President Trump is turning to Value Capture, to Decide, Which Transit Projects are Awarded Funding.

The Trump Infrastructure Plan Just Might Have One Good Idea for Cities

Donald Trump is no friend to mass transit. But tucked away in the 55-page infrastructure plan released on Monday is an intriguing idea for America's forthcoming subways and light rails, should the administration decide to fund them at all: A demand that all new transit use some form of value capture.

From article, (Donald Trump is no friend to mass transit. But tucked away in the 55-page infrastructure planreleased on Monday is an intriguing idea for America’s forthcoming subways and light rails, should the administration decide to fund them at all: A demand that all new transit use some form of value capture.

Under the proposal, any city that wants federal money must show that it will collect some of the property value gains that accrue to plots along the new line, and use those proceeds to finance the project. There are lots of different technical ways to do this (with boring names like “tax-increment financing district”), but each of them is grounded in a fundamental expectation: Transit is supposed to make the land it touches more expensive.

This forces transit planners to think as hard about real estate development as getting people from place to place, and not always for the better. Many streetcar projects, for example, are rather transparently intended to spur apartment construction, rather than move people, and their abysmal ridership statistics show the peril of that approach. Relatedly, value capture proponents often oppose adding transit to neighborhoods that are already built out, even if ridership would be high.

The Trump administration wants to make the 5309 Capital Investment Grants, a program run out of the Federal Transit Administration, conditional on value capture. CIG, which includes the popular transit funding grant New Starts, has been responsible for funding virtually every new transit project in the country, including the Second Avenue Subway. In many cases, CIG funding is indispensable: Seattle received $830 million from CIG for its $1.95 billion University Link extension, a popular light rail project in the rare city where fewer people are driving to work alone.

Requiring transit planners to recoup real estate gains would dramatically change the selection, viability, and influence of these multibillion-dollar endeavors.

Capturing value from development is above all a political challenge. If a planner commits to boosting property values, she is laying out two potential scenarios. One option: The buildings around the new stations don’t change, and home values, propery taxes (and rents) go up. That’s not a good result when so many residents face daunting rent burdens. Otherwise, the city commits to up-zoning the area around the new stations, raising property values through the construction of larger buildings without necessarily having rents rise. That’s not an easy sell for homeowners who want to have their cake (an unchanging neighborhood) and eat it too (a convenient mass transit link). 

Ultimately, a requirement that new transit include value capture mechanisms would, I think, effectively demand coordination between transit and city planners, and could all but require larger buildings around stations.)

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If we learned anything from the Second Avenue Subway, LIRR East Side Access Needs to Rein In Its Bloated Costs.

The real cost of LIRR East Side Access

No one at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Rail Road or any elected official including Gov. Cuomo ever wants to talk about the real full cost for LIRR East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal which may be closer to $15 billion rather than $10.8 billion.

 From article, (No one at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Long Island Rail Road or any elected official including Gov. Cuomo ever wants to talk about the real full cost for LIRR East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal which may be closer to $15 billion rather than $10.8 billion.

The original Full Funding Grant Agreement between the United States Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration and MTA was approved in December 2006. The $2.63 billion in federal grant funding remains unchanged (virtually all of which has already been spent) with the MTA as local sponsor having to cover the $6 billion and growing cost overruns. Ten years later in August 2016 the FTA amended agreement was signed off by both FTA and the MTA. After years of negotiations, the MTA and FTA finally came to an agreement which would reflect the true current cost and schedule. Both the cost went up and first revenue day of service slipped once again. Taxpayers may end up paying $12 billion in direct costs for this project. The odds have increased that riders may have to wait until December 31, 2023 before boarding the first LIRR train to Grand Central Terminal.

On numerous occasions the MTA has blamed Amtrak for being responsible for additional delays on the progression of LIRR ESA to Grand Central Terminal project. Insufficient support from Amtrak has been responsible for periodic delays since 2006. This may continue for years due to ongoing Penn Station repairs. 

Since 2001, the total direct cost for LIRR East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal has grown from $3.5 billion to $4.3 billion in 2003, $6.3 billion in 2006, $8.4 billion in 2012, $10.8 billion in 2014 and easily up $12 billion when finally completed.

Based upon past history, the final direct cost might go up again over the next six years by $1 billion or more. The anticipated opening day for passenger revenue service date has slipped on a number of occasions from 2011 to December 2023. Over the next six years will both this date and budget hold? No one should be surprised, if it ends up in 2024 or later.)

How many Falcon 9s, Falcon Heavies, and BFRs can SpaceX produce per year?

If there was the demand SpaceX has factory capacity for 100+ Falcon Heavy launches in 2019 and beyond | NextBigFuture.com

SpaceX has the factory production capability to provide over 100 Falcon 9 and 100 Falcon heavy launches in 2019 and 2020. SpaceX is producing about 5 engines per week and has the factory capacity of 400 engines per year or about 8 engines per week. The Falcon 9 has 10 engines.

From article, (SpaceX has the factory production capability to provide over 100 Falcon 9 and 100 Falcon heavy launches in 2019 and 2020.

SpaceX is producing about 5 engines per week and has the factory capacity of 400 engines per year or about 8 engines per week.

The Falcon 9 has 10 engines. One nine-engine first stage and a single engine second stage.
The Falcon Heavy has 28 engines. Three nine-engine cores and a single engine second stage.

 SpaceX should soon be pretty perfectly recovering the first stages and the fairing and other parts. Only the single-engine second stage will not be recovered. The number of total launches is the number of expendable second stages that are made once there are about ten to twenty reusable first stages.

If 2018 production was 400 engines. In 2018 and 2019, SpaceX could produce twenty reusable Falcon 9 and ten Falcon Heavy’s along with 220 expendable second stages.

The Raptor engines are the same size as the Merlin engines.

The SpaceX BFR has 31 engines in the first stage and 6 engines in the second stage. SpaceX should be able to produce ten BFR per year.

SpaceX is rapidly changing what is possible in space. Instead of taking 40 launches over a decade to build the 400-ton space station, we could have 1000 launches in a year from ten fully reusable SpaceX BFRs that would place 150,000 tons into space. The 1000 SpaceX BFR launches would cost $10 billion versus $40 billion for the space shuttle launches of the International space station.

We will be getting 1000 times the capability in space.

Casey Ex Australia has suggested that NASA and other space agencies should sign a contract with SpaceX to guarantee a Falcon Heavy launch to every planetary exploration target on every launch window – a steady campaign of about one launch per year per planet. A steady pipeline guaranteed launches will mean a lot of capacity for secondary payloads.)

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You Are Probably Pretty Fed Up With NYC's Traffic and Transit. What is NYC / NYS to do?

Congestion pricing where the outer boroughs win

Whether you're a lifelong New Yorker or a recent transplant, the odds are pretty good that you're fed up with our city's traffic and transit. As any old-timer will tell you, we haven't seen mass transit this bad since the early 1980s.

From article, (Whether you’re a lifelong New Yorker or a recent transplant, the odds are pretty good that you’re fed up with our city’s traffic and transit. As any old-timer will tell you, we haven’t seen mass transit this bad since the early 1980s. And traffic, recently estimated to be costing the region $20 billion a year in lost economic productivity, is the worst ever recorded.

Competing interests have sunk previous congestion management plans. But between them, the Move NY and Fix NYC plans were developed with extensive input from elected officials, business groups, labor unions and community groups across the region—with a particular emphasis on hearing from opponents of past pricing efforts. As a result, the Fix NYC plan that sits before the Legislature today ensures that Manhattanites will pay their fair share. Just as important, it delivers for long-suffering drivers and riders in the outer boroughs.

Long-overdue fixes and upgrades to the subways will be a boon to their more than 5.6 million weekday riders, including many who come from areas outside of Manhattan. Revenue from this proposal will allow the MTA to finally fill transit gaps, bringing new or improved service to underserved areas.

Drivers traveling into central Manhattan, meanwhile, will get a return on their money in the form of less traffic. Drivers traveling in places outside the congestion charging zone, like Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City, will likewise see less traffic—without having to pay a cent. Finally, drivers commuting to the central business district who pay tolls on bridges or tunnels will receive a credit against their congestion fee, ensuring they won’t be charged twice.

Some legislators, particularly in Queens and Brooklyn, have continued a decades-old tradition of reflexively dismissing congestion pricing out of hand. Their objections may have been appropriate for previous, Manhattan-centric proposals. But the severity of the traffic and transit crises, combined with the benefits this proposal delivers to their constituents, requires these legislators either to put forward a better plan or get on board.

New Yorkers have understandably run out of patience. The capacity crowd at a recent public debate in Mill Basin, a car-reliant and transit-poor community in Brooklyn, made clear that voters want real solutions and are ready to give congestion pricing a try.)

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Congestion Pricing for NYC is seen by Boston as a Role Model for its City.

Congestion pricing in Boston: Has its time arrived?

New York City is closer than ever to enacting congestion pricing-that is, charging most motorists a fee for driving in and out of Manhattan's main commercial districts. The idea has the backing of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the sort-of backing, or at least not outright opposition, of New York Mayor (and Cambridge native) Bill de Blasio.

From article, (New York City is closer than ever to enacting congestion pricing—that is, charging most motorists a fee for driving in and out of Manhattan’s main commercial districts.

The idea has the backing of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the sort-of backing, or at least not outright opposition, of New York Mayor (and Cambridge native) Bill de Blasio. Business groups are starting to line up behind it, and even ride-hailing apps such as Uber are saying they wouldn’t have a problem with the fee.

The idea behind congestion pricing is simple: To reduce vehicular traffic in congested areas by making it a cost-benefit analysis rather than a routine for drivers. Go in and about only if you absolutely need to—otherwise, take public transit, bike, or walk.

In New York’s case, too, the revenue from congestion pricing under the most recent proposal would go toward paying for much-needed repairs to the region’s public transit system, particularly the subway.

You know what other region needs money for its public transit system, particularly the subway? Yes, Boston.

But congestion pricing in Boston has never gotten beyond the idea phase. What if New York institutes it, though? (That could come as soon as this spring via the New York state budgeting process.)

 New York would become the first city in the U.S. to enact congestion pricing. Would that be a tipping point for other clogged cities such as Boston?

The Boston region already boasts (?) some of the world’s worst traffic, the sort of jams that nibble away at quality of life and that have a very real economic impact on individuals, businesses, and the region as a whole.

And the T and the commuter-rail are routinely short of the capital funding necessary for substantive improvements to infrastructure and service. Plus, most T lines are just a headache to take on any given day.

Perhaps, then, the idea and its moment are about to meet in Boston: Congestion pricing to pay for public transit improvements and to curb traffic in busier areas.)

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Some things in Society Tend to Take Time to Happen. It was 56 years ago that the Jetsons envisioned flying cars. Now, we may be finally getting them.

Look up! A dozen 'air taxi' flying cars are readying for takeoff

Well, it may have been 56 years since "The Jetsons" was first on TV, but flying cars are finally about to become real. The last few months have been filled with news of companies that unveiled, demonstrated, or released videos of their "air taxis," as they're often called.

 From article, (Well, it may have been 56 years since “The Jetsons” was first on TV, but flying cars are finally about to become real.

The last few months have been filled with news of companies that unveiled, demonstrated, or released videos of their “air taxis,” as they’re often called. They’re basically giant-sized versions of drones — giant enough to carry a person, or two, or five.

Why now? Because all the necessary ingredients have aligned: Batteries with high enough energy density to carry these copters into the air; composite materials like carbon fiber light enough to work; avionics (aircraft software and electronics, developed for regular drones) cheap and reliable enough to adapt; and collision-avoidance systems advanced enough to keep these things from crashing.

The beauty of these personal copters is that since they’re all electric, they’re really quiet. They could fly at low altitude without becoming a nuisance to people on the ground. And, of course, they’re pollution-free: zero emissions.

All of these models can be autonomous. You plug in your destination, and the thing flies you there. Some have a joystick so that you can seize control of it if you want, and most can also be remote controlled.

These air taxis are built with redundancies of the major elements, so even if something goes wrong, you won’t drop out of the air. Many have low-altitude parachutes, too.

Now, don’t get all excited. You can’t buy a passenger drone yet — that moment will probably come in 2020 at the earliest, and they’ll cost hundreds of thousands apiece. Even then, nothing will happen in the U.S. until the Federal Aviation Administration comes up with rules to govern how these things use the airspace.

Oh, and by the way: Even with all the advances in batteries and materials, these things are still super limited in flight time. You’re lucky to get 20 minutes in the air.

But the trend is unmistakable: A lot of companies have working prototypes that are taking real people on real flights. [Click on the For More Info link for a list of companies and summary of their prototypes.])

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A computer program that can work in weeks, making artificially designed organisms, that can take years of human work, and only act when a biological switch is activated. That is the Goal achieved.

Biologists would love to program cells as if they were computer chips

Illustration by David S. Goodsell Sitting in his startup lab space on the outskirts of MIT's campus, Alec Nielsen opens his laptop and types in instructions for a genetically modified yeast cell that will glow yellow. He tells the program what sugars he plans to feed the cell-arabinose and lacctose-and specifies that it should make a fluorescent protein normally found in jellyfish.

 From article, (Biology research, for the most part, is experimental. You don’t know what will work until you try it. But Asimov thinks it can take some of the guesswork out of making engineered organisms. “We decided a couple of years ago to take this very complex problem and make it as simple as programming a computer,” says Christopher Voigt, an MIT professor who is a cofounder of the company. “We starting thinking of how to pull the tools of electronic circuit design into genetic circuit design.”

Manufacturing proteins, biofuels, or chemicals inside cells isn’t new. That is where insulin, alcohol, and the enzymes in laundry detergent come from. But getting a microbe to make what you want—when you want—without dropping dead from the effort isn’t easy.

Now scientists are designing a new generation of organisms that do more than continuously pump out gene products like factories. They want them to sense and respond to environmental cues, turn on at certain times, or become smart cancer drugs that are deadly only inside a tumor.

A few products with such “switches” in them are already in development. A company called Synlogic is testing bacteria with a gene circuit in it that people are swallowing as part of a clinical trial. Big drug companies have started acquiring startups with ideas for new cancer-fighting cells.
 Voigt’s lab spent the last decade developing genetic switches that perform basic logical tasks, such as waiting for two biological signals before turning on.

In 2016, he, Nielsen, and others demonstrated the CELLO software, which so sped up genetic design that they were able to build 52 such circuits in about a week’s time. More than two-thirds actually worked. “It condenses years of work into a few weeks,” Voigt says. “We spent a lot of time figuring out why the basic elements fail and how to fix them, and how to insulate the system so they would work in all different combinations.”

If biological design can be made more predictable, Nielsen sees few limits on what it could be used for. “We think genetic circuits will start appearing in all of the products that touch our lives every day, from foods to clothes to medicines,” he says.)

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Finding New Antibiotics, with New Tools, and Soil, From Around the World.

A potentially powerful new antibiotic is discovered in dirt

The modern medical era began when an absent-minded British scientist named Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find that one of the petri dishes he forgot to put away was covered in a bacteria-killing mold. He had discovered penicillin, the world's first antibiotic. Ninety years later, the world faces an antibiotic crisis.

 From article, (“Every place you step, there’s 10,000 bacteria, most of which we’ve never seen,” said Brady, a professor at Rockefeller University in New York. Many of these bacteria behave in ways that aren’t yet understood and produce molecules that haven’t been seen before.

“Our idea is, there’s this reservoir of antibiotics out in the environment we haven’t accessed yet,” Brady said.

That idea is beginning to pay off: In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology, he and his colleagues report the discovery of a new class of antibiotic extracted from unknown microorganisms living in soil. This class, which they call malacidins, kills several superbugs – including the dreaded methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) – without engendering resistance.

You won’t find this antibiotic at your pharmacy next week, Brady cautioned. It takes years for a novel molecule to be developed, tested and approved for distribution. But its discovery is proof of a powerful principle, he said: A world of potentially useful untapped biodiversity is still waiting to be discovered.

Though antibiotics are prized for their ability to combat the microbes that make humans sick, most of them actually come from bacteria. For example, streptomycin, which has been used to treat tuberculosis and plague, is produced by the bacterium Streptomyces griseus. (This microbe was originally found in the dirt of a New Jersey farm field, though the antibiotic research was conducted using cell cultures.)

Bacteria have been fighting one another for billions of years – far, far longer than humans have been around – so it’s hardly surprising that they have evolved all the best weapons. Yet the vast majority of these microbes don’t grow well under controlled laboratory conditions, making them difficult to study.

“Maybe, using that simple culture-based approach, we’ve missed most of the chemistry that are produced by bacteria,” Brady said.

It would be better to derive interesting molecules directly from the environment. And with the advent of metagenomics, techniques that allow all the genetic material in a sample to be sequenced en masse, researchers can do just that.

For this study, Brady’s team cloned vast quantities of DNA from hundreds of soil samples contributed by citizen scientists across the country and then sorted through the material in search of interesting sequences.

“Most of what’s there is completely unknown, and that’s the future,” Brady said.

He and his colleagues were looking specifically for a known gene associated with the production of calcium-dependent antibiotics – molecules that attack bacterial cells, but only when calcium is around. It’s thought that the existence of such an “on-off” switch may make it harder for microbes to evolve resistance. Because of this, the gene for calcium dependence might serve as a flag for a much longer sequence controlling the production of antibiotics – much the same way that coming across instructions for making crust might flag cookbook readers that they’ve found a recipe for pie.

Having identified a sequence containing the calcium-dependence gene, the researchers cloned it and injected it into a microbe that can be cultured. Soon enough, those microbes were making malacidins. When applied to cuts in the skin of MRSA-infected rats, the previously unknown molecule successfully sterilized the wounds. The bacterium didn’t show signs of resistance, even after three weeks of exposure.

According to Brady, malacidins work by interfering with the process that bacteria use to build their cell walls. Human cells rely on a different process, so the antibiotic isn’t toxic in people.

He and his colleagues don’t know what species the molecules come from, but they don’t need to – they already have the genetic blueprint for building it. “The effort now is to scale it,” he said.)

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SpaceX is building a third drone ship to land its Falcon Heavy rocket on. Two Cores of the Falcon Heavy would land on two seperate drone ships? What about the Center Core?

Elon Musk plans new SpaceX drone ship, A Shortfall of Gravitas

CLOSE CAPE CANAVERAL - A new SpaceX drone ship under construction will help the company handle increased launch operations and likely call the Space Coast home, CEO Elon Musk said Monday. The company's third ship, named A Shortfall of Gravitas, will join Of Course I Still Love You for East Coast booster landing operations, Musk said via Twitter in response to the USA TODAY Network.

  From article, (A new SpaceX drone ship under construction will help the company handle increased launch operations and likely call the Space Coast home, CEO Elon Musk said Monday.

The company's third ship, named A Shortfall of Gravitas, will join Of Course I Still Love You for East Coast booster landing operations, Musk said via Twitter in response to the USA TODAY Network. The latter is based at Port Canaveral and returns Falcon 9 boosters to facilities near the port for post-launch checkouts.

Musk also confirmed that for Falcon Heavy missions, the rocket's two side boosters will not always return to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station like they did during last week's premiere launch. In some cases involving tight fuel margins and heavy satellites, having two ships based on the Space Coast will mean both sail out at the same time and play host to tandem ocean landings.)

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Me, "Doesn't SpaceX need a Fourth Drone ship for the center core of the Falcon Heavy to land on?"

President Trump's budget for NASA shows a lot will be going on in Human Space Flight over the next few years, with Government, and Commercial Projects.

Trump budget aims to kick-start lunar exploration, cancels space telescope

The White House's $19.9 billion NASA budget outline released Monday would continue development of NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule and begin the deployment of a mini-space station around the moon as soon as 2022, but the proposal would cancel WFIRST, a flagship-class astronomy mission planned for launch in the mid-2020s.

From article, (The White House’s $19.9 billion NASA budget outline released Monday would continue development of NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule and begin the deployment of a mini-space station around the moon as soon as 2022, but the proposal would cancel WFIRST, a flagship-class astronomy mission planned for launch in the mid-2020s.

The funding request submitted to Congress on Monday calls for $10.5 billion in fiscal year 2019, which begins Oct. 1, to prepare for human exploration of the moon as a stepping stone toward eventual missions to Mars and deeper into the solar system.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate will draft their own budget for NASA and other federal agencies to send to the White House for President Trump’s signature, and there will likely be changes to the Trump administration’s proposal when the final budget is enacted.

Members of Congress from both parties have expressed concern with parts of the NASA budget request.

The budget proposal refocuses NASA on lunar exploration using the agency’s Space Launch System and Orion spaceship, two multibillion-dollar programs that could make their first unpiloted test flight together in 2020, several years later than originally intended.

NASA officials said there would be significant roles for commercial partners in the lunar exploration plan.

In 2022, a power and propulsion module could be launched aboard a commercial rocket to begin the construction of a space station named the Lunar Orbital Platform – Gateway. Employing solar-electric propulsion with plasma engines, the module was previously slated to launch on the NASA-owned Space Launch System.

Agency officials called the proposed space complex the Deep Space Gateway in past briefings.

The outline described by the White House and NASA officials Monday envisions commercially-developed lunar landers to ferry experiments, hardware, and eventually astronauts between the moon’s surface and the station in lunar orbit by the end of the 2020s.

“The budget request this year for FY19 is $19.9 billion,” said Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s acting administrator. “It’s a $400 million increase in terms what we’ve had, that we’re working to right now as an agency. It really reflects the administration’s confidence that America will lead the way back to the moon and take that next giant leap from where we made the first small steps for humanity some 50 years ago.”

Under the program unveiled by the White House last year, and explained in further detail in Monday’s budget request, NASA would still use the same SLS/Orion vehicles originally designed for the Constellation moon program and the Obama White House’s asteroid and Mars initiative. But instead of bypassing treks to the lunar surface in favor of Mars, NASA plans to tap commercial providers to develop and build landers that will explore the moon, first robotically, and then with crews.

NASA has spent some $23 billion on the SLS, Orion and ground system projects over approximately the last decade, with $15 billion of that expenditure coming since 2012, according to the agency’s inspector general.

Lightfoot called SLS and Orion the “critical backbone elements” for NASA’s future in human space exploration.

Multiple new commercial U.S. heavy-lift rockets could be flying by the time the Space Launch System debuts in 2020, including SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which made its first successful test flight Feb. 6. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and ULA’s planned Vulcan launcher, both with less lift capability than the Falcon Heavy, are expected to fly for the first time as soon as 2020.

In its initial “Block 1” configuration, the expendable Space Launch System will be able to hurl more than 70 metric tons — 154,000 pounds — into low Earth orbit and more than 25 metric tons — 55,000 pounds — on a trajectory to the moon.

SpaceX says its Falcon Heavy can loft nearly 64 metric tons — more than 140,000 pounds — into low Earth orbit, sending up nearly as much cargo as an SLS flight at a fraction of the cost.

Lightfoot said the lunar exploration outline revealed Monday came out of a 45-day study ordered by the National Space Council, a committee of senior administration officials chaired by Vice President Mike Pence.

“In short, we are once again on a path to return to the moon, with an eye toward Mars,” Lightfoot said.

“Around the moon, in orbit, we’re going to place and begin the first steps of our in-space infrastructure,” Lightfoot said. “In that development, we’re going to launch the power and propulsion element for the Lunar Orbital Platform – Gateway that we’re going to put up. That’s planned to launch in 2022, and that’ll be the first piece that we’re going to have around the moon.

“Also, at the moon, we’re going to have a series of more capable landers,” Lightfoot said. “We’re going to start with small ones that will basically be our scouts, doing the resource prospecting, as I call it, to get ready to go and learn what we can from a scientific perspective, but also how it applies to humans, so you’ll see a series of landers going forward in this budget. That allows us to really start getting our feet wet with what it’s like to be on the moon.”

NASA could also issue contracts for the first small commercial lunar lander missions in the coming months, according to Hunter.

The landing craft will first be small in scale to test out descent technology. Subsequent landers will be larger and carry scientific payloads, rovers and other instrumentation to examine the resources available to crews on the lunar surface.

Finally, the commercial lander program could lead to a human-rated landing craft.

NASA’s science directorate will initially oversee the commercial moon lander program.

Without a major boost in NASA’s budget, the lunar program’s affordability assumes the space agency ends its direct funding of the International Space Station in 2025.

“Given competing priorities at NASA, and budget constraints, developing another large space telescope immediately after completing the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope is not a priority for the administration,” officials wrote in a budget summary postd on the White House website. “The budget proposes to terminate WFIRST and redirect existing funds to other priorities of the science community, including completed astrophysics missions and research.”

The proposed cancellation of WFIRST was “due to a size cost decision, and the notion that a very large flagship was not affordable at this time,” Hunter said.

Scientists expect WFIRST to find up to 20,000 exoplanets orbiting other stars, building on the planet-hunting capabilities of NASA’s Kepler telescope.

NASA has already spent around $300 million on WFIRST during the last few years.

Spergel called on astronomers and the public to try to get Congress to continue supporting WFIRST.

“Congress writes the budget,” he tweeted. “If the astronomy community and those who are interested in astronomy push back, we will be able to reverse the cuts in the astronomy budget. These cuts imperil not only WFIRST but any future major mission. Push back!”)

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Me, "While it is exciting to see the first steps for our country to return to the Moon. Its still sad to wonder what WFIRST may have been able to discover. Maybe Congress can keep WFIRST funded. But if not, like I said, a lot of interesting things being mapped out for NASA, and Commercial Space in Human Space Flight."

Exploring the Shadow left by a Retreating Iceberg.

Scientists Set to Explore Mysterious Seafloor Exposed by Antarctica's Giant Iceberg

Remember the massive iceberg that split away from Antarctica last year? An international team of scientists is about to embark on a mission to explore the newly exposed marine ecosystem underneath-one that's been hidden for over 100,000 years. Iceberg A-68, as it's called, calved from Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf on July 12, 2017.

From article, (An international team led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will travel to the area aboard the RRS James Clark Ross for a three-week mission beginning on February 21, 2018. The scientists will depart from the Falkland islands and use satellite imagery to avoid the many icebergs in the region. Once at the Larsen Ice Shelf (which is now 10 percent smaller than it was when it broke off from Antarctica), the scientists will collect samples from the newly exposed seafloor—but time is of the essence.

Iceberg A-68, as it’s called, calved from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf on July 12, 2017. Weighing about a trillion tons and featuring a surface area of 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers), the iceberg is about the size of Delaware, or about four times the size of London, England. It’s been drifting away from the area for months now, slowly disintegrating into smaller and smaller bits (and spawning treacherous many icebergs in the process). For thousands of years, this chunk of ice rested above the seafloor, but it’s gone now, and scientists are eager to explore the mysterious world underneath.

 “The calving of A-68 offers a new and unprecedented opportunity to establish an interdisciplinary scientific research programme in this climate sensitive region,” said David Vaughan, Science Director at BAS. “Now is the time to address fundamental questions about the sustainability of polar continental shelves under climate change. We need to be bold on this one. Larsen C is a long way south and there’s lots of sea ice in the area, but this is important science, so we will try our best to get the team where they need to be.”

Using video cameras and a special sled that will scoop up samples from the bottom, the researchers are hoping to collect seafloor animals, microbes, plankton, and sediment. Specifically, the they’ll be looking for things like sea sponges, brittle stars, urchins, sea cucumbers, sea stars, and anything else that may have taken root under the ice. They’re also going to see if any new life has taken residence in the area, including birds and marine mammals.

“The calving of A-68 provides us with a unique opportunity [to] study marine life as it responds to a dramatic environmental change,” Katrin Linse, a marine biologist with the BAS, said in a statement. “It’s important we get there quickly before the undersea environment changes as sunlight enters the water and new species begin to colonize. We’ve put together a team with a wide range of scientific skills so that we can collect as much information as possible in a short time. It’s very exciting.)

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