Russia's declining space program, 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.
Turmoil Over Ukraine Could Debilitate Russia’s Space Program
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing political and economic fallout from the conflict has ripple effects everywhere, including in space. Here’s my take on the impacts in space, including on Russia’s declining space program, which will probably fall behind the US’s and China’s, and on the mostly US-based commercial space industry, which is playing a significant role in the war, too.
NASA Finally Rolls Out Its Massive SLS Rocket, With Much at Stake
Despite delays and ballooning costs, NASA finally rolled out the Space Launch System, the world’s most powerful rocket, onto the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Engineers are running a battery of tests through early April, preparing for the first major new mission to the moon!
The Situation at Chernobyl Is Deteriorating
Russian forces took over Chernobyl, the site of the infamous nuclear disaster, near the border with Belarus. Chernobyl was disconnected from the electricity grid, the backup generators ran out, monitoring systems stopped transmitting, and fatigued personnel haven’t been allowed to rotate out. While a meltdown isn’t imminent, the situation remains dire.
Mercury Could Be Littered With Diamonds
Turns out Mercury’s a complex world with a tumultuous past, having been bombarded by numerous asteroids billions of years ago, including a big impact that might have blown off its upper layers. Astronomers’ new research also shows how, thanks to the surface being blanketed with graphite, all those collisions probably created tons and tons of diamonds on Mercury.
NASA Bets on an Asteroid Killer, a Venusian Balloon, and More
NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program invests in high-risk, high-reward ideas, some of which could become part of the future of space travel. Their latest awards include a portable magnetic field to ward off space radiation, a backup plan to pulverize a killer asteroid, and a space balloon to deploy in Venus’s atmosphere.
In other writing…
Untangling race from hair
There’s a long history of people viewing and judging others’ hair through racial and racist lenses. Anthropologists have avoided studying the evolutionary roots of hair diversity for that reason, until now, and one scientist tries to untangle hair from that racialized history. Interesting story by Hannah Seo in Sapiens magazine.
Of course we’re living in a simulation
It sounds like a crackpot idea without much convincing evidence, but the simulation hypothesis keeps popping up in pop culture and in statements by influential Silicon Valley types. Here’s an excellent and irreverent essay by my WIRED colleague Jason Kehe.
How did this many deaths become normal?
We’re nearing a million US COVID-19 deaths and more than six million worldwide, while the true death toll is surely far higher. But these numbers seem mind-boggling—so many lives lost, so many families mourning and suffering—so how is it that we’ve come to accept them? Ed Yong dives into these difficult questions in his new piece in The Atlantic, while finding some reasons for hope, too.
Is geometry a language that only humans know?
Does humanity's knowledge of languages—including geometry—make us unique? Since baboons can recognize many of the same kinds of symbols and shapes we can, what does it mean? Interesting story by Siobhan Roberts in the New York Times.
Skiing and Nothingness
As a lifelong skier, especially in the Rockies, I enjoyed this essay by Rachel Kushner in Harper’s magazine, which weaves in a number of writers’ and philosophers’ takes on the wonderful sport, including, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre.
What I’m reading: Draft No. 4, a book by the prolific author and talented New Yorker writer John McPhee, and A Lost Lady, a novella by Willa Cather.
Looking back: One year ago, I wrote this piece in Undark magazine about the social cost of carbon (and it was reprinted in WIRED too), when the Biden administration sought to use this metric in policies and regulations to account for the social and economic costs of climate change inaction.
More about me: I’m the space writer at WIRED magazine, and I’m based in San Diego. 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.