Hezbollah brings Iranian fuel into crisis-hit Lebanon
Issued on: 16/09/2021 -

Tankers carrying Iranian fuel arrive from Syria at al-Ain in Hermel in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley on September 16, 2021. 

© AFP
Text by: NEWS WIRES

Hezbollah began bringing Iranian fuel into Lebanon via Syria on Thursday, a move the Shi'ite Muslim group says should ease a crippling energy crisis but which opponents say risks provoking U.S. sanctions.

A convoy of trucks carrying Iranian fuel oil entered northeastern Lebanon near the village of al-Ain, where Hezbollah's yellow flag fluttered from lampposts.

"Thank you Iran. Thank you Assad's Syria," declared a banner, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah's al-Manar TV said a convoy of around 20 trucks had crossed into Lebanon.

The trucks sounded their horns as they passed through al-Ain as people watched on. Some waved Hezbollah's flag, while a woman and boy threw petals at one vehicle.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has said the ship carrying the fuel docked in Syria on Sunday after being told going to Lebanon could risk sanctions.

Washington has reiterated that U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil sales remain in place. But it has not said whether it is considering taking any action over the move by Hezbollah, which it designates a terrorist group.

The Lebanese government has said its permission was not sought to import the fuel.

The move marks an expansion of Hezbollah's role in Lebanon, where critics have long accused the heavily armed group of acting as a state within the state.

Founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982, Hezbollah has long been part of Lebanon's governing system, with ministers and members of parliament.

It has fought numerous wars with Israel, and its fighters have helped Assad in the Syrian war.

Breaking 'the American siege'

The energy crisis is a result of a financial meltdown since 2019, sinking the currency by some 90% and sending more than three quarters of the population into poverty.

Fuel supplies have dried up because Lebanon does not have enough hard currency to cover even vital imports, forcing essential services including some hospitals to scale back or shut down and sparking numerous security incidents.

Hezbollah declared it had broken an "American siege".

Lebanon's financial system unravelled as a result of decades of profligate spending by a state riddled with corruption and waste, and the unsustainable way it was financed.

The French ambassador rebuked the former prime minister in July for saying Lebanon was under siege, saying the crisis was the result of years of mismanagement and inaction by Lebanon.

Western governments and donor institutions have said they will unlock aid once Lebanon enacts reforms.

The United States, a big supplier of humanitarian and military aid to Lebanon, is backing a plan to ease the energy crisis using Egyptian natural gas piped via Jordan and Syria. The U.S. ambassador has said Lebanon does not need Iranian fuel.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said a second ship with fuel oil will arrive in the Syrian port of Baniyas in a few days, with a third and fourth, respectively carrying gasoline and fuel oil, also due.

A new government aims to resume talks with the IMF to tackle the crisis.

(REUTERS)

 

UN: Pandemic did not slow advance of climate change

The results of the United in Science 2021 report are an "alarming appraisal of just how far off course we are," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said.

    

Global fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the power and industry sectors are at the same level as in 2019

The UN released a report on Thursday warning that the COVID-19 pandemic has not slowed the pace of climate change.

Virus-related economic slowdown and lockdowns caused only a temporary downturn in CO2 emissions last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

The United in Science 2021 report, which gathers the latest scientific data and findings related to climate change, said global fossil-fuel CO2 emissions between January and July in the power and industry sectors were already back to the same level or higher than in the same period in 2019, before the pandemic.

"This is a critical year for climate action," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, saying the results were an "alarming appraisal of just how far off course we are."

Pandemic pause was brief 

The WMO said that emissions reductions during the first COVID-19 wave in early 2020 represented a "brief lapse." 

"Overall emissions reductions in 2020 likely reduced the annual increase of the atmospheric concentrations of long-lived greenhouse gases, but this effect was too small to be distinguished from natural variability," the report concluded.

Although CO2 emissions from road traffic in 2021 have been below the levels before the pandemic outbreak, concentrations of the major greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming continued to increase, according to the report. 

"We are still significantly off-schedule to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. 

"Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale  reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5C will be impossible, with catastrophic consequences for people and the planet on which we depend." Guterres said.

jcg/sms (dpa, Reuters)

1.5 C warming limit 'impossible' without

 major action: UN

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

The global average mean surface temperature for 2017 to 2021 is estimated to be 1.06 C to 1.26 C above pre-industrial levels 

JOSH EDELSON AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

A new climate change report out Thursday shows that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be impossible without immediate, large-scale emissions cuts, the UN chief said.

The United in Science 2021 report, published by a range of UN agencies and scientific partners just weeks before the COP26 climate summit, said climate change and its impacts were accelerating.

And a temporary reduction in carbon emissions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic had done nothing to slow the relentless warming, it found.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, struck at the COP21 summit, called for capping global warming at well below 2 C above the pre-industrial level, and ideally closer to 1.5 C.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report's findings were "an alarming appraisal of just how far off course we are" in meeting the Paris goals.

"This year has seen fossil fuel emissions bounce back, greenhouse gas concentrations continuing to rise and severe human-enhanced weather events that have affected health, lives and livelihoods on every continent," he wrote in the report's foreword.

"Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5 C will be impossible, with catastrophic consequences for people and the planet."

COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, will be held in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12.

- Pandemic effects -

Fossil greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2019, shrinking by 5.6 percent in 2020 due to the Covid-19 restrictions and economic slowdown.

But outside aviation and sea transport, global emissions, averaged across the first seven months of 2021, are now at about the same levels as in 2019.

And the report said concentrations of the major greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- continued to increase in 2020 and the first half of 2021.

Overall emissions reductions in 2020 likely shrank the annual increase of the atmospheric concentrations of long-lived greenhouse gases, but the effect was "too small to be distinguished from natural variability", it said.

The global average mean surface temperature for 2017 to 2021 -- with this year's data based on averages up to June -- is estimated to be 1.06 C to 1.26 C above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels, the report said.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change called for capping global warming at well below 2 C above the pre-industrial level

 ARMANDO BABANI AFP/File

The global mean near-surface temperature was meanwhile expected to be at least 1 C over pre-industrial levels in each of the coming five years, with a 40-percent chance it could climb to 1.5 C higher in one of those years, it said.

Guterres said the world had reached a "tipping point", and the report showed "we really are out of time".

- Net-zero goal -

The all-time Canadian heat record was broken in June when a high of 49.6 C was recorded in Lytton, British Columbia.

Though the Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave was a rare or extremely rare event, it would be "virtually impossible without human-caused climate change", the report said.

As for the severe flooding in Germany in July, the report said with high confidence that human-induced climate change "increased the likelihood and intensity of such an event to occur".

The report said the increasing number of countries committing to net-zero emission goals was encouraging, with about 63 percent of global emissions now covered by such targets.

But, it said, far greater action was needed by 2030 to keep those targets feasible and credible.

Calling for all countries to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, Guterres said: "I expect all these issues to be addressed, and resolved, at COP26."

"Our future is at stake."

© 2021 AFP

WW3.0
South Korea: new kid on the SLBM block

  submarine-launched ballistic missile 

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

Seoul's missile was fired underwater from South Korea's newly commissioned submarine Ahn Chang-ho

 Handout South Korean Defence Ministry/AFP/File


Seoul (AFP)

Missile test headlines on the Korean peninsula are almost invariably about the nuclear-armed North, but this week the South fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile of its own as it rapidly scales up its military capabilities.

The successful test puts the South among the elite flotilla of nations with proven SLBM technology, and Seoul is on a multi-billion-dollar drive to develop its defence forces.

On the other side of the Demilitarized Zone that splits the peninsula, the North maintains the world's largest standing army and has made rapid progress in its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes, earning it multiple international sanctions.

But Seoul's SLBMs shift the strategic balance, enabling it to respond with a surprise second strike even if its land-based forces were destroyed in a conflict.

Wednesday's launch took place from the Ahn Chang-ho, a new 3,000-ton missile submarine named after an independence campaigner.

Afterwards President Moon Jae-in -- who has long pursued engagement with Pyongyang to bring it to the negotiating table -- told the vessel's commander: "Activist Ahn Chang-ho remarked in 1921 that 'The only thing we can trust and wish for is our strength'."

South Korea maintains a conscript army to defend it against the North, which invaded in 1950, and this month unveiled a blueprint to raise its defence budget to 70 trillion won ($60 billion) by 2026, with a focus on developing "cutting-edge advanced technologies".

It is adding more Aegis-class destroyers to its navy and building more SLBM submarines, as well as replacing ageing F-4 and F-5 jets with indigenously-designed KF-21 fighters.

The state Agency for Defense Development (ADD) also unveiled a supersonic cruise missile on Wednesday and said it was pursuing a high-powered ballistic missile able to deliver a significantly heavier warhead.

And in July it successfully tested what it called a solid-fuel engine for space rockets, designed to put small satellites into low Earth orbit.

Space rockets and military missiles use similar engine technology -- a correlation previously exploited by the North when it carried out what it said were satellite launches and others called disguised missile tests.

Solid-fuelled missiles are more mobile and quicker to deploy than liquid-fuelled ones.

- Lesson learned -

Washington stations around 28,500 troops in the South to help defend it against the North, but analysts say Seoul's development programmes are also driven by its experience of Donald Trump's administration, which showed it could be strategically unwise to rely on the US in perpetuity.

"We have to remember just how erratic the exercise of American power became," said Yonsei University professor John Delury.

"President Trump would regularly talk about in very hostile terms about the alliance with South Korea. So of course, that leaves a legacy," he said.

"And obviously nothing has really worked with North Korea," he added.

"From a South Korean perspective, you know you need your backup plan."

Under terms of the alliance, in the event of war their forces will be combined under American control.

Transferring that operational command to South Korea is a touchstone issue for the country's nationalistic left, and the South's military capacities are among the conditions required.

Moon has repeatedly pressed for the change to happen before he leaves office, but that is now unlikely with only eight months to go.

Outside the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, only India and now South Korea have proven SLBM technology. And aside from the South, all the others are nuclear powers.

Whether Seoul should go nuclear is a long-running topic of debate in the country, particularly on the right -- the last US atomic weapons were removed in 1991.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) the South is barred from having atomic weapons of its own, but a recent opinion poll by the conservative Asan Institute showed almost 70 percent support for their acquisition in light of the North's arsenal -- the highest figure in a decade.

"The NPT protocols failed to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power and yet restrict the Republic of Korea from developing its own weapons," retired South Korean lieutenant general Chun In-bum told AFP. "This needs to change."

© 2021 AFP

First view from new Crew Dragon shows marble-like Earth

By Trevor Mogg

September 15, 2021 

SpaceX has posted footage showing the stunning view now being enjoyed by its first all-civilian crew.

The historic Inspiration4 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center at just after 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, September 15, with the four crewmates reaching Earth orbit a short while later.

The scenery from the Crew Dragon spacecraft is even more dramatic than what astronauts enjoy from the International Space Station (ISS), with the higher orbit giving Earth a more marble-like appearance. The Crew Dragon is orbiting Earth at an altitude of 358 miles (575 km), 100 miles (160 km) above the ISS and the furthest it’s ever traveled from our planet.

The video shared by SpaceX shows the spacecraft’s new glass dome. Its engineers were able to put it in place of the Crew Dragon’s docking mechanism as the Inspiration4 mission is not linking up with the space station. The dome is fitted beneath the nose cone, which is designed to open up when the spacecraft reaches orbit.

Crewmates Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Dr. Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski will orbit Earth for about three days before returning home.

During their time in space, they’ll conduct various science experiments in microgravity conditions — so long as they can turn their attention from the breathtaking view, that is.

Entrepreneur Isaacman, who founded payment processing company Shift4 Payments, secured the groundbreaking mission in a private deal with SpaceX. The three other three passengers were then selected through various means, with all four undergoing intense training for the flight over the last six months.

Isaacman made clear early on that the main goal of the Inspiration4 mission is to raise funds of at least $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

For SpaceX, the mission marks the start of a potentially lucrative space tourism business that will operate alongside its astronaut flights between Earth and the ISS, and small-satellite launches for private companies and its Starlink internet service.

SpaceX blasts off for world's first tourist trip into orbit

Four civilians have blasted off into space on the first ever trip into orbit by amateur space travelers.



The rocket lifted off safely from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday night (local time)

A group of civilian space travelers has made history by becoming the first set of non-professional travelers to orbit the Earth.

Although amateurs have gone into space before, trained astronauts or cosmonauts have always been on board.

The SpaceX Dragon carrying four amateurs separated from the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket 12 minutes after liftoff, according to a live video feed.

As of 00:50 UTC, the capsule was "officially in space," according to SpaceX.

"Dragon will conduct two phasing burns to reach its cruising orbit of 575 km (357 miles) where the crew will spend the next three days orbiting planet Earth," the company wrote on Twitter.

Who is on board for the trip?

Among the passengers is Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payment processing company Shift4 Payments.

The 38-year-old high school dropout is funding the entire trip — named Inspiration4.

The Falcon rocket soared from the same Kennedy Space Center pad used by SpaceX's three previous astronaut flights for NASA

"A few have gone before and many are about to follow," said Isaacman.

He will be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a nurse who beat bone cancer as a child. Arceneaux was treated at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where she now works.

She was chosen for the trip after Isaacman donated a ticket to the hospital for a guest.

Arceneaux is the youngest American to go into space, and the first with a prosthesis — on part of her femur.

The two other seats were sold in a fundraising raffle for St. Jude.

They went to Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer; and the geoscientist Sian Proctor.

Proctor is a geology professor who was almost selected to be an astronaut for NASA in 2009. She is set to become only the fourth African American woman to go to space.

From left, Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux sit in the Dragon capsule

What's the plan?

A Dragon capsule housing the passengers blasted off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket.

The departure was from the launch complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The complex is where the Apollo 11 mission took off for the Moon.

The spaceship's trajectory will take it to an altitude of 575 kilometers (357 miles), which is further into space than the International Space Station.

The four passengers will splash down off the coast of Florida at the end of their journey, with their descent slowed down by huge parachutes.

Mission to open up space

As well as raising money for the hospital, the mission has the stated goal of becoming a turning point in the democratization of space.

It aims to show that space travel is accessible to people who have not been handpicked and undergone years of training as astronauts.

It also marked the debut flight of SpaceX owner Elon Musk's new orbital tourism business, wherein wealthy customers are willing to pay a small fortune for the thrill — and bragging rights — of spaceflight.

Isaacman has reportedly paid an undisclosed sum to Musk for the mission to include himself and his three crewmates.

SpaceX regards the mission as a step towards humanity existing on multiple planets.

The biological data, including their heart rate and sleep statistics, will be analyzed as well as their cognitive abilities.

The team will also undergo tests before and after the trip, to see how it affects their bodies.

While the team's training only lasted about six months, they were put through their paces physically.

They had to trek to the summit of 14,411 feet (roughly 3,000 meters) Mount Rainier and complete G force training — both in a centrifuge and onboard a jet.

While the flight should be fully automated, the crew has been trained to take control in the event of an emergency.

Both Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos also blasted off from the Earth earlier this year as amateurs. However, their flights in July only briefly skimmed space rather than going into orbit, with Branson reaching 86 kilometers and Bezos 106 kilometers.

rc, as/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)

First all-civilian crew launched to orbit aboard SpaceX rocket ship

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

Video by:Fraser JACKSON

A billionaire e-commerce executive and three less-wealthy private citizens chosen to join him blasted off from Florida on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket ship and soared into orbit, the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space. The quartet of amateur astronauts, led by the American founder and chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments Inc, Jared Isaacman, lifted off just before sunset from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

NASA video shows the cramped quarters where SpaceX's 4 civilian passengers will live for 3 days

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

The Inspiration4 crew sits inside a model Crew Dragon spaceship. Left to right: Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman, and Hayley Arceneaux. SpaceX


SpaceX just launched its first tourist crew into Earth's orbit aboard its Crew Dragon spaceship.

The mission, called Inspiration4, will have four civilians orbiting in the spaceship for three days.

NASA astronauts' video from inside the ship shows how cramped their quarters will be.
Insider Healthcare: The latest healthcare news & analysis

SpaceX just launched four people, none of whom are professional astronauts, into Earth's orbit.

Now that crew is set to circle the planet for three days aboard the company's Crew Dragon spaceship. The inside of the capsule will probably get cramped. With four seats, control displays, and storage, the four passengers will have about enough space to move around as they would inside a walk-in closet.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman chartered the flight from SpaceX and called the mission Inspiration4. He gave the other three seats to Hayley Arceneaux, who survived bone cancer as a child and now works at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital; Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran who works for Lockheed Martin; and Dr. Sian Proctor, a geoscientist who serves as an analogue astronaut in simulations of long-term Mars missions.

In training for their mission, the Inspiration4 crew spent 30 hours inside the capsule together for a simulation at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. During that time, they were cramped in a very small space. Gravity holding them down only made it smaller.

"We're literally sleeping right next to each other," Proctor told Axios reporter Miriam Kramer. "You're doing so many mental tasks and physical exertion that, even though it was not comfortable, I still fell asleep."

Now that they're in orbit, and they're all floating in microgravity, they can take advantage of the vertical space inside the capsule too. But even then, it will be cramped. Just watch these four astronauts giving a tour of Crew Dragon, high above Earth, in November:

Those astronauts were only inside the spaceship for about one day. Their Crew Dragon docked with the International Space Station, where the astronauts lived and worked for six months before climbing back aboard the spaceship and returning to Earth.

But unlike those astronauts, the Inspiration4 crew will have a glass dome at the nose of their spaceship. Because they don't need to dock to the space station, SpaceX replaced that docking port with this cupola. The passengers can stick their heads into the dome and get the full experience of drifting through space.

An illustration of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship with a glass dome "cupola" at its nose. SpaceX

Incidentally, that's also where the spaceship's toilet is.

"When people do inevitably have to use the bathroom, they're going to have one hell of a view," Isaacman told Insider in June.

This Crew Dragon will feel roomy compared to what SpaceX has in store. In the future, the company plans to launch as many as seven people aboard the spaceship.

SpaceX's first private crewed mission lifts off into space

Inspiration4 mission will orbit Earth for around three days.

By Aimee Chanthadavong | September 16, 2021


Image: SpaceX

SpaceX has launched what it is deeming as the "world's first all-civilian" crew into orbit as part of its Inspiration4 mission.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from a launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 8.02pm ET, 15 September 2021, and will now orbit Earth for roughly three days at an altitude of 575 kilometres -- just above the Hubble Space Telescope and 155 kilometres further from the International Space Station.

On board the company's fully automated Crew Dragon spacecraft are four crew members: Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Issacman, cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux, geoscientist Sian Proctor, and aerospace employee Chris Sembroski. They each underwent six months of training prior to launch.

During their time in space, the crew will perform "carefully selected research experiments on human health and performance" that will be used for potential applications for human health on Earth and during future spaceflights, SpaceX said.

"We are proud that our flight will help influence all those who will travel after us and look forward to seeing how this mission will help shape the beginning of a new era for space exploration," Issacman said.

Noticeably absent from the flight is SpaceX founder and tech billionaire Elon Musk. This is unlike Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who jumped on board Blue Origin's first crewed space launch and Richard Branson when he boarded Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity in July.

Between the three tech billionaires, it has been a head-to-head race to see whose aerospace company would be the first to make space travel available to paying civilians, not just for professional astronauts.

SpaceX launches four people to orbit in company's first-ever tourism mission

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business
Updated  September 16, 2021


Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN Business)A SpaceX rocket soared into orbit Wednesday evening, carrying four people — none of whom are professional astronauts — and kicking off the first-ever mission to Earth's orbit crewed entirely by tourists.

The launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida was dramatically illuminated with spotlights against the night sky, and when the SpaceX rocket's nine engines fired up just after 8 pm ET it flooded the surrounding wetlands with a blaze of light as it soared into the upper atmosphere and made a dramatic, ghostly light show overhead. After reaching orbital speeds — more than 17,000 miles per hour — the capsule carrying the four passengers detached from the rocket and began to maneuver toward its intended orbit.

The team of amateurs — which include a billionaire who self-funded the mission, a cancer survivor, a community college teacher and a Lockheed Martin employee — strapped into their 13-foot-wide SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Wednesday afternoon before their SpaceX rocket roared to life and blasted the capsule into orbit. The crew will remain aboard their capsule for three days as it flies through orbit before returning for a splashdown landing off the coast of Florida on Saturday.




From left, Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux sit in the Dragon capsule at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sept. 12, 2021 during a dress rehearsal for the upcoming launch.

For the next three days, the passengers will float around the capsule as it circles around the planet once every 90 minutes, traveling at more than 17,500 miles per hour, while the passengers float and take in panoramic views of Earth. To cap off the journey, their spacecraft will dive back into the atmosphere for a fiery re-entry and splash down off the coast of Florida.
Splashdown is currently slated for Saturday, but that could change if weather or other issues prompt an earlier or later return. The capsule is stocked with enough food and supplies for about a week.


A SpaceX rocket carries the first-ever all-tourist crew into orbit.

This is only the third crewed launch from US soil in the past decade.
The crew includes 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, who personally financed the trip; Hayley Arceneux, 29, a childhood cancer survivor and current St. Jude physician assistant; Sian Procotor, 51, a geologist and community college teacher with a PhD; and Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old Lockheed Martin employee and lifelong space fan who claimed his seat through an online raffle.
All four passengers will spend the entire mission aboard the SpaceX capsule, a 13-foot-wide, gumdrop-shaped spacecraft that detaches from SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket after reaching orbital speeds and was originally built to carry NASA astronauts.
And yes, for all three days in space, the passengers will all have to share a special zero-gravity-friendly toilet located near the top of the capsule. No showering will be available, and crew will all have to sleep in the same reclining seats they will ride in during launch.

SpaceX hopes this will be the first of many similar tourism missions, paving the way toward a future when it's as common to take a jaunt to space as it is to hop on an airplane. And the Crew Dragon capsule is SpaceX's first step on the way there. Though it was designed and built under a NASA contract and intended to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station, SpaceX still owns and operates the vehicle and is allowed to sell seats or entire missions to whoever the companies wishes. And with that, SpaceX and its space tourism customers get to design the entire mission — from picking the flight path and training regiment all the way down to choosing whcih foods the passengers will munch on while in oribt.

At a press briefing Tuesday evening, Sembroski, the 42-year-old who got his ticket via a raffle, told reporters that joining the Inspriation4 mission felt like "we're writing the rules, we're breaking a couple of them that NASA used to demand...We get to kind of do things our own way."

This is far from the first time civilians have traveled to space. Though NASA has been averse to signing up non-astronauts for routine missions after the death of Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher who was killed in the Challenger disaster in 1986, a cohort of wealthy thrill-seekers paid their own way to the International Space Station in the 2000s through a company called Space Adventures. American investment management billionaire Dennis Tito became the first to self-fund a trip in 2001 with his eight-day stay on the International Space Station, and six others came after him. They all booked rides alongside professional astronauts on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

The Inspiration4 crew in an altitude chamber training on July 2, 2021, at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina.

This mission, however, has been billed as the beginning of a new era of space travel in which average people, rather than government-selected astronauts and the occasional deep-pocketed adventurer, carry the mantle of space exploration.
But to be clear, we are still a long way from that reality, and this trip is still far from "average." It's a custom, one-off mission financed by a billionaire founder of a payment processing company, and though pricing details have not been made public, it likely cost upward of $200 million. (According to one government report, SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule costs roughly $55 million per seat.)

Jared Isaacman during rollout at Launch Complex 39A on September 11, 2021.

Isaacman — who will become the third billionaire to self-fund a trip space in the past three months and the first to buy a trip to orbit on a SpaceX capsule — is billing this mission as one that he hopes will inspire would-be space adventureres, hence the missions's name, Inspiration4. He's also using it as the centerpiece for a $200 million fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Hospital, $100 million of which he donated personally and the rest he is hoping to raise through online donations and an auction set to begin Thursday. Items will include a ukulele that Sembroski will play in space and 66 pounds of beer hops.

So far, the fundraiser has brought in $31 million of its $100 million goal.

Rolls-Royce’s all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ takes to the skies for the first time

By Glenn Sands September 15, 2021 Featured

We are pleased to announce the completion of the first flight of our all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ aircraft. At 14:56 (BST) the plane took to the skies propelled by its powerful 400kW (500+hp) electric powertrain with the most power-dense battery pack ever assembled for an aircraft. This is another step towards the plane’s world-record attempt and another milestone on the aviation industry’s journey towards decarbonisation.

Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce, said: “The first flight of the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is a great achievement for the ACCEL team and Rolls-Royce. We are focused on producing the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land, and sea, and capture the economic opportunity of the transition to net-zero. This is not only about breaking a world record; the advanced battery and propulsion technology developed for this programme has exciting applications for the Urban Air Mobility market and can help make ‘jet zero’ a reality.”

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “The first flight of Rolls-Royce’s revolutionary Spirit of Innovation aircraft signals a huge step forward in the global transition to cleaner forms of flight. This achievement, and the records we hope will follow, shows the UK remains right at the forefront of aerospace innovation.

“By backing projects like this one, the Government is helping to drive forward the boundary-pushing technologies that will leverage investment and unlock the cleaner, greener aircraft required to end our contribution to climate change.”

The aircraft took off from the UK Ministry of Defence’s Boscombe Down site, which is managed by QinetiQ, and flew for approximately 15 minutes. The site has a long heritage of experimental flights and the first flight marks the beginning of an intense flight-testing phase in which we will be collecting valuable performance data on the aircraft’s electrical power and propulsion system. The ACCEL programme, short for ‘Accelerating the Electrification of Flight’ includes key partners YASA, the electric motor and controller manufacturer, and aviation start-up Electroflight. The ACCEL team has continued to innovate while adhering to the UK Government’s social distancing and other health guidelines.

Half of the project’s funding is provided by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, and Innovate UK. In the run-up to COP26, the ACCEL programme is further evidence of the UK’s position at the forefront of the zero-emission aircraft revolution.

“The first flight of the Spirit of Innovation demonstrates how innovative technology can provide solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges,” said Gary Elliott, CEO, Aerospace Technology Institute. “The ATI is funding projects like ACCEL to help UK develop new capabilities and secure a lead in the technologies that will decarbonise aviation. We congratulate everyone who has worked on the ACCEL project to make the first flight a reality and look forward to the world speed record attempt which will capture the imagination of the public in the year that the UK hosts COP26.

Rolls-Royce is offering our customers a complete electric propulsion system for their platform, whether that is an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) or commuter aircraft. We will be using the technology from the ACCEL project and applying it to products for these exciting new markets. The characteristics that ‘air-taxis’ require from batteries are very similar to what is being developed for the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ so that it can reach speeds of 300+ MPH (480+ KMH) – which we are targeting in our world record attempt. In addition, Rolls-Royce and airframer Tecnam are currently working with Widerøe, the largest regional airline in Scandinavia, to deliver an all-electric passenger aircraft for the commuter market, which is planned to be ready for revenue service in 2026.

In June, we announced our pathway to net-zero carbon emissions – a year on from joining the UN Race to Zero campaign – and the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is one way in which we are helping decarbonise the critical parts of the global economy in which we operate. We are committed to ensuring our new products will be compatible with net-zero operation by 2030 and all our products will be compatible with net-zero by 2050.

MICHIGAN

Massive energy bill becomes law, investing billions between renewable, nuclear sectors

Gov. JB Pritzker signs Senate Bill 2408, a sweeping energy regulation overhaul,
into law at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago Wednesday. (Credit: Blueroomstream.com)

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Unions, environmentalists call it a win for climate, job creation in state

By JERRY NOWICKI
Capitol News Illinois
jnowicki@capitolnewsillinois.com

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker was joined by environmental and social justice activists, union representatives, and lawmakers from both parties Wednesday as he signed into law a sweeping energy regulation overhaul that aims to phase out carbon emissions from the energy sector by 2045 while diversifying the renewable energy workforce.

His signature marked a celebratory end to negotiations that began shortly after he took office in 2019, ended as he seeks a second term, and were feared permanently derailed on numerous occasions in between.

“We've seen the effects of climate change, right here in Illinois, repeatedly in the last two-and-a-half years alone,” Pritzker said at a bill-signing ceremony at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. “A polar vortex, devastating floods, microbursts that destroy buildings, record lake levels, extreme heat and emergency declarations in more than a third of Illinois counties.”

The governor mentioned Hurricane Ida’s destruction to the South and fires at the Boundary Waters wilderness area in Minnesota, describing the energy bill, Senate Bill 2408, as “the most significant step Illinois has taken in a generation toward a reliable, renewable, affordable and clean energy future.”

Specifically, the bill forces fossil fuel plants offline between 2030 and 2045, depending on the source and carbon emissions level, although the Illinois Commerce Commission, Illinois Power Agency and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency would have the authority to alter plant closure timelines in order to ensure energy grid reliability.

It subsidizes three nuclear plants with $694 million paid over a period of five years, and increases subsidies for renewable energy by more than $350 million annually. The latter is the driving piece in an effort to increase state’s renewables output from 7-8 percent of the energy mix currently to 40 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.

Another goal aims for 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050, elevating the importance of the nuclear plants, which will continue to operate as a result of the massive subsidy.

Estimates for the cost of the bill have ranged from $3 to $4 monthly added to ratepayer bills according to the Citizens Utility Board, to $15 according to the senior advocacy group AARP. In terms of percentages, bill sponsor Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Frankfort, said residential electric bills would increase by about 3-4 percent, commercial bills by about 5-6 percent, and industrial bills by about 7-8 percent.

Large business and industry groups such as the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and Illinois Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill due to its effects on businesses. But advocates argue the advent of more renewables will lower residential bills over time, creating savings for ratepayers as the cheaper renewables become more widely available.

While critics have also said the bill could cause grid reliability issues downstate, creating a need to import more expensive carbon-emitting power from neighboring states, supporters pointed to the five-year review by ICC, IPA and IEPA as a safeguard against such a reality.

Much of the hourlong news conference Wednesday was a celebration for the various interest groups and lawmakers that negotiated the bill.

Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, represents multiple nuclear plants and was one of two Republicans to vote for the bill in the Senate.

With the bill, she said, “we ensure that our state's nuclear fleet will stay online and thousands of jobs and the tax revenue that they provide won't be lost. We ensure that our state won't lose the source of over 50 percent of its total energy and nearly 90 percent of the carbon-free energy. We ensure that our state has a better energy path.”

Exelon Corporation, which owns the state’s six nuclear plants, had threatened to close two of them in the coming days and months without the legislative action to make nuclear more competitive and cost-effective compared to fossil fuels and highly subsidized renewables. Five of the six Exelon plants will now receive subsidies.

Pat Devaney, secretary treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO federation of labor unions, said the bill “sets the strongest labor standards in the country” for renewable projects. It mandates project labor agreements for large-scale renewable projects and requires a prevailing wage be paid on non-residential renewable projects.

“This now-enacted piece of legislation proves that we do not have to choose between good jobs and a clean energy future for our state. We can do both,” he said.

Unions and environmentalists had struggled to come to an agreement on the bill, due in large part to the effect on coal plants which are heavily staffed and maintained by union labor. Two municipal coal plants – the City, Water, Light and Power plant in Springfield and Prairie State Energy Campus in the Metro East near St. Louis – were a particular sticking point.

Ultimately, those plants were neutral on the final bill language, which provides they must be carbon-free by 2045 and reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2035. If they cannot do so, they’d have three years to come into compliance or shut down part of their operations.

The signing also garnered attention from Washington, D.C., with U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm praising the measure in a news release.

“Preserving our existing fleet of nuclear reactors, adopting more clean and renewable energy, and incentivizing sales of electric vehicles are all key components of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and essential to reaching our nation’s climate goals,” she said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of Gov. Pritzker and legislators, Illinois will keep a number of nuclear power plants online – preserving thousands of good paying jobs – all while showing just what bold state-level action can do to usher in the clean energy future.”

The electric vehicle portion of the bill aims to put 1 million electric vehicles on Illinois roads by 2030, partially by offering incentives up to 80 percent of the cost of charging stations that were built by labor paid at the prevailing wage, based on a number of factors.

The bill also provides for a $4,000 rebate on an electric vehicle purchase starting in July 2022, which Pritzker said would be available to all Illinoisans, not just those in certain counties, as had been discussed during floor debate of the bill. That could be clarified in follow-up legislation which lawmakers have said will be considered in the fall veto session to clean up portions of the nearly 1,000-page bill.

The law also provides subsidies to convert coal-fired plants to solar or energy storage facilities at about $47 million annually starting in 2024. That provision, according Hastings, will be a boon to downstate by helping “transition shuttered coal plants into state-of-the-art solar energy sites with world-renowned battery storage,” a provision aimed at boosting the reliability of otherwise intermittent resources such as wind and solar.

Equity advocates said the law sets Illinois apart from other states by creating a $180 million annual investment in clean energy workforce diversification programs, as well as training programs aimed at providing the fossil fuel workforce with inroads into renewable energy.

Among many such provisions, the bill directs the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to create the Clean Jobs Workforce Network program, which establishes 13 hubs in different communities across the state that rely on community-based organizations to provide job training and a career pipeline for equity-focused populations.

It also establishes training programs for those recently leaving incarceration, and creates a “Climate Bank” within the Illinois Finance Authority to help fund renewable projects and a “Jobs and Justice Fund” aimed at ensuring “the benefits of the clean energy economy are equitably distributed.”

Delmar Gillus, a social equity advocate with Elevate Illinois, praised the equity provisions as “nation-leading.”

At the bill signing Wednesday, he explained how it would help those who, according to the bill, hail from areas where “residents have historically been excluded from economic opportunities” or have “historically been subject to disproportionate burdens of pollution.”

“It means that Cheryl Johnson, from the People for Community Recovery, has access to seed capital money to build solar in her community,” Gillus said, naming several advocates who worked for the bill’s passage. “It means that Rev. Tony Pierce in Peoria has access to the prime contractor program that will provide underserved contractors the resources they need to become lead contractors that create jobs in their communities. It means that Troyce Polk from here in Chicago will have access to solar incentives so that he can develop projects that he has been planning for years.”

Rep. Ann Williams, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the Clean Energy Jobs Act that provided much of the framework for the ultimate compromise, called Wednesday a “historic day” that marks “just the beginning” of a larger effort to combat climate change. 

“The climate conversation is far from over in Illinois and everywhere else,” she said. “Addressing the climate crisis, which remains an escalating threat to the life and health of each and every one of us, will require ongoing, aggressive and sustained action at all levels of government.”

 

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

 

On the moral and scientific case against Covid booster shots

Wednesday, 15 September 2021, 
Article: Gordon Campbell,  SCOOP N

A year ago, a Covid vaccine was still on humanity’s wish list. Now, we’re basing our economic planning - and the safety of opening our borders – on the ability of the new Covid vaccines to reduce infection, hospitalisation and death. Given this reliance and in the face of an evolving virus, there is a lot of anxiety about how well the vaccines protect us, and for how long. Will we need booster shots, and how soon? And would the theoretical gain from a booster shot programme outweigh the very low incidence of serious side effects, such as the myocarditis risk that has been linked to the mRNA vaccines and the Guillain-Barre syndrome associated with the adenovirus vector vaccines?

There’s another consideration. At this point, how justifiable can it be for countries like New Zealand to amass stockpiles of vaccines – Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Novovaxx- cumulatively sufficient to protect our population several times over, when there are people in other countries who have yet to receive even a single dose of a Covid vaccine. Not even of the AstraZeneca vaccine that the affluent world tends to shun. In these circumstances talk of a third, “booster” shot programme would seem entirely immoral.

That concern can be framed in terms of self-interest. The Delta variant has raised the stakes. In time, are even more dangerous Covid variants likely to arise in a largely unvaccinated Third World ? Possibly. (Delta remember, emerged from a largely unvaccinated context in India.) That’s why – so the argument goes - until we are all safe, none of us are safe.

Science, not Politics

Almost all the above issues were raised in an article published 48 hours ago in the Lancet medical journal. In it, the authors strongly question (a) the need (b) the supportive medical evidence and (c) the morality of a booster shot programme for the main vaccines that have been rolled out to date. As the FiercePharma medical news website has pointed out, two of the authors of the Lancet article are especially worthy of note. Dr. Marion Gruber is the director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s office of Vaccines Research and Review, and Dr. Philip Krause is her deputy director. This would seemingly put them on a collision course with the Biden administration’s decision – reported by Werewolf a fortnight ago - to launch a booster shot programme. Perhaps not coincidentally in the light of that Biden decision, Gruber and Krause both recently announced their plans to retire from theiur current FDA posts.

The full text of the Lancet article is available here. It begins with a reminder that the data on vaccine efficacy – and the length of time that the vaccines offer protection – is still sketchy, is occasionally confounding and is being selectively reported. Some of it is being published in peer-reviewed contexts, and some of it is not. As Werewolf reported, the Boden booster plan assumes the Pfizer vaccine needs a third booster shot eight months after the second vaccination. In reaching that conclusion, the US seems to be jumping ahead of strong supportive evidence. As the Lancet authors put it :

Careful and public scrutiny of the evolving data will be needed to assure that decisions about boosting are informed by reliable science more than by politics. Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations.

Booster shots may be better deployed as a targeted response. Yet even then there is room for doubt about that if a double shot regime fails to offer adequate protection, whether a third shot would do much better:

Boosting could be appropriate for some individuals in whom the primary vaccination, defined here as the original one-dose or two-dose series of each vaccine, might not have induced adequate protection—eg, recipients of vaccines with low efficacy or those who are immunocompromised(although people who did not respond robustly to the primary vaccination might also not respond well to a booster). It is not known whether such immunocompromised individuals would receive more benefit from an additional dose of the same vaccine or of a different vaccine that might complement the primary immune response.

So... Even for the most vulnerable, the science remains inconclusive as to whether (and how to proceed with a booster. Should it be with the same vaccine as previously, or with another? In general, here’s where we are to date:

A consistent finding is that vaccine efficacy is substantially greater against severe disease than against any infection; in addition, vaccination appears to be substantially protective against severe disease from all the main viral variants. Although the efficacy of most vaccines against symptomatic disease is somewhat less for the delta variant than for the alpha variant, there is still high vaccine efficacy against both symptomatic and severe disease due to the delta variant.

In other words, the main vaccines are still proving to be very effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death, as distinct from offering protection against mild bouts of infection. When it comes down to the duration of protection – on which the whole argument for booster shots is based – the evidence does not apparently (as yet) support the calls for a booster shot programme. Here’s possibly why:

Current evidence does not…appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high. Even if humoral immunity appears to wane, reductions in neutralising antibody titre do not necessarily predict reductions in vaccine efficacy over time, and reductions in vaccine efficacy against mild disease do not necessarily predict reductions in the (typically higher) efficacy against severe disease. This effect could be because protection against severe disease is mediated not only by antibody responses, which might be relatively short lived for some vaccines, but also by memory responses and cell-mediated immunity, which are generally longer lived.

In other words, antigens may not be the only relevant marker. This is a key point. We still seem to be in a “so far, so good” phase where the antigen response against the earlier forms of the virus is also still working pretty effectively against the variants as well :

The ability of vaccines that present the antigens of earlier phases of the pandemic (rather than variant-specific antigens) to elicit humoral immune responses [ ie antigens against extracellular pathogens] currently circulating variants indicates that these variants have not yet evolved to the point at which they are likely to escape the memory immune responses induced by those vaccines.

But then comes the cautionary footnote, as the variants interact with the vaccines :

Even without any changes in vaccine efficacy, increasing success in delivering vaccines to large populations will inevitably lead to increasing numbers of breakthrough cases, especially if vaccination leads to behavioural changes in vaccinees.

Who deserves the life jackets?

Even so.. For now, the reliable science, the authors contend, does not support the necessity for booster shots, or the case for prioritising them. This includes their verdict on an August 2021 study in Israel which had reported some benefits from a third “ booster” shot :

A recent report on the experience in Israel during the first 3 weeks of August, 2021, just after booster doses were approved and began to be deployed widely, has suggested efficacy of a third dose (relative to two doses). Mean follow-up was, however, only about 7 person-days (less than expected based on the apparent study design); perhaps more importantly, a very short-term protective effect would not necessarily imply worthwhile long-term benefit.

To repeat: Vaccines are not a failsafe solution. They are more effective against stopping serious illness, reducing the need for hospitalisation and preventing death than they are at stopping infection or transmission. Even when the overall rate of vaccination is fairly high, the unvaccinated remainder will still be the people (a) most at risk of severe illness, and (b) most likely to transmit the virus. Obviously, the Covid variants do not come out of nowhere. They are more likely to evolve from the existing strains. As the Lancet authors suggest, this means that the “booster” vaccines will be more effective if they are devised to match the main circulating variants, much as we do already with flu vaccines.

Finally though, there is the moral argument mentioned early on. If the need for a booster shot programme is unproven and while the potential gains remain inconclusive, surely the more pressing priority has to be to put the vaccines, the funds, and the technology into speeding up the vaccination rollout in other countries. That’s the conclusion reached by the Lancet article:

The vaccines that are currently available are safe, effective, and save lives. The limited supply of these vaccines will save the most lives if made available to people who are at appreciable risk of serious disease and have not yet received any vaccine. Even if some gain can ultimately be obtained from boosting, it will not outweigh the benefits of providing initial protection to the unvaccinated. If vaccines are deployed where they would do the most good, they could hasten the end of the pandemic by inhibiting further evolution of variants. Indeed, WHO has called for a moratorium on boosting until the benefits of primary vaccination have been made available to more people around the world.

Footnote: The WHO criticism of the Biden booster plan includes this striking comment :

On Thursday, the World Health Organization responded that current data don't support the need for boosters. Unvaccinated people in poorer nations should be prioritized for their first shots before those in developed countries get a third dose, the WHO maintains.“We’re planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we’re leaving other people to drown,” Michael Ryan, the emergencies chief at the WHO, told reporters.