Not just a seasonal gig Frankly, what’s most interesting about the paper isn’t those three fundamental categories, but the personalized glimpses it gives of the people who choose to become professional Santas. While a few Santas might make six figures, most do not, and may even lose money being Santa—they do it anyway for the ..
Tag : Science
For the second time this month, a Chinese rocket designed for reuse successfully soared into low-Earth orbit on its first flight Monday, defying the questionable odds that burden the debuts of new launch vehicles. The first Long March 12A rocket, roughly the same height and diameter of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, lifted off from the ..
The retirement of the Atlas V and Delta IV led to a period of downsizing for United Launch Alliance, with layoffs and facility closures in Florida, California, Alabama, Colorado, and Texas. In a further sign of ULA’s troubles, SpaceX won a majority of US military launch contracts for the first time last year. Bruno, 64, ..
On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what ..
Some models suggest that clouds (and the convection that gives rise to them) will clump together more with global warming — and produce more rainfall extremes that often far exceed what theory predicts. But other simulations suggest that clouds will congregate less. “There seems to be still possibly a range of answers,” says Allison Wing, ..
“Ants reduce per-worker investment in one of the most nutritionally expensive tissues for the good of the collective,” Matte explains. “They’re shifting from self-investment toward a distributed workforce.” Power of the collective The researchers think the pattern they observed in ants reflects a more universal trend in the evolution of societal complexity. The transition from ..
The year-end emergency that does exist in Washington state has been caused by record-setting rainfall and widespread flooding. (President Donald Trump has declared a federal emergency and authorized disaster assistance.) Thousands of people have been displaced and damage to major highways will take months to repair. “It is so ironic, when we have a real ..
The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox. Sign Me Up! SpaceX warns of dangerous Chinese launch. China’s recent deployment of nine satellites occurred dangerously close to a ..
CubeSats have been a ubiquitous part of the satellite industry for nearly a quarter-century. They are based on a cube-shaped design, measuring about 10 centimeters per side, but can be scaled from a single cube “unit” to three, six, 12, or more, depending on mission requirements. The CubeSat standard has become a popular choice for ..
It probably sucked to be a Roman soldier guarding Hadrian’s Wall circa the third century CE. W.H. Auden imagined the likely harsh conditions in his poem “Roman Wall Blues,” in which a soldier laments enduring wet wind and rain with “lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.” We can now add chronic ..