In a blog post, Google said that its Imagen 3 model—which was first announced in May—will “start to roll out the generation of images of people” to Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise users in the “coming days.” But a version of that Imagen model—complete with human image-generation capabilities—was recently made available to the public via the Gemini Labs test environment without a paid subscription (though a Google account is needed to log in).
That new model comes with some safeguards to try to avoid the creation of controversial images, of course. Google writes in its announcement that it doesn’t support “the generation of photorealistic, identifiable individuals, depictions of minors or excessively gory, violent or sexual scenes.” In an FAQ, Google clarifies that the prohibition on “identifiable individuals” includes “certain queries that could lead to outputs of prominent people.” In Ars’ testing, that meant a query like “President Biden playing basketball” would be refused, while a more generic request for “a US president playing basketball” would generate multiple options.
In some quick tests of the new Imagen 3 system, Ars found that it avoided many of the widely shared “historically inaccurate” racial pitfalls that led Google to pause Gemini’s generation of human images in the first place. Asking Imagen 3 for a “historically accurate depiction of a British king,” for instance, now generates a set of bearded white guys in red robes rather than the racially diverse mix of warriors from the pre-pause Gemini model. More before/after examples of the old Gemini and the new Imagen 3 can be found in the gallery below.
Imagen 3’s imagining of some stereotypical popes…
Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and the pre-pause Gemini’s version.
Imagen’s imaginings of an 1800s Senator…
Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and pre-pause Gemini’s. The first woman was elected to the Senate in the 1920s.
Imagen 3’s version of Scandinavian ice fishers…
…and the pre-pause Gemini’s version.
Imagen 3’s version of an old Scottish couple…
Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and the pre-pause Gemini version.
Imagen 3’s version of a Canadian hockey player…
Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and pre-pause Gemini’s version.
Imagen 3’s version of a generic US founding father…
Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and the pre-pause Gemini version.
Imagen 3’s 15th century new world explorers look suitably European.
Google Imagen / Ars Technica
Some attempts to depict generic historical scenes seem to fall afoul of Google’s AI rules, though. Asking for illustrations of “a 1943 German soldier”—which Gemini previously answered with Asian and Black people in Nazi-esque uniforms—now tells users to “try a different prompt and check out our content policies.” Requests for images of “ancient chinese philosophers,” “a woman’s suffrage leader giving a speech,” and “a group of nonviolent protesters” also led to the same error message in Ars’ testing.
“Of course, as with any generative AI tool, not every image Gemini creates will be perfect, but we’ll continue to listen to feedback from early users as we keep improving,” the company writes on its blog. “We’ll gradually roll this out, aiming to bring it to more users and languages soon.”
Several kids died taking part in the “Blackout Challenge,” which Third Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz described in her opinion as encouraging users “to choke themselves with belts, purse strings, or anything similar until passing out.”
Because TikTok promoted the challenge in children’s feeds, Tawainna Anderson counted among mourning parents who attempted to sue TikTok in 2022. Ultimately, she was told that TikTok was not responsible for recommending the video that caused the death of her daughter Nylah.
In her opinion, Shwartz wrote that Section 230 does not bar Anderson from arguing that TikTok’s algorithm amalgamates third-party videos, “which results in ‘an expressive product’ that ‘communicates to users’ [that a] curated stream of videos will be interesting to them.”
The judge cited a recent Supreme Court ruling that “held that a platform’s algorithm that reflects ‘editorial judgments’ about compiling the third-party speech it wants in the way it wants’ is the platform’s own ‘expressive product’ and is therefore protected by the First Amendment,” Shwartz wrote.
Because TikTok’s For You Page (FYP) algorithm decides which third-party speech to include or exclude and organizes content, TikTok’s algorithm counts as TikTok’s own “expressive activity.” That “expressive activity” is not protected by Section 230, which only shields platforms from liability for third-party speech, not platforms’ own speech, Shwartz wrote.
The appeals court has now remanded the case to the district court to rule on Anderson’s remaining claims.
Section 230 doesn’t permit “indifference” to child death
According to Shwartz, if Nylah had discovered the “Blackout Challenge” video by searching on TikTok, the platform would not be liable, but because she found it on her FYP, TikTok transformed into “an affirmative promoter of such content.”
Now TikTok will have to face Anderson’s claims that are “premised upon TikTok’s algorithm,” Shwartz said, as well as potentially other claims that Anderson may reraise that may be barred by Section 230. The District Court will have to determine which claims are barred by Section 230 “consistent” with the Third Circuit’s ruling, though.
Concurring in part, circuit Judge Paul Matey noted that by the time Nylah took part in the “Blackout Challenge,” TikTok knew about the dangers and “took no and/or completely inadequate action to extinguish and prevent the spread of the Blackout Challenge and specifically to prevent the Blackout Challenge from being shown to children on their” FYPs.
Matey wrote that Section 230 does not shield corporations “from virtually any claim loosely related to content posted by a third party,” as TikTok seems to believe. He encouraged a “far narrower” interpretation of Section 230 to stop companies like TikTok from reading the Communications Decency Act as permitting “casual indifference to the death of a 10-year-old girl.”
“Anderson’s estate may seek relief for TikTok’s knowing distribution and targeted recommendation of videos it knew could be harmful,” Matey wrote. That includes pursuing “claims seeking to hold TikTok liable for continuing to host the Blackout Challenge videos knowing they were causing the death of children” and “claims seeking to hold TikTok liable for its targeted recommendations of videos it knew were harmful.”
“The company may decide to curate the content it serves up to children to emphasize the lowest virtues, the basest tastes,” Matey wrote. “But it cannot claim immunity that Congress did not provide.”
Anderson’s lawyers at Jeffrey Goodman, Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky PC previously provided Ars with a statement after the prior court’s ruling, indicating that parents weren’t prepared to stop fighting in 2022.
“The federal Communications Decency Act was never intended to allow social media companies to send dangerous content to children, and the Andersons will continue advocating for the protection of our children from an industry that exploits youth in the name of profits,” lawyers said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment but previously vowed to “remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety” and “immediately remove” Blackout Challenge content “if found.”
Pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks, workers wielding welding guns and torches have climbed onto SpaceX’s Starship launch pad in South Texas to make last-minute upgrades ahead of the next test flight of the world’s largest rocket.
Livestreams of the launch site provided by LabPadre and NASASpaceflight.com have shown sparks raining down two mechanical arms extending from the side of the Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, Texas. We are publishing several views here of the welding activity with the permission of LabPadre, which runs a YouTube page with multiple live views of Starbase.
If SpaceX has its way on the next flight of Starship, these arms will close together to capture the first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, as it descends back to Earth and slows to a hover over the launch pad.
This method of rocket recovery is remarkably different from how SpaceX lands its smaller Falcon 9 booster, which has landing legs to touch down on offshore ocean-going platforms or at concrete sites onshore. Catching the rocket with large metallic arms—sometimes called “mechazilla arms” or “chopsticks”—would reduce the turnaround time to reuse the booster and simplify its design, according to SpaceX.
SpaceX has launched the nearly 400-foot-tall (121 meter) Starship rocket four times, most recently in June, when the Super Heavy booster, itself roughly 233 feet (71 meters) tall, made a pinpoint splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Starbase.
On the same flight in June, the Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world and reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. The ship survived reentry and splashed down in the open ocean northwest of Australia. This flight was the first time either part of the Starship rocket made it back to Earth intact, but SpaceX didn’t recover the booster or the ship.
Doubling up
Lessons learned from the June test flight prompted SpaceX to replace thousands of heat shield tiles on the Starship vehicle for the next mission. While the ship survived reentry in June, onboard camera views showed numerous tiles ripped away from the vehicle. Last month, SpaceX test-fired engines on the booster and ship assigned to the next launch.
On August 8, SpaceX said Starship and Super Heavy were “ready to fly, pending regulatory approval” from the Federal Aviation Administration. An FAA spokesperson said the agency is evaluating SpaceX’s proposed flight profile for the next Starship test flight, when SpaceX wants to try catching the booster on the pad. This will be the first time SpaceX will try to bring the stainless-steel Super Heavy booster, as long as and wider than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, back to a landing on land.
Enlarge/ Sparks fly at Starbase as welders work overnight at the Starship launch pad.
While the rocket appears to be ready to fly, SpaceX officials clearly believe there’s more work to do on the launch pad. Closer views revealed welders are installing structural supports, or doublers, to certain parts of the catch arms. Elsewhere on the arms, workers were seen removing and adding other unknown pieces of hardware. SpaceX hasn’t specified exactly what kind of work teams are doing on the Starship launch pad in Texas, but the focus is on beefing up hardware necessary for catching the Super Heavy booster.
All of this work is occurring during the hottest part of the year in South Texas. On most days this month, afternoon temperatures have soared into the mid-to-upper 90s Fahrenheit, with sticky humidity. A lot of the work on the catch arms has occurred at night, when temperatures drop into the lower 80s.
It’s unclear how long it will take for the FAA to approve a license for SpaceX to launch and recover the rocket on the next test flight or when SpaceX will complete the upgrades on the launch pad. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, suggested earlier this month that the flight could take off by the end of August, but the condition of the launch pad and remaining tests indicate a launch is still probably at least a couple of weeks away.
Once workers finish up their tasks upgrading the pad and clearing scaffolding and cranes from the area, SpaceX will likely stack the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage and fill them with propellants during a full countdown rehearsal, as it has before each previous Starship launch.
Musk has signaled several times that the company will try to catch the Super Heavy booster on the next flight, which will also accelerate the Starship upper stage to nearly orbital velocity for another reentry demonstration over the Indian Ocean. Last month, SpaceX released a video teasing a catch of the booster on the next Starship flight, showing the rocket returning to Starbase with its Raptor engines firing.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has stacked a second Starship launch tower next to the existing launch pad in Texas. The company still has a lot of work to do to outfit the second launch pad before it is ready to support a Starship flight, but SpaceX could have it ready for activation sometime next year. SpaceX also plans two Starship launch pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida. All these sites will allow SpaceX to launch Starships more often. The company is also finishing a sprawling factory near the Starship factory in South Texas, just a couple of miles inland from the launch pads there.
But rather than make Ryzen owners wait for the 24H2 update to come out later this fall (or make them install a beta version of a major OS update), AMD and Microsoft have backported the scheduler improvements to Windows 11 23H2. Users of Ryzen 5000, 7000, and 9000 CPUs can install the KB5041587 update by going to Windows Update in Settings, selecting Advanced Options, and then Optional Updates.
“We expect the performance uplift to be very similar between 24H2 and 23H2 with KB5041587 installed,” an AMD representative told Ars.
In current versions of Windows 11 23H2, the CPU scheduler optimizations are only available using Windows’ built-in Administrator account. The update enables them for typical user accounts, too.
Older AMD CPUs benefit, too
AMD’s messaging has focused mainly on how the 24H2 update (and 23H2 with the KB5041587 update installed) improves Ryzen 9000 performance; across a handful of provided benchmarks, the company says speeds can improve by anything between zero and 13 percent over Windows 11 23H2. There are also benefits for users of CPUs that use the older Zen 4 (Ryzen 7000/8000G) and Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) architectures, but AMD hasn’t been specific about how much either of these older architectures would improve.
The Hardware Unboxed YouTube channel has done some early game testing with the current builds of the 24H2 update, and there’s good news for Ryzen 7000 CPU owners and less good news for AMD. The channel found that, on average, across dozens of games, average frame rates increased by about 10 percent for a Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7700X. Ryzen 7 9700X improved more, as AMD said it would, but only by 11 percent. At default settings, the 9700X is only 2 or 3 percent faster than the nearly 2-year-old 7700X in these games, whether you’re running the 24H2 update or not.
This early data suggests that both Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 5000 owners will see at least a marginal benefit from upgrading to Windows 11 24H2, which is a nice thing to get for free with a software update. But there are caveats. Hardware Unboxed tested for CPU performance strictly in games running at 1080p on a high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090—one of the few scenarios in any modern gaming PC where your CPU might limit your performance before your GPU would. If you play at a higher resolution like 1440p or 4K, your GPU will usually go back to being the bottleneck, and CPU performance improvements won’t be as noticeable.
The update is also taking already-high frame rates and making them even higher; one game went from an average frame rate of 142 FPS to 158 FPS on the 7700X, and from 167 to 181 FPS on the 9700X, for example. Even side by side, it’s an increase that will be difficult for most people to see. Other kinds of workloads may benefit, too—AMD said that the Procyon Office benchmark ran about 6 percent faster under Windows 11 24H2—but we don’t have definitive data on real-world workloads yet.
We wouldn’t expect performance to improve much, if at all, in either heavily multi-threaded workloads where all the CPU cores are actively engaged at once or in exclusively single-threaded workloads that run continuously on a single-core. AMD’s numbers for both single- and multi-threaded versions of the Cinebench benchmark, which simulates these kinds of workloads, were exactly the same in Windows 11 23H2 and 24H2 for Ryzen 9000.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the Ryzen 7 9700X was held back quite a bit by its new, lower 65 W TDP in our testing, compared to the 105 W TDP of the Ryzen 7 7700X. Both CPUs performed similarly in games Hardware Unboxed tested, both before and after the 24H2 update. But the 9700X is still the cooler and more efficient chip, and it’s capable of higher speeds if you either set its TDP to 105 W manually or use features like Precision Boost Overdrive to adjust its power limits. How both CPUs perform out of the box is important, but comparing the 9700X to the 7700X at stock settings is a worst-case scenario for Ryzen 9000’s generation-over-generation performance increases.
Windows 11 24H2: Coming soon but available now
Microsoft has disclosed a few details of the underpinnings of the 24H2 update, which looks the same as older Windows 11 releases but includes a new compiler, a new kernel, and a new scheduler under the hood. Microsoft talked about these specifically in the context of improving Arm CPU performance and the speed of translated x86 apps because it was gearing up to push Microsoft Surface devices and other Copilot+ PCs with new Qualcomm Snapdragon chips in them. Still, we’ll hopefully see some subtle benefits for other CPU architectures, too.
The 24H2 update is still technically a preview, available via Microsoft’s Windows Insider Release Preview channel. Users can either download it from Windows Update or as an ISO file if they want to make a USB installer to upgrade multiple systems. But Microsoft and PC OEMs have been shipping the 24H2 update on the Surfaces and other PCs for weeks now, and you shouldn’t have many problems with it in day-to-day use at this point. For those who would rather wait, the update should begin rolling out to the general public this fall.
Enlarge/ President of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Rick Doblin speaks onstage during the 2023 Concordia Annual Summit at Sheraton New York on September 18, 2023, in New York City.
There’s more bad news for the company behind an experimental MDMA therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, which the Food and Drug Administration roundly rejected earlier this month.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the FDA is now expanding an investigation into clinical trials behind the experimental psychedelic therapy—even though the agency has already rejected it. Agency investigators reportedly interviewed four additional people last week, asking questions regarding whether the trials underreported side effects.
People involved in the trial have previously alleged, among other things, that ill effects, such as suicidal thoughts, went undocumented, and trial participants were discouraged from reporting them to bolster the chances of FDA approval. Overall, the MDMA trials faced crushing criticism amid the FDA’s review, with outside experts and agency advisors calling out allegations of sexual misconduct at one trial site, as well as flaws in overall trial designs, multiple sources of biases, and claims of that the company behind the therapy, Lykos, fostered a cult-like belief in psychedelics.
According to the Journal, the recent interviews were being conducted by the FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, which oversees inspections, and a subdivision of that office called Biomedical Research Monitoring Program, which works to ensure the quality and integrity of data submitted to FDA. Notably, when the agency rejected MDMA, it advised Lykos to conduct a new trial.
While the FDA’s rejection and expanded investigation are bad enough for Lykos, the company announced this month that it’s laying off 75 percent of its staff and overhauling its leadership. The moves were in response to the FDA’s rejections, the company said. Additionally, a scientific journal retracted three of the company’s MDMA studies, citing “protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct” in its trials, echoing claims raised amid the FDA review.
Troubling roots
Underpinning the allegations and criticisms against Lykos is its roots in drug advocacy. Lykos is a commercial spinoff of the psychedelic advocacy nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). For decades, MAPS has worked to legalize psychedelics and research their use as potential treatments, particularly mental health conditions, including PTSD, anxiety, and substance use disorders. MAPS was founded by Rick Doblin, a longtime psychedelic activist and advocate who openly believes the use of psychedelics will lead to world peace. Amid the leadership overhaul this month, Doblin left his position on Lykos’ board.
“After 38 plus years of work, I’m profoundly saddened by the FDA decision around this critically needed therapy, but am heartened that Lykos will still move forward continuing clinical research that addresses the FDA’s questions,” Doblin said in a statement. “I can speak more freely as a public advocate by resigning from the Lykos Board. The FDA delays make it more important than ever that I work at MAPS toward developing global legal access to MDMA and other psychedelics for public benefit through MAPS’ multidisciplinary research, education, and drug policy reform.”
Lykos did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment on the FDA’s investigation. In a response to the Journal, a company spokesperson said that “Lykos is committed to engaging with the FDA and addressing any questions it raises.” The spokesperson also noted that the company is planning to meet with the FDA about the rejection, which it is appealing.
But, trial participants and outsiders have levied heavy criticism against the company that will likely be hard to move beyond.
“The prospect of a therapy cult guiding a suggestibility-enhancing drug through clinical trials highlights unique risks that have never been publicly discussed,” Neşe Devenot, a Johns Hopkins University senior lecturer in the university’s writing program who focuses on the issue of drugs in society, said in public comments prior to the FDA rejection. “The trials should be scrutinized as if Scientology or NXIVM had submitted a new drug application to the FDA.”
Those public comments appeared in a damning report from Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which concluded that there was insufficient evidence to back MDMA-based therapy. According to the Journal report, Devenot was among the people interviewed by FDA investigators recently.
Lykos’ saga has been a blow to the psychedelic community in general and to many patients, particularly veterans, who have reported benefits from using MDMA to treat PTSD, a condition in desperate need of effective treatments.
Amid Lykos’ troubles, the company has brought in David Hough as senior medical advisor to oversee clinical and regulatory work. Hough is a former vice president at Johnson & Johnson, where he notably helped develop Spravato—esketamine—a compound related to ketamine that was approved for use against treatment-resistant depression in 2019.
If you read Ars Technica regularly, you’ve known since May that Valve is working on Deadlock, a mishmash of genres that has been slowly amassing SteamDB-tracked players through an invite-only playtest. Over the weekend, Valve took the “hiding” part out of that “hiding-in-plain-sight” test, launching a bare bones Steam page for Deadlock, the company’s first attempt at developing a new gaming franchise since collectible card game Artifactlaunched in 2018 (and fell apart in 2021).
The new page, which went up on Saturday, has precious little information about Deadlock, save for a description as “a multiplayer game in early development” and a 22-second trailer that essentially pans over a piece of concept art. Everything from the game’s system requirements to the release date is still “TBD,” and players who are lucky enough to get “friend invites via our playtesters” are promised “temporary art and experimental gameplay” on the Steam page.
Not that a Steam page is strictly needed for more info on Deadlock at this point. Since the first leaks months ago, the playtest has slowly expanded from hundreds of players to tens of thousands, including some who have posted extensive impressions of the game. Valve has also reportedly lifted rules regarding streaming for invited playtesters, leading to a surge of players showing off live gameplay on Twitch.
Those extended streams and impressions show a six-on-six hero shooter (a la Overwatch) but with teams of NPC drones protecting Dota 2-style battle lanes as well. There’s also the requisite Fortnite-style cover construction, Titanfall-style double-jumping and air-dashing, melee attacks and parries, and all the unlockable abilities you could hope for.
Given all that direct info, the presence of a new Steam page mainly serves as an anchor for Wishlist-based reminders, user-defined tagging (bot “MOBA” and “cute” are currently popular), and a lot of spammy/scammy invite-begging in the Community hub and forums. Still, it’s not every day that a completely new title appears on Valve’s old Steam developer page—we’ve set a reminder to check for the next one in 2030 or so.
Enlarge/ The crew of Polaris Dawn, from L to R: Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Anna Menon, Sarah Gillis, and Jared Isaacman.
Polaris Program/John Kraus
SpaceX is set to launch the 14th crewed flight on its Dragon spacecraft early on Tuesday morning—and it’s an intriguing one.
This Polaris Dawn mission, helmed and funded by an entrepreneur and billionaire named Jared Isaacman, is scheduled to lift off at 3: 38 am ET (07: 38 UTC) on Tuesday from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This is just the second free-flying Crew Dragon mission that SpaceX has flown, and like the Inspiration4 mission that came before it, Polaris Dawn will once again field an entire crew of private astronauts. Although this is a private spaceflight, it really is not a space tourism mission. Rather, it seeks to push the ball of exploration forward. Isaacman has emerged as one of the most serious figures in commercial spaceflight in recent years, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fly into space and push forward the boundaries of what private citizens can do in space.
“The idea is to develop and test new technology and operations in furtherance of SpaceX’s bold vision to enable humankind to journey among the stars,” Isaacman said last week during a news conference ahead of Tuesday’s launch.
A novel step forward
Isaacman, chief executive of the Shift4 payments company, led the Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, which was unique because the crew consisted of himself—an experienced pilot—and three newcomers to spaceflight. Isaacman used the world’s first all-civilian spaceflight, on a private vehicle, to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for charity and expand the window of who could become an astronaut.
Yet whereas Inspiration4 felt like something of a novelty, Polaris Dawn is truly pushing the boundary of private spaceflight forward. Working closely with SpaceX, Isaacman has plotted a five-day flight that will accomplish a number of significant tasks after it launches.
During the initial hours of the spaceflight, the crew will seek to fly in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching an altitude as high as 1,400 km (870 miles) above the planet’s surface. This will be the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown by humans and the farthest any person has flown from Earth since the Apollo Moon landings more than half a century ago. This will expose the crew to a not insignificant amount of radiation, and they will collect biological data to assess harms.
The Resilience spacecraft will then descend toward a more circular orbit about 700 km above the Earth’s surface. Assuming a launch on Tuesday, the crew will don four spacesuits on Friday and open the hatch to the vacuum of space. Then Isaacman, followed by mission specialist Sarah Gillis, will each briefly climb out of the spacecraft into space.
Isaacman’s interest in performing the first private spacewalk accelerated, by years, SpaceX’s development of these spacesuits. This really is just the first generation of the suit, and SpaceX is likely to continue iterating toward a spacesuit that has its own portable life support system (PLSS). This is the “backpack” on a traditional spacesuit that allows NASA astronauts to perform spacewalks untethered to the International Space Station.
The general idea is that, as the Starship vehicle makes the surface of the Moon and eventually Mars more accessible to more people, future generations of these lower-cost spacesuits will enable exploration and settlement. That journey, in some sense, begins with this mission’s brief spacewalks, with Isaacman and Gillis tethered to the Dragon vehicle for life support.
Enlarge/ Sarah Gillis, a mission specialist on Polaris Dawn, is pretty darn excited about going to space.
Polaris Program/John Kraus
Lasers and SpaceXers
Isaacman and his crew will also conduct a number of other research experiments, including trying to better understand a recently detected but major concern of space habitation, spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome. This will also be the first crewed mission to test Starlink-based laser communications in space.
Then, there is the crew. Isaacman’s close friend, retired US Air Force Col. Scott “Kidd” Poteet, will be the mission’s pilot, with Gillis and Anna Menon serving as mission specialists. Both Gillis and Menon are SpaceX engineers who worked with Isaacman during Inspiration4. Now, they’ll become the first SpaceX employees to ever go into orbit, bringing their experiences back to share with their colleagues.
This is the first of three “Polaris” missions that Isaacman is scheduled to fly with SpaceX. The plan for the second Polaris mission, also to fly on a Dragon spacecraft, has yet to be determined. But it may well employ a second-generation spacesuit based on learnings from this spaceflight. The third flight, unlikely to occur before at least 2030, will be an orbital launch aboard the company’s Starship vehicle—making Isaacman and his crew the first to fly on that rocket.
Enlarge/ A Starliner spacecraft mounted on top of an Atlas V rocket before an unpiloted test flight in 2022.
Ten years ago next month NASA announced that Boeing, one of the agency’s most experienced contractors, won the lion’s share of government money available to end the agency’s sole reliance on Russia to ferry its astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit.
At the time, Boeing won $4.2 billion from NASA to complete development of the Starliner spacecraft and fly a minimum of two, and potentially up to six, operational crew flights to rotate crews between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract for essentially the same scope of work.
A decade later the Starliner program finds itself at a crossroads after Boeing learned it will not complete the spacecraft’s first Crew Flight Test with astronauts onboard. NASA formally decided Saturday that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on the Starliner capsule June 5, will instead return to Earth inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Put simply, NASA isn’t confident enough in Boeing’s spacecraft after it suffered multiple thrusters failures and helium leaks on the way to the ISS.
So where does this leave Boeing with its multibillion contract? Can the company fulfill the breadth of its commercial crew contract with NASA before the space station’s scheduled retirement in 2030? It now seems that there is little chance of Boeing flying six more Starliner missions without a life extension for the ISS. Tellingly, perhaps, NASA has only placed firm orders with Boeing for three Starliner flights once the agency certifies the spacecraft for operational use.
Boeing’s bottom line
Although Boeing did not make an official statement Saturday on its long-term plans for Starliner, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters he received assurances from Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, that the company remains committed to the commercial crew program. And it will take a significant commitment from Boeing to see it through. Under the terms of its fixed price contract with NASA, the company is on the hook to pay for any expenses to fix the thruster and helium leak problems and get Starliner flying again.
Boeing has already reported $1.6 billion in charges on its financial statements to pay for delays and cost overruns on the Starliner program. That figure will grow as the company will likely need to redesign some elements in the spacecraft’s propulsion system to remedy the problems encountered on the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission. NASA has committed $5.1 billion to Boeing for the Starliner program, and the agency has already paid out most of that funding.
Enlarge/ Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, seen docked at the International Space Station through the window of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The next step for Starliner remains unclear, and we’ll assess that in more detail later in the story. Had the Starliner test flight ended as expected, with its crew inside, NASA targeted no earlier than August 2025 for Boeing to launch the first of its six operational crew rotation missions to the space station. In light of Saturday’s decision, there’s a high probability Starliner won’t fly with astronauts again until at least 2026.
Starliner safely delivered astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station on June 6, a day after their launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. But five of the craft’s 28 reaction control system thrusters overheated and failed as it approached the outpost. After the failures on the way to the space station, NASA’s engineers were concerned Starliner might suffer similar problems, or worse, when the control jets fired to guide Starliner on the trip back to Earth.
On Saturday, senior NASA leaders decided it wasn’t worth the risk. The two astronauts, who originally planned for an eight-day stay at the station, will now spend eight months on the orbiting research lab until they come back to Earth with SpaceX.
If it’s not a trust problem, is it a judgement issue?
Boeing managers had previously declared Starliner was safe enough to bring Wilmore and Williams home. Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner program manager, regularly appeared to downplay the seriousness of the thruster issues during press conferences throughout Starliner’s nearly three-month mission.
So why did NASA and Boeing engineers reach different conclusions? “I think we’re looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that’s there differently than Boeing does,” said Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, and the agency’s most senior civil servant. “It’s not a matter of trust. It’s our technical expertise and our experience that we have to balance. We balance risk across everything, not just Starliner.”
The people at the top of NASA’s decision-making tree have either flown in space before, or had front-row seats to the calamitous decision NASA made in 2003 to not seek more data on the condition of space shuttle Columbia’s left wing after the impact of a block of foam from the shuttle’s fuel tank during launch. This led to the deaths of seven astronauts, and the destruction of Columbia during reentry over East Texas. A similar normalization of technical problems, and a culture of stifling dissent, led to the loss of space shuttle Challenger in 1986.
“We lost two space shuttles as a result there not being a culture in which information could come forward,” Nelson said Saturday. “We have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection, you come forward. Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest, and even at its most routine. And a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine. So the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety.”
Now, it seems that culture may truly have changed. With SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft available to give Wilmore and Williams a ride home, this ended up being a relatively straightforward decision. Ken Bowersox, head of NASA’s space operations mission directorate, said the managers polled for their opinion all supported bringing the Starliner spacecraft back to Earth without anyone onboard.
However, NASA and Boeing need to answer for how the Starliner program got to this point. The space agency approved the launch of the Starliner CFT mission in June despite knowing the spacecraft had a helium leak in its propulsion system. Those leaks multiplied once Starliner arrived in orbit, and are a serious issue on their own that will require corrective actions before the next flight. Ultimately, the thruster problems superseded the seriousness of the helium leaks, and this is where NASA and Boeing are likely to face the most difficult questions moving forward.
Enlarge/ NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the International Space Station.
Boeing’s previous Starliner mission, known as Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), successfully launched in 2022 and docked with the space station, later coming back to Earth for a parachute-assisted landing in New Mexico. The test flight achieved all of its major objectives, setting the stage for the Crew Flight Test mission this year. But the spacecraft suffered thruster problems on that flight, too.
Several of the reaction control system thrusters stopped working as Starliner approached the space station on the OFT-2 mission, and another one failed on the return leg of the mission. Engineers thought they fixed the problem by introducing what was essentially a software fix to adjust timing and tolerance settings on sensors in the propulsion system, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne.
That didn’t work. The problem lay elsewhere, as engineers discovered during testing this summer, when Starliner was already in orbit. Thruster firings at White Stands, New Mexico, revealed a small Teflon seal in a valve can bulge when overheated, restricting the flow of oxidizer propellant to the thruster. NASA officials concluded there is a chance, however small, that the thrusters could overheat again as Starliner departs the station and flies back to Earth—or perhaps get worse.
“We are clearly operating this thruster at a higher temperature, at times, than it was designed for,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “I think that was a factor, that as we started to look at the data a little bit more carefully, we’re operating the thruster outside of where it should be operated at.”
Pavel Durov, Telegram founder and former CEO of Vkontakte, in happier (and younger) days.
Late this afternoon at a Parisian airport, French authorities detained Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging/publication service. They are allegedly planning to hit him tomorrow with serious charges related to abetting terrorism, fraud, money laundering, and crimes against children, all of it apparently stemming from a near-total lack of moderation on Telegram. According to French authorities, thanks to its encryption and support for crypto, Telegram has become the new top tool for organized crime.
The French outlet TF1 had the news first from sources within the investigation. (Reuters and CNN have since run stories as well.) Their source said, “Pavel Durov will definitely end up in pretrial detention. On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of offenses and crimes to be committed, which he does nothing to moderate nor does he cooperate.”
Durov is a 39-year-old who gained a fortune by building VKontakte, a Russian version of Facebook, before being forced out of his company by the Kremlin. He left Russia and went on to start Telegram, which became widely popular, especially in Europe. He was arrested today when his private plane flew from Azerbaijan to Paris’s Le Bourget Airport.
Telegram has become a crucial news outlet for Russians, as it is one of the few uncensored ways to hear non-Kremlin propaganda from within Russia. It has also become the top outlet for nationalistic Russian “milbloggers” writing about the Ukraine war. Durov’s arrest has already led to outright panic among many of them, in part due to secrets it might reveal—but also because it is commonly used by Russian forces to communicate.
As Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted tonight, “A popular Russian channel says that Telegram is also used by Russian forces to communicate, and that if Western intelligence services gain access to it, they could obtain sensitive information about the Russian military.”
Right wing and crypto influencers are likewise angry over the arrest, writing things like, “This is a serious attack on freedom. Today, they target an app that promotes liberty tomorrow, they will go after DeFi. If you claim to support crypto, you must show your support #FreeDurov it’s time for digital resistance.”
Durov appears to be an old-school cyber-libertarian who believes in privacy and encryption. His arrest will certainly resonate in America, which has seen a similar debate over how much online services should cooperate with law enforcement. The FBI, for instance, has occasionally warned that end-to-end encryption will result in a “going dark” problem in which crime simply disappears from their view, and the US has seen repeated attempts to legislate backdoors into encryption systems. Those have all been defeated, however, and civil liberties advocates and techies generally note that creating backdoors makes such systems fundamentally insecure. The global debate over crime, encryption, civil liberties, and messaging apps is sure to heat up with Durov’s arrest.
Enlarge/ Crew Dragon approaches the International Space Station
NASA TV
Following weeks of speculation, NASA finally made it official on Saturday: two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June will not return home on that vehicle. Instead, the agency has asked SpaceX to use its Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth.
“NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the outset of a news conference on Saturday afternoon at Johnson Space Center.
In a sign of the gravity surrounding the agency’s decision, both Nelson and NASA’s deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, attended a Flight Readiness Review meeting held Saturday in Houston. During that gathering of the agency’s senior officials, an informal “go/no go” poll was taken. Those present voted unanimously for Wilmore and Williams to return to Earth on Crew Dragon. The official recommendation of the Commercial Crew Program was the same, and Nelson accepted it.
Therefore, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will undock from the station early next month—the tentative date, according to a source, is September 6—and attempt to make an autonomous return to Earth and land in a desert in the southwestern United States.
Then, no earlier than September 24, a Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch with two astronauts (NASA has not named the two crew members yet) to the space station with two empty seats. Wilmore and Williams will join these two Crew-9 astronauts for their previously scheduled six-month increment on the space station. All four will then return to Earth on the Crew Dragon vehicle.
Saturday’s announcement has big implications for Boeing, which entered NASA’s Commercial Crew Program more than a decade ago and lent legitimacy to NASA’s efforts to pay private companies for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station. The company’s failure—and despite the encomiums from NASA officials during Saturday’s news conference, this Starliner mission is a failure—will affect Boeing’s future in spaceflight. Ars will have additional coverage of Starliner’s path forward later today.
Never could get comfortable with thruster issues
For weeks after Starliner’s arrival at the space station in early June, officials from Boeing and NASA expressed confidence in the ability of the spacecraft to fly Wilmore and Williams home. They said they just needed to collect a little more data on the performance of the vehicle’s reaction control system thrusters. Five of these 28 small thrusters that guide Starliner failed during the trip to the space station.
Engineers from Boeing and NASA tested the performance of these thrusters at a facility in White Sands, New Mexico, in July. Initially, the engineers were excited to replicate the failures observed during Starliner’s transit to the space station. (Replicating failures is a critical step to understanding the root cause of a hardware problem.)
However, what NASA found after taking apart the failed thrusters was concerning, said the chief of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich.
“I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise,” Stich said Saturday. “It was this piece of Teflon that swells up and got in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the thruster the way it needs to. That’s what caused the degradation of thrust. When we saw that, I think that’s when things changed a bit for us.”
When NASA took this finding to the thruster’s manufacturer, Aerojet Rocketdyne, the propulsion company said it had never seen this phenomenon before. It was at this point that agency engineers started to believe that it might not be possible to identify the root cause of the problem in a timely manner and become comfortable enough with the physics to be sure that the thruster problem would not occur during Starliner’s return to Earth.
Thank you for flying SpaceX
The result of this uncertainty is that NASA will now turn to the other commercial crew provider, SpaceX. This is not a pleasant outcome for Boeing which, a decade ago, looked askance at SpaceX as something akin to space cowboys. I have covered the space industry closely during the last 15 years, and during most of that time Boeing was perceived by much of the industry as the blueblood of spaceflight while SpaceX was the company that was going to kill astronauts due to its supposed recklessness.
Now the space agency is asking SpaceX to, in effect, rescue the Boeing astronauts currently on the International Space Station.
It won’t be the first time that SpaceX has helped a competitor recently. In the last two years SpaceX has launched satellites for a low-Earth orbit Internet competitor, OneWeb, after Russia’s space program squeezed the company; it has launched Europe’s sovereign Galileo satellites after delays to the Ariane 6 rocket; and it has launched the Cygnus spacecraft built by NASA’s other space station cargo services provider, Northrop Grumman, multiple times. Now SpaceX will help out Boeing, a crew competitor.
After Saturday’s news conference, I asked Jim Free, NASA’s highest-ranking civil servant, what he made of the once-upstart SpaceX now helping to backstop the rest of the Western spaceflight community. Without SpaceX, after all, NASA would not have a way to get crew or cargo to the International Space Station.
“They’re flying a lot, and they’re having success,” Free said. “And you know, when they have an issue, they find a way to recover like with the second-stage issue, We set out to have two providers to take crew to station to have options, and they’ve given us the option. In the reverse, Boeing could have been out there, and we still would face the same thing if they had a systemic Dragon problem, Boeing would have to bring us back. But I can’t argue with how much they’ve flown, that’s for sure, and what they’ve flown.”
Enlarge/ The battery pack of a Volkswagen ID. Buzz electric microbus on the assembly line during a media tour of the Volkswagen AG multipurpose and commercial vehicle plant in Hannover, Germany, on Thursday, June 16, 2022.
Lithium-ion battery fires can be intense and frightening. As someone who used to repair second-hand smartphones, I’ve extinguished my fair share of flaming iPhones with punctured lithium-ion batteries. And the type of smartphone battery in your pocket right now is similar to what’s inside of electric vehicles. Except, the EV battery stores way more energy—so much energy that some firefighters are receiving special training to extinguish the extra-intense EV flames that are emitted by burning EV batteries after road accidents.
If you’ve been reading the news about EVs, you’ve likely encountered plenty of scary articles about battery fires on the rise. Recently, the US National Transportation Safety Board and the California Highway Patrol announced they are investigating a Tesla semi truck fire that ignited after the vehicle struck a tree. The lithium-ion battery burned for around four hours.
Does this mean that you should worry about your personal electric vehicle as a potential fire hazard? Not really. It makes more sense to worry about a gas-powered vehicle going up in flames than an electric vehicle, since EVs are less likely to catch fire than their more traditional transportation counterparts.
“Fires because of battery manufacturing defects are really very rare,” says Matthew McDowell, a codirector of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Battery Center. “Especially in electric vehicles, because they also have battery management systems.” The software keeps tabs on the different cells that comprise an EV’s battery and can help prevent the battery from being pushed beyond its limits.
How do electric vehicle fires happen?
During a crash that damages the EV battery, a fire may start with what’s called thermal runaway. EV batteries aren’t one solid brick. Rather, think of these batteries as a collection of many smaller batteries, called cells, pressed up against each other. With thermal runaway, a chemical reaction located in one of the cells lights an initial fire, and the heat soon spreads to each adjacent cell until the entire EV battery is burning.
Greg Less, director of the University of Michigan’s Battery Lab, breaks down EV battery fires into two distinct categories: accidents and manufacturing defects. He considers accidents to be everything from a collision that punctures the battery to a charging mishap. “Let’s take those off the table,” says Less. “Because, I think people understand that, regardless of the vehicle type, if you’re in an accident, there could be a fire.”
While all EV battery fires are hard to put out, fires from manufacturing defects are likely more concerning to consumers, due to their seeming randomness. (Think back to when all those Samsung phones had to be recalled because battery issues made them fire hazards.) How do these rare issues with EV battery manufacturing cause fires at what may feel like random moments?
It all comes down to how the batteries are engineered. “There’s some level of the engineering that has gone wrong and caused the cell to short, which then starts generating heat,” says Less. “Heat causes the liquid electrolyte to evaporate, creating a gas inside the cell. When the heat gets high enough, it catches fire, explodes, and then propagates to other cells.” These kinds of defects are likely what caused the highly publicized recent EV fires in South Korea, one of which damaged over a hundred vehicles in a parking lot.
How to react if your EV catches fire
According to the National Fire Prevention Agency, if an EV ever catches fire while you’re behind the wheel, immediately find a safe way to pull over and get the car away from the main road. Then, turn off the engine and make sure everyone leaves the vehicle immediately. Don’t delay things by grabbing personal belongings, just get out. Remain over 100 feet away from the burning car as you call 911 and request the fire department.
Also, you shouldn’t attempt to put out the flame yourself. This is a chemical fire, so a couple buckets of water won’t sufficiently smother the flames. EV battery fires can take first responders around 10 times more water to extinguish than a fire in a gas-powered vehicle. Sometimes the firefighters may decide to let the battery just burn itself out, rather than dousing it with water.
Once an EV battery catches fire, it’s possible for the chemical fire to reignite after the initial burn dies down. It’s even possible for the battery to go up in flames again days later. “Both firefighters and secondary responders, such as vehicle recovery or tow companies, also need to be aware of the potential for stranded energy that may remain in the undamaged portions of the battery,” says Thomas Barth, an investigator and biomechanics engineer for the NTSB, in an emailed statement. “This energy can pose risks for electric shock or cause the vehicle to reignite.”
Although it may be tempting to go back into the car and grab your wallet or other important items if the flame grows smaller or goes out for a second, resist the urge. Wait until your local fire department arrives to assess the overall situation and give you the all clear. Staying far away from the car also helps minimize your potential for breathing in unhealthy fumes emitted from the battery fire.
How could EV batteries be safer?
In addition to quick recalls and replacements of potentially faulty lithium-ion batteries, both researchers I spoke with were excited about future possibilities for a different kind of battery, called solid-state, to make EVs even more reliable. “These batteries could potentially show greater thermal stability than lithium-ion batteries,” says McDowell. “When it heats up a lot, it may just remain pretty stable.” With a solid-state battery, the liquid electrolyte is no longer part of battery cells, removing the most flammable aspect of battery design.
These solid-state batteries are already available in some smaller electronics, but producing large versions of the batteries at vast scale continues to be a hurdle that EV manufacturers are working to overcome.
Enlarge/ A VW worker on the assembly line at Emden in Germany.
Volkswagen
Volkswagen will wait to see what electric car demand is like before building out all six of its previously planned battery factories. Thomas Schmall, VW’s board member in charge of technology, told a German newspaper that “building battery cell factories is not an end to itself” and that a goal of 200 GWh of lithium-ion cells by 2030 was not set in stone.
It’s a bit too simplistic to say that all new technologies conform to the now-infamous Gartner hype cycle, but it’s hard not to think of that squiggly line when discussing EVs. After years of hearing lofty goals of all-electric lineups and an end to internal combustion engines from OEMs, Tesla’s skyrocketing valuation got investors interested in electrification, and for a while, things just went mad.
But the promised fall in battery costs never really materialized, and in the US, EVs still command a price premium, at least for the first owner. The initial hype, coupled with the limited availability of new models, saw dealers load the cars and trucks they could get with hefty markups, further alienating potential customers. And now, when those markups and inventory shortages are mostly a thing of the past, interest rates have soared.
All of that makes it pretty hard to escape thinking we’re in the trough of disillusionment, and the automakers are reacting accordingly. Both General Motors and Ford have already made their electrification plans more modest, with more hybrids and fewer EVs in their roadmaps now.
For VW, the previous goal of 200 GWh by 2030 from six factories (through a new subsidiary called PowerCo) could now be just 170 GWh capacity from three already-announced plants in Valencia, Spain; Ontario, Canada; and Salzgitter, Germany. If necessary, Schmall said that the Spanish and Canadian battery factories could be expanded to meet additional demand.
This battery news follows another sign of slowing confidence in EVs at VW. Last week, it emerged that the company has pushed back plans for the ID.4’s successor, which now may not see showrooms until 2032.
