How Science Fiction Changed Space Exploration, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from WIRED space writer Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
How Sci-Fi Changed Who Gets to Go to Space
In four years, NASA plans to send the first woman and the first person of color to land on the moon—a half century since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot there. In this WIRED piece, I argue that the diversifying of the space program follows science fiction, where Star Trek, The Expanse, Foundation and other series have provided a vision of a more inclusive space exploration, much different than the Buck Rogers era.
A New 3,200-Megapixel Camera Has Astronomers Salivating
Scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have nearly finished assembling the Vera Rubin Observatory’s camera, and I had the privilege of seeing it in person. This instrument will allow the upcoming telescope in northern Chile to map out 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars in the Milky Way. This was my most popular story over the past month.
China Is Now a Major Space Power
The Chinese space program successfully launched and docked its third and final module of the new space station, called Tiangong. That officially makes China a major space power, like the US and Russia. But that role comes with responsibility, and its troubling seeing the rocket that lofted that module come plummeting down through the atmosphere out of control. Fortunately, it didn’t crash in a populated area.
Protest is Risky at Egypt’s Climate Talks. That Won’t Stop Activists
Egyptian activists have been bravely protesting human rights abuses and mediocre climate policies at the COP27 climate summit, despite repression by the government’s security forces. Here’s my take on the situation, with my colleague Greg Barber contributing on-the-ground reporting from Sharm el-Sheikh.
In other writing…
For protesting Iranians and the Iranian diaspora, the struggle continues
Nearly two months after Iran’s so-called morality police killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, the protest movement continues. I like this account by Nilo Tabrizy in The Paris Review of protesters in Tehran, and I empathize with this piece by Neda Toloui-Semnani in New York Magazine about how tough it is for the Iranian diaspora right now. This London Review of Books piece by Azadeh Moaveni is well written, but many have criticized it, especially for downplaying the brutal repression by the Iranian government. I agree with those criticisms, but I also agree with Kourosh Ziabari, who argues in The National Interest that infighting among the diaspora isn’t helping.
Tuna
I don’t know much about tuna, and I honestly never really thought about them before. But this essay in Granta magazine by Katherine Rundell brings them alive in a way Hemingway might have appreciated. This is an excerpt from her book, The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasures.
A touch of moss
I hadn’t thought much of moss before either, but this evocative essay in Aeon magazine by historian of science Nikita Arora, who encourages us to reimagine how we interact with the national world around us.
Are trees talking underground?
A narrative has emerged among some scientists and journalists that there’s a “wood-wide web,” with trees in forests, fungi, and organisms in the vicinity somehow communicate with each other. But there’s little evidence about that, and the jury’s still out. I like this New York Times story by Gabe Popkin that investigates the situation.
The big fight over 403 very small wasps
We seem to be witnessing an “insect apocalypse,” and the suffering species include rare wasps. So scientists are rushing to catalog and study them, before they disappear from Earth. This is a fascinating feature story in WIRED by Brooke Jarvis.
What I’m reading: Scattered All Over the Earth, a novel by Yoko Tawada.
Looking back: One year ago, I published this piece in Aeon magazine, “Decolonizing the Cosmos,” and I’m proud to announce that it won the San Diego Press Club’s award in the essay/opinion category. And my WIRED story, “The Black Carbon Cost of Rocket Launches,” won their magazine award in the environment category.
More about me: I’m the space writer at WIRED magazine, and I’ve just moved from San Diego to the Bay Area. I used to be a freelance writer and journalist, and before that, an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter @raminskibba. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.