Shannon Garcia

New evidence that some supernovae may be a “double detonation”

astronomy, astrophysics, Science, supernova, Type Ia supernova, white dwarf / Shannon Garcia / July 3, 2025

Type Ia supernovae are critical tools in astronomy, since they all appear to explode with the same intensity, allowing us to use their brightness as a measure of distance. The distance measures they’ve given us have been critical to tracking the expansion of the Universe, which led to the recognition that there’s some sort of dark energy hastening the Universe’s expansion. Yet there are ongoing arguments over exactly how these events are triggered.

There’s widespread agreement that type Ia supernovae are the explosions of white dwarf stars. Normally, these stars are composed primarily of moderately heavy elements like carbon and oxygen, and lack the mass to trigger additional fusion. But if some additional material is added, the white dwarf can reach a critical mass and reignite a runaway fusion reaction, blowing the star apart. But the source of the additional mass has been somewhat controversial.

But there’s an additional hypothesis that doesn’t require as much mass: a relatively small explosion on a white dwarf’s surface can compress the interior enough to restart fusion in stars that haven’t yet reached a critical mass. Now, observations of the remains of a supernova provide some evidence of the existence of these so-called “double detonation” supernovae.

Deconstructing white dwarfs

White dwarfs are the remains of stars with a similar mass to our Sun. After having gone through periods during which hydrogen and helium were fused, these tend to end up as carbon and oxygen-rich embers: hot due to their history, but incapable of reaching the densities needed to fuse these elements. Left on their own, these stellar remnants will gradually cool.

But many stars are not left on their own; they exist in binary systems with a companion, or even larger systems. These companions can provide the material needed to boost white dwarfs to the masses that can restart fusion. There are two potential pathways for this to happen. Many stars go through periods where they are so large that their gravitational pull is barely enough to hold on to their outer layers. If the white dwarf orbits closely enough, it can pull in material from the other star, boosting its mass until it passes a critical threshold, at which point fusion can restart.

New evidence that some supernovae may be a “double detonation” Read More »

From Le Mans to Driven—where does F1: The Movie rank?

Cars, culture, F1 the movie, movie review / Shannon Garcia / July 3, 2025

How well does the world of F1 translate into the tropes of a sporting movie?

Damson Idris (left) and Brad Pitt (right) star in F1 The Movie, directed by Joseph Kozinski. Credit: Apple

It may not have escaped your attention that there’s a new film about motorsport called F1: The Movie. It’s a return-to-racing story with elements you’ll have seen before, just maybe with other sports. A driver has been looking to slay his personal demons. There’s a wise veteran, an impatient rookie, and an underdog team with its back to the wall. Except this time, the backdrop is the multicolored circus of Formula 1, seen close up at 200 mph.

Backed by Apple and made by people responsible for high-energy productions like the recent Top Gun: Maverick, the film takes advantage of some of those same ingredients. For one, the filmmakers got an all-access pass from the powers that be, filming on the actual Formula 1 grid during 2023 and some of 2024. Having seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton as a producer helped with that. And the filmmakers were able to capture remarkable footage in the process thanks to powerful cameras that are now much smaller than the versions they strapped to some US Navy fighter jets.

The movie comes with a prebuilt audience, one that’s grown enormously in recent years. The Drive to Survive effect is real: Motorsport, particularly F1, hasn’t been this popular in decades. More and more young people follow the sport, and it’s not just among the guys, either.

NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - JULY 04: The cars of the upcoming F1 based movie are seen driving on track during previews ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain at Silverstone Circuit on July 04, 2024 in Northampton, England. — Spot the camera car. Credit: Joe Portlock – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

I’m not a new fan, but I only started really paying attention to the series at the end of 1993. I’d have reviewed the film sooner, but the screenings occurred while I was on vacation, and the 24-hour races on consecutive weekends at the Nurburgring in Germany and Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium were not to be missed.

The setup of F1 sees Sonny Hayes (played by Brad Pitt) brought back to the world of F1 30 years after a crash ended his rookie season. We find Hayes racing in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, filmed at the actual race last year. He’s lured back to F1 by his old friend, who now owns APXGP, in a Hail Mary attempt to score some points before the end of the half-completed season, thus saving the team.

An F1 driver’s most immediate rival is always their teammate—they both have to drive the same car, after all, so comparisons are immediate. (Pedants: please no long arguments about different setups or upgrades—you know what I mean.) And thus Hayes’ rival is Joshua Pearce (played by Damson Idris), a young driver in his first season who sees no reason to trust a driver whose arrival in his team mid-season seems more like a practical joke. That’s as much of the plot as I’ll reveal, but the writing is so formulaic that you can probably construct the rest for yourself quite easily.

What works, what doesn’t?

That’s not to say it’s a bad film. Yes, it requires some suspension of disbelief if you know enough about racing, but the issues are pretty small. The racing scenarios seem outlandish, but all of them have happened at one time or another—just perhaps not all to one team in nine races. Mostly, it’s a very close look at some parts of the sport most of us would never see—an actual F1 wind tunnel test filmed at Williams’ facility, which required assurances to the sport that this wasn’t just a way for that team to gain some more wind tunnel hours. McLaren’s impressive MTC shows up, too, though I’m quite sure you can’t park either a car or a bike by that particular door and expect to find either there when you return.

Brad Pitt, an actor playing Sonny Hayes, and Idris Damson, a driver for the fictional APX GP team in the Apex F1 movie by Apple Studios and Bruckheimer Films, pose for a portrait during the F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on December 5 to 8, 2024. — Pitt and Idris filming on-track at the Yas Marina circuit during the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Credit: Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images

That’s the level of detail you can expect to trip you up. You may notice that a sequence that’s supposed to be in Spain or Belgium looks a little too much like Brands Hatch, an hour outside of London. Or that a seat fitting should take at least some amount of time.

Among the film’s biggest successes is what we don’t see. The cars don’t have an endless sequence of gears for the driver to punch their way through. No one suddenly remembers to accelerate all the way halfway down the straight rather than out of the apex like in real life. No race cars are driven out of tracks into high-speed pursuits, and no drivers have conversations with their rivals mid-race at 8,000 rpm.

All of that qualifies F1 for a podium position among racing movies. Neither the recent Rush nor Ford v Ferrari could resist some of those dumber tropes, and even the most desperate racing junkie will admit that neither Driven nor Michel Vaillant are really worth the time it takes to watch them unless the intention is to Statler-and-Waldorf your way through it with a friend.

And of course, there’s Days of Thunder, which was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who also produced F1. The NASCAR movie loses what was third place in my personal pantheon of racing movies to the carbon-fiber newcomer. There’s little distance between them; I’m just much more interested in F1 than stock cars.

Only 3rd place?

The only problem is that all this has been done before. The last time F1 was this big, the same combination of fast cars and good-looking drivers captured Hollywood’s attention just the same. John Frankenheimer was the man who got to make the movie, and 1966’s Grand Prix broke new ground at the time, starring James Garner, who I’m told turned out to be rather fast behind the wheel in filming. Its story is sentimental, and some of the acting is a little wooden, but it’s visually exciting and features spectacular footage of the 1966 F1 season.

James Garner and Toshiro Mifune starred in Grand Prix. FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images

The fact that Grand Prix broke so much more new ground than F1 means that Frankenheimer’s film finishes just ahead for me. But neither can quite supplant the magic of Le Mans, the 1971 film starring Steve McQueen, which was recently remastered on Blu-ray.

McQueen might have been one of the world’s biggest movie stars at the time, but he mostly wanted to be a racing driver. He wasn’t bad at it, either—in 1970, he almost won the 12 hours of Sebring in a Porsche 908 despite having broken his foot in six places a couple of weeks earlier. The actor was originally up for Garner’s role in Grand Prix and never gave up on a motorsports movie, capitalizing on his success in the late 1960s to get his own project underway.

Objectively, as a movie, Le Mans can be considered a failure. There is no dialogue for the first half-hour, just the occasional narration from a trackside announcer that contextualizes the scale of the annual 24-hour race. There was no script for months during filming, and the film went through directors John Sturges and Alan Trustman before Lee H. Katzin finished the job.

Even so, there was an assortment of many of the actual race cars that competed in the 1970 race at Le Mans. And the town had graciously allowed McQueen’s production company to close some of the roads used by the track for more filming. The cars were mostly piloted by the elite racing drivers of the time, but McQueen drove his own character’s Porsche 917K—at racing speeds but with heavy film cameras rigged onto it—as did Siegfried Rauch in the Ferrari 512.

This is what happens when you let a frustrated racing driver make a movie. CBS via Getty Images

Other footage had been shot in the actual 1970 race, both trackside and onboard, thanks to the same Porsche 908 that McQueen drove earlier that year in Florida, which was used as a camera car. At times, it’s more like a documentary. But only at times. With Le Mans, there was no CGI, and no other tracks were standing in for filming.

F1 can’t quite make that claim. At times, the cars seemed to be at slightly different scales on track—a product of Pitt and Idris being filmed driving slightly smaller, slightly slower F2 cars. Perhaps my biggest issue was with some of the unsporting behavior you see on screen. Those antics work better in a comedy like Major League; in a serious drama, it feels a little like disrepute.

None of that will stop me watching F1 again, however.

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

From Le Mans to Driven—where does F1: The Movie rank? Read More »

Paramount accused of bribery as it settles Trump lawsuit for $16 million

cbs 60 minutes, kamala harris interview, paramount, Policy, Trump / Shannon Garcia / July 2, 2025

Payout to future presidential library

Paramount told us that the settlement terms were proposed by a mediator and that it will pay $16 million, including plaintiffs’ fees and costs. That amount, minus the fees and costs, will be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, Paramount said. Trump’s complaint sought at least $20 billion in damages.

Paramount also said that “no amount will be paid directly or indirectly to President Trump or Rep. Jackson personally” and that the settlement will release Paramount from “all claims regarding any CBS reporting through the date of the settlement, including the Texas action and the threatened defamation action.”

Warren’s statement said the “settlement exposes a glaring need for rules to restrict donations to sitting presidents’ libraries,” and that she will “introduce new legislation to rein in corruption through presidential library donations. The Trump administration’s level of sheer corruption is appalling and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism.”

Trump previously obtained settlements from ABC, Meta, and X Corp.

Paramount said the settlement “does not include a statement of apology or regret.” It “agreed that in the future, 60 Minutes will release transcripts of interviews with eligible US presidential candidates after such interviews have aired, subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”

FCC’s news distortion investigation

Trump and Paramount previously told the court that they were in advanced settlement negotiations and are scheduled to file a joint status report on Thursday.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has been probing CBS over the Harris interview and holding up Paramount’s merger with Skydance. Carr revived a complaint that was previously dismissed by the FCC and which alleges that CBS intentionally distorted the news by airing two different answers given by Harris to the same question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Paramount accused of bribery as it settles Trump lawsuit for $16 million Read More »

Medical groups warn Senate budget bill will create dystopian health care system

aap, ama, health, health care, hospitals, medicaid / Shannon Garcia / July 2, 2025

Medical organizations are blasting the Senate’s budget bill in the wake of its narrow passage Tuesday, warning of the dystopian health care system that will arise from the $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other federal health programs if it is passed into law. The bill has moved back to the House for a vote on the Senate’s changes.

Over the weekend, an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 11.8 million people would lose their health insurance over the next decade due to the cuts to Medicaid and other programs. Those cuts, which are deeper than the House’s version of the bill, were maintained in the Senate’s final version of the bill after amendments, with few concessions.

Organizations representing physicians, pediatricians, medical schools, and hospitals were quick to highlight the damage the proposal could cause.

The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Susan Kressly, released a stark statement saying the legislation “will harm the health of children, families, and communities.” The cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will mean that “many children will not have healthy food to eat. When they are sick, they will not have health insurance to cover their medical bills—which means some children will simply forgo essential health care.” And the cuts are so deep that they will also have “devastating consequences that reach far beyond even those who rely on the program,” Kressly added.

Medical groups warn Senate budget bill will create dystopian health care system Read More »

Drug cartel hacked FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants, report says

Biz & IT, cartel, fbi, mexico, Security / Shannon Garcia / July 1, 2025

The Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico hacked the phone of an FBI official investigating kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as part of a surveillance campaign “to intimidate and/or kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” according to a recently published report by the Justice Department.

The report, which cited an “individual connected to the cartel,” said a hacker hired by its top brass “offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices.” The hired hacker observed “’people of interest’ for the cartel, including the FBI Assistant Legal Attache, and then was able to use the [attache’s] mobile phone number to obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data, associated with the [attache’s] phone.”

“According to the FBI, the hacker also used Mexico City’s camera system to follow the [attache] through the city and identify people the [attache] met with,” the heavily redacted report stated. “According to the case agent, the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses.”

The report didn’t explain what technical means the hacker used.

Existential threat

The report said the 2018 incident was one of many examples of “ubiquitous technical surveillance” threats the FBI has faced in recent decades. UTS, as the term is abbreviated, is defined as the “widespread collection of data and application of analytic methodologies for the purpose of connecting people to things, events, or locations.” The report identified five UTS vectors, including visual and physical, electronic signals, financial, travel, and online.

While the UTS threat has been longstanding, the report authors said, recent advances in commercially available hacking and surveillance tools are making such surveillance easier for less sophisticated nations and criminal enterprises. Sources within the FBI and CIA have called the threat “existential,” the report authors said

A second example of UTS threatening FBI investigations occurred when the leader of an organized crime family suspected an employee of being an informant. In an attempt to confirm the suspicion, the leader searched call logs of the suspected employee’s cell phone for phone numbers that might be connected to law enforcement.

Drug cartel hacked FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants, report says Read More »

Substack and Other Blog Recommendations

Substack / Shannon Garcia / July 1, 2025

Substack recommendations are remarkably important, and the actual best reason to write here instead of elsewhere.

As in, even though I have never made an active attempt to seek recommendations, approximately half of my subscribers come from recommendations from other blogs. And for every two subscribers I have, my recommendations have generated approximately one subscription elsewhere. I am very thankful to all those who have recommended this blog, either through substack or otherwise.

As the blog has grown, I’ve gotten a number of offers for reciprocal recommendations. So far I have turned all of these down, because I have yet to feel any are both sufficiently high quality and a good match for me and my readers.

Instead, I’m going to do the following:

This post will go through the 16 blogs I do currently recommend, and explain what I think is awesome about each of them.
I will also go over the top other non-substack blogs and sources I read regularly.
Then I will briefly review the 10 other substacks that sent me the most readers.
I will plan on doing something similar periodically in the future, each time looking at at least 10 previously uncovered substacks, and each time evaluating which blogs I should add or remove from the recommendation list. In the future I will skip any inactive substacks.
The comments section will be an opportunity to pitch your blog, or pitch someone else’s blog. Please aggressively like comments to vote for blogs.

I have a very high bar for being willing to go behind a paywall, the same way I have decided not to have one of my own. If something is behind a unique paywall, then almost all of my readers can’t read it, and the post is effectively outside of the broader conversation. So not only do I have to be excited enough about the content to initiate a subscription, I have to be excited enough despite it being unavailable to others.

I am of course happy to accept and respond to gift subscriptions for various content, including other blogs and newspapers, which substantially increase the chance I read, discuss or ultimately recommend the content in question.

Going over this list, I notice that I highly value a unique focus and perspective, a way of thinking and a set of tools that I want to have available, that is compatible with the rationalist-style perspective of thinking with gears and figuring out what will actually work versus not work. I want to be offered a part of that elephant I would otherwise miss, a different reality-tunnel to incorporate into my own.

What I do not need to do is agree with the person about most things. I have profound and increasing important disagreements with most of the people on this list. When I recommend the substack, I am absolutely not endorsing the opinions or worldview contained therein.

I also reminded myself, doing this, that there is a lot of great content I simply don’t have the time to check out properly, especially recently with several things creating big temporary additional time commitments, that will continue for a few more weeks.

Scott Alexander is one of the great ones. If you haven’t dived into the Slate Star Codex archives, you should do that sometime. In My Culture, many of those posts are foundational, and I link back to a number of them periodically.

There was a period of years during the SSC era when Scott Alexander had very obviously the best blog by a wide margin, and everyone I knew would drop what they were doing and read posts whenever they came out.

I do think that golden age has passed for now, and things have slipped somewhat. I can get frustrated, especially when he focuses on Effective Altruist content. I usually skip the guest posts unless something catches my eye.

That still leaves this as my top Substack or personal blog.

Robin Hanson is unique. I hope he never changes, and never stops Robin Hansoning.

Most of the time, when I read one of his posts, I disagree with it. But it is almost always interesting, and valuable to think about exactly what I disagree with and why. The questions are always big. I could happily write an expanded response to most of his posts, as I have done a number of times in the past. I would do this more if AI wasn’t taking up so much attention.

I find Hanson frustrating on AI in particular, especially on Twitter where he discusses this more often and more freely. We strongly disagree on all aspects of AI, including over its economic value and pace of progress, and whether we should welcome it causing human extinction. That part I actually like, that’s him Robin Hansoning.

What I do not like, but also find valuable in its own way, is that he often seems willing, especially on Twitter, to amplify essentially anything related to AI that makes one of his points, highlight pull quotes supporting those points, and otherwise act in a way that I see as compromising his otherwise very strong epistemic standards.

The reason I find this valuable is that this then acts as a forcing function to ensure I consider and am aware of opposing rhetoric and arguments, and retain balance.

Before we first met up so he could interview me for his book On the Edge, I knew I had a lot in common with Nate Silver. I’ve been following him since Baseball Prospectus. Only when we talked more, and when I read the final book, did I realize quite how much we matched up in interests and ways of thinking. I hope to do a collaboration at some point if the time can be found.

His politics model will probably always be what we most remember him for, but Silver Bulletin is Nate Silver’s best non-modeling work, and it also comes with the modern version of the politics model that remains the best game in town when properly understood in context. He offers a unique form of grounding on political, sports and other issues, and a way of bridging my kinds of ideas into mainstream discourse. I almost never regret reading.

Sarah is one of my closest friends, and at one point was one of my best employees.

In her blog she covers opportunities in science and technology, and also in society, and offers a mix of doing the research and explaining it in ways few others can, pointing our attention in places it would not otherwise go but that are often worth going to, and offering her unique perspectives on many questions.

If these topics are relevant to your interests, you should absolutely jump on this. If there’s one blog that deserves more of my attention than it gets, if only I had more time to actually dig deep, this would be it.

No one drills down into the practical, detail level in an accessible way as well as Brian Potter. One needs grounding in these kinds of physical details. When AI was going less crazy, and I was spending a lot more time on diverse topics especially housing and energy, I was always excited to dive into one of this posts. They very much help distinguish what is and is not important, and where to put your focus, helping you build models made of gears.

I noticed compiling this list that I haven’t been reading these posts for a while due to lack of time, but the moment I went there I was excited to dive back in, and the most recent post is definitely going directly into the queue. My current plan is to do a full catching up before my next housing roundup.

There is something highly refreshing about the way Kling offers his own consistent old school economic libertarian perspective, takes his time responding to anything, and generally tries to understand everything including developments in AI from that perspective. He knows a few important things and it is good to get reminders of them. He often offers links, the curation of which is good enough that they are worth considering.

Perhaps never has a man more simultaneously given both all and none of the fs.

Dominic writes with a combination of urgency, deep intellectual curiosity and desire to explain things across a huge variety of topics, and utter contempt for all those idiots trying to run our civilization and especially its governments, or for what anyone else thinks, or for the organizing principles of writing.

He screams into the void, warning that so many things are going wrong, that all of politics is incompetent to either achieve outcomes or even win elections, and for us to all wake up and stop acting like utter idiots. What he cares about is what actually works and would work, and what actually happened or will happen.

His posts are collections of snippets even more than mine, jumping from one thing to another, trying to weave them together over time to explain various important things about today and from history that people almost never notice.

I find a dose of these perspectives highly valuable. One needs to learn from people, even when you disagree with them on quite a lot of things, and to be clear I disagree with Dominic on many big things. I feel I understand the world substantially better than I would have without Dominic. One does not need to in any way approve of his politics or preferences, starting of course with Brexit, to benefit from these insights.

Similar to Dominic Cummings and Robin Hanson, I think most people who read this would benefit from a healthy dose, at least once, of Bryan Caplan and the way he views the world, offering us a different reality tunnel where things you don’t consider are emphasized and things you often emphasize are dismissed rather than considered.

Bryan expresses himself as if he is supremely confident he is right about everything, that everyone else is simply obviously wrong about them, and that the reasoning is very simple, if only you would listen. You want this voice as part of the chorus in your head.

I found The Case Against Education and Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids both extremely valuable.

However, I do notice that I feel like I already have enough of this voice on the issues he emphasizes most often, especially calls for free markets including open borders. So I notice that I am increasingly skipping more of his posts on these subjects.

This blog is of course primarily about politics, in particular how much better he thinks everything would be if normie Democrats were moderate, and supported policies that were both good and popular and did the things that win elections and improved outcomes, and how to go about doing that. He takes a very proto-rationalist, practical approach to this, that I very much appreciate, complete with yearly predictions. The writing is consistently enjoyable and clear.

It is important to think carefully about exactly how much politics one wants to engage with, and in which ways, and with what balance of incoming perspectives. Many of us should minimize such exposure most of the time.

Cate Hall is a super awesome person and her blog is all about taking that and then saying ‘and so can you.’ She shares various tricks and tactics she has used to be more agentic and happier and make her life better. They definitely won’t all work for you or be good ideas for you, but the rate of return on considering them, why they might work and what you might want to do with them is fantastic, and it’s a joy to read about it.

I have to be extremely stingy recommending AI blogs, because the whole point of my AI blog is that you shouldn’t need to read either AI Twitter or the other AI blogs, because I hope to consistently flag such things.

There are still a few that made the list.

This is the blog for AI Futures Project which includes AI 2027. A lot of the posts explain the thinking behind how they model the AI future, aimed at a broader audience. Others include advocacy, consistently for modest common sense proposals. All of it is written with a much lower barrier to entry than my work, and I find the writing consistently strong and interesting.

This is very much a case of someone largely doing a subset of what I am doing, finding, summarizing and responding to key news events with an emphasis on AI. So I would hope that if you read my AI posts, you don’t also need to directly read Peter. But he has a remarkably high hit rate of finding things I would have otherwise overlooked or offering useful new perspective. If you are looking for something shorter and sweeter, and easier to process, or to compare multiple sources, this is one of the best choices.

China Talk focuses on China, as the name suggests, and also largely on Chinese AI and other Chinese tech. When this is good and on point, it is very, very good, and provides essential perspective I couldn’t have found elsewhere, especially when doing key interviews.

It is highly plausible that I should be focusing way more on these topics.

He hasn’t posted since January, but I hope he gets back to it. We need more musings, especially musings I strongly disagree with so I can think about and explain why I disagree with them. I still would like to give better arguments in response to his thoughts.

Once a month you used to get a collection of notes and links, without my emphasis on the new hotness. The curation level was consistently excellent.

I save these, so that if I ever have need of more good content. But at this point it’s been four years.

Without loss of generality, all of these would be highly reasonable for me to include in my recommendation list, might well do so in the future after more consideration, and for which I would be happy to offer reciprocity:

The Pursuit of Happiness (Scott Sumner) about things Sumner, including economics, culture and movies.

Knowingness (Aella) about Aella things, often sexual.

Second Person (Jacob Falkovich) about dating.

Derek Thompson (Derek Thompson) about things in general.

Works In Progress (Various) about progress studies.

The Grumpy Economist (John Cochrane) about free markets and economics.

Dwarkesh Podcast (Dwarkesh Patel) mostly hosts the podcast. I highly recommend the podcast and watch him on YouTube.

Rising Tide (Helen Toner) about AI policy.

Understanding AI (Timothy Lee) about AI and tech.

One Useful Thing (Ethan Mollick) about AI.

Import AI (Jack Clark) about AI.

My review process for each blog by default is to look at two to four posts, depending on how it is going, with a mix of best-of posts or what catches my eye, and at least one most recent post to avoid cherry-picking.

ControlAI advocates for, well, controlling AI, making the case for why we need to avoid extinction risks from AI, how we might go about doing that, and covering related news items. They are out there in the field making real efforts, so they often report back useful information about that. This is very much an advocacy blog rather than an explanation blog, if you want that then it is pretty good.
Applied Psychology = Communication appears to be a dead blog at this point, with the tagline ‘psychology that is immensely useful to your everyday life.’ These appear to be writeups of very simple points where You Should Know This Already, but there is a decent chance you don’t, and the benefits of finding one you didn’t know are plausibly high, so it is not crazy to quickly look, but I failed to learn anything new.
Get Down and Shruti by Shruti Rajagopalan is about Indian culture and politics and hasn’t been updated since January. I very much appreciate the recommendation, since our interests and worlds seem so disjointed. I found her posts interesting and full of facts I did not know. The issue is that this is mostly not relevant to my core interests, but if you have the interest or bandwidth, and don’t mind that it’s a bit dry, go for it, there’s lots of good stuff here.
Meaningness by David Chapman is a philosophy blog. I’ve extensively read Chapman previously via his previous online incarnation of his work, which is a book in slightly odd, hyperlinked form that you can jump around in, that is still in progress. That book is refreshingly accessible as such things go, if you don’t mind a tone of superiority and authority and claims of understanding it all that appear throughout, which passes through to the blog. I suspect what it takes to benefit from such things is the ability to look at such a system that is refreshingly made of gears, figure out which gears seem right for your situation and are doing the relevant work, which ones don’t work or are overreaching, and take the parts that you need. It is an excellent sign that the most recent post is one I could easily write quite a lot about in response, if I had more time. I’m glad I looked here.
The Roots of Progress by Jason Crawford is what you would expect from the name, if you are familiar with progress studies. The problem here is that Jason is writing an excellent book, but it is a book trying to present a case that most people reading this will already take for granted. Which is a good thing, but also means most of you don’t need to read the blog. The important progress questions are soon largely going to be about AI, where Jason is better at taking the differences seriously than most similar others, although there is still much work to do there, and again that is not the topic here. The question is, who both is going to sit for this length of progress message, and also needs it? For those people this should be a great fit.
Homo Economicus by Nicholas Decker. Decker is certainly not afraid to touch third rails, I will give him that, including his most popular post (way more popular than anything I’ve posted, life is like that) entitled ‘When Must We Kill Them?’ and subtitled ‘evil has come to America.’ He has a post asking, Should We Take Everything From The Old To Give To The Young? He seems at his best when making brief particular points in ways others wouldn’t dare, especially on Twitter where Icarus has some real bangers, whereas the longform writing, in my brief survey, needs work.
Marketing BS with Edward Nevraumont, dormant since 2023. Not my cup of tea, and the posts are very of-the-moment, with much less value now 18 months later.
Doom Debates by Liron Shapira, essentially a YouTube channel as a Substack. Debates about AI Doom, I tell you, doom! Recent debate partners for Liron are Richard Hanania, Emmett Shear and Scott Sumner. Would benefit from transcripts, these are strong guests but my barrier to consuming audio AI content is high and for debates it is even higher. I do love that he is doing this.
Donkeyspace by Frank Lantz. There’s an interesting core to these posts, a lot of the writing is fun, but there’s definitely ‘could have been a Tweet’ vibes to a lot of it. As in, there’s a core point that Lantz is making. It’s a good point, but we don’t need this much explanation to get to it. I don’t feel like I’m thinking along with him, so much as I wish he’d just share the one sentence already. Yes, I know who is typing this.
State of the Future by Lawrence Lundy-Bryan, examining questions about AI, mundane AI impacts and They Took Our Jobs. I noticed it failing to hold my interest, despite the topic being something I often focus on.

It is remarkable how few blogs are left that are not Substack, that I still want to read.

Most of the remaining alpha in blogs is in Marginal Revolution and LessWrong. Without either of those this blog would be a lot worse.

LessWrong is a community blog, which obviously one would not want to read in full. That’s what the karma system, curation and other filters are for, including remembering which authors are worthwhile. Karma is very far from a perfect system, and it will sometimes miss very good posts, and the curated post selection is also very good. But I find it to be very good at positive selection. For recent posts, if you set a threshold of 200 and check out those plus the curated posts, and then filter by whether you are interested in the topic, you should do very well. For quick takes and comments, a threshold around 50-75 should be similar. There is also always tons of alpha in the archives, especially the sequences.
1. Note that my posts are cross-posted there, if you want to check out additional comments, or prefer the way they do formatting.
2. Reading the comments is often not a mistake on LessWrong.
Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok). A large percentage of interesting links and ideas I find come from Marginal Revolution, many of which I would have otherwise missed, by far the richest vein if you don’t count Twitter as a source. Alex often makes good points very cleanly. Tyler is constantly bringing unique and spicy takes. I have great fun sparring with Tyler Cowen on a variety of topics, and his support growing the blog via links and emergent ventures has been invaluable, he really makes an effort to assist thinkers and talent. Tyler in particular often plays his actual views very close to his chest, only gesturing at what one might think about or how to frame looking at something, or offering declarations without explaining. In many cases this is great, since it helps you think for yourself. You can tell that Tyler has a purpose behind every word he writes, and he should be read as such.
1. Alas, I have become increasingly frustrated with Tyler recently, especially in the AI realm, and not only because I don’t understand how he can hold the views he expresses given what he gets correct elsewhere. He seems to increasingly aggressively be placing his rhetorical thumb on the scale in ways I would not have expected him to previously. He also seems willing to amplify voices and points where I assume he must know better. It reads as if a strategic decision has been made. This also seems to be happening in other ways with respect to the current administration. So one must adjust, but MR is still a highly valuable and irreplaceable source of ideas and information.
Shtetl-Optimized (Scott Aaronson). It rarely ends up being relevant to my work but I find the perspective valuable, and it’s good to keep up with different forms of science like quantum computing and get Scott’s unique perspective on various other events as well.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Yes, this is an online comic, but it is full of actual ideas often enough I’m going to list it here anyway, also xkcd of course.
Meteuphoric (Katja Grace) is a series of simple points put bluntly and well, that I find worth considering.
Luke Muehlhauser is mostly tracking his media consumption. I do find this a worthwhile data point to periodically scan.
Stratechery (Ben Thompson). It is mostly paywalled. There was sufficient relevance that I paid up. Ben deals with AI and tech from a pure business perspective of profit maximization, and believes that this perspective is the important one and should carry the day, and is dismissive of downside concerns. Within that framework, he gets a lot of things right, and provides a lot of strong information and insight that I would otherwise miss. But this does cause me to strongly disagree with a lot of the points he emphasizes most often.
Bloomberg. This is my most expensive subscription, and it is money well spent. If I had to choose one mainstream news source to rely upon, this would be it. It is very much not perfect, but I find I can trust Bloomberg’s bounded distrust principles far more than I trust those of other mainstream sources, and also for them to focus on what matters more often and in more depth.
Wall Street Journal. This is my go to newspaper, and they often have articles that are important coverage of events in AI.
Washington Post. This also often has good unique coverage, and offers a counterweight to the Wall Street Journal. For conventional news stories I’ll often expand to a number of additional news websites.

And of course, there is always there is Twitter.

I always check all posts from my followers and the Rationalist and AI lists.

In total that is on the order of 500 unique accounts.

This effectively is the majority of my consumption, if you include things I find via Twitter.

I write this guide back in March 2022 on how to best use Twitter to follow events in real time. Using Twitter to follow AI is somewhat different since it is less about real time developments and more about catching all the important stories, but most of the advice there still applies today.

If I had to make one change to the ‘beware’ list it would be that I did not emphasize enough the need to aggressively block people whose posts make your life worse, especially in the sense of making you emotionally worse off without compensation, or that draw you into topics you want to avoid, or that indicate general toxicity. A block is now even more than before only a small mistake, as they can still see your posts. If someone has not provided value before, a hair trigger is appropriate. This includes blocking people whose posts are shown to you via someone’s retweet.

The other note is that I take care to cultivate a mix of perspectives. I keep a number of accounts around so that I know what the other half is thinking, in various ways, especially legacy accounts that I was already following for another reason, many of which pivoted to AI in one way or another. I also count on them to ‘bubble up’ the key posts from the accounts that are truly obnoxious, too much so to put on the lists. One as to protect one’s own mental health. The rule is then that I can’t simply dismiss what those sources have to say out of hand, although of course sometimes what they say is not newsworthy.

I consume writing and write about it as a full time job. Most people of course cannot do this, plus you hopefully want to read this blog too, so you’ll have to be a lot more picky than this. If I was primarily working on something else, I’d be consuming vastly less content than I am now, and even now I don’t fully read a lot of these.

What am I potentially missing here, and should consider including? I encourage sharing in the comments, especially in the Substack comments. You are free to pitch your own work, but do say you are doing so.

Discussion about this post

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The second launch of New Glenn will aim for Mars

blue origin, new glenn, Space / Shannon Garcia / June 30, 2025

Notably, the company plans to launch each new rocket as soon as it is ready to fly to gather data about the vehicle’s performance, attempt to catch and reuse first stages, and move closer to a rapid launch cadence. Therefore, if a customer payload is not ready, the company has also developed an inspirational mission called “Cube for the Future,” which appears to be part of the company’s initiative to inspire future generations to pursue careers in science. This may also fly as a rideshare on one of the launches listed above.

All eyes on the Moon

Among these missions, the payload likely to spark the most interest is the Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is part of the company’s plans to develop a large, reusable lander capable of landing humans on the Moon.

Blue Origin shared a snippet of video last week on social media showing the mid-section of the MK1 lander arriving at the company’s assembly facilities in Rocket Park, Florida. This will be the tallest vehicle ever to land on the Moon. It is 8 meters (26.4 feet) tall, which is 1 meter taller than the Lunar Module NASA used to land humans during the Apollo Program.

MK1 is a cargo version of a larger vehicle, MK2, that Blue Origin is developing for humans. The cargo version is rated to carry about 3 metric tons to the surface, about 10 times the capacity of currently available commercial landers available to NASA.

Barring a major setback, it now appears highly likely that Blue Origin will beat SpaceX in landing a vehicle on the lunar surface. Due to the struggles with development of the Starship vehicle—whether on the ground or in space, the last four Starship upper stages have been lost before achieving a nominal success—some industry officials believe Blue Origin now has a realistic chance to compete with SpaceX in the effort to land NASA astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis Program.

Both companies are developing large, ambitious vehicles—SpaceX with Starship, and Blue Origin with its MK2 lander—but Blue Origin’s vehicle is somewhat less technically challenging. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is also far more committed to a lunar program than SpaceX founder Elon Musk, sources said, and if he sees an opportunity to finally best his rival in space, he may go for it.

The second launch of New Glenn will aim for Mars Read More »

Robotic sucker can adapt to surroundings like an actual octopus

Biology, octopus, robotics, Science / Shannon Garcia / June 28, 2025

This isn’t the first time suction cups were inspired by highly adaptive octopus suckers. Some models have used pressurized chambers meant to push against a surface and conform to it. Others have focused more on matching the morphology of a biological sucker. This has included giving the suckers microdenticles, the tiny tooth-like projections on octopus suckers that give them a stronger grip.

Previous methods of artificial conformation have had some success, but they could be prone to leakage from gaps between the sucker and the surface it is trying to stick to, and they often needed vacuum pumps to operate. Yue and his team created a sucker that was morphologically and mechanically similar to that of an octopus.

Suckers are muscular structures with an extreme flexibility that helps them conform to objects without leakage, contract when gripping objects, and release tension when letting them go. This inspired the researchers to create suckers from a silicone sponge material on the inside and a soft silicone pad on the outside.

For the ultimate biomimicry, Yue thought that the answer to the problems experienced with previous models was to come up with a sucker that simulated the mucus secretion of octopus suckers.

This really sucks

Cephalopod suction was previously thought to be a product of these creatures’ soft, flexible bodies, which can deform easily to adapt to whatever surface it needs to grip. Mucus secretion was mostly overlooked until Yue decided to incorporate it into his robo-suckers.

Mollusk mucus is known to be five times more viscous than water. For Yue’s suckers, an artificial fluidic system, designed to mimic the secretions released by glands on a biological sucker, creates a liquid seal between the sucker and the surface it is adhering to, just about eliminating gaps. It might not have the strength of octopus slime, but water is the next best option for a robot that is going to be immersed in water when it goes exploring, possibly in underwater caves or at the bottom of the ocean.

Robotic sucker can adapt to surroundings like an actual octopus Read More »

After 27 years, engineer discovers how to display secret photo in Power Mac ROM

Apple History, classic mac, easter egg, easter eggs, Mac OS, Macintosh, PowerPC, Retro computing, retrotech, Reverse-engineering, rom hacking, Tech, Vintage computing / Shannon Garcia / June 28, 2025

“If you double-click the file, SimpleText will open it,” Brown explains on his blog just before displaying the hidden team photo that emerges after following the steps.

The discovery represents one of the last undocumented Easter eggs from the pre-Steve Jobs return era at Apple. The Easter egg works through Mac OS 9.0.4 but appears to have been disabled by version 9.1, Brown notes. The timing aligns with Jobs’ reported ban on Easter eggs when he returned to Apple in 1997, though Brown wonders whether Jobs ever knew about this particular secret.

The G3 All-in-One is often nicknamed the — The ungainly G3 All-in-One set the stage for the smaller and much bluer iMac soon after. Credit: Jonathan Zufi

In his post, Brown expressed hope that he might connect with the Apple employees featured in the photo—a hope that was quickly fulfilled. In the comments, a man named Bill Saperstein identified himself as the leader of the G3 team (pictured fourth from left in the second row) in the hidden image.

“We all knew about the Easter egg, but as you mention; the technique to extract it changed from previous Macs (although the location was the same),” Saperstein wrote in the comment. “This resulted from an Easter egg in the original PowerMac that contained Paula Abdul (without permissions, of course). So the G3 team wanted to still have our pictures in the ROM, but we had to keep it very secret.”

He also shared behind-the-scenes details in another comment, noting that his “bunch of ragtag engineers” developed the successful G3 line as a skunk works project, with hardware that Jobs later turned into the groundbreaking iMac series of computers. “The team was really a group of talented people (both hw and sw) that were believers in the architecture I presented,” Saperstein wrote, “and executed the design behind the scenes for a year until Jon Rubenstein got wind of it and presented it to Steve and the rest is ‘history.'”

After 27 years, engineer discovers how to display secret photo in Power Mac ROM Read More »

Man eats dubious street food—ends up blowing apart his GI tract

Boerhaave syndrome, esophagus, food, health, medical case report, New England Journal of Medicine, vomiting / Shannon Garcia / June 28, 2025

Bilious blowout

Doctors noted that his breath was fast and shallow, with crackling in his neck. But breathing sounds from the base of his right lung were quiet. A computed tomography (CT) scan revealed the problems. There was air in his chest space and into his neck. Fluid was also building up around his lungs, and his right lung was collapsing. The scan also showed a perforation in the esophagus.

The doctors inserted a chest tube to remove the fluid, which did not include gastric contents, suggesting the fluid build-up was from chest inflammation.

The doctors then did an additional X-ray exam of the esophagus using a water-soluble contrast agent. This clearly revealed a large gash in the man’s esophagus resulting from the robust eruption. The imaging also showed the contrast agent leaking out into the man’s chest.

The doctors quickly sent the man into emergency surgery to repair his esophagus. He spent the next 35 days in the hospital recovering. When he was discharged, he still had a feeding tube that passed through his nose and into his small intestine. It took an additional three months for the perforation to completely heal, at which point doctors could finally remove the feeding tube.

It’s not entirely clear what causes Boerhaave syndrome. Researchers hypothesize that it occurs from a loss of neuromuscular coordination, which, in particular, causes the upper sphincter in the esophagus—the cricopharyngeus—to fail to relax at the onset of vomiting. The rapid rise of internal pressure overwhelms the esophagus, typically causing a lengthwise tear in the lower third of the tube, which is the weakest portion. On average, tears can be up to 8 centimeters (about 3 inches) long.

Though researchers expect that cases are underreported, the estimated incidence based on reports is about three cases per million people globally each year.

Man eats dubious street food—ends up blowing apart his GI tract Read More »

Microsoft is trying to get antivirus software away from the Windows kernel

microsoft, Security, Tech, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2 / Shannon Garcia / June 27, 2025

Working with third-party companies to define these standards and address those companies’ concerns seems to be Microsoft’s way of trying to avoid that kind of controversy this time around.

“We will continue to collaborate deeply with our MVI partners throughout the private preview,” wrote Weston.

Death comes for the Blue Screen

Microsoft is changing the “b” in BSoD, but that’s less interesting than the under-the-hood changes. Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft’s post outlines a handful of other security-related Windows tweaks, including some that take alternate routes to preventing more Crowdstrike-esque outages.

Multiple changes are coming for the “unexpected restart screen,” the less-derogatory official name for what many Windows users know colloquially as the “blue screen of death.” For starters, the screen will now be black instead of blue, a change that Microsoft briefly attempted to make in the early days of Windows 11 but subsequently rolled back.

The unexpected restart screen has been “simplified” in a way that “improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed.”

But the more meaningful change is under the hood, in the form of a new feature called “quick machine recovery” (QMR).

If a Windows PC has multiple unexpected restarts or gets into a boot loop—as happened to many systems affected by the Crowdstrike bug—the PC will try to boot into Windows RE, a stripped-down recovery environment that offers a handful of diagnostic options and can be used to enter Safe Mode or open the PC’s UEFI firmware. QMR will allow Microsoft to “broadly deploy targeted remediations to affected devices via Windows RE,” making it possible for some problems to be fixed even if the PCs can’t be booted into standard Windows, “quickly getting users to a productive state without requiring complex manual intervention from IT.”

QMR will be enabled by default on Windows 11 Home, while the Pro and Enterprise versions will be configurable by IT administrators. The QMR functionality and the black version of the blue screen of death will both be added to Windows 11 24H2 later this summer. Microsoft plans to add additional customization options for QMR “later this year.”

Microsoft is trying to get antivirus software away from the Windows kernel Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s dustup on the border; Northrop has a nozzle problem

launch, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex / Shannon Garcia / June 27, 2025

NASA has finally test-fired the first of its new $100 million SLS rocket engines.

Backdropped by an offshore thunderstorm, a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster stands on its landing pad at Cape Canaveral after returning to Earth from a mission launching four astronauts to the International Space Station early Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.50 of the Rocket Report! We’re nearly halfway through the year, and it seems like a good time to look back on the past six months. What has been most surprising to me in the world of rockets? First, I didn’t expect SpaceX to have this much trouble with Starship Version 2. Growing pains are normal for new rockets, but I expected the next big hurdles for SpaceX to clear with Starship to be catching the ship from orbit and orbital refueling, not completing a successful launch. The state of Blue Origin’s New Glenn program is a little surprising to me. New Glenn’s first launch in January went remarkably well, beating the odds for a new rocket. Now, production delays are pushing back the next New Glenn flights. The flight of Honda’s reusable rocket hopper also came out of nowhere a few weeks ago.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Isar raises 150 million euros. German space startup Isar Aerospace has obtained 150 million euros ($175 million) in funding from an American investment company, Reuters reports. The company, which specializes in satellite launch services, signed an agreement for a convertible bond with Eldridge Industries, it said. Isar says it will use the funding to expand its launch service offerings. Isar’s main product is the Spectrum rocket, a two-stage vehicle designed to loft up to a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. Spectrum flew for the first time in March, but it failed moments after liftoff and fell back to the ground near its launch pad. Still, Isar became the first in a new crop of European launch startups to launch a rocket theoretically capable of reaching orbit.

Flush with cash … Isar is leading in another metric, too. The Munich-based company has now raised more than 550 million euros ($642 million) from venture capital investors and government-backed funds. This far exceeds the fundraising achievements of any other European launch startup. But the money will only go so far before Isar must prove it can successfully launch a rocket into orbit. Company officials have said they aim to launch the second Spectrum rocket before the end of this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Rocket Lab aiming for record turnaround. Rocket Lab demonstrated a notable degree of flexibility this week. Two light-class Electron rockets were nearing launch readiness at the company’s privately owned spaceport in New Zealand, but one of the missions encountered a technical problem, and Rocket Lab scrubbed a launch attempt Tuesday. The spaceport has two launch pads next to one another, so while technicians worked to fix that problem, Rocket Lab slotted in another Electron rocket to lift off from the pad next door. That mission, carrying a quartet of small commercial signals intelligence satellites for HawkEye 360, successfully launched Thursday.

Giving it another go … A couple of hours after that launch, Rocket Lab announced it was ready to try again with the mission it had grounded earlier in the week. “Can’t get enough of Electron missions? How about another one tomorrow? With our 67th mission complete, we’ve scheduled our next launch from LC-1 in less than 48 hours—Electron’s fastest turnaround from the same launch site yet!” Rocket Lab hasn’t disclosed what satellite is flying on this mission, citing the customer’s preference to remain anonymous for now.

You guessed it! Baguette One will launch from France. French rocket builder HyPrSpace will launch its Baguette One demonstrator from a missile testing site in mainland France, after signing an agreement with the country’s defense procurement agency, European Spaceflight reports. HyPrSpace was founded in 2019 to begin designing an orbital-class rocket named Orbital Baguette 1 (OB-1). The Baguette One vehicle is a subscale, single-stage suborbital demonstrator to prove out technologies for the larger satellite launcher, mainly its hybrid propulsion system.

Sovereign launch … HyPrSpace’s Baguette One will stand roughly 10 meters (30 feet) tall and will be capable of carrying payloads of up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) to suborbital space. It is scheduled to launch next year from a French missile testing site in the south of France. “Gaining access to this dual-use launch pad in mainland France is a major achievement after many years of work on our hybrid propulsion technology,” said Sylvain Bataillard, director general of HyPrSpace. “It’s a unique opportunity for HyPrSpace and marks a decisive turning point. We’re eager to launch Baguette One and to play a key role in building a more sovereign, more sustainable, and boldly innovative European dual-use space industry.” (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Firefly moves closer to launching from Sweden. An agreement between the United States and Sweden brings Firefly Aerospace one step closer to launching its Alpha rocket from a Swedish spaceport, Space News reports. The two countries signed a technology safeguards agreement (TSA) at a June 20 ceremony at the Swedish embassy in Washington, DC. The TSA allows the export of American rockets to Sweden for launches there, putting in place measures to protect launch vehicle technology.

A special relationship … The US government has signed launch-related safeguard agreements with only a handful of countries, such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and now Sweden. Rocket exports are subject to strict controls because of the potential military applications of that technology. Firefly currently launches its Alpha rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and is building a launch site at Wallops Island, Virginia. Firefly also has a lease for a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, although the company is prioritizing other sites. Then, last year, Firefly announced an agreement with the Swedish Space Corporation to launch Alpha from Esrange Space Center as soon as 2026. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Amazon is running strong out of the gate. For the second time in two months, United Launch Alliance sent a batch of 27 broadband Internet satellites into orbit for Amazon on Monday morning, Ars reports. This was the second launch of a full load of operational satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a network envisioned to become a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink. Just like the last flight on April 28, an Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and delivered Amazon’s satellites into an on-target orbit roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth.

Time to put up or shut up … After lengthy production delays at Amazon’s satellite factory, the retail giant is finally churning out Kuiper satellites at scale. Amazon has already shipped the third batch of Kuiper satellites to Florida to prepare for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket next month. ULA won the lion’s share of Amazon’s multibillion-dollar launch contract in 2022, committing to up to 38 Vulcan launches for Kuiper and nine Atlas V flights. Three of those Atlas Vs have now launched. Amazon also reserved 18 launches on Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket, and at least 12 on Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Vulcan, Ariane 6, and New Glenn have only flown one or two times, and Amazon is asking them to quickly ramp up their cadence to deliver 3,232 Kuiper satellites to orbit in the next few years. The handful of Falcon 9s and Atlas Vs that Amazon has on contract are the only rockets in the bunch with a proven track record. With Kuiper satellites now regularly shipping out of the factory, any blame for future delays may shift from Amazon to the relatively unproven rockets it has chosen to launch them.

Falcon 9 launches with four commercial astronauts. Retired astronaut Peggy Whitson, America’s most experienced space flier, and three rookie crewmates from India, Poland, and Hungary blasted off on a privately financed flight to the International Space Station early Wednesday, CBS News reports. This is the fourth non-government mission mounted by Houston-based Axiom Space. The four commercial astronauts rocketed into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and their Dragon capsule docked at the space station Thursday to kick off a two-week stay.

A brand-new Dragon … The Crew Dragon spacecraft flown on this mission, serial number C213, is the fifth and final addition to SpaceX’s fleet of astronaut ferry ships built for NASA trips to the space station and for privately funded commercial missions to low-Earth orbit. Moments after reaching orbit Wednesday, Whitson revealed the name of the new spacecraft: Crew Dragon Grace. “We had an incredible ride uphill, and now we’d like to set our course for the International Space Station aboard the newest member of the Dragon fleet, our spacecraft named Grace. … Grace reminds us that spaceflight is not just a feat of engineering, but an act of goodwill to the benefit of every human everywhere.”

How soon until Ariane 6 is flying regularly? It’ll take several years for Arianespace to ramp up the launch cadence of Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, Space News reports. David Cavaillolès, chief executive of Arianespace, addressed questions at the Paris Air Show about how quickly Arianespace can reach its target of launching 10 Ariane 6 rockets per year. “We need to go to 10 launches per year for Ariane 6 as soon as possible,” he said. “It’s twice as more as for Ariane 5, so it’s a big industrial change.” Two Ariane 6 rockets have launched so far, and a third mission is on track to lift off in August. Arianespace’s CEO reiterated earlier plans to conduct four more Ariane 6 launches through the end of this year, including the first flight of the more powerful Ariane 64 variant with four solid rocket boosters.

Not a heavy lift … Arianespace’s target flight rate of 10 Ariane 6 rockets per year is modest compared to other established companies with similarly sized launch vehicles. United Launch Alliance is seeking to launch as many as 25 Vulcan rockets per year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is designed to eventually fly often, although the company hasn’t released a target launch cadence. SpaceX, meanwhile, aims to launch up to 170 Falcon 9 rockets this year. But European governments are perhaps more committed than ever to maintaining a sovereign launch capability for the continent, so Ariane 6 isn’t going away. Arianespace has sold more than 30 Ariane 6 launches, primarily to European institutional customers and Amazon.

SLS booster blows its nozzle. NASA and Northrop Grumman test-fired a new solid rocket booster in Utah on Thursday, and it didn’t go exactly according to plan, Ars reports. This booster features a new design that NASA would use to power Space Launch System rockets, beginning with the ninth mission, or Artemis IX. The motor tested on Thursday isn’t flight-worthy. It’s a test unit that engineers will use to learn about the rocket’s performance. It turns out they did learn something, but perhaps not what they wanted. About 1 minute and 40 seconds into the booster’s burn, a fiery plume emerged from the motor’s structure just above its nozzle. Moments later, the nozzle violently disintegrated. The booster kept firing until it ran out of pre-packed solid propellant.

A questionable future … NASA’s Space Launch System appears to have a finite shelf life. The Trump administration wants to cancel it after just three launches, while the preliminary text of a bill making its way through Congress would extend it to five flights. But chances are low the Space Launch System will make it to nine flights, and if it does, it’s questionable if it would reach that point before 2040. The SLS rocket is a core piece of NASA’s plan to return US astronauts to the Moon under the Artemis program, but the White House seeks to cancel the program in favor of cheaper commercial alternatives.

NASA conducts a low-key RS-25 engine test. The booster ground test on Thursday was the second time in less than a week that NASA test-fired new propulsion hardware for the Space Launch System. Last Friday, June 20, NASA ignited a new RS-25 engine on a test stand at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The hydrogen-fueled engine is the first of its kind to be manufactured since the end of the space shuttle program. This particular RS-25 engine is assigned to power the fifth launch of the SLS rocket, a mission known as Artemis V, that may end up never flying. While NASA typically livestreams engine tests at Stennis, the agency didn’t publicize this event ahead of time.

It has been 10 years … The SLS rocket was designed to recycle leftover parts from the space shuttle program, but NASA will run out of RS-25 engines after the rocket’s fourth flight and will exhaust its inventory of solid rocket booster casings after the eighth flight. Recognizing that shuttle-era parts will eventually run out, NASA signed a contract with Aerojet Rocketdyne (now L3Harris) to set the stage for the production of new RS-25 engines in 2015. NASA later ordered an initial batch of six RS-25 engines from Aerojet, then added 18 more to the order in 2020, at a price of about $100 million per engine. Finally, a brand-new flight-worthy RS-25 engine has fired up on a test stand. If the Trump administration gets its way, these engines will never fly. Maybe that’s fine, but after so long with so much taxpayer investment, last week’s test milestone is worth publicizing, if not celebrating.

SpaceX finds itself in a dustup on the border. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico is considering taking legal action after one of SpaceX’s giant Starship rockets disintegrated in a giant fireball earlier this month as it was being fueled for a test-firing of its engines, The New York Times reports. No one was injured in the explosion, which rained debris on the beaches of the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The conflagration occurred at a test site SpaceX operates a few miles away from the Starship launch pad. This test facility is located next to the Rio Grande River, just a few hundred feet from Mexico. The power of the blast sent wreckage flying across the river into Mexican territory.

Collision course …“We are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are very close to our border,” Sheinbaum said at a news conference Wednesday. If SpaceX violated any international laws, she added, “we will file any necessary claims.” Sheinbaum’s leftist party holds enormous sway around Mexico, and the Times reports she was responding to calls to take action against SpaceX amid a growing outcry among scientists, regional officials, and environmental activists over the impact that the company’s operations are having on Mexican ecosystems. SpaceX, on the other hand, said its efforts to recover debris from the Starship explosion have been “hindered by unauthorized parties trespassing on private property.” SpaceX said it requested assistance from the government of Mexico in the recovery and added that it offered its own resources to help with the cleanup.

Next three launches

June 28: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-34 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04: 26 UTC

June 28: Electron | “Symphony in the Stars” | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 06: 45 UTC

June 28: H-IIA | GOSAT-GW | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 16: 33 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s dustup on the border; Northrop has a nozzle problem Read More »

Author name: Shannon Garcia