Tim Fernholz

One thing science fiction has taught us: We’ll need lasers in space. But if the movies teach us that their most common application is blasting away at rival star cruisers, in real life we’ll (hopefully) use them mainly to stay in touch. Militaries, of course, are interested in lasers as a way to blind satellite sensors or even damage them permanently—the US has tested such systems, and intelligence analysts say China is developing them at a secret facility. But a laser that can damage something…

There’s a lot about Bidenomics that represents a departure from the US economic status quo, most notably the administration’s willingness to engage in industrial policy by subsidizing efforts to lessen dependence on fossil fuels and bring the manufacturing of computer chips back to the United States. Economists are typically dubious that government planners can arrange for companies and workers to hit production targets—market measures of demand are more efficient signals for investment. But m…

The attacks launched by Hamas against Israel leveraged modern technology: rockets, drones, and paragliders, not to mention mobile phone cameras and internet connections to broadcast their crimes to the world. Where did the money for all this come from? In part, cryptocurrency. Decentralized finance has always been pitched as a way to avoid the difficulties of the regulated global financial system, and crypto has long been used to fuel black markets. But its role as a source of finance for terr…

This week marks Blue Origin announcing a new product without a flashy launch featuring founder and funder Jeff Bezos. Is it a sign of things to come? The space company revealed a new vehicle called Blue Ring, effectively a space tug on steroids. Lars Hoffman, a Blue Origin salesperson, told Aviation Week that the vehicle will be able to carry more than 6600 lbs (3020 kg) of payloads to a variety of orbits throughout the solar system. It will use chemical and electric propulsion that is apparent…

Apple, Meta, and Google have all mulled businesses based on satellites orbiting the Earth, but last week Amazon became the first tech giant to actually begin operating computers in space. The company launched two prototype satellites for its Kuiper constellation on Oct. 6, and 10 days later confirmed they had survived the trip to an orbit about 600 km (373 miles) above the Earth. They are able to generate power from the sun and communicate with Amazon engineers on the ground as testing gets u…

The US government is borrowing a lot of money at high interest rates. In the 2023 fiscal year, the deficit rose to $1.7 trillion—a number the US only exceeded during the burst of pandemic spending. But the reason for so much borrowing isn’t spending—federal outlays were actually down 2% in 2023. The bulk of the difference came from falling revenue compared to 2022, when the US taxman made out like a bandit as investors closed their positions at the top of the bull market in equities and paid t…

The first person to fly in another country’s spacecraft, and the first person to go to space who wasn’t from the US or Russia, was Vladimir Remek, a Czech Air Force pilot who visited the Salyut space station in 1978. Now, 45 years later, we’re about to enter a new age of international human spaceflight, but it’s not led by state actors. As it proceeds towards opening a commercial space station, US company Axiom has become the world’s space agency. It has flown two missions to the Internationa…

As Israeli authorities have documented the results of the shocking attacks launched by Hamas earlier this month, it’s become clear many of the hostages taken back to Gaza by the Islamic militant group aren’t Israeli. More than half of the estimated 220 hostages hold foreign passports, some of whom are dual nationals, the Israeli government said on Oct. 25. That includes a dozen Americans, as well as German, Argentine, French, Russian and Filipino victims. But the largest group, numbering 54, a…

NASA’s top officials took a tour last week. Their destinations: The companies the space agency hired to put astronauts on the Moon before China does. On Oct. 26, NASA administrator Bill Nelson stopped by Blue Origin’s engine production facility in Huntsville, Alabama, accompanied by Jim Free, the NASA executive in charge of the Artemis program to return to the Moon. Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder and financier, was there to greet them, along with top execs like John Couloris, a former pilot…

Our obsession with a certain spaceport on the Texas coast may come to an end if SpaceX’s Starship finally makes its second attempt at an orbital flight this month. But our long national spaceport nightmare is just beginning. The number of commercial orbital rocket launches in the US is growing, from just 12 in 2012 to 84 in 2022; there have already been 92 launches this year. Most of those are SpaceX rockets, and the company says it plans to fly even more often in 2023. We are also expected to…