To Starbase and Beyond: SpaceX Gets a Town of Its Own - Tech News Briefing
For a few years, a section of land in southeast Texas has been dubbed Starbase. It's where SpaceX houses rocket production sites, launch facilities and employee housing. WSJ reporter Micah Maidenberg tells us what a weekend vote to greenlight the town's official incorporation means for the future of SpaceX. Then: We'll take you to Dubai, where Token2049 drew crypto industry celebrities and their followers, and ushered in 'a new era of freedom' for the battered industry. Host Victoria Craig speaks with reporter Angus Berwick.
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2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Turning the Red Planet green? It's time to take terraforming Mars seriously, scientists say
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The concept of terraforming Mars — transforming the planet's climate to support life as we know it — has long belonged to the realm of science fiction. But a new study argues that it's time to take the idea seriously. "Thirty years ago, terraforming Mars wasn't just hard — it was impossible," said Erika DeBenedictis, CEO of Pioneer Labs and lead author of the new paper. "But new technology like [SpaceX's] Starship and synthetic biology have now made it a real possibility." The paper debates the complex ethical questions that must be considered if we're to terraform Mars and lays the blueprint for a potential path forward. "Advocates argue that more life is better than less, and terraforming Mars could mark humanity's first act of planetary stewardship with a net positive environmental impact," said DeBenedictis. Put succinctly, "living planets are better than dead ones," said study co-author Edwin Kite, an associate professor at the University of Chicago. "We now know that Mars was habitable in the past, from data returned by the Mars rovers, so greening Mars could be viewed as the ultimate environmental restoration challenge." Though full terraforming may take centuries, if not millennia, the long-term goal would be a Mars with stable liquid water, breathable oxygen and a thriving ecosystem. In the short term, this might mean only small patches of microbial life; in the distant future, there could perhaps be human cities on the planet. And if we reach the scale of cities, perhaps that's a stepping stone to even more significant exploration for our species. "As we move out into the galaxy, we will need base camps, and a base camp on the scale of the galaxy is a habitable planet," said Kite. For co-author Robin Wordsworth, a professor of environmental and planetary science at Harvard, the argument for terraforming Mars goes beyond human colonization to the propagation of life in general. "I see humanity as part of the biosphere, not separate from it," he said. "Life is precious — we know of nowhere else in the universe where it exists — and we have a duty to conserve it on Earth, but also to consider how we could begin to propagate it to other worlds." It's not all about looking beyond the bounds of Earth; terraforming Mars could also help us solve climate and sustainability challenges at home, advocates say. Nina Lanza, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a co-author on the paper, sees Mars as a prime testbed for planetary engineering. "If we want to learn how to modify our environment here on Earth, to keep it in a configuration that suits us and other life forms, maybe it would be better to experiment on Mars and say, 'Look, does this work?'" she said. "I personally would like to be a little more conservative with our home planet. This is the only place we can live." There are technological lessons to be learned, too. "Concretely, developing and adopting green technology on Earth often falters because it must compete with dirtier alternatives that benefit from decades of infrastructure investment and entrenched interests," said DeBenedictis. "Mars is a unique target market because it has no oil, no existing infrastructure and no status quo. For this reason, developing green technologies for space is a powerful strategy for maturing it for use on Earth." But we should take a few lessons from "Jurassic Park" when thinking about terraforming, some scientists say: Before asking, "Could we?" we need to ask, "Should we?" "If we decide to terraform Mars, then we will really change it in ways that may or may not be reversible," said Lanza. "Mars is its own planet and has its own history. When we terraform, then we effectively don't have the opportunity to study that anymore, and we may lose knowledge about how planets form and evolve." Most dramatically, we may destroy potential evidence of ancient Martian life, if such evidence exists. "If we modify the environment on Mars, we're going to change the chemistry of the surface and of the subsurface, eventually," said Lanza, pointing out that such actions might erase any traces of life on Mars. "I can't say for certain. It's very complicated, but it's a risk." Terraforming Mars would require massive changes, namely the warming of the planet to support both oxygen-producing microbes and liquid water. While all the technologies to terraform Mars are not yet available, the authors of the paper propose three phases of development. First, scientists would use abiotic climate engineering techniques — such as deploying reflective solar sails, dispersing nanoparticles, or laying aerogel tiles — to warm the surface by at least 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), enough to melt subsurface ice and release trapped carbon dioxide. This warming would thicken the Martian atmosphere and potentially support the presence of stable liquid water. The second phase would introduce extremophile microbes — likely anaerobic and genetically engineered ones — capable of surviving in Mars' harsh conditions and kickstarting ecological succession. These organisms would begin producing oxygen and organic matter, slowly altering planetary chemistry. The third and longest phase would focus on building a complex biosphere, increasing atmospheric pressure and oxygen content to eventually support more advanced plant life, and, in the very long term, potentially allow humans to breathe unassisted. Related stories: — Could we really terraform Mars? — New Mars terraforming idea: engineered, heat-absorbing dust nanoparticles — Bad news for terraforming: Mars' atmosphere is lost in space The study's authors agree: If we're to have any chance of terraforming Mars, we must move forward on multiple fronts simultaneously. "Answering the question of when and how to start making other worlds habitable requires a clear understanding of the costs and benefits, which can only be adequately assessed based on a combination of theory and experiments, with input from diverse fields including physics, chemistry, materials science and biology," said Kite. Right now, we need to continue to study Mars. Lanza advocates for the Mars Sample Return mission, a NASA-European Space Agency campaign to bring home material collected on the Red Planet by the Perseverance rover. "The samples are incredibly well documented and analyzed to the best of our ability on Mars," she said. "Now we need to bring those back, because that's going to help us answer some of these fundamental questions. What is Mars made out of? Are there traces of life?" And, as we continue to visit the Red Planet, we can put terraforming concepts into practice. "Upcoming Mars surface missions in 2028 or 2031 should include small-scale experiments to de-risk terraforming strategies, such as warming localized regions," said DeBenedictis. Then, of course, we need to continue to innovate new technologies that will allow us to terraform Mars in the future. All this is to say, while fully terraforming Mars might take generations, the decisions start now. "This is how we get from the imagination and the concept to some reality that has totally changed our world," said Lanza. "We should really keep doing science — it's transformational." The new study was published last month in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rocket Lab Successfully Launches Electron Rocket With Busy Year Ahead
Rocket Lab's Electron rocket continued its successful launch history this week by inserting the BlackSky Gen-3 satellite into a low-Earth-orbit target, 292 miles above the Earth. This is the seventh successful launch Electron has made this year, but the schedule is only going to accelerate from here. There are already a further 14 launches planned for the rest of 2025, with two more slated for 2026, and a further 10 within a 2025-2027 launch window. Rocket Lab has been developing its Electron rocket design for over a decade and has been successfully launching payloads for customers since the end of 2018. Although the industry has been dominated by larger rocket developers, like SpaceX, Rocket Lab has continually championed the smaller rocket industry. In April, it argued that there was a value in being able to control the orbital insertion angle, instead of just ride-sharing on someone else's payload in a larger rocket design, like a Falcon 9, or future Starship. Credit: Rocket Lab And Electron keeps proving the management right. Rocket Lab is ramping up its launch schedule to show it can be a responsive and prolific launch vehicle operator. The last Electron launch was a mere two weeks previously on May 17. It also managed three launches in March from the same launch site complex in Mahia, New Zealand. The BlackSky AI-surveillance satellite is the seventh of more than 20 planned launches this year. The launches are spread across a few different companies, mostly launching satellites into low Earth orbit. However, in 2025 alone it will also complete a joint mission with MIT to send an atmospheric probe to Venus and complete a contract for the U.S. Space Force to show its responsiveness to rapid launch requirements. Most of the upcoming launches will be from the same New Zealand-based launch complex, though a couple are slated to launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia. Building on these successes, Rocket Lab plans to introduce its larger Neutron rocket before the end of 2025. It will have a payload up to 25 times that of Electron, and a reusable first stage, in a similar fashion to SpaceX's Falcon 9—though Falcon 9 can still carry substantially more cargo into orbit. This will represent Rocket Lab stepping into the medium payload space, one that the company feels will complement its existing small payload launch vehicle.
Gizmodo
2 hours ago
- Gizmodo
SpaceX's Company Town May Force Its Residents to Leave Their Homes
It's been less than a month since Elon Musk got his dream town in Boca Chica, Texas, and Starbase is already a nuisance. The SpaceX town has issued a memo to residents about a new zoning ordinance and updated citywide map that could impact how they use their property. Starbase, Texas, sent the memo to residents who own property within a 'mixed-use district' that will allow for 'residential, office, retail, and small-scale service uses,' according to a copy of the memo obtained by CNBC. The company town is set to hold a hearing on June 23 at city hall to allow for public comment on its new zoning plan 'THAT WILL DETERMINE WHETHER YOU MAY LOSE THE RIGHT TO CONTINUE USING YOUR PROPERTY FOR ITS CURRENT USE,' the memo read in all caps. It's not exactly clear what this terse, oddly worded warning means, or if it implies that certain residents of Starbase could get kicked out of their homes. If someone loses the right to use their residence as they do now, does that mean they can't even sleep there? The memo mentions that the so-called mixed-use district will be for residential use, as well as office and retail, so perhaps some of the homes will have to be transformed into something else. Either way, residents were ominously warned to attend the upcoming hearing to find out their fate. Earlier in May, residents voted in favor of turning Starbase into its own city. The city spans about 1.6 square miles (4.1 square kilometers) and is home to roughly 500 nearby residents, the majority of whom are SpaceX employees and contractors. SpaceX began buying land in the area in 2012 to set up shop for its rocket business. The company has expanded its presence with housing and other facilities, and even announced tentative plans to open a $15 million shopping center. Musk first pitched the idea of turning Starbase into its own city in 2021, a long-held dream that could grant SpaceX the right to build more facilities and change the surrounding landscape. The company is currently trying to gain control of public beach closures and the closing down of roads in Boca Chica for rocket launches, ground testing, or other related activities during the week. The company's frequent rocket launches have already been disruptive to the local community and the surrounding wildlife. Now that Starbase is a city, it may increase the company's municipal authority and allow it to overstep regulatory red tape designed to protect the environment. SpaceX is facing fines of almost $150,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly illegally dumping pollutants into a Texas waterway without a permit. SpaceX, however, claims otherwise. 'Our goal is to ensure that the zoning plan reflects the City's vision for balanced growth, protecting critical economic drivers, ensuring public safety, and preserving green spaces,' Starbase wrote in the memo to its residents. The company has invested in the area by generating jobs and attracting space tourists to watch its rockets lift off to space, but its increased influence does come at a price.
