Lifeboat Foundation

That failure, and another one last year involving another type of Long March rocket, slowed China’s space efforts. Officials had hoped to launch around 30 rockets of one type or another in 2017 but only managed 18 (there were 29 launches in America and another 20 of Russian ones—see chart). But they promise to bounce back in 2018, with 40-or-so lift-offs planned this year. These will probably include a third outing for the Long March 5—assuming its flaws can be fixed in time—and missions that will greatly expand the number of satellites serving BeiDou, China’s home-grown satellite navigation system.

NATTY yellow carts whizz tourists around Wenchang space port, a sprawling launch site on the tropical island of Hainan. The brisk tour passes beneath an enormous poster of Xi Jinping, China’s president, then disgorges passengers for photographs not far from a skeletal launch tower. Back at the visitor centre there is a small exhibition featuring space suits, a model moon-rover and the charred husk of a re-entry capsule that brought Chinese astronauts back from orbit. A gift shop at the exit sells plastic rockets, branded bottle openers and cuddly alien mascots.

The base in a township of Wenchang city is the newest of China’s four space-launch facilities. It is also by far the easiest to visit—thanks in part to the enthusiasm of officials in Hainan, a haven for tourists and rich retirees. Wenchang’s local government has adopted a logo for the city reminiscent of Starfleet badges in “Star Trek”. It is building a space-themed tourist village near the launch site, with attractions that include a field of vegetables grown from seeds that have been carried in spaceships.

Continue reading “China’s ambitions in space are growing” »

Analysis by scientists at SETI indicate that subterranean lava tubes on the moon may provide access to massive underground glaciers.

Russian tech tycoon turned-ET wayfarer Yuri Milner says he intends to beat NASA to a mission to the Saturn moon Enceladus looking for alien lifeforms.

“The one overarching question we are asking at our foundation is: ‘Are we alone in the universe?’” said Milner, who has swore over $200 million to the Breakthrough Initiative, an association he established in 2015 that observes space, and grows new methods for infinite travel.

Talking at a Seattle gathering, ‘A New Space Age’, Milner said his science group agrees there are three potential areas for additional earthly lifeforms in our close planetary system: under the surface of Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and “the most encouraging competitor,” Enceladus.

Continue reading “Russian Billionaire Sets up an Alien-hunting Mission to Saturn Moon” »

This asteroid could’ve been sent by aliens to spy on us.

Have we just been buzzed by ET?

Green Bank telescope in West Virginia will listen for radio signals from ‘Oumuamua, an object from another solar system.

Machine learning drove the breakthrough.

In a recent blog post, Paul Krugman tried to illustrate a point about the GOP tax cut plan by imagining interplanetary trade with Martians. (At least he’s now entertaining voluntary transactions, rather than an alien invasion.) Yet in his zeal to downplay the potential benefits to workers from a corporate tax cut, Krugman ends up shortchanging the versatility of markets. As a teaching exercise, I’ll walk through the full implications of Krugman’s story about Martians, to show the elegance of capitalism.

Krugman’s Martian Scenario

The context for Krugman’s fanciful thought experiment is the GOP plan to cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 to 20 percent. In order to sell this plan as pro-worker, the GOP defenders are arguing that capital is very mobile on the international market. Therefore, global investors can be picky, and must earn the same after–tax rate of return (due account being made for risk), wherever they invest. This means — so the GOP argument continues — that a large cut in the US corporate tax rate will simply invite a flood of foreign capital into the US, pushing down the pre -tax rate of return to reestablish equilibrium across all countries. Yet this process helps American workers, who are now mixing their labor with a larger capital stock. Because labor productivity is higher with more tools and equipment, wage rates end up rising. Thus, so the argument concludes, the primary beneficiaries of the GOP tax cut won’t be international capitalists, but instead will be American workers.