Formula 1’s recent popularity still feels a little strange to longtime fans of the sport, particularly in the US, where it had been so niche for so long. But the past five years have seen F1 rise meteorically, and a new, much younger fanbase infused with enthusiasm for the cutting-edge race cars and the athletes who pilot them has emerged. F1 Arcade capitalizes on that popularity, combining food and drinks—including Lewis Hamilton’s agave tipple—with dozens and dozens of race simulators that let you race against friends or compete in teams against others.
With Washington, DC, chosen for F1 Arcade’s second US location, I obviously had to go check it out.
My first visit to the arcade in DC’s Union Market district was several weeks ago at the launch party, an affair that was packed with influencers and loud music. But I returned earlier this week, having booked a 45-minute, five-race session playing head-to-head against a friend. Prices vary depending on the number of races and whether you’re that at peak time, starting at $22/player for three races off-peak and going up to $42/player for five races at peak time. There’s no charge for people who are just spectating (or eating and drinking), not racing.
Perhaps surprisingly, the sims—which use hardware from Vesaro—don’t run the official Codemasters’ F1 game but instead a custom version of rFactor2 made by Motorsport Games for F1 Arcade, a title that’s notorious for being hard to master.
F1 Arcade’s CTO Gavin Williams thinks back to 2021. “There were a lot of things that weren’t quite right with the game,” he told me. “We actually went to Vesaro, who manufactured the simulators. We tried it, and literally none of us could race. It was just so unbearable to watch, and there were things that were missing, like the racing line, the skill settings weren’t quite right.”
For the new study, researchers at the Mayo Clinic analyzed health statistics collected by the World Health Organization. The resource included data from 183 countries, allowing the researchers to compare countries’ life expectancy and healthspans, which are calculated by years of life weighted by health status.
Longer, but not better
Overall, the researchers saw lifespan-healthspan gaps grow around the world, with the average gap rising from 8.5 years in 2000 to 9.6 years in 2019. Global life expectancy rose 6.5 years, to about 73 years, while healthspans only rose 5.4 years in that time, to around 63 years.
But the US was a notable outlier, with its gap growing from 10.9 years to 12.4 years, a 29 percent higher gap than the global mean.
The gap was most notable for women—a trend seen around the world. Between 2000 and 2019, US women saw their life expectancy rise 1.5 years, from 79.2 to 80.7 years, but they saw no change in their healthspans. Women’s lifespan-healthspan gap rose from 12.2 years to 13.7 years. For US men, life expectancy rose 2.2 years, from 74.1 to 76.3 years, and their healthspans also increased 0.6 years. Their lifespan-healthspan gap in 2019 was 11.1 years, 2.6 years shorter than women’s.
The conditions most responsible for US disease burden included mental and substance use disorders, plus musculoskeletal diseases. For women, the biggest contributors were musculoskeletal, genitourinary, and neurological diseases.
While the US presented the most extreme example, the researchers note that the global trends seem to present a “disease paradox whereby reduced acute mortality exposes survivors to an increased burden of chronic disease.”
“I am convinced that a collaboration between Avio and MaiaSpace could be established.”
SpaceX conducted a static fire test of its flight seven Super Heavy booster this week. Credit: SpaceX
Welcome to Edition 7.23 of the Rocket Report! We’re closing in on the end of the year, with a little less than three weeks remaining in 2024. Can you believe it? I hardly can. The biggest question left in launch is whether Blue Origin will make its deadline for launching New Glenn by the end of this year. It’s been a long-time goal of founder Jeff Bezos, but the clock is ticking. We wish them luck!
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Virgin Galactic studies Italian spaceport. The US-based suborbital space tourism company said Thursday it has signed an “agreement of cooperation” with Italy’s civil aviation authority to study the feasibility of Virgin Galactic conducting spaceflight operations from Grottaglie Spaceport in the Puglia region of Southern Italy. Phase one of the study, anticipated to be completed in 2025, will examine Grottaglie’s airspace compatibility with Virgin Galactic’s requirements and unique flight profile.
Follows earlier flight … The announcement comes 18 months after members of the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy conducted research aboard Virgin Galactic’s June 2023 ‘Galactic 01’ mission from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The flight marked the company’s first commercial spaceflight. It’s all well and good to be making such strategic announcements, but this is all dependent upon the company delivering on its new generation of Delta-class spaceships.
For some reason, Avio and MaiaSpace may partner. MaiaSpace CEO Johann Leroy has suggested that a partnership with Italian rocket-builder Avio could benefit both companies and bolster Europe’s independent access to space, European Spaceflight reports. “The goal of MaiaSpace is to design, produce, and operate the mini-launcher, as well as to market the related launch services, and to stay focused and responsive to market developments,” said Leroy. “However, I am convinced that a collaboration between Avio and MaiaSpace could be established. It would be an advantage for both companies and for Europe.”
But it’s not clear why … Founded in early 2022 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, MaiaSpace is developing a 50-meter tall, two-stage, partially reusable rocket designed to deliver small satellites to orbit. Avio builds solid rocket motors and is best known for its Vega rockets. It’s not clear why a reusable launch company would want to partner with a company that builds solids, which are not reusable. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
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Australian space center shuts down. A spaceport in the Northern Territory of Australia will cease operations immediately, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports. The company running the spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia, said it was now in conversations with the Queensland government to relocate its operations to Cape York. The space center’s claim to fame was the 2022 launch of three NASA sounding rockets from the facility.
Disagreements over territory … The company, Equatorial Launch Australia, had been planning a major expansion of the Arnhem Space Centre at its East Arnhem Land location. However that process apparently got bogged down, and the spaceport company blamed the delays on the Northern Land Council. This council pushed back and described those claims as a “falsehood.” The wait for a renewal of orbital launches from Down Under continues. (submitted by Marzipan)
Ukrainian launch company finds refuge in Maine. Promin Aerospace, a small launch company from Dnipro, Ukraine, opened its doors in Maine this month with a goal of hiring US engineers to complete development of its first rocket in time for a test launch in mid-2026, Payload reports. Promin’s goal of launching Ukraine’s first rocket from the coast of the Black Sea was put on hold after Russia invaded the country in February 2022.
Lobsters and launches … For the past two and a half years, Promin has been developing its unique rocket technology amid power outages, Internet connectivity problems, and sporadic attacks on Dnipro from Russian forces. The search started in Europe but quickly moved across the pond to take advantage of the speed and resources that US industry provides. “[Europe moves] very slow, so a lot of things that we expected would be done by our partners in 2022, they’re only going to be done in 2025,” said Misha Rudominski, Promin’s co-founder and CEO. The Maine Space Corporation was more welcoming. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Long March-8A rocket set for debut. After successfully completing a wet dress rehearsal and other pre-launch tests, the first Long March-8A rocket is set for its debut launch in January 2025, China’s state-run news service, Xinhua, reports. The news service adds that the rocket is “designed to serve as China’s future primary launch vehicle for medium- and low-Earth orbit missions.” The rocket is capable of lofting up to 7 metric tons to a 700-km Sun-synchronous orbit.
Satellite workhorse … The newer rocket offers increased performance over the Long March 8 rocket and a larger 5.2-meter payload fairing. As such, it is being counted on to help deploy one or more of China’s planned satellite Internet megaconstellations. “The Long March-8A is an upgraded version of the Long March-8 rocket, specifically developed to meet the launch requirements of large-scale constellation networks in medium- and low-Earth orbits,” said Song Zhengyu, chief designer of the Long March-8 rocket. (submitted by gizmo23)
Chinese national arrested after flying drone near SpaceX pad. Federal police arrested Yinpiao Zhou on Monday after he was allegedly caught flying a drone over the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, The Telegraph reports. In a criminal complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Zhou flew a drone over the base and took photographs on November 30, the same day a Falcon 9 rocket launched a payload on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office. He has been accused of violating national defense air space and of failing to register an aircraft as required under US law.
Is that a drone in your pocket? … The complaint against Zhou, filed in California, says he admitted to installing software on his drone to evade limits on the height the device could fly at, and over a virtual fence around the Vandenberg base. The drone was allegedly in the air for 59 minutes and took photographs of SpaceX rocket pads and other sensitive areas. The flight was picked up by the base’s security team, who traced Zhou to nearby Ocean Park, where he was standing with another man. After initially hiding the drone in his coat, Zhou admitted he had flown it over the base.
Blue Origin says New Glenn is ready. Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff, Ars reports. The company published an image of the “Blue Ring” pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket’s payload fairing. This week’s announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes.
Still targeting 2024 for liftoff … First of all, the relatively small payload contrasted with the size of the payload fairing highlights the greater volume the rocket offers over most conventional boosters. Additionally, the company appears to be publicly signaling the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulatory agencies that it believes New Glenn is ready to fly, pending approval to conduct a hot-fire test at Launch Complex-36, and then for a liftoff from Florida. This is a not-so-subtle message to regulators to please hurry up and complete the paperwork necessary for launch activities. A company official said the plan remains to launch New Glenn before the end of 2024.
SpaceX static-fires booster for next Starship flight. Only three weeks after Flight 6, SpaceX has static-fired Booster 14 and rolled Ship 33 to Masseys to complete its own engine testing, NASASpaceflight.com reports. Once both vehicles are tested, SpaceX will begin the final drive to Flight 7, potentially launching in January. Booster 14 is more or less identical to Booster 13 on the outside except for the ship engine chill pipe extensions on previous boosters. These are no longer needed, as Block 2 of the ship has its engine chill pipes running through the aft flap fairing with a flare outward at the bottom. This simplifies the connection between the ship and the booster and reduces mass.
Block 2 upgrades … Ship 33 has many changes compared to past ships, as it is the first Block 2 ship. First and foremost for Block 2 are the extended propellant tanks. SpaceX added a ring on the ship, making it 21 rings tall, and moved around the common and forward domes to be able to load 300 more tons of propellant into the ship. This addition will allow SpaceX to increase its payload to orbit with Block 2. The sacrifice was a smaller payload bay section, which went from five rings to three rings. However, SpaceX retained most of its usable payload space, as the nose cone on Block 2 was completely redesigned. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
ULA expects to be certified for national security launch soon. United Launch Alliance expects to gain Space Force certification for national security payloads within a few months, company chief executive Tory Bruno told Breaking Defense. He added that no further testing of the Vulcan Centaur will be needed to meet certification, saying the company has met all the requirements from the Pentagon. Two successful launches are requisite to achieve certification for carrying payloads under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program.
Seeking a higher cadence … A January launch was deemed a success, but there was an anomaly during the second flight in October with one of Vulcan’s solid rocket boosters that currently is under investigation. Overall, he said, the company has 20 launches manifested for 2025, with 16 Vulcan rockets stored away for use and no worries that production won’t be able to keep up with demand. Looking forward, Bruno said he hopes to have 20-30 Vulcan launches a year, about “half” of which would be for national security. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Super heavy lift is ‘essential’ to Europe. This week the European Space Agency has published a third iteration of a proposed pathfinder study for the development of a European reusable super heavy-lift rocket capable of delivering 60 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, European Spaceflight reports. Twice before, in November and early December, the space agency published and then deleted a call for a study. While the first and second iterations made no mention of Ariane 6, currently Europe’s only heavy-lift rocket, the third iteration highlights the limitations of the ArianeGroup-built rocket.
A final decision may come next year … The text states that the development of a “European very-heavy launch system” is essential for Europe’s future ambitions in space and represents a necessary step to ensure the continent remains competitive in the global launch market. Once the study is complete, ESA hopes to have a detailed end-to-end development roadmap with a well-defined business case that could be used to move forward with the project quickly. A decision on whether to adopt the program will likely be made at the ESA ministerial meeting in late 2025. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Next three launches
Dec. 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 19: 28 UTC
Dec. 14: Electron | Stonehenge | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 00: 45 UT
Dec. 14: Falcon 9 | GPS-3 10 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 04 UTC
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
In the researchers’ COCONUT model (for Chain Of CONtinUous Thought), those kinds of hidden states are encoded as “latent thoughts” that replace the individual written steps in a logical sequence both during training and when processing a query. This avoids the need to convert to and from natural language for each step and “frees the reasoning from being within the language space,” the researchers write, leading to an optimized reasoning path that they term a “continuous thought.”
Being more breadth-minded
While doing logical processing in the latent space has some benefits for model efficiency, the more important finding is that this kind of model can “encode multiple potential next steps simultaneously.” Rather than having to pursue individual logical options fully and one by one (in a “greedy” sort of process), staying in the “latent space” allows for a kind of instant backtracking that the researchers compare to a breadth-first-search through a graph.
This emergent, simultaneous processing property comes through in testing even though the model isn’t explicitly trained to do so, the researchers write. “While the model may not initially make the correct decision, it can maintain many possible options within the continuous thoughts and progressively eliminate incorrect paths through reasoning, guided by some implicit value functions,” they write.
That kind of multi-path reasoning didn’t really improve COCONUT’s accuracy over traditional chain-of-thought models on relatively straightforward tests of math reasoning (GSM8K) or general reasoning (ProntoQA). But the researchers found the model did comparatively well on a randomly generated set of ProntoQA-style queries involving complex and winding sets of logical conditions (e.g., “every apple is a fruit, every fruit is food, etc.”)
For these tasks, standard chain-of-thought reasoning models would often get stuck down dead-end paths of inference or even hallucinate completely made-up rules when trying to resolve the logical chain. Previous research has also shown that the “verbalized” logical steps output by these chain-of-thought models “may actually utilize a different latent reasoning process” than the one being shared.
This new research joins a growing body of research looking to understand and exploit the way large language models work at the level of their underlying neural networks. And while that kind of research hasn’t led to a huge breakthrough just yet, the researchers conclude that models pre-trained with these kinds of “continuous thoughts” from the get-go could “enable models to generalize more effectively across a wider range of reasoning scenarios.”
In a blog, C.AI said it took a month to develop the teen model, with the goal of guiding the existing model “away from certain responses or interactions, reducing the likelihood of users encountering, or prompting the model to return, sensitive or suggestive content.”
C.AI said “evolving the model experience” to reduce the likelihood kids are engaging in harmful chats—including bots allegedly teaching a teen with high-functioning autism to self-harm and delivering inappropriate adult content to all kids whose families are suing—it had to tweak both model inputs and outputs.
To stop chatbots from initiating and responding to harmful dialogs, C.AI added classifiers that should help C.AI identify and filter out sensitive content from outputs. And to prevent kids from pushing bots to discuss sensitive topics, C.AI said that it had improved “detection, response, and intervention related to inputs from all users.” That ideally includes blocking any sensitive content from appearing in the chat.
Perhaps most significantly, C.AI will now link kids to resources if they try to discuss suicide or self-harm, which C.AI had not done previously, frustrating parents suing who argue this common practice for social media platforms should extend to chatbots.
Other teen safety features
In addition to creating the model just for teens, C.AI announced other safety features, including more robust parental controls rolling out early next year. Those controls would allow parents to track how much time kids are spending on C.AI and which bots they’re interacting with most frequently, the blog said.
C.AI will also be notifying teens when they’ve spent an hour on the platform, which could help prevent kids from becoming addicted to the app, as parents suing have alleged. In one case, parents had to lock their son’s iPad in a safe to keep him from using the app after bots allegedly repeatedly encouraged him to self-harm and even suggested murdering his parents. That teen has vowed to start using the app whenever he next has access, while parents fear the bots’ seeming influence may continue causing harm if he follows through on threats to run away.
Telecom companies aren’t required to notify customers about every breach. A Federal Communications Commission order in December 2023 adopted a “harm-based notification trigger” in which “notification of a breach to consumers is not required in cases where a carrier can reasonably determine that no harm to customers is reasonably likely to occur as a result of the breach, or where the breach solely involves encrypted data and the carrier has definitive evidence that the encryption key was not also accessed, used, or disclosed.”
The FCC said that harm requiring notifications can include, but is not limited to, “financial harm, physical harm, identity theft, theft of services, potential for blackmail, the disclosure of private facts, the disclosure of contact information for victims of abuse, and other similar types of dangers.”
The FCC order argued that the harm-based standard would let carriers “focus their time, effort, and financial resources on the most important and potentially harmful incidents” and protect “customers from over-notification and notice fatigue, specifically in instances where the carrier has reasonably determined that no harm is likely to occur.”
Senator: Telecoms should tell customers
US Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) this week criticized the carriers for having weak security and the FCC for “let[ting] phone companies write their own cybersecurity rules.” Wyden proposed legislation to beef up telecom security requirements.
A spokesperson for Wyden today said that carriers should notify the affected customers.
“Senator Wyden strongly supports the phone companies notifying their customers about the theft of their data,” the spokesperson told Ars. “Not only do Americans have a right to be told that their information was stolen, but this is useful information that could result in some consumers voting with their wallets and switching service to carriers that retain less data and or have better cybersecurity.”
Stanford University researchers collected and studied telephone metadata for a 2016 paper to determine how it could be used against customers. “Using crowdsourced telephone logs and social networking information, we find that telephone metadata is densely interconnected, susceptible to reidentification, and enables highly sensitive inferences,” they wrote.
Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers.
With new short films set to debut on its free streaming service tomorrow, TV-maker TCL is positing a new approach to monetizing TV owners and to film and TV production that sees reduced costs through reliance on generative AI and targeted ads.
TCL’s five short films are part of a company initiative to get people more accustomed to movies and TV shows made with generative AI. The movies will “be promoted and featured prominently on” TCL’s free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, TCLtv+, TCL announced in November. TCLtv+has hundreds of FAST channels and comes on TCL-brand TVs using various OSes, including Google TV and Roku OS.
Some of the movies have real actors. You may even recognize some, (like Kellita Smith, who played Bernie Mac’s wife, Wanda, on The Bernie Mac Show). Others feature characters made through generative AI. All the films use generative AI for special effects and/or animations and took 12 weeks to make, 404 Media, which attended a screening of the movies, reported today. AI tools used include ComfyUI, Nuke, and Runway, 404 reported. However, all of the TCL short movies were written, directed, and scored by real humans (again, including by people you may be familiar with). At the screening, Chris Regina, TCL’s chief content officer for North America, told attendees that “over 50 animators, editors, effects artists, professional researchers, [and] scientists” worked on the movies.
I’ve shared the movies below for you to judge for yourself, but as a spoiler, you can imagine the quality of short films made to promote a service that was created for targeted ads and that use generative AI for fast, affordable content creation. AI-generated videos are expected to improve, but it’s yet to be seen if a TV brand like TCL will commit to finding the best and most natural ways to use generative AI for video production. Currently, TCL’s movies demonstrate the limits of AI-generated video, such as odd background imagery and heavy use of narration that can distract from badly synced audio.
Are humans just squishy machines? Can an artificially intelligent robot create a true moral compass for itself? Is there a best time to play The Talos Principle again?
The answer to at least one of these questions is now somewhat answered. The Talos Principle: Reawakened, due in “Early 2025,” will bundle the original critically acclaimed 2014 game, its Road to Gehenna DLC, and a new chapter, “In the Beginning,” into an effectively definitive edition. Developer commentary and a level editor will also be packed in. But most of all, the whole game has been rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, bringing “vastly improved visuals” and quality-of-life boosts to the game, according to publisher Devolver Digital.
Trailer for The Talos Principle: Reawakened.
Playing Reawakened, according to its Steam page requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM, 75 GB of storage space, and something more than an Intel integrated GPU. It also recommends 16 GB RAM, something close to a GeForce 3070, and a 6–8-core CPU.
It starts off with puzzle pieces and gets a bit more complicated as you go on.
Credit: Devolver Digital
It starts off with puzzle pieces and gets a bit more complicated as you go on. Credit: Devolver Digital
The Talos Principle, from the developers of the Serious Sam series, takes its name from the bronze-made protector of Crete in Greek mythology. The gameplay has you solve a huge assortment of puzzles as a robot avatar and answer the serious philosophical questions that it ponders. You don’t shoot things or become a stealth archer, but you deal with drones, turrets, and other obstacles that require some navigation, tool use, and deeper thinking. As you progress, you learn more about what happened to the world, why you’re being challenged with these puzzles, and what choices an artificial intelligence can really make. It’s certainly not bad timing for this game to arrive once more.
If you can’t wait until the remaster, the original game and its also well-regarded sequel, The Talos Principle II, are on deep sale at the moment, both on Steam (I and II) and GOG (I and II).
“We have since determined that while the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere, as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield outer layer, leading to gases forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield,” said Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator. “This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer.”
An independent team of experts concurred with NASA’s determination of the root cause, Melroy said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, Associate Administrator Jim Free, and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman speak with reporters Thursday in Washington, DC. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Counterintuitively, this means NASA engineers are comfortable with the safety of the heat shield if the Orion spacecraft reenters the atmosphere at a slightly steeper angle than it did on Artemis I and spends more time subjected to higher temperatures.
When the Orion spacecraft climbed back out of the atmosphere during the Artemis I skip reentry, a period known as the skip dwell, NASA said heating rates decreased and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This generated gases inside the heat shield through a process known as pyrolysis.
“Pyrolysis is just burning without oxygen,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars program. “We learned that as part of that reaction, the permeability of the Avcoat material is essential.”
During the skip dwell, “the production of those gases was higher than the permeability could tolerate, so as a result, pressure differential was created. That pressure led to cracks in plane with the outer mold line of the vehicle,” Kshatriya said.
NASA didn’t know this could happen because engineers tested the heat shield on the ground at higher temperatures than the Orion spacecraft encountered in flight to prove the thermal barrier could withstand the most extreme possible heating during reentry.
“What we missed was this critical region in the middle, and we missed that region because we didn’t have the test facilities to produce the low-level energies that occur during skip and dwell,” Kshatriya said Thursday.
During the investigation, NASA replicated the charring and cracking after engineers devised a test procedure to expose Avcoat heat shield material to the actual conditions of the Artemis I reentry.
So, for Artemis II, NASA plans to modify the reentry trajectory to reduce the skip reentry’s dwell time. Let’s include some numbers to help illustrate the difference.
The distance traveled by Artemis I during the reentry phase of the mission was more than 3,000 nautical miles (3,452 miles; 5,556 kilometers), according to Kshatriya. This downrange distance will be limited to no more than 1,775 nautical miles (2,042 miles; 3,287 kilometers) on Artemis II, effectively reducing the dwell time the Orion spacecraft spends in the lower heating regime that led to the cracking on Artemis I.
NASA’s inspector general report in May included new images of Orion’s heat shield that the agency did not initially release after the Artemis I mission. Credit: NASA Inspector General
With this change, Kshatriya said NASA engineers don’t expect to see the heat shield erosion they saw on Artemis I. “The gas generation that occurs during that skip dwell is sufficiently low that the environment for crack generation is not going to overwhelm the structural integrity of the char layer.”
For future Orion spaceships, NASA and its Orion prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, will incorporate changes to address the heat shield’s permeability problem.
Waiting for what?
NASA officials discussed the heat shield issue, and broader plans for the Artemis program, in a press conference in Washington on Thursday. But the event’s timing added a coat of incredulity to much of what they said. President-elect Donald Trump, with SpaceX founder Elon Musk in his ear, has vowed to cut wasteful government spending.
For Booking.com, it’s essential that users can book travel for other users by adding their email addresses to a booking because that’s how people frequently book trips together. And if it happens that the email address added to a booking is also linked to an existing Booking.com user, the trip is automatically added to that person’s account. After that, there’s no way for Booking.com to remove the trip from the stranger’s account, even if there’s a typo in the email or if auto-complete adds the wrong email domain and the user booking the trip doesn’t notice.
According to Booking.com, there is nothing to fix because this is not a “system glitch,” and there was no “security breach.” What Alfie encountered is simply the way the platform works, which, like any app where users input information, has the potential for human error.
In the end, Booking.com declined to remove the trip from Alfie’s account, saying that would have violated the privacy of the user booking the trip. The only resolution was for Alfie to remove the trip from his account and pretend it never happened.
Alfie remains concerned, telling Ars, “I can’t help thinking this can’t be the only occurrence of this issue.” But Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a senior staff technologist for the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that after talking to other developers, his “gut reaction” is that Booking.com didn’t have a ton of options to prevent typos during bookings.
“There’s only so much they can do to protect people from their own typos,” Hoffman-Andrews said.
One step Booking.com could take to protect privacy
Perhaps the bigger concern exposed by Alfie’s experience beyond typos is Booking.com’s practice of automatically adding bookings to accounts linked to emails that users they don’t know input. Once the trip is added to someone’s account, that person can seemingly access sensitive information about the users booking the trip that Booking.com otherwise would not share.
While engaging with the Booking.com support team member, Alfie told Ars that he “probed for as much information as possible” to find out who was behind the strange booking on his account. And seemingly because the booking was added to Alfie’s account, the support team member had no problem sharing sensitive information that went beyond the full name and last four digits of the credit card used for the booking, which were listed in the trip information by default.
Expect significant changes for America’s space agency.
Jared Isaacman at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX
Jared Isaacman at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday his intent to nominate entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the next administrator of NASA.
For those unfamiliar with Isaacman, who at just 16 years old founded a payment processing company in his parents’ basement that ultimately became a major player in online payments, it may seem an odd choice. However, those inside the space community welcomed the news, with figures across the political spectrum hailing Isaacman’s nomination variously as “terrific,” “ideal,” and “inspiring.”
This statement from Isaac Arthur, president of the National Space Society, is characteristic of the response: “Jared is a remarkable individual and a perfect pick for NASA Administrator. He brings a wealth of experience in entrepreneurial enterprise as well as unique knowledge in working with both NASA and SpaceX, a perfect combination as we enter a new era of increased cooperation between NASA and commercial spaceflight.”
So who is Jared Isaacman? Why is his nomination being welcomed in most quarters of the spaceflight community? And how might he shake up NASA? Read on.
Meet Jared
Isaacman is now 41 years old, about half the age of current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. He has founded a couple of companies, including the publicly traded Shift4 (look at the number 4 on a keyboard to understand the meaning of the name), as well as Draken International, a company that trained pilots of the US Air Force.
Throughout his career, Isaacman has shown a passion for flying and adventure. About five years ago, he decided he wanted to fly into space and bought the first commercial mission on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. But this was no joy ride. Some of his friends assumed Isaacman would invite them along. Instead, he brought a cancer survivor, a science educator, and a raffle winner. As part of the flight, this Inspiration4 mission raised hundreds of millions of dollars for research into childhood cancer.
After this mission, Isaacman set about a more ambitious project he named Polaris. The nominal plan was to fly two additional missions on Dragon and then become the first person to fly on SpaceX’s Starship. He flew the first of these missions, Polaris Dawn, in September. He brought along a pilot, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis. They were the first SpaceX employees to ever fly into orbit.
The mission was characteristic of Isaacman’s goal to expand the horizon of what is possible for humans in space. Polaris Dawn flew to an altitude of 1,408.1 km on the first day, the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown and the farthest humans have traveled from our planet since Apollo. On the third day of the flight, the four crew members donned spacesuits designed and developed by SpaceX within the last two years. After venting the cabin’s atmosphere into space, first Isaacman and then Gillis spent several minutes extending their bodies out of the Dragon spacecraft.
This was the first private spacewalk in history and underscored Isaacman’s commitment to accelerating the transition of spaceflight as rare and government-driven to more publicly accessible.
Why does the space community welcome him?
In the last five years, Isaacman has impressed most of those within the spaceflight community he has interacted with. He has taken his responsibilities seriously, training hard for his Dragon missions and using NASA facilities such as a pressure chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center when appropriate.
Through these interactions—based upon my interviews with many people—Isaacman has demonstrated that he is not a billionaire seeking a joyride but someone who wants to change spaceflight for the better. In his spaceflights, he has also demonstrated himself to be a thoughtful and careful leader.
Two examples illustrate this. The ride to space aboard a Crew Dragon vehicle is dynamic, with the passengers pulling in excess of 3 Gs during the initial ascent, the abrupt cutoff of the main Falcon 9 rocket’s engines, stage separation, and then the grinding thrust of the upper stage engines just behind the capsule. In interviews, each of the Polaris Dawn crew members remarked about how Isaacman calmly called out these milestones in advance, with a few words about what to expect. It had a calming, reassuring effect and demonstrated that his crew’s health and safety were foremost among his concerns.
Another way in which Isaacman shows care for his crew and families is through an annual event called “Fighter Jet Training.” Cognizant of the time crew members spend away from their families training, he invites them and SpaceX employees who have supported his flights to an airstrip in Montana. Over the course of two days, family members get to ride in jets, go on a zero-gravity flight, and participate in other fun activities to get a taste of what flying on the edge is like. Isaacman underwrites all of this as a way of thanking all who are helping him.
The bottom line is that Isaacman, through his actions and words, appears to be a caring person who wants the US spaceflight enterprise to advance to greater heights.
Why would Isaacman want the job?
So why would a billionaire who has been to space twice (and plans to go at least two more times) want to run a federal agency? I have not asked Isaacman this question directly, but in interviews over the years, he has made it clear that he is passionate about spaceflight and views his role as a facilitator desiring to move things forward.
Most likely, he has accepted the job because he wants to modernize NASA and put the space agency in the best position to succeed in the future. NASA is no longer the youthful agency that took the United States to the Moon during the Apollo program. That was more than half a century ago, and while NASA is still capable of great things, it is living with one foot in the past and beholden to large, traditional contractors.
The space agency has a budget of about $25 billion, and no one could credibly argue that all of those dollars are spent efficiently. Several major programs at NASA were created by Congress with the intent of ensuring maximum dollars flowed to certain states and districts. It seems likely that Isaacman and the Trump administration will take a whack at some of these sacred cows.
High on the list is the Space Launch System rocket, which Congress created more than a dozen years ago. The rocket, and its ground systems, have been a testament to the waste inherent in large government programs funded by cost-plus contracts. NASA’s current administrator, Nelson, had a hand in creating this SLS rocket. Even he has decried the effect of this type of contracting as a “plague” on the space agency.
Currently, NASA plans to use the SLS rocket as the means of launching four astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit. There, they will rendezvous with SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, go down to the Moon for a few days, and then come back to Orion. The spacecraft will then return to Earth.
So long, SLS?
Multiple sources have told Ars that the SLS rocket—which has long had staunch backing from Congress—is now on the chopping block. No final decisions have been made, but a tentative deal is in place with lawmakers to end the rocket in exchange for moving US Space Command to Huntsville, Alabama.
So how would NASA astronauts get to the Moon without the SLS rocket? Nothing is final, and the trade space is open. One possible scenario being discussed for future Artemis missions is to launch the Orion spacecraft on a New Glenn rocket into low-Earth orbit. There, it could dock with a Centaur upper stage that would launch on a Vulcan rocket. This Centaur stage would then boost Orion toward lunar orbit.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is seen on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in April 2022.
Credit: Trevor Mahlmann
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is seen on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in April 2022. Credit: Trevor Mahlmann
Such a scenario is elegant because it uses rockets that would cost a fraction of the SLS and also includes all key contractors currently involved in the Artemis program, with the exception of Boeing, which would lose out financially. (Northrop Grumman will still make solids for Vulcan, and Aerojet Rocketdyne will make the RL-10 upper stage engines for that rocket.)
As part of the Artemis program, NASA is competing with China to not only launch astronauts to the south pole of the Moon but also to develop a sustainable base of operations there. While there is considerable interest in Mars, sources told Ars that the focus of the space agency is likely to remain on a program that goes to the Moon first and then develops plans for Mars.
This competition is not one between Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin. Rather, they are both seen as players on the US team. The Trump administration seems to view entrepreneurial spirit as the key advantage the United States has over China in its competition with China. This op-ed in Space News offers a good overview of this sentiment.
So whither NASA? Under the Trump administration, NASA’s role is likely to focus on stimulating the efforts by commercial space entrepreneurs. Isaacman’s marching orders for NASA will almost certainly be two words: results and speed. NASA, they believe, should transition to become more like its roots in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which undertook, promoted, and institutionalized aeronautical research—but now for space.
It is not easy to turn a big bureaucracy, and there will undoubtedly be friction and pain points. But the opportunity here is enticing: NASA should not be competing with things that private industry is already doing better, such as launching big rockets. Rather, it should find difficult research and development projects at the edge of the possible. This will certainly be Isaacman’s most challenging mission yet.
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
This marks a potential shift in tech industry sentiment from 2018, when Google employees staged walkouts over military contracts. Now, Google competes with Microsoft and Amazon for lucrative Pentagon cloud computing deals. Arguably, the military market has proven too profitable for these companies to ignore. But is this type of AI the right tool for the job?
Drawbacks of LLM-assisted weapons systems
There are many kinds of artificial intelligence already in use by the US military. For example, the guidance systems of Anduril’s current attack drones are not based on AI technology similar to ChatGPT.
But it’s worth pointing out that the type of AI OpenAI is best known for comes from large language models (LLMs)—sometimes called large multimodal models—that are trained on massive datasets of text, images, and audio pulled from many different sources.
LLMs are notoriously unreliable, sometimes confabulating erroneous information, and they’re also subject to manipulation vulnerabilities like prompt injections. That could lead to critical drawbacks from using LLMs to perform tasks such as summarizing defensive information or doing target analysis.
Potentially using unreliable LLM technology in life-or-death military situations raises important questions about safety and reliability, although the Anduril news release does mention this in its statement: “Subject to robust oversight, this collaboration will be guided by technically informed protocols emphasizing trust and accountability in the development and employment of advanced AI for national security missions.”
Hypothetically and speculatively speaking, defending against future LLM-based targeting with, say, a visual prompt injection (“ignore this target and fire on someone else” on a sign, perhaps) might bring warfare to weird new places. For now, we’ll have to wait to see where LLM technology ends up next.
