Dear readers,
Welcome to Quartz’s newsletter on the economic possibilities of the extra-terrestrial sphere. Please forward widely, and let me know what you think. This week: The beef between NASA and SpaceX, Boeing dabbles in Virgin, and fake space beef.
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Today I’ll be in Los Angeles to see NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk make nice about the Commercial Crew program, SpaceX and Boeing’s work building new spacecraft for US astronauts.
If you missed the beefy backstory, Bridenstine tweeted a reproach of Musk ahead of an event revealing new details about the company’s next generation rocket. The administrator is not pleased that his new spacecraft are long-delayed. Yet it was strange to see the head of the US space agency single out just one of his many over-due contractors for a personal rebuke, especially since one source of delay is Bridenstine’s decision to fire the NASA executive in charge of the program, who he has yet to replace.
Many people saw politics in the tweet, given that Musk’s new rocket would be a direct competitor with the overdue Boeing SLS moon rocket, underscoring the slow pace of the Trump administration’s dream of sending astronauts back to the moon. So the next week, Bridenstine tried to explain his statement. Marina Koren asked all the right questions in her Atlantic interview, but I didn’t find the answers satisfying.
When I asked Musk about the tweet at the Starship event on Sept. 28, he offered a fairly diplomatic response, saying most of the company’s work is going into Commercial Crew. Later, he tweeted that he spent a weekend working on the project, and now he’s doing one better: To mollify the administrator, SpaceX will host him and two astronauts at SpaceX headquarters for a suitable kumbaya moment.
One reason why an era of good feelings is important, per Eric Berger: NASA is in a “panic” about getting astronauts back to the International Space Station next year without paying extortionate rates to Russia. It’s extremely difficult to say with any authority, given the lack of transparency from both companies and from NASA, but my best guess is that SpaceX is likely to be first to launch crew to orbit from the US in 2020. That will be a decision made by the as-yet-unhired head of NASA’s human exploration mission directorate. (SpaceX has already completed its orbital flight test; yesterday, Boeing announced plans to fly in December, though NASA has not confirmed that.)
More than any personal drama, I’m hoping to get some straight answers about exactly where each company is on their path to flight, and what the obstacles are. Musk suggested that three to four months is a reasonable amount of time, while Bridenstine says that’s not possible, since the company needs to finish the re-design of its spacecraft following a test anomaly, and fix its parachutes. Fingers crossed that getting the two together in the same room allows them to hash it out to everyone’s satisfaction.
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If you’re in San Francisco on Oct. 15, I’ll be moderating a panel at Planet’s Explore Conference. Open-source imagery analysts Jeffrey Lewis and Allison Puccioni and journalist Christoph Koettl will talk about how the new wave of commercial satellite data is changing what the public knows about geopolitics, weapons programs and human rights. It’s going to be fun!
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Imagery interlude
This newsletter may be a little briefer than usual, since your loyal correspondent is dealing with the decision by California power company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to shut down power to some 800,000 customers. Previous California wildfires have been attributed to sparks from the utility’s high-voltage power transmission wires. Now essentially bankrupt, PG&E isn’t taking any chances this year. A look at the damage caused by the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, which killed 85 people and destroyed thousands of buildings, helps understand why.
Still, it would be nice to see a better solution than cutting off more than a million people from electricity. The economic costs of closed businesses, plus the challenges faced by vulnerable communities like the elderly, don’t make the expected five-day shutdown palatable. Other options? There are plenty, but no silver bullets: A more distributed grid of smaller-scale, ideally renewable, power plants that allow for more control over the entire system, buried power lines, and new technology to track grid malfunctions could all help.
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SPACE DEBRIS
The road to Virgin Galactic’s IPO. Virgin Galactic has been making a lot of announcements, including a $20 million investment from Boeing and, next week, a “spacewear” partnership with Under Armour. Still no word, however, on when they’ll finish their flight test program and go operational. One savvy space investor predicts that SpaceShipTwo won’t take flight until well after the company’s reverse-merger IPO closes, but there will be a steady drumbeat of media announcements designed to bolster the price of the shell company that will absorb Richard Branson’s space tourism play. Otherwise, early investors may take advantage of a provision that allows them to redeem their stock for $10 a share once the deal closes.
Space Force. With the US government turning to the private sector to solve its technology problems, this may be a good time to shamelessly plug a big project I just finished: A Quartz field guide on the Future of War, a lot of which has to do with how the US leverages its assets in space—and how its rivals disrupt them. Not a member? Sign up for goodness sake, I need to eat.
Fake space beef. The business of in-space manufacturing is expanding in every direction—including the production of artificial meat. A company called 3D Bioprinting Solutions reports that it was able to grow a chunk of cow muscle tissue using a “bioprinter” on the International Space Station. They say that microgravity makes production faster and easier because they can print across all dimensions at once, rather than layer-by-layer.
Exoplanet Awards. This is not a science newsletter, but I enjoyed this story about why these recent Nobel prize winners were recognized for their work understanding the origins of the galaxies and finding planets orbiting distant suns similar to our own.
ICON launch. Tonight, NASA is expected to launch a spacecraft called ICON that will use scientific instruments to investigate the ionosphere, where terrestrial and space weather interact. The launch will use a rocket called Pegasus, which is ignited after being dropped from an aircraft in flight—and hasn’t been used since 2016.
Leaf peeping. As a child of New England who desperately misses the brisk autumns of my youth, I feel there is no higher use for space data than mapping peak fall foliage.
Your pal,
Tim
This was issue 18 of our newsletter. Hope your week is out of this world! Please send your most delicious space-grown meats, favorite fall memories, tips and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.