Imagine a post office for space. That is the job of U.S. space company NanoRacks. Just down the street from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, NanoRacks is one of many companies benefitting from the U.S. space program’s support for a broader range of commercial interests.

“There has been a shift in federal funding into more of this commercial space transportation program,” said David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute and professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University in Houston.

“What that has allowed these companies to do is essentially have an anchor client, an anchor customer and then build up their manifest and build up their client base and think of lots of new ways of accessing space for many different purposes,” Alexander added.

Watch: US Space Company Makes History with Client from China

​The space business

For a price, NanoRacks can help almost anyone, anywhere send an experiment or small satellite to the International Space Station in orbit around the Earth. The company made history this summer with a client from China.

“We’re all about democratizing access to space. It’s really important to me that we involve as many nations as possible,” NanoRacks Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Manber said.

The company has helped deliver space experiments and satellites of customers from 30 countries, including academic institutions in Eastern Europe, Peru and Vietnam.

The Beijing Institute of Technology, one of NanoRacks’ latest customers, became the first from China to have an experiment brought onboard the International Space station.

“They’re doing an experiment on DNA and how it mutates in microgravity,” Michael Lewis, chief technology officer of NanoRacks, said.

The research operation in China did not respond to VOA’s request for an interview, but NanoRacks’ Manber said findings from the Chinese experiment could have groundbreaking implications.

“They’ve shown abnormal results when DNA is subjected to space. That could mean, we can’t travel to Mars,” Manber said.

​Getting Chinese experiment to ISS

Getting the Chinese experiment to the International Space Station was complicated because U.S. federal law prohibits NASA from working directly with China because of fears the Chinese could steal U.S. technology.

“First we brought it to the Obama administration. They were very concerned there was no ties to the People’s Liberation Army,” Manber said.

After two years, NanoRacks received approval from U.S. lawmakers.

A statement from NASA said, “NASA complied with all legal requirements to notify the Congress of this activity, and all of the ISS (International Space Station) partners approved the inclusion of the experiment from the Beijing Institute of Technology.”

However, there was one stipulation.

“We had to make sure that there was no technology transfer. No IT connection to the space station,” Lewis said. “We had a creative solution. We said, ‘OK, we’ll make sure that we plug in the experiment, and it’s not even connected data wise,’” he added.

Lewis said the self-contained autonomous Chinese experiment flew to the International Space Station on the SpaceX CRS-11 Dragon spacecraft. The experiment received only power from the space station and spent about three weeks there before returning to Earth.

“On the science side, a lot of us scientists would welcome the partnerships. There’re other issues we don’t think about. Much of the Chinese space program is done through the military and the technology development they have gone through in the last few years, again, have been very successful,” Alexander said.

Aside from national security concerns, scientists and businesses are pushing for more international collaboration in space.

“You can’t do deep space exploration alone. The American government cannot do it without the American private sector, and America cannot do it without international colleagues. It’s too expensive. It’s too longer term,” Alexander said.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump’s comments at a Phoenix rally that he will probably end up terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement brought cheers from the crowd but groans from the state’s top business group.

Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Glenn Hamer posted a video calling any termination a “terrible mistake” within hours of Trump’s remarks Tuesday night. Hamer is in Mexico on a trade mission with a bipartisan delegation of about two dozen state lawmakers.

“It would be a mistake that the administration would feel each and every day,” Hamer said. “And why would that be? The administration has set a noble goal of 3 percent growth. You can’t get there if your start unraveling trade agreements.

“You need good tax policy, you need good regulatory policy and you need good trade policy,” he said.

Trump hints NAFTA is done

Trump said at the campaign-style rally that he believes Mexico and Canada are coming out ahead on the 23-year-old trade agreement. Renegotiations began in recent weeks.

“Personally, I don’t think we can make a deal, because we have been so badly taken advantage of,” Trump said. “I think we’ll end up probably terminating NAFTA at some point, OK? Probably.”

Modernizing agreement

Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain have called for modernizing an agreement they say has brought huge benefits for Arizonans.

Flake has put on a full court press in recent months, launched an effort in May to highlight what he calls the agreement’s “huge boon to Arizona and the U.S.” He’s put out videos featuring people and businesses that have benefited from the trade pact.

On Wednesday, he said he won’t stop that effort.

“I will continue to speak up for the countless Arizonans whose jobs and businesses rely on the billions of dollars that NAFTA injects into our state’s economy,” Flake said in a statement.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

SpaceX has unveiled a sleek white spacesuit for astronauts on its crewed flights coming up next year.

Chief executive Elon Musk made the big reveal via Instagram on Wednesday. He says it’s not him in the new suit, rather a SpaceX engineer.

SpaceX is developing a crew version of its Dragon cargo capsule for NASA astronauts. Boeing is also working to get U.S. astronauts flying again from home soil. Boeing is going blue for spacesuits for its Starliner capsules.

U.S. astronauts last rocketed away from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2011. They’ve since been riding Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station.

Musk says the new SpaceX suit has been tested on Earth — and works. He says it was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function.
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From: MeNeedIt

Food alone cannot solve the world’s malnutrition crises but only three countries are looking beyond hunger to the other major driver, according to a global study released Thursday.

Water, sanitation and hygiene, usually treated by governments and NGOs as a separate policy area from food and nutrition, make up the second leading cause of stunted growth in children, after underweight births, said the report.

But only Cambodia, Niger, and Zimbabwe among the 10 countries covered by the report are linking their response to malnutrition and water by bringing together the responsible agencies, according to charity WaterAid.

“Improving child health is a long-term issue. It’s not as simple as giving food and that improves malnutrition — right?” Dan Jones of WaterAid told Reuters.

Jones said governments that treat food and water separately cannot prevent malnutrition. Instead, they must tackle the poor sanitation that causes malnutrition, via infection and disease.

In 2016, 155 million children younger than five were stunted due to a lack of nutrition, according to the United Nations World Health Organization.

Diseases caused by dirty water and lack of sanitation such as gut infections, intestinal worms, and diarrhea prevent young bodies from absorbing the nutrients needed for growth, according to WaterAid, which produced the report with charities Action Against Hunger and SHARE.

Jones said malnutrition can leave children with invisible cognitive, emotional and physical damage.

Yet the effects are clear, and span all areas of development, from economic growth to schooling, said Jones.

“If they have clean water … girls, when they grow up to be mothers, are more likely to give birth to healthy children, and to be able to help them to grow and develop and provide them with clean water and food — and those children can go to school and concentrate in school,” said Jones.

Jones singled out Cambodia for linking up its response.

One in three Cambodian children younger than five is stunted, but Prime Minister Hun Sen has brought together the ministries responsible for nutrition, health, agriculture, and water and sanitation to create a joint response.

“It sounds very obvious, but those ministers really talking to each other can make a huge difference,” Jones said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Starbucks coffee shops recently installed the fastest Wi-Fi we regular folks can enjoy. It’s a blazing 9 megabits per second. But researchers in the Netherlands have some Wi-Fi that leaves that in the dust. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Oil is the main revenue source in Alaska. This year, the trans-Alaska pipeline celebrated 40 years of service. From Alaska, VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya looks at the history of North America’s largest oil field.
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From: MeNeedIt

Congressional Republicans, seeking to address the complaints of small businesses, are floating changes to their controversial proposal to eliminate business tax deductions for debt interest payments, business lobbyists said Tuesday.

A top U.S. Republican on tax policy acknowledged that modifications are in the works but did not provide details.

The debt interest proposal, long seen by Republican policymakers as necessary to help drive economic growth, is backed by large companies with ready access to equity financing that they could substitute for debt if eliminating the interest deduction made issuing debt too costly. Debt-dependent small-business owners, farmers and ranchers don’t have that luxury.

As Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration slog ahead with a push to overhaul the U.S. tax code, a key task is figuring out how to resolve conflicting groups’ priorities, with business debt interest a clear example.

The tax code has not been overhauled since 1986, partly because reconciling these conflicts can be so difficult.

“We’ve asked businesses large and small to look at that, test-drive it and give us back their feedback,” House of Representatives tax committee Chairman Kevin Brady said in remarks at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday, without offering specifics about the modified proposal.

His staff at the committee had no comment.

Businesses lobbyists said the panel’s lawmakers have quietly agreed to focus on exemptions for small businesses, including farmers and ranchers, and an exemption for land.

Interest deduction

Lawmakers have also discussed a possible partial elimination of the interest deduction, with an exemption for existing debt, or eliminating the deduction only for businesses deemed to have an excessive amount of debt, according to lobbyists.

Brady is one of the “Big Six” negotiators from Congress and the Trump administration who are guiding the tax reform debate.

At the Louisville event, he described rolling back the business interest deduction as a “trade-off” for another proposal to accelerate expensing, which would allow businesses to write off investments in plants and equipment more quickly.

He said net interest deduction is one of a number of tax breaks that lawmakers are looking to eliminate to help pay for lower business tax rates. Republicans say tax cuts will help drive annual U.S. economic growth above the 3 percent mark.

Independent analysts say that eliminating the interest deduction would raise more than $1 trillion in federal revenues.

Republicans want to cut the corporate income tax rate to 20-25 percent from 35 percent. But they have been hard-pressed to pay for such a cut since jettisoning a border-adjusted import tax that would have raised more than $1 trillion.
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From: MeNeedIt

Engineers at a lab in Florida have been working quietly for 2½ years on building one of the most powerful magnets in the world.

And on Monday, they succeeded. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory — whose main location is housed at Florida State University — met its goal and reclaimed its status as home to the world’s strongest resistive magnet.

They called it “Project 11,” a nod to the comedy film “This is Spinal Tap,” about a fictional heavy metal band whose guitarist boasts an amplifier whose volume goes up to 11, not just 10.

Lab officials said they tested a 41.4-tesla magnet, which is roughly 20 times the strength of a magnet used in medical imaging machines and vastly stronger than the ones that get stuck to the door of a household refrigerator. The Earth’s magnetic field, by comparison, is one-twenty thousandth (.00005) of a tesla. A tesla is a measure of magnetic field strength.

The new magnet, which cost $3.5 million to build, beat the old mark for resistive magnets, which was held by a 38.5-tesla magnet in China. The National MagLab had previously held the record for 19 years.

Greg Boebinger, the lab’s director, said the loss of the record prompted officials to tell engineers, “Go ahead and make the thing bigger, go ahead and use more power, just go full volume to 11 and see what you can do.”

Continuous operation

Resistive magnets are a type of electromagnet used for research. They differ from pulsed magnets, which can reach a higher Tesla but can sustain that power for only a fraction of a second. Resistive magnets can run continuously. Superconducting magnets use less power but tap out at a lower field strength. Hybrid magnets combine superconducting and resistive elements and can reach even higher fields. The National MagLab has the world’s strongest hybrid magnet, which reaches 45 tesla.

Researchers say they can use these powerful magnets to answer many questions, such as: What kinds of materials will work best in quantum computers? How does a potential Alzheimer’s drug change the brain? What molecules make up a sample of crude oil — and will it be worth drilling for?

The new record-setting magnet is powerful enough that lab officials use non-magnetic tools, but it’s not as powerful as some imagine.

“Local people think we change the weather,” said Boebinger, who said he gets asked about Magneto all the time. “We don’t even change the magnetic field outside our building.”

Instead, the magnetic field created by the new magnet will be used by researchers and scientists from around the world as a way to look at and study various types of materials and perhaps make breakthroughs in medicine, engineering and energy.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Trump administration has rejected a coal industry push to win a rarely used emergency order protecting coal-fired power plants, a decision contrary to what one coal executive said the president personally promised him.

The Energy Department says it considered issuing the order sought by companies seeking relief for plants it says are overburdened by environmental regulations and market stresses. But the department ultimately ruled it was unnecessary, and the White House agreed, a spokeswoman said.

The decision is a rare example of friction between the beleaguered coal industry and the president who has vowed to save it. It also highlights a pattern emerging as the administration crafts policy: The president’s bold declarations — both public and private — are not always carried through to implementation.

President Donald Trump committed to the measure in private conversations with executives from Murray Energy Corp. and FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. after public events in July and early August, according to letters to the White House from Murray Energy and its chief executive, Robert Murray. In the letters, obtained by The Associated Press, Murray said failing to act would cause thousands of coal miners to be laid off and put the pensions of thousands more in jeopardy. One of Murray’s letters said Trump agreed and told Energy Secretary Rick Perry, “I want this done” in Murray’s presence.

The White House declined to comment on Murray’s assertion. A spokesman for Murray Energy, Gary Broadbent, also declined to comment on the letters.

Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said the agency was sympathetic to the coal industry’s plight.

“We look at the facts of each issue and consider the authorities we have to address them, but with respect to this particular case at this particular time, the White House and the Department of Energy are in agreement that the evidence does not warrant the use of this emergency authority,” Hynes said in a statement Sunday.

The aid Murray sought from Trump involves invoking a little-known section of the U.S. Federal Power Act that allows the Energy Department to temporarily intervene when the nation’s electricity supply is threatened by an emergency, such as war or natural disaster. Among other measures, it temporarily exempts power plants from obeying environmental laws. In the past, the authority has been used sparingly, such as during the California energy crisis in 2000 and following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration never used it. The Trump administration has used it twice in seven months in narrow instances.

Murray’s company is seeking a two-year moratorium on closures of coal-fired power plants, which would be an unprecedented federal intervention in the nation’s energy markets. The company said invoking the provision under the Power Act was “the only viable mechanism” to protect the reliability of the nation’s power supply.

Murray told the White House that his key customer, Ohio-based electricity company FirstEnergy Solutions, was at immediate risk of bankruptcy. Without FirstEnergy’s plants burning his coal, Murray said his own company would be forced into “immediate bankruptcy,” triggering the layoffs of more than 6,500 miners. FirstEnergy acknowledged to the AP that bankruptcy of its power-generation business was a possibility.

Murray urged Trump to use the provision in the Federal Power Act to halt further coal plant closures by declaring an emergency in the electric power grid.

After a conversation with Trump at a July 25 political rally in Youngstown, Ohio, Murray wrote, the president told Perry three times, “I want this done.” Trump also directed the emergency order be given during an Aug. 3 conversation in Huntington, West Virginia, he said.

“As stated, disastrous consequences for President Trump, our electric power grid reliability, and tens of thousands of coal miners will result if this is not immediately done,” he wrote.

Murray’s claims raise the possibility that Trump was warned against the move by his advisers — some of whom are known to be more cautious — or that he simply made assurances to Murray to avoid immediate confrontation. The people who worked on the decision most directly were Perry, Michael Catanzaro, who works under National Economic Council director Gary Cohn as the top White House energy adviser, and Perry’s chief of staff, Brian McCormack, U.S. officials told the AP. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal policy considerations by name.

Murray and his company have been impassioned supporters of Trump, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign and inauguration, hosting fundraisers and embracing him as the rescuer of the Appalachian coal industry. The friendliness has been mutual: When Trump repealed an Obama administration regulation barring coal companies from dumping mine waste in streams, Murray and his sons were invited for the signing.

The Energy Department has already informed Murray it will not invoke the law, an official with knowledge of the decision told the AP.

Coal has become an increasingly unattractive fuel for U.S. electricity companies, which have been retiring old boilers at a record pace. At least two dozen big coal-fired plants are scheduled to shut down in coming months as utilities transition to new steam turbines fueled by cleaner-burning natural gas made more abundant in recent years by new drilling technologies.

Trump, who rejects the consensus of scientists that burning fossil fuels is causing global warming, has made reversing the coal industry’s decline a cornerstone of his administration’s energy and environmental policies. Since taking office, he announced that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, and he has moved to block or delay Obama-era regulations seeking to limit carbon emissions.

Other coal executives have urged similar government intervention to save their businesses. In a speech last week, the CEO of Peabody Energy Corp., the nation’s largest coal producer, also said a two-year moratorium on coal-plant closures was needed.

Perry has already twice invoked the Federal Power Act in narrow ways at the request of utilities seeking to keep old coal-burning plants online past their planned retirement dates. In both cases, the utilities were allowed to continue operations at plants amid concerns that shutting them down could lead to regional shortages in electricity.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ford Motor Co. and a Chinese automaker said Tuesday they are looking into setting up a joint venture to develop and manufacture electric cars in China.

Ford’s potential venture with Anhui Zotye Automobile Co. adds to the global auto industry’s rising activity in electric vehicles for China, which passed the United States last year as the biggest market for them.

Chinese planners who see electrics as a promising industry and a way to clean up smog-choked cities are pushing automakers to speed up development.

Ford previously said it plans to offer electric versions of 70 percent of its models in China by 2025.

Privately owned Zotye Auto, headquartered in the eastern city of Huangshan, produces its own electric vehicles and said sales in the first seven months of this year rose 56 percent over the same period of 2016 to 16,000.

“This presents us with an exciting opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths,” Zotye chairman Jin Zheyong said in a joint statement.

Sales of pure-electric and gasoline-electric hybrids in China rose 50 percent last year over 2015 to 336,000 vehicles, or 40 percent of global demand. U.S. sales totaled 159,620.

Beijing has supported sales with subsidies and a planned quota system that would require automakers to produce electric cars or buy credits from companies that do.

Ford said it expects China’s market for all-electrics and hybrids to grow to annual sales of 6 million by 2025.

Volvo Cars announced plans this year to make electric cars in China for global sale starting in 2019. General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG, Nissan Motor Co. and others also have announced plans to make electric vehicles in China.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Authorities in Japan are trying to decide what to do with the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of contaminated water being stored at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went into meltdown following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

It is estimated the huge water storage tanks surrounding the site contain more than 750,000 tons of water contaminated with tritium, considered one of the less harmful radioactive isotopes.

Watch: Japan Considers Release of Fukushima Tritium-Contaminated Water Into Pacific

Local media reported last month that plant owner TEPCO planned to release the water into the Pacific Ocean, prompting an outcry from environmental groups and local fishermen. The general manager of TEPCO’s nuclear division, Takahiro Kimoto, says the company has yet to make a decision.

“One option is to release the tritium-contaminated water into the ocean. However, there are other options such as vaporizing it, but we have not decided yet which option to take to dispose of the water. Since there may be an influence on the environment, and because there have been harmful rumors about what effects it may have on people and the environment, we are still consulting with various stakeholders before finally deciding on the solution,” Kimoto told VOA in an interview.

Tritium releases

TEPCO points out all nuclear power plants around the world release tritium into the environment.

Tritium is considered one of the less dangerous radioactive isotopes, said leading marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. He has been monitoring the effects of the Fukushima disaster on the Pacific Ocean.

“There are natural sources up in cosmic rays interacting in the atmosphere. And the biggest source by far was the weapons testing in the 1960s. So you’re talking about adding to what’s already there. If it’s all released on one day, that’s a very different scenario for the oceans than if it’s released sequentially over the course of several years.”

A purification system called ALPS is designed to remove other, more harmful isotopes from the contaminated water. Buesseler said more oversight is needed.

“Independently, I want to see for each tank, what are the levels not only of the tritium, which dominates by far the radioactivity, but all those minor elements, cesium, strontium, that are still there to some degree.”

Nuclear fuel removal

Longer-term, Japanese authorities face the task of trying to remove the nuclear fuel. Robots have recorded footage of what appear to be melted fuel rods inside reactor 3, but in other reactors soaring levels of radioactivity have crippled the robots within minutes.

“Around the fall of this year, we are hoping to reveal a big plan on our future policy, and the method we will use to remove this fuel,” said TEPCO’s Kimoto.

The Japanese government estimates the total cleanup cost, including compensation, decommissioning and decontamination, will reach $190 billion in a process likely to take at least 40 years.
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From: MeNeedIt

A rare total solar eclipse began in the Western state of Oregon Monday, as millions of people across the U.S. are watching the phenomenon from the Pacific to the Atlantic for the first time in 99 years.

The temperature in Oregon dropped significantly as the moon moved to cover the sun.

An estimated 200 million people live within a day’s drive of Monday’s path of totality, which starts from Oregon’s Pacific Coast, across the U.S. heartland, all the way to South Carolina’s Atlantic Coast.

WATCH: Washington, D.C. eclipse watchers on watching big event

Cities, towns and parks across the path have been prepared for an influx of people with telescopes, cameras and protective glasses to watch what NASA said it expects to be the most watched and documented eclipse in history.

More than 100,000 people gathered in Madras, a town in Oregon with a population of 7,000 and one of the first places that will witness the celestial event. According to the Los Angeles Times, the National Guard had to be called in to assist with traffic jams in Madras because so many people wanted to view the eclipse there.

The total eclipse will last longest near Carbondale, Illinois at 2 minutes and 44 seconds.

“It’s chilling, it’s cool, it’s a life experience,” Gregg Toland, who traveled from Palatine, Illinois to the airport in Perryville Missouri to see the eclipse in the path of totality through his telescope, told VOA.

“It’s something you’ll never forget,” he said.

The first city to enter totality will be Lincoln Beach, Oregon, at 10:16 a.m. Pacific time and the last to exit the totality will be Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:48 p.m. EDT.

A total solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun and completely blots out the sun’s light, except for the corona of its outer atmosphere.

From Earth, the moon will appear to be the same size as the sun. This is possible because while the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun in diameter, it is also 400 times closer to Earth than the sun. When the two line up exactly, the skies go dark.

VOA’s Kane Farabaugh and Carolyn Presutti contributed to this report.
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From: MeNeedIt