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Texas politicians warn Smithsonian it must not lobby to retain its space shuttle

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(Oddly, Cornyn and Weber’s letter to Roberts described the law as requiring Duffy “to transfer a space vehicle involved in the Commercial Crew Program” rather than choosing a destination NASA center related to the same, as the bill actually reads. Taken as written, if that was indeed their intent, Discovery and the other retired shuttles would be exempt, as the winged orbiters were never part of that program. A request for clarification sent to both Congress members’ offices was not immediately answered.)

two men in business suits sit front of a large model of a space shuttle

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, at right) sits in front of a model of Space Shuttle Discovery at Space Center Houston, where they want to move the real orbiter. Credit: collectSPACE.com

In the letter, Cornyn and Weber cited the Anti-Lobbying Act as restricting the use of funds provided by the federal government to “influence members of the public to pressure Congress regarding legislation or appropriations matters.”

“As the Smithsonian Institution receives annual appropriations from Congress, it is subject to the restrictions imposed by this statute,” they wrote.

The money that Congress allocates to the Smithsonian accounts for about two-thirds of the Institution’s annual budget, primarily covering federal staff salaries, collections care, facilities maintenance, and the construction and revitalization of the buildings that house the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and other centers.

Pols want Smithsonian to stay mum

As evidence of the Smithsonian’s alleged wrongdoing, Cornyn and Weber cited a July 11 article by Zach Vasile for Flying Magazine, which ran under the headline “Smithsonian Pushing Back on Plans to Relocate Space Shuttle.” Vasile quoted from a message the Institution sent to Congress saying that there was no precedent for removing an object from its collection to send it elsewhere.

The Texas officials wrote that the anti-lobbying restrictions apply to “staff time or public relations resources” and claimed that the Smithsonian’s actions did not fall under the law’s exemptions, including “public speeches, incidental expenditures for public education or communications, or activities unrelated to legislation or appropriations.”

Cornyn and Weber urged Roberts, as the head of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to “conduct a comprehensive internal review” as it applied to how the institution responded to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Should the review reveal that appropriated funds were used in a manner inconsistent with the prohibitions outlined in the Anti-Lobbying Act, we respectfully request that immediate and appropriate corrective measures be implemented to ensure the Institution’s full compliance with all applicable statutory and ethical obligations,” Cornyn and Weber wrote.

Texas politicians warn Smithsonian it must not lobby to retain its space shuttle Read More »

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Houston, you’ve got a space shuttle… only NASA won’t say which one

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An orbiter by any other name…

“The acting administrator has made an identification.”

a side view of a space shuttle orbiter with its name digitally blurred out

Don’t say Discovery: Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has decided to send a retired space shuttle to Houston, but won’t say which one. Credit: Smithsonian/collectSPACE.com

Don’t say Discovery: Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has decided to send a retired space shuttle to Houston, but won’t say which one. Credit: Smithsonian/collectSPACE.com

The head of NASA has decided to move one of the agency’s retired space shuttles to Houston, but which one seems to still be up in the air.

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), who earlier this year introduced and championed an effort to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston, issued a statement on Tuesday evening (August 5) applauding the decision by acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy.

“There is no better place for one of NASA’s space shuttles to be displayed than Space City,” said Cornyn in the statement. “Since the inception of our nation’s human space exploration program, Houston has been at the center of our most historic achievements, from training the best and brightest to voyage into the great unknown to putting the first man on the moon.”

Keeping the shuttle a secret, for some reason

The senator did not state which of NASA’s winged orbiters would be making the move. The legislation that required Duffy to choose a “space vehicle” that had “flown in space” and “carried people” did not specify an orbiter by name, but the language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law last month was inspired by Cornyn and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bill to relocate Discovery.

“The acting administrator has made an identification. We have no further public statement at this time,” said a spokesperson for Duffy in response to an inquiry.

a man with gray hair and pale complexion wears a gray suit and red tie while sitting at a table under a red, white and blue NASA logo on the wall behind him

NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, identified a retired NASA space shuttle to be moved to “a non-profit near the Johnson Space Center” in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 5, 2025. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

It is not clear why the choice of orbiters is being held a secret. According to the bill, the decision was to be made “with the concurrence of an entity designated” by the NASA administrator to display the shuttle. Cornyn’s release only confirmed that Duffy had identified the location to be “a non-profit near the Johnson Space Center (JSC).”

Space Center Houston is owned by the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization, and is the official visitor’s center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“We continue to work on the basis that the shuttle identified is Discovery and proceed with our preparations for its arrival and providing it a world-class home,” Keesha Bullock, interim COO and chief communications and marketing officer at Space Center Houston, said in a statement.

Orbiter owners

Another possible reason for the hesitation to name an orbiter may be NASA’s ability, or rather inability, to identify one of its three remaining space-flown shuttles that is available to be moved.

NASA transferred the title for space shuttle Endeavour to the California Science Center in Los Angeles in 2012, and as such it is no longer US government property. (The science center is a public-private partnership between the state of California and the California Science Center Foundation.)

NASA still owns space shuttle Atlantis and displays it at its own Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

Discovery, the fleet leader and “vehicle of record,” was the focus of Cornyn and Cruz’s original “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act.” The senators said they chose Discovery because it was “the only shuttle still owned by the federal government and able to be transferred to Houston.”

For the past 13 years, Discovery has been on public display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, the annex for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. As with Endeavour, NASA signed over title upon the orbiter’s arrival at its new home.

As such, Smithsonian officials are clear: Discovery is no longer NASA’s to have or to move.

“The Smithsonian Institution owns the Discovery and holds it in trust for the American public,” read a statement from the National Air and Space Museum issued before Duffy made his decision. “In 2012, NASA transferred ‘all rights, title, interest and ownership’ of the shuttle to the Smithsonian.”

The Smithsonian operates as a trust instrumentality of the United States and is partially funded by Congress, but it is not part of any of the three branches of the federal government.

“The Smithsonian is treated as a federal agency for lots of things to do with federal regulations and state action, but that’s very different than being an agency of the executive branch, which it most certainly is not,” Nick O’Donnell, an attorney who specializes in legal issues in the museum and visual arts communities and co-chairs the Art, Cultural Property, and Heritage Law Committee of the International Bar Association, said in an interview.

a space shuttle orbiter sits at the center of a hangar on display

The Smithsonian has displayed the space shuttle Discovery at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, since April 2012. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“If there’s a document that accompanied the transfer of the space shuttle, especially if it says something like, ‘all rights, title, and interest,’ that’s a property transfer, and that’s it,” O’Donnell said.

“NASA has decided to transfer all rights, interest, title, and ownership of Discovery to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum,” reads the signed transfer of ownership for space shuttle orbiter Discovery (OV-103), according to a copy of the paperwork obtained by collectSPACE.

The Congressional Research Service also raised the issue of ownership in its paper, “Transfer of a Space Vehicle: Issues for Congress.”

“The ability of the NASA Administrator to direct transfer of objects owned by non-NASA entities—including the Smithsonian and private organizations—is unclear and may be subject to question. This may, in turn, limit the range of space vehicles that may be eligible for transfer under this provision.”

Defending Discovery

The National Air and Space Museum also raised concerns about the safety of relocating the space shuttle now. The One Big Beautiful Bill allocated $85 million to transport the orbiter and construct a facility to display it. The Smithsonian contends it could be much more costly.

“Removing Discovery from the Udvar-Hazy Center and transporting it to another location would be very complicated and expensive, and likely result in irreparable damage to the shuttle and its components,” the museum’s staff said in a statement. “The orbiter is a fragile object and must be handled according to the standards and equipment NASA used to move it originally, which exceeds typical museum transport protocols.”

“Given its age and condition, Discovery is at even greater risk today. The Smithsonian employs world-class preservation and conservation methods, and maintaining Discovery‘s current conditions is critical to its long-term future,” the museum’s statement concluded.

The law directs NASA to transfer the space shuttle (the identified space vehicle) to Space Center Houston (the entity designated by the NASA administrator) within 18 months of the bill’s enactment, or January 4, 2027.

In the interim, an amendment to block funding the move is awaiting a vote by the full House of Representatives when its members return from summer recess in September.

“The forced removal and relocation of the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum is inappropriate, wasteful, and wrong. Neither the Smithsonian nor American taxpayers should be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this misguided effort,” said Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), who introduced the amendment.

A grassroots campaign, KeepTheShutle.org, has also raised objection to removing Discovery from the Smithsonian.

Perhaps the best thing the Smithsonian can do—if indeed it is NASA’s intention to take Discovery—is nothing at all, says O’Donnell.

“I would say the Smithsonian’s recourse is to keep the shuttle exactly where it is. It’s the federal government that has no recourse to take it,” O’Donnell said. “The space shuttle [Discovery] is the Smithsonian’s, and any law that suggests the intention to take it violates the Fifth Amendment on its face—the government cannot take private property.”

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Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a daily news publication and online community focused on where space exploration intersects with pop culture. He is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He is on the leadership board for For All Moonkind and is a member of the American Astronautical Society’s history committee.

Houston, you’ve got a space shuttle… only NASA won’t say which one Read More »

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“It’s a heist”: Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal shuttle from Smithsonian

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Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston.

Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian’s collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred “all rights, interest, title, and ownership” for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian.

“This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don’t have the right in Texas to claim this,” said Durbin.

Houston was not the only city to miss out on displaying a retired space shuttle. In 2011, Durbin and fellow Illinois Senator Mark Kirk appealed to NASA to exhibit one of the winged spacecraft at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The agency ultimately decided to award the shuttles to the National Air and Space Museum, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, and the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Houston, we have a problem

A prototype orbiter that was exhibited where Discovery is now was transferred to the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

To be able to bring up his points at Thursday’s hearing, Durbin introduced the “Houston, We Have a Problem” amendment to “prohibit the use of funds to transfer a decommissioned space shuttle from one location to another location.”

He then withdrew the amendment after having voiced his objections.

“I think we’re dealing with something called waste. Eighty-five million dollars worth of waste. I know that this is a controversial issue, and I know that there are other agencies, Smithsonian, NASA, and others that are interested in this issue; I’m going to withdraw this amendment, but I’m going to ask my colleagues to be honest about it,” said Durbin. “I hope that we think about this long and hard.”

“It’s a heist”: Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal shuttle from Smithsonian Read More »

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Rocket Report: Japan’s workhorse booster takes a bow; you can invest in SpaceX now

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“We will be able to industrialize Zephyr production up to 50 units per year.”

Europe’s first reusable rocket main stage demonstrator, Themis, is being transported to its launch pad at Esrange Space Centre, Sweden. Credit: ESA/ArianeGroup

Welcome to Edition 8.01 of the Rocket Report! Today’s edition will be a little shorter than normal because, for one day only, we celebrate fake rockets—fireworks—rather than the real thing. For our American readers, we hope you have a splendid Fourth of July holiday weekend. For our non-American readers, you may be wondering what the heck is happening in our country right now. Alas, making sense of all this is beyond the scope of this humble little newsletter.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Will Orbex ever launch an orbital rocket? Orbex, a launch services company based in the United Kingdom, has announced the postponement of its first orbital launch to 2026 due to infrastructure limitations and other issues, Orbital Today reports. At the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, Orbex chief executive Miguel Bello Mora announced that the company is now targeting next year for the liftoff of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord in Scotland. He said the delay is partly due to the limited launch infrastructure at SaxaVord and a “bottleneck” in site operations.

The real issue, revealed … Orbex is developing the Prime rocket, but progress has been very slow. The company is now a decade old and has shown off relatively little hardware. It’s difficult to believe the company will launch anytime soon. Tellingly, Orbex recently told the UK government it would need to raise a further 120 million pounds ($163 million) from private investors over the next four years to realize its ambitions. That seems like a huge ask. This newsletter has been skeptical of Orbex before, and this latest update only affirms that skepticism.

Themis demonstrator arrives in Sweden. Developed by ArianeGroup, a 30-meter launch vehicle intended to demonstrate reusable launch capability has arrived at the Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden, SVT reports. The initial phase of the test campaign will include wet-dress rehearsals and hot-fire tests, to be followed by a “hop test” that will occur no earlier than the end of this year.

Hopping higher and higher … Based on experience from these initial tests, the program aims to fly the Themis demonstrator on higher and progressively more advanced tests, not dissimilar to what SpaceX did with its Grasshopper vehicle a little more than a decade ago in Texas. Eventually, Europe aims to use lessons learned from Themis to develop a reusable rocket similar to the Falcon 9 vehicle. (submitted by bjelkeman)

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.

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Electron launches twice in two days. Rocket Lab’s “Symphony in the Stars” mission lifted off on Saturday, June 28, from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The mission was the second of two launches from the same launch site in less than 48 hours, a new record for turnaround time, the company said. It’s a sign of a maturing company that Rocket Lab can turn between launches so quickly.

Reaching an impressive cadence … “Symphony in the Stars” was Rocket Lab’s tenth Electron mission of 2025 and its 68th launch overall as the company continues to increase the cadence of Electron launches. “The future of space is built on proven performance, and Electron continues to deliver against a stacked launch manifest this year,” Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said in a news release. It’s been a good year for the firm, with 100 percent mission success.

Latitude announces expansion plans. In an emailed news release, the French launch startup Latitude said this week that it has secured a strategic industrial site south of Reims on the former AstraZeneca production facility. This site offers development potential of 270,000 sq. feet. By investing over 50 million euros ($58 million) in this site, Latitude aims to deliver on its promise of developing a small rocket with a high launch cadence.

Seeking to scale … “Thanks to this location, we will be able to industrialize Zephyr production up to 50 units per year while maintaining control over our growth pace,” said Isabelle Valentin, chief operating officer of the company. Latitude aims to launch its Zephyr rocket in 2026 from the Guiana Space Centre, in French Guiana, for the first time. The company also said it has signed two major contracts, including a strategic mission for the European Defence Fund and a contract with the French space agency, CNES, for microgravity demonstrations.

Japan’s H2A rocket makes final flight. Japan’s flagship H2A rocket lifted off for the final time on Sunday from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, successfully concluding a 24-year run that has defined the nation’s space capabilities, The Japan Times reports. The rocket’s 50th and final mission carried the GOSAT-GW, a government-developed hybrid environmental observation satellite.

Out with the old, in with the new … Jointly developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the 53-meter rocket debuted in 2001 and quickly became the workhorse of the country’s space program. It had an excellent record, with 49 successes out of 50 launch attempts. The decision to retire the H2A comes amid rising global competition in the space launch industry, where cost-efficiency has become a key differentiator. Japan hopes its new H3 rocket, although expendable, will be more cost competitive.

SpaceX to win DOD satellite contract. The Trump administration plans to cancel a fleet of orbiting data relay satellites managed by the Space Development Agency and replace it with a secretive network that, so far, relies primarily on SpaceX’s Starlink Internet constellation, Ars reports. While details of the Pentagon’s plan remain secret, the White House proposal would commit $277 million in funding to kick off a new program called “pLEO SATCOM” or “MILNET.” The funding line for a proliferated low-Earth orbit satellite communications network hasn’t appeared in a Pentagon budget before, but plans for MILNET already exist in a different form.

X marks the spot … Meanwhile, the budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 would eliminate funding for a new tranche of data relay satellites from the Space Development Agency. The pLEO SATCOM or MILNET program would replace them, providing crucial support for the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense shield. While SpaceX’s role isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Pentagon’s budget documents, the MILNET program is already on the books, and SpaceX is the lead contractor. It has been made public in recent months, after years of secrecy, although many details remain unclear.

Prometheus rocket engine undergoes testing. European rocket builder ArianeGroup announced this week that it completed a series of Prometheus rocket engine test ignitions in late June, marking a key milestone in the program, European Spaceflight reports. Developed under a European Space Agency contract, Prometheus is a reusable rocket engine capable of producing around 100 metric tons of thrust.

Launching soon from Sweden … It is designed to be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of current European engines, with the use of additive manufacturing playing a key role in reducing production costs. According to ArianeGroup, the multiple ignitions over a single day represent a “significant advancement in the engine’s development.” Prometheus will initially power the Themis demonstrator (see item above). Its first commercial application will be the two-stage Maia rocket, developed by MaiaSpace, an ArianeGroup subsidiary.

Do you want to buy SpaceX tokens? SpaceX remains a privately held company, which means that us mere mortals cannot invest in the launch firm. (To be clear, as a space reporter, I do not invest in any space companies. To do so would be unethical.) The DealBook newsletter has a report on a new trend in “tokens” that allows ordinary investors to invest in privately traded companies, including SpaceX.

Not technically equity … Vlad Tenev, Robinhood’s chief executive, said that the tokens are not technically “equity,” but that they “effectively give retail investors exposure to these private assets.” Robinhood isn’t alone: The startup Republic is offering tokens meant to track the equity performance of SpaceX. Those will be sold to US investors via a loophole in a 2012 securities law. However, DealBook warns, unregulated private-company tokens could lead to a fragmented and less transparent ecosystem for investments, making it harder for regulators to protect the public.

Texas politicians seek to move shuttle Discovery. This week, a political effort to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston has been merged with the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which the US Senate passed on Tuesday, Ars reports. Among the bill’s many provisions is $85 million for the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act. Sponsored by US Sen John Cornyn, R–Texas, the bill calls for Discovery to be removed from its home of the past 13 years, the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and put it on display at Space Center Houston, the official visitor complex for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Underestimating transport costs … The Senate version of the bill provides “no less than $5 million” for the “transportation of the space vehicle” and the remainder to go toward the construction of a facility to house it. The original text of the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act called for the NASA administrator and the Smithsonian to jointly develop a plan for moving Discovery prior to appropriations being made by Congress. It is unclear whether the total amount allocated by the Senate would be enough; the National Air and Space Museum provided Congress with an estimate of $200 million to $300 million for the move. Speaking frankly, and as a resident of Houston, this bill is absurd, and the shuttle Discovery absolutely belongs in the Smithsonian. NASA is being told to cut science missions left and right, but funding can be found for this?

Next New Glenn launch will target Mars. Blue Origin is making steady progress toward the second launch of its New Glenn rocket, which could occur sometime this fall, Ars reports. Publicly, the company has said this second launch will take place no earlier than August 15. This is now off the table. One source told Ars that a mid- to late-September launch date was “realistic,” but another person said late October or November was more likely.

A big landing on tap … Blue Origin has been mum about the payload that will fly on this rocket, but multiple people have told Ars that the current plan is to launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission on the second launch of New Glenn. This mission encompasses a pair of small spacecraft that will be sent to Mars to study the red planet’s magnetosphere. After ESCAPADE, Blue Origin has several missions tentatively plotted out. A much-anticipated mission to land Blue Origin’s Mk1 lander on the Moon could take place during the first half of next year.

Next three launches

July 3:  Soyuz 2.1a | Progress MS-31 | Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan | 19: 32 UTC

July 8:  Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-28 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05: 48 UTC

July 15:  Eris | Initial test flight | Bowen Orbital Spaceport, Australia | 21: 30 UTC

Photo of Eric Berger

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Rocket Report: Japan’s workhorse booster takes a bow; you can invest in SpaceX now Read More »

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Sony, Ubisoft scandals prompt Calif. ban on deceptive sales of digital goods

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No more now you see it, now you don’t —

New California law reminds us we don’t own games and movies.

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Sony, Ubisoft scandals prompt Calif. ban on deceptive sales of digital goods

California recently became the first state to ban deceptive sales of so-called “disappearing media.”

On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2426 into law, protecting consumers of digital goods like books, movies, and video games from being duped into purchasing content without realizing access was only granted through a temporary license.

Sponsored by Democratic assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, the law makes it illegal to “advertise or offer for sale a digital good to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.”

Moving forward, sellers must clearly mark when a buyer is only receiving a license for—rather than making a purchase of—a digital good. Sellers must also clearly disclose that access to the digital good could be revoked if the seller no longer retains rights to license that good.

Perhaps most significantly, these disclosures cannot be buried in terms of service, but “shall be distinct and separate from any other terms and conditions of the transaction that the purchaser acknowledges or agrees to,” the law says.

An exception applies for goods that are advertised using “plain language” that states that “buying or purchasing the digital good is a license.” And there are also carve-outs for free goods and subscription services providing limited access based on a subscription’s duration. Additionally, it’s OK to advertise a digital good if access isn’t ever revoked, such as when users purchase a permanent download that can be accessed offline, regardless of a seller’s rights to license the content.

Ubisoft, Sony called out for consumer harms

In a press release earlier this month, Irwin noted that the law was drafted to “address the increasingly-common instance of consumers losing access to their digital media purchases through no fault of their own.”

She pointed to Ubisoft revoking licenses for purchases of its video game The Crew last April and Sony stirring backlash by threatening to yank access to Discovery TV shows last year as prominent examples of consumer harms.

Irwin noted that the US has been monitoring this problem since at least 2016, when the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force published a white paper concluding that “consumers would benefit from more information on the nature of the transactions they enter into, including whether they are paying for access to content or for ownership of a copy, in order to instill greater confidence and enhance participation in the online marketplace.”

It took eight years for the first state lawmakers to follow through on the recommendation, Irwin said, noting that sellers are increasingly licensing content over selling goods and rarely offer refunds for “disappearing media.”

“As retailers continue to pivot away from selling physical media, the need for consumer protections on the purchase of digital media has become increasingly more important,” Irwin said. “AB 2426 will ensure the false and deceptive advertising from sellers of digital media incorrectly telling consumers they own their purchases becomes a thing of the past.”

In Irwin’s press release, University of Michigan law professor Aaron Perzanowski praised California for trailblazing with a law that clearly labels this practice as false advertising.

“Consumers around the world deserve to understand that when they spend money on digital movies, music, books, and games, those so-called ‘purchases’ can disappear without notice,” Perzanowski said. “There is still important work to do in securing consumers’ digital rights, but AB 2426 is a crucial step in the right direction.”

Sony, Ubisoft scandals prompt Calif. ban on deceptive sales of digital goods Read More »

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Is accidentally stumbling across the unknown a key part of science?

discovery, luck, nature of science, Science, serendipity / /

That wasn’t what I was looking for —

A new book argues that our ignorance is so large, lucky discoveries are inevitable.

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The First Combat of Gav and Talhand', Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings), ca. 1330–40, Attributed to Iran, probably Isfahan, Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper, Page: 8 1/16 x 5 1/4 in. (20.5 x 13.3 cm), Codices, Three battles between two Indian princes - half brothers contending for the throne - resulted in the invention of the game of chess, to explain the death of one of them to their grieving mother. The Persian word shah mat, or checkmate, indicating a position of no escape, describes the plight of Talhand at the end of the third battle. (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Enlarge / The First Combat of Gav and Talhand’, Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings), ca. 1330–40, Attributed to Iran, probably Isfahan, Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper, Page: 8 1/16 x 5 1/4 in. (20.5 x 13.3 cm), Codices, Three battles between two Indian princes – half brothers contending for the throne – resulted in the invention of the game of chess, to explain the death of one of them to their grieving mother. The Persian word shah mat, or checkmate, indicating a position of no escape, describes the plight of Talhand at the end of the third battle. (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The three princes of Sarandib—an ancient Persian name for Sri Lanka—get exiled by their father the king. They are good boys, but he wants them to experience the wider world and its peoples and be tested by them before they take over the kingdom. They meet a cameleer who has lost his camel and tell him they’ve seen it—though they have not—and prove it by describing three noteworthy characteristics of the animal: it is blind in one eye, it has a tooth missing, and it has a lame leg.

After some hijinks the camel is found, and the princes are correct. How could they have known? They used their keen observational skills to notice unusual things, and their wit to interpret those observations to reveal a truth that was not immediately apparent.

It is a very old tale, sometimes involving an elephant or a horse instead of a camel. But this is the version written by Amir Khusrau in Delhi in 1301 in his poem The Eight Tales of Paradise, and this is the version that one Christopher the Armenian clumsily translated into the Venetian novel The Three Princes of Serendip, published in 1557; a publication that, in a roundabout way, brought the word “serendipity” into the English language.

In no version of the story do the princes accidentally stumble across something important they were not looking for, or find something they were looking for but in a roundabout, unanticipated manner, or make a valuable discovery based on a false belief or misapprehension. Chance, luck, and accidents, happy or otherwise, play no role in their tale. Rather, the trio use their astute observations as fodder for their abductive reasoning. Their main talent is their ability to spot surprising, unexpected things and use their observations to formulate hypotheses and conjectures that then allow them to deduce the existence of something they’ve never before seen.

Defining serendipity

This is how Telmo Pievani, the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences at the University of Padua, eventually comes to define serendipity in his new book, Serendipity: the Unexpected in Science. It’s hardly a mind-bending or world-altering read, but it is a cute and engaging one, especially when his many stories of discovery veer into ruminations on the nature of inquiry and of science itself.

He starts with the above-mentioned romp through global literature, culminating in the joint coining and misunderstanding of the term as we know it today: in 1754, after reading the popular English translation entitled The Travels and Adventures of Three Princes of Serendip, the intellectual Horace Walpole described “Serendipity, a very expressive word,” as “discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.”

Pievani knows a lot, but like a lot, about the history of science, and he puts it on display here. He quickly debunks all of the instances of alleged serendipity that are always trotted out: Fleming the microbiologist had been studying antibiotics and searching for a commercially viable one for years before his moldy plate led him to penicillin. Yes, Röntgen discovered X-rays by a fluke, but it was only because of the training he received in his studies of cathode rays that he recognized he was observing a new form of radiation. Plenty of people over the course of history splashed some volume of water out of the baths they were climbing into and watched apples fall, but only Archimedes—who had recently been tasked by his king to figure out if his crown was made entirely of gold—and Newton—polymathic inventor of calculus—leapt from these (probably apocryphal) mundane occurrences to their famous discoveries of density and gravity, respectively.

After dispensing with these tired old saws, Pievani then suggests some cases of potentially real—or strong, as he deems it—serendipity. George de Mestral’s inventing velcro after noticing burrs stuck to his pants while hiking in the Alps; he certainly wasn’t searching for anything, and he parlayed his observation into a useful technology. DuPont chemists’ developing nylon, Teflon, and Post-it notes while playing with polymers for assorted other purposes. Columbus “discovering” the Americas (for the fourth time) since he thought the Earth was about a third smaller than Eratosthenes of Cyrene had correctly calculated it to be almost two thousand years earlier, forgotten “due to memory loss and Eurocentric prejudices.”

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Discovery+ catches up to the competition with offline access

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