Lugh

The US has voted for someone who likes to govern via chaos. We've seen it since they took office, and we can assume that is how the next 4 years, and maybe longer will be.

Chaos has consequences, and one area that may soon be felt is space exploration. With regard to the Moon, there's currently two large-scale efforts. NASA's Artemis program, and China's plans to build an International Lunar Research Station at the Moon's south pole. As Elon Musk is now the de facto leader of America's space exploration, is it his plans that will take precedence? He says the Artemis program is a waste of time and the US should focus on going to Mars instead.

All of this has consequences - US partner space agencies from Europe, Japan and Canada are all spending billions on their parts of the Artemis program. Is there any point any more? What alternatives do they have, for not just lunar exploration, but replacing the aging International Space Station.

One thing seems likely, they won't want to spend billions of their taxpayer's money on chaos.

Some people think large industrialized countries being 100% renewables is impossible, but Germany will soon prove that wrong. There's also the idea among some that solar can't be effective at more northern latitudes - wrong again. Solar is cheap and powerful enough to work fine in Northern Europe, it just takes a building a bit more of it than you would in sunny climates.

Germany's switch is being helped by the widespread adoption of cheap home solar. It's cheap not just because the price of solar panels has decreased by 90% in the last ten years, but systems are being sold now you can install yourself, without the cost of qualified installers.

Furthermore, almost two thirds of Germans plan to have a home solar system by 2029. Does this point to a future around the world where most people have some decentralized home electricity generation capacity?

They may be plateauing, it's unclear.

People often talk about the profound first-mover advantages that might come to a nation that first develops AGI, but what about the one who develops workable fusion power first?

We are already seeing the decay of the fossil fuel age, and all the economic and political structures that go with it. The creation of fusion power would speed that up. China seems to be in a positive-feedback loop, where being the world's biggest industrial and manufacturing power is making it the technological leader too. A fusion power breakthrough might be a shot in the arm for that process.

The depressing reality is there are so many ways this could be happening. Is it unaccounted for methane in melting permafrost? Is it the fact carbon dioxide emissions are still increasing, thanks to India and China. Or perhaps some feedback mechanism we don't know about?

Considering how more damaging it is, I wonder does the world have a handle on how much methane is being released? Especially from thawing permafrost land. Climate change keeps seeming to happen quicker than we expect.

It is confusingly written, though my interpretation of this is that they are talking about a future variant of Ariane 6. I could be wrong, there are plans for something called Ariane Next in the 2030s, that will also be fully reusable, but this sounds like they intend it to happen this decade for the upper stage at least.

As with everything European there's a bewildering number of acronyms, national, and pan-national agencies involved. The French space agency CNES is leading this, though all ESA member states pool resources, and the Ariane rockets.

Confusingly, there is another ESA reusable rocket initiative centered around building a brand new rocket with a new type of engine, though it doesn't start launch testing until 2026.

Europe is behind the US and China on reusable rockets, but its space program will benefit from the world's move towards protectionist economic policies. It has always been helped by the 'buy European' policies of European governments, & geo-political changes make this approach likely to become stronger.

The American Big Tech companies are sowing the seeds of their own downfall by embracing the current US administration's Orwellian agenda. Much of the world will turn against them and their technology - Europe already explicitly is - and at home when times change, they will be remembered as Vichy-like collaborators for their betrayal of democracy.

I agree, in a sea of bad news, this is some very good news.

I hope it continues and robs Musk, Thiel and the other Big Tech hobgoblins of the power they were dreaming AI would give them.

Yes, but GPT-4 was at 7% and regarded as world best only months ago.

The true significance here, is that they've replicated the industry leader so easily and so quickly.

And it's a great idea to pump another $500 billion into these people, why? ...