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The first US mission to Mars in five years may be the start of a new wave of exploration, as geopolitics and the private space industry pressure NASA to move faster. Global space agencies are planning five missions to Mars that are expected to launch in 2020, including a new US rover.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration called for a return to the moon, and then cancelled a planned NASA-designed rover in favor of hiring private companies to transport scientific instruments to the moon using vehicles of their own design, upsetting scientists who worked on the program. NASA is looking at plans to finance deep-space exploration by ending its work on the International Space Station in the next decade, possibly handing it over to one or more private companies.
Future missions will need to improve on the current record: InSight missed its original launch window in 2016 after a seismometer designed by France’s space agency failed in tests. This week, the oft-delayed James Webb Space Telescope project announced that it may face further slips in schedule after vibration tests that simulate the stress of a launch led to screws and washers falling off.
On April 16, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a NASA satellite on a mission to hunt alien worlds. Next week, his company will fly the final version of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket, as Musk begins to focus on developing a larger interplanetary vehicle to send humans to Mars. Last weekend, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launched its reusable rocket for the eighth time, with plans to fly human test pilots within the next year. All this as private funding is flowing to satellite builders and rocket-makers.
Scientists are concerned that they will be left out of a space revolution driven by private companies. Yet the model is not so different from today: Lockheed Martin, after all, built and will operate the InSight spacecraft, with researchers from around the world contributing scientific tools. And NASA science leaders like Thomas Zurbuchen are pushing for ambitious missions with cheap hardware—tiny cubesats—pioneered by private companies. In a perfect world, cheaper access to space should enable scientific exploration, not diminish it.
The real question is whether space agencies will continue demanding that aerospace companies act like bureaucracies, or if bureaucrats will learn from the new space companies and return to their roots—acting more like the tech startup NASA was when it got humans to the moon in the first place.—Tim Fernholz
Five things on Quartz we especially liked
The epic mistake that cost the US millions of jobs. Automation, not trade, is responsible for the loss of American factory jobs, right? Wrong. Gwynn Guilford unpacks one economist’s startling discovery: Politicians, economists, and the media have long been misinterpreting data on productivity and output. And that error led to complacent policies that contributed to the hollowing out of a once-thriving sector.
Nothing to see here at this 币圈. In chat groups where Chinese investors buy and sell cryptocurrencies, Zheping Huang reports, traders have developed jargon that aims to avoid detection after a government crackdown. Now the word is out, however: Bì quān (coin circle, in bold above) describes the crypto space, where big pancakes (bitcoin) are traded and dog bosses (big timers) move the market.
Bollywood’s dark secret is the same as Hollywood’s. Except powerful men in India still get away with sexual misconduct. The #MeToo movement has felled movie moguls in the West, yet similar change remains elusive in the Hindi film industry. Maria Thomas looks at a BBC documentary that shows how sexism on and off screen makes it difficult to combat a culture of silence.
A huge mobile money service wants to become a social network. The dominance of M-Pesa, one of the world’s biggest mobile money-transfer operations, will likely be reinforced with Kenya mobile operator Safaricom‘s launch of Bonga, which will allow nearly 30 million subscribers to send and receive money while they chat, Abdi Latif Dahir writes. This follows in the footsteps of all-in-one communications platforms like China’s WeChat.
“You do you” is not building your wealth. Individual cognitive quirks trip up even the best financial intentions. So admitting your own financial foibles is hard, and understanding them is even harder. For help, see Eshe Nelson’s guide to the personal biases that can derail your savings and investment planning.
Five things elsewhere that made us smarter
Why we shouldn’t replace politicians with experts. “You have to be a brave person to come out as an epistocrat in a democratic society,” David Runciman writes in The Guardian. In the aftermath of Trump and Brexit, he notes a renewed questioning of democracy—and argues we shouldn’t give up on rule by the people just yet.
The unbroken essence of black Americans. In photo portraits encapsulating the fierce beauty that persists even in hardscrabble circumstances, Deana Lawson reveals the confidence that surfaces amid bare apartments, cramped spaces, and lives of overwork. The depth and complexity of her work would escape words—if Zadie Smith weren’t lending it her prose in The New Yorker.
How the old left and far right can live together. To him, his wife is a racist. She sees her husband as a national masochist. The unlikely marriage of writers Helmut Lethen, 79, and Caroline Sommerfeld, 42, reflects the challenges roiling “an ever-more divided Germany,” Katrin Bennhold writes for The New York Times (paywall), concluding that their spirited debates on history, diversity, and identity should be part of the national conversation.
The life of a journeyman rapper. Lamont Hawkins, one of nine original members of the Wu-Tang Clan, didn’t quite make it to the same levels of fame and fortune as his peers. In this review of his autobiography for The Spectator, Dorian Lynskey says the book is “ultimately as disillusioning an account of life in a beloved group as the Fall bassist Steve Hanley’s ‘The Big Midweek.’”
You can figure out where you are with a watch, some string and a protractor. If MacGyver can do it, so can you, Rhett Allain shows in Wired. Of course, understanding latitude and longitude also go a long way in making your improvised sextant setup work. That’s where a basketball comes in.
Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, big pancakes, and makeshift navigational devices to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Kabir Chibber and John Mancini.