.

In the new Spotify Original series Red Frontier, Gilpin (also an Emmy nominee) plays Commander Taylor Fullerton, an astronaut who is tasked with finishing a one-way mission to colonize Mars alone, after her crew is killed in a mysterious tragedy. Gilpin rose to fame as soap actor turned professional wrestler Debbie Liberty Belle Eagan on Netflixs GLOW, which she called the best job [shell] ever have in a moving eulogy for Vanity Fair after the show was canceled last year. Shes also proven herself to be an exceedingly winning presence on non-scripted podcastsher episode of Las Culturistas, hosted by Matt Rogers and SNLs Bowen Yang, is a standout thanks to Gilpins honesty and humor, and the palpable admiration of the hosts. Gilpin will be joined on Red Frontier by Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story), Ashley Park (Girls5Eva), Charlie Barnett (Russian Doll), Maria Dizzia (Orange Is the New Black) and off-Broadway star Kara Young to round out this nail-biting, interplanetary thriller.

Red Frontier was written, directed, and executive produced by Sarah Nolen, who has written for the Emmy Award-winning series The Americans, as well as the upcoming Apple TV+ series Foundation. Red Frontier was born years ago as I explored my personal independence acquired after the loss of my mother, says Nolen. As both a writer and director, its been a fulfilling experience to embrace the audio-only format, which offers an unparalleled experience for the listener that is immersive and intimate. I hope Red Frontier will touch anyone feeling the burden of loneliness and bring them some comfort while providing a compelling and subversive female-driven science fiction story. Red Frontier, which also features a haunting score by the French-Candadian singer-songwriter Ghostly Kisses, will premiere on June 14.

This article has been updated.

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When the first baby is born off-Earth, it will be a milestone as momentous as humanitys first steps out of Africa. Such a birth would mark the beginning of a multiplanet civilization for the human species.

For the first half-century of the space age, only governments launched satellites and people into Earth orbit. No longer. Hundreds of private space companies are building a new industry that already has US$300 billion in annual revenue.

Im a professor of astronomy who has written a book and a number of articles about humans future in space. Today, all activity in space is tethered to Earth. But I predict that in around 30 years people will start living in space; and soon after, the first off-Earth baby will be born.

Space started as a duopoly as the United States and the Soviet Union vied for supremacy in a geopolitical contest with loud military overtones. But while NASA achieved the moon landings in 1969, its budget has since shrunk by a factor of three. Russia is no longer an economic superpower, and its presence in space is a pale shadow of the program that launched the first satellite and the first person into orbit.

The new kid on the block is China. After a late start, the Chinese space program is surging, fueled by a budget that has recently grown faster than their economy. China is building a space station, the country has landed probes on the moon and Mars, and it is planning a moon base. On its current trajectory, China will soon be the dominant space power.

Governments will continue to launch rockets, but it would be safe to say that the future of private space flight arrived in 2016 when, for the first time, commercial launches outnumbered launches by all the worlds countries combined. But the most exciting progress is being made by private space companies that are marketing space for tourism and recreation. Elon Musks goal for SpaceX is to carry 100 people at a time to the moon, Mars, and beyond, although in public presentations he is coy about giving a timeline. Jeff Bezos company, Blue Origin, also aims to colonize the solar system. Such grandiose plans have skeptics, but remember that these are the two richest people in the world.

For a spacecraft, the trip to Mars is about 1,000 times farther than a trip to the moon, so the moon will be humanitys first home away from home.

China is partnering with Russia to build a long-term facility at the moons South Pole sometime between 2036 and 2045. NASA plans to put boots on the moon in 2024 and establish a a permanent settlement called the Artemis Base Camp within another decade. As part of the Artemis mission, NASA is also planning to launch a lunar space station in 2024 called Gateway. NASA is teaming up with SpaceX for this and future lunar projects, and the lunar station will make it easier for SpaceX to resupply the future lunar colony.

After the moon comes Mars, and the collaboration between SpaceX and NASA is accelerating the timeline for getting there. NASAs plans are purposeful, but the organization hasnt given a timeline. Elon Musk, on the other hand, has loudly proclaimed that he intends to have a colony on Mars by 2050. Humanitys attempt to colonize the moon will give us a good sense of the challenges we might face on Mars.

For a civilization to be really free from Earth, the population needs to grow, and that means babies. Living on the moon or Mars will be arduous and stressful, so the first inhabitants will probably spend only a few years there at a time and are unlikely to start a family.

But once people do take up permanent residency off-Earth, there are still many unknowns. First, little research has been done on the biology of pregnancy and reproductive health in a space or low-gravity environment like the moon or Mars. Its possible there will be unexpected hazards to the fetus or mother. Second, babies are fragile, and raising them is not easy. The infrastructure of these bases would have to be sophisticated to make some version of normal family life possible, a process that will take decades.

With these uncertainties in mind, it seems likely that the first off-Earth baby will be born much closer to home. A Dutch startup called SpaceLife Origin wants to send a heavily pregnant woman 250 miles up just long enough to give birth. They talk a good story, but the legal, medical and ethical obstacles are formidable. Another company, called Orbital Assembly Corporation, plans to open a luxury hotel in orbit in 2027 called the Voyager Station. Current plans show that it would hold 280 guests and 112 crew members, with its spinning-wheel design providing artificial gravity. But the breathless news reports omit any discussion of the difficulty and cost of such a project.

However, on April 12, 2021, NASA announced that it is considering allowing a reality TV show to send a civilian to the International Space Station and film them for 10 days. Its plausible that this idea could be extended, with a wealthy couple booking a long-term stay for the entire process from conception to birth in orbit.

At the moment, theres no evidence anyone has had sex in space. But with about 600 people having been in Earth orbit, including one NASA couple who kept their marriage a secret, one space historian was able to gather plenty of space age salacious moments.

My guess is that sometime around 2040, a unique individual will be born. They may carry the citizenship of their parents, or they may be born in a facility operated by a corporation and end up stateless. But I prefer to think of this future person as the first true citizen of the galaxy.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: NASA/Dennis Davidson/WikimediaCommons

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When Will the First Baby Be Born in Space? - Singularity Hub

Worcesters Budget Holds Steady Tax Rate, Grows Spending By 6%

SNOW HILL Worcester County officials adopted a $216 million budget for the coming fiscal year.The Worcester County Commissioners on Tuesday voted 5-2 to adopt a $216,509,211 operating budget for fiscal year 2022. The budget, a 6% increase over the current years spending plan, maintains the current property tax rate of 84.5 cents per $100 Read more

SNOW HILL Discussion of a library program and its possible link to a political movement dominated a meeting of the Worcester County Commissioners this week.The commissioners on Tuesday met with Worcester County Library Director Jennifer Ranck to discuss Read Woke, a teen reading program the library is offering. Despite concerns from some commissioners, Ranck Read more

OCEAN PINES Officials attributed juvenile fire play as the cause of a house fire that left nine Ocean Pines residents homeless this week.At around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, June 1, Worcester County Emergency Services received reports of a house fire in the 300 block of Ocean Parkway in Ocean Pines. When crews arrived at Read more

BERLIN Mayor Zack Tyndall vetoed the towns $6.8 million budget in response to amendments made to the spending plan by the town council.Tyndall on Friday vetoed Berlins fiscal year 2022 budget, citing the changes made by the Berlin Town Council last month. Hes hopeful that before any vote to override his veto, council members Read more

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06/03/2021 | Announcements | News Ocean City MD - The Dispatch - The Dispatch

In an image from video footage from 2015, an unexplained object is seen at center as it soars among the clouds, traveling against the wind. "There's a whole fleet of them," a naval aviator tells another, though only one indistinct object is shown. Department of Defense via AP hide caption

In an image from video footage from 2015, an unexplained object is seen at center as it soars among the clouds, traveling against the wind. "There's a whole fleet of them," a naval aviator tells another, though only one indistinct object is shown.

Are we alone? Have alien spacecraft been buzzing across Earth's skies? Those are the questions being asked in the U.S. government's new report on unexplained aerial phenomena its preferred term for what many of us call unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.

So far, it looks like the answers in the report will leave UFO spotters and conspiracy theorists unsatisfied. U.S. officials and analysts who examined video footage from U.S. Navy planes and other records say the evidence doesn't point to alien technology but they also say they can't explain the unusual phenomena.

The report's release is still pending; after The New York Times first reported news of its findings Thursday night, a senior U.S. official confirmed to NPR that details in the newspaper's story are accurate.

One of the report's only substantial conclusions is that the craft encountered by the military objects that showed unusual flight capabilities were not created by classified programs run by the U.S. government or the Pentagon.

That finding jibes with statements previously made by Luis Elizondo, the former leader of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. He spoke to NPR in 2017 after the release of a previously classified video taken by a camera aboard a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet.

In the footage, pilots struggled to explain what they were seeing as an object on their sensors maintained a high speed and then, for no apparent reason, rotated.

"Look at that thing!" one pilot exclaimed.

Earlier, the same pilot remarked they might be seeing some type of drone.

"There's a whole fleet of them," the other pilot said.

"My gosh!" the first pilot replied.

Discussing that footage in an interview with NPR, Elizondo confessed he didn't know the origin of the craft.

"If you're asking my personal opinion from here, look, I've got to be honest with you, I don't know where it's from. But we're pretty sure it's not here," Elizondo said. "Now does that mean it's 'out there'? Whether or not it's Russian or Chinese inside or little green men from Mars or frankly your neighbor's dog, I wanted to purposely steer away from that because I wanted to focus on truly the raw science: What were we seeing, and did it pose a threat to national security?"

Interest in the idea that alien beings might be visiting Earth from off-planet has skyrocketed in recent years, particularly after the Pentagon verified that several videos showing what look to be objects moving at incredible speeds and with remarkable agility had indeed come from official U.S. Navy sources.

In 2017, news of the existence of a secretive Pentagon program that was established to examine sightings of unexplained aircraft and phenomena ignited public interest. It also brought new legitimacy and definition to an area of research that for decades was defined by speculation and stereotypes of UFO enthusiasts running around in tinfoil hats.

The Pentagon reportedly began its Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in an early form in 2007. Congress then funded it, and Elizondo took it over in 2010. But the Defense Department halted it in 2012.

In April 2020, the Department of Defense officially released footage from the Navy fighter pilots' on-board cameras.

The department said it was releasing the videos to clear up misconceptions about whether footage that had already been circulating is real.

"The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified,' " the Defense Department said.

Americans, it seems, are ready to believe. A 2019 Gallup Poll found that a third of U.S. adults agreed with the idea that "some UFOs have been alien spacecraft visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies."

The new report on UFOs is poised to be released to Congress this month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

U.S. intelligence agencies and the Defense Department are required to report on what they know about unusual aerial phenomena because of a stipulation in the massive COVID-19 relief and government funding bill that Congress approved last year.

In a section titled Advanced Aerial Threats, the spending bill calls for federal agencies to submit a report on "unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as 'anomalous aerial vehicles'), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified."

When former President Donald Trump signed the bill on Dec. 27, he also triggered the start of a 180-day deadline for the director of national intelligence to send the report to Congress.

The report will go to the Intelligence and Armed Services committees in each chamber of Congress.

Linda Looney wipes her face outside the Alien Research Center, a gift shop on the Extraterrestrial Highway, in Crystal Springs, Nev., in 2019. The tiny desert town is near Area 51, a secret government facility some believe is a research center devoted to studies of space aliens. John Locher/AP hide caption

Linda Looney wipes her face outside the Alien Research Center, a gift shop on the Extraterrestrial Highway, in Crystal Springs, Nev., in 2019. The tiny desert town is near Area 51, a secret government facility some believe is a research center devoted to studies of space aliens.

Speculation about extraterrestrial beings coming to Earth and potentially colonizing our planet, as humans have done to one another for millenniums has long been fuel for movies and pulp novels. But fiction or not, the military has also been intrigued by the idea.

Americans' fixation with UFOs has its roots in July 1947. According to UFO enthusiasts, that's when the U.S. Air Force allegedly recovered an alien spacecraft and its occupants near Roswell, N.M.

As with more recent efforts, the U.S. military worked to determine whether an alien force had arrived on our planet or whether the sightings potentially indicated unexpected gains in aeronautics and engineering by some rival power.

"The UFO craze began in the summer of 1947," journalist Annie Jacobsen told NPR in 2011 when she published a book about the mysterious Area 51 in New Mexico. As speculation about that incident grew, Jacobsen added, the Army intelligence corps went on a search for former Third Reich aerospace designers who were said to have created a flying disc.

That same year, the Air Force started a program to investigate UFO sightings, called Project BLUE BOOK. Over the next two decades, 12,618 strange sightings were reported to the project. When it was phased out in 1969, around 700 sightings were still categorized as "Unidentified," according to the National Archives.

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How UFO Sightings Went From Conspiracy Theory To A Serious Government Inquiry - NPR

We may very soon watch the first TV show or movie shot entirely in space.

Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian are some of the highly acclaimed movies. All of these movies are around space. There are a select few who have experienced spaced. To the majority of us, space is still a fairytale life. Hence we are drawn towards space exploration, Moon Explorations, Mars Colonization and International Space Station. The thought of a habitable Mars might still be a distant future. But what if you can visit the international space station sooner and even have TV shows or movies shot on the international space station.

NASA is now opening doors to people willing to shell out a few million and have their own private space experience. Ms Dana Weigel, Deputy Manager at the space station for NASA said, "Were finally able to open our doors to private citizens and allow others to experience the magic of living and working in space. The dream is really to allow everyone access to space, and this is a pretty exciting starting point here. "

"Who Wants to be an Astronaut", a new TV show by Discovery, is planning to send a winner onboard the second Axiom mission to the space station. The second Axiom mission is expected to launch six to seven months after the first Axiom mission, the details of which are yet to be shared. The agreement between NASA and Discovery is yet to be finalised and will be closed soon.

NASA led missions are to the International Space Station will accommodate two private astronauts each year. Because NASA has decided to accommodate private astronauts, many private companies have started showing interest in the private space program. With the new garnered interest from private firms, Ms Dana Weigel said, "We are seeing a lot of interest in private astronaut missions, even outside of Axiom. At this point, the demand exceeds what we actually believe the opportunities on the station will be.

On the 25th of May 2021, Axiom announced the two astronauts for the second Axiom mission. The first is Peggy Whitson, currently holding the record for the most cumulative time in space by a NASA astronaut(665days). The Axiom mission will add more days to her existing record. Peggy will be the commander onboard the Axiom. The second person is John Shoffner, who will be paying for his seat. John heads of a company that manufactures conduits for fibre optic cables and will be the pilot for Axiom's second mission.

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International Space Station will now host TV shows and Films - PINKVILLA

Each week one of Popdust's disposable clones grown in a vault deep beneath the Mojave desert is exposed to the outside world through a relentless feed of news, pop culture, and social media.

The arduous process accelerates their dissolution back into an amorphous clone slurry. But before they go, they leave behind a document of what they've absorbed and what they've learned a time capsule preserving a single moment in the slow-motion collapse of civilization. We call these End Times Updates...

End Times Update SNL, the Gas Crisis, and Courtney Stodden youtu.be

Transcript: Oh hi! Welcome to another End Times Update, presented by Popdust. I'll be your clone-host for this week, Pelvis Wrestley.

[Elvis Presley]: You ain't nothin' but a hound dog. C-cryin' all the time.

As always, we'll be looking through the news, pop culture, and social media from the last week, for the latest forebodings of societal doom.

This week has been a real show-stopper when it comes to signs of the imminent demise of the human race. For a start, second richest man on Earth Elon Musk became the first ever second richest man on earth to host Saturday Night Live. Musk also made history with his monologue, in which he revealed that he's been diagnosed with Asperger's, an autism spectrum disorder.

[Elon Musk]: I'm actually making history tonight, as the first person with Asperger's to host SNL... Or at least the first to admit it.

The Mother's Day episode then proceeded, with lots of references to Musk's business ventures

[Elon Musk]: I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship I'm in charge of the whole Mars colonization project Sure, I do like electric horses, and self-driving horses -- which are just horses -- but I've also built a machine that can dig a tunnel ten times faster than a gopher.

and and his online presence

[Elon Musk]: But I also write things like "69 days after 4/20 again haha." People are so mean online. Okay, for a while I thought masks were dumb, but now I admit masks make sense.

Chad on Mars - SNL http://www.youtube.com

and also a weird amount of references to cousins being into each other.

[Mikey Day]: How many times have you found out too late that your lover is your cousin?

[Ego Nwodim]: What are you doing?

[Chris Redd]: What?

[Ego Nwodim]: You're my cousin.

[Chris Redd]: What? Oh no, I totally forgot. (Silently) Almost got away with it.

[Elon Musk]: Ooli, I think of all the good times we could have, eating fermented shark in the nude

[Chloe Fineman]: Oh my gosh. Okay, Ragnarok, stop. Cousin Check told us we were cousins.

[Elon Musk]: Exaclty, we have so much in common!

Speaking of electric cars, this was not a great week for for the other kind of cars, with the average gas price in the US topping $3 a gallon for the first time in years and hundreds of gas stations along the east coast running dry with some truly wild panic buying.

The panic was brought on by the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, which typically delivers hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel from refineries in Texas all the way up to New York and all along the eastern seaboard. But after being attacked by the corporate ransomware outfit known as "DarkSide," the Colonial Pipeline Company lost access to their billing software, so they just stopped delivering altogether, causing a federally declared state of emergency in 17 states.

Thankfully, service was restored on Wednesday night, though the company says it will take a few more days to get back to 100%.

It was also a big week for Ellen DeGeneres, who announced that the 19th season of her daytime talk show will be the last.

Ellen's Big Season 19 Announcement http://www.youtube.com

[Elen DeGeneres]: This show has been the greatest experience of my life, and I owe it all to you The truth is, I always trust my instincts. Uh, my instinct told me it's time. As a comedian I've always understood the importance of...timing. And recently I had a dream that a bird, a beautiful bird with bright red feathers, came to my window and whispered, "You can still do stuff on Netflix." And that was the sign I was looking for.

Beginning in 2003, the show made "Be Kind" its mantra, while behind the scenes the host earned a reputation as one of the meanest bosses in Hollywood.

[Hedda Muskat]: Toxic, phony, hypocrite liar, that's what she is. We were told from the very beginning, "Don't talk to Ellen, don't do this, you can't, you know, go into her office." It was very nerve-wracking, very stressful, we all walked on eggshells all the time.

Speaking of hypocrisy

[Courtney Stodden]: Hypo-Chrissy Teigen

this week former child-bride Courtney Stodden came after model Chrissy Teigen for hurtful comments that the so-called "Mayor of Twitter" made about them when they was just a teenager including wishing for the young celebrity to take a, quote, "dirt nap."

[Courtney Stodden]: It's ironic because, right, because she left, you know, social media, complaining about bullying. She has sent me so many different tweets, private DMs, um, up to a couple years ago.

Stodden, who identifies as non-binary, first came to the world's attention in 2011 when, at the age of 16, they married 51 year old Green Mile actor Doug Hutchinson. The "Don't Put it on Me" singer

[Courtney Stodden]: Don't put it on me, girl. D-d-d-d-d-d-d-don't

quickly became the target of ridicule and commentary, despite the fact that as they've since recognized they were clearly the victim of a predatory grooming relationship.

Courtney Stodden Calls Chrissy Teigen a Hypocrite Over Bullying | TMZ http://www.youtube.com

In response to Stodden calling her out, Teigen issued an apology on Twitter, saying, quote, "I was an insecure, attention-seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior."

In other news, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have reunited to once again form Bennifer Afflepez for the first time in 17 years. And actress Kat Dennings and singer Andrew W.K. announced that they're engaged this week.

But what else... Oh, right. Violence in Israel and Gaza reached new heights this week in the decades-long conflict between a powerful military ethnostate with nuclear weapons, and a group of displaced and disenfranchised people living under martial law.

But according to President Biden, when it comes to killing protestors and toppling 13-story residential buildings

[Joe Biden]: Israel has right to defend itself.

Well, that does it for this week. If the world survives longer than I do, we'll send another clone with more updates. Until then...byyye!

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End Times Update 5/15/2021: SNL, the Gas Crisis, and Courtney Stodden - Popdust

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Cryptocurrencies, Mars colonization, and an unpronounceable child's name may have dominated Elon Musk's first Saturday Night Live appearance, but the Tesla CEO's influence on electric vehicles was clear from the ads that popped up during the late-night program.

Musk is known for "reinventing" electric vehicles as a more mainstream alternative to gas-powered cars with his Tesla brand and its original Model S sedan back in 2012. Now there are more than 50 EV models available in the U.S. including options from legacy automakers like Ford, Nissan, and Chevy.

Tesla doesn't do traditional advertising, but its competitors do. During Saturday's SNL episode several car companies ran ads for their EVs, timed with Musk's appearance. Musk didn't say much about Tesla or EVs during the show aside from a joke about driving a Toyota Prius hybrid.

During the ad breaks, there was a 30-second spot from startup Lucid with its yet-to-arrive Air luxury sedan, plugging its 517-mile range battery. Tesla has a Model S version coming out in 2022 with a purported 520-mile battery range.

Publications like The Verge and USA Today noticed other EV ads from Audi for its E-tron, Volvo with a plug-in hybrid SUV, Ford with the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, and Volkswagen with the recently released ID.4.

Musk is the the public figure most associated with electric vehicles, so his appearance on a show with an audience as wide as SNL's led car companies to take advantage of the moment. Lucid, the EV company that has delayed the release of its first car, saw a pop in Google traffic that matched search interest with Musk's Tesla during the SNL broadcast.

trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"tesla","geo":"US","time":"now 1-d"},{"keyword":"lucid air","geo":"US","time":"now 1-d"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"date=now%201-d&geo=US&q=tesla,lucid%20air","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"});

Musk has always welcomed competition in the EV space, but things are starting to heat up.

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Elon Musk's 'SNL' appearance shows he's the face of EVs beyond Tesla - Mashable SE Asia

Elon Musk poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Award on Dec. 1, 2020 in Berlin.

Who doesn't love a weird, 60-plus-year-old coincidence? As if there aren't enough headlines about Elon Musk at the moment, a connection between his name and a decades-old book that seemed to eerily predict the billionaire's involvement in Mars exploration resurfaced this week.

In the 1950s, German-turned-American scientist Wernher von Braun (yes, the Nazis' leading rocket man), wrote a science fiction novel called The Mars Project. It takes place in then-distant 1980 and features human colonists on Mars whose leader uses the title "Elon." As in, oh, we don't know ... billionaire Tesla and SpaceX big shot, upcoming SNL host, and guy who wants us to get us to Mars?

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

The coincidence is hardly unknown. My CNET colleague Eric Mack wrote about it in 2018. It gained more notoriety when space reporter Toby Li tweeted about it in December 2020, writing, "Speaking about destiny, did you know that Von Braun's 1953 book "Mars Project," referenced a person named Elon that would bring humans to Mars? Pretty nuts."

Musk himself responded to the tweet suspiciously, tweeting back, "Are we sure this is real?"

And real it is, although as one Twitter user pointed out, "'Elon' referred by Von Braun in the book isn't the name of the person but rather the name of the position something like an elected meritocratic president."

Coincidences happen. "Elon" isn't the most common name these days, but baby-name site Nameberry says it's a Hebrew name meaning "oak tree."

It's also in the bible. "Before Musk arrived on the scene, Elon was the name of a Biblical judge," the Nameberry page for Elon notes. "Long obscure, naming your son Elon today would signal an admiration for Musk rather than the Good Book."

Speaking of names, Elon Musk and musician Grimes drew attention recently for naming their son X A-12. That's pronounced "X Ash A Twelve," though his dad likes to call him "Baby X."

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Elon Musk's first name shows up in 1953 book about colonizing Mars - CNET

On Friday, April 16, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX to move forward in building the first modern human landing system (HLS), returning humans to the surface of the Moon for the first time in nearly 50 years.

This marks a dramatic step toward sustainable lunar exploration and preparation for the ultimate journey of a human-crewed mission to Mars.

NASA stated: The exploration of the Moon and Mars is intertwined. The Moon provides an opportunity to test new tools, instruments and equipment that could be used on Mars, including human habitats, life support systems, and technologies and practices that could help us build self-sustaining outposts away from Earth."

Interplanetary exploration will rely on a complex supply-chain network from terrestrial/on-ground to low earth orbit onto the Moon, Mars and beyond.This new interplanetary supply chain will exploit the same emergent technologies that have given rise to the disruptive forces that mark our entrance to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Cloud, artificial intelligence, blockchain and additive manufacturing are already forming the core foundational components of the architectures that enable space technologies to be delivered and funded turnkey "as a service," allowing for democratization of space and space data access, significantly lowering the barrier to entry. Bank of America expects the space industry to triple to a US$1.4 trillion market within a decade, forecasting the industry's revenue growth by 230% from about $4.2 billion in 2019 to about $1.4 trillion in 2030.

For the space economy to exploit its full potential, a scalable, extensible, resilient and secure infrastructure of orbital communication and transportation services is being created, giving rise to the space for space economy where goods and services are built in space for space.

Yet, with all advancements, there is risk. The value of the digital and physical cargo to be transported is immense. Assets mined on planets and small bodies may be worth more than the total value of the Earths current economy. The intellectual property digitally transported across these complex supply chains will provide nations and companies with an incalculable competitive advantage. And the same architectures that support terrestrial-based digital supply chains will be just as exploitable as those in space.

With disruption comes opportunity, and attackers are better and faster than us at adapting to, leveragingand exploiting disruption. In a future where speed and agility are defining factors, they have the edge.

Currently, there is a race to develop offensive space capabilities designed to intercept, deny service or alter satellite communications. Organized underground groups will be ready, armed, and able to execute cyber-attacks against space transportation systems to enable the hijacking of cargo, abducting people and holding them for ransom or intercepting and stealing digital-based intelligence.

The cloud-based architectures that will underpin interplanetary commercial transportation and services will be exploitable by a range of different threat actors. And while countries and corporations alike are developing capabilities to detect, predict and defend against these attacks, they lack a consistent and comprehensive framework.

In 2020, the US government published the policy directive, Cybersecurity Principles for Space Systems, that outlined five main principles:

While these principles and the resultant application of information security frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, or SOC 2 Type 2 across the entirety of space supply chains is a good first step, the design for how we approach security around these systems will need to transform. We will need to be better, faster and more adaptable. And, while the use of artificial intelligence and thinking systems will be prevalent, we will need to be prepared to see cybersecurity and defense personnel aboard spacecraft.

Information security and GRC professionals need to expand our knowledge and, quite frankly, imagination to include the applied sciences involved in space. We have to become more experienced in life safety systems. AI needs to be foundational to all cybersecurity and GRC professionals training as we will be working alongside thinking systems in harsh environments where there are microseconds between life or death.

Which brings me to diversity. We have no real idea what type of person will be best suited for interplanetary travel or outpost settlements. Make no mistake one we leave this planet for another's destination, we will begin to evolve and evolution requires diversity.

If we are to protect and defend the people, companies, and countries in our charge, we will need racial, gender, identity, physical and neuro-diversity.

There is a high degree of likelihood that the attributes that make someone successful here on Earth may not be well-suited on another planet. People who think outside of the box may be the ones to thrive.

Leaders and futurists have predicted we may see the first human on Mars in the next 5-10 years, with colonization to happen soon thereafter. We sit at the dawn of interplanetary travel. As we embark on this next phase in human history, it is critical that we consider the end-to-end risks involved in the development of these new economies and the diversity in our workforce necessary to help protect and defend the people, goods and services that comprise the new space ecosystems.

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Time for Infosec Professionals' Imaginations to Stretch to Outer Space - Infosecurity Magazine