Air and Space: Will Space Tourists Finally Get a Ride?

Air and Space: Will Space Tourists Finally Get a Ride?

By Joe Pappalardo

Spaceport America is the place where future spaceflights with Virgin Galactic will take off - for $250,000 each. In the middle of the New Mexico desert, Richard Branson's company has been promising space tourism for years. They now have former test pilots and NASA astronauts for pilots, and two spaceships to make it work. A WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane a SpaceShipTwo passenger plane are going through final tests. The first official flight is expected to take off next June.

    For the hefty price, there is also a great deal of hospitality. A lounge is situated just off the run way where families can watch Future Astronauts (the rich people who get to ride) take off. Afterward, they will meet in here for celebratory champagne. The whole flight will take under 2 hours, with 5 minutes spent weightlessly in space.

The New Yorker: Why you can't just vote on your phone during the pandemic

The New Yorker: Why you can't just vote on your phone during the pandemic

By Sue Halpern

    Many people are concerned with going to the polls during the pandemic, and some have found state-run pilot programs for online voting on the Internet and social media. So why aren't we all just voting online?

    Three words: It's not safe. Pilot programs and last-second emergency online voting has shown that hackers can easily change a vote while it is traveling from the voter to the counter, all without leaving a trace. In fact, a government programmer demonstrated all the weak points in a video that can be found online.

    Now, we could send absentee ballots to people online, have them fill it out, print it, and mail it, but hackers could still gain access to what was input on the ballot, leading to the possibility of targeted political ads. However, there is great potential and many investors in this idea, and perhaps the future will see widespread online voting.

Time: What Kamala Harris Means For Joe Biden's Campaign—and the Democratic Party's Future

Time: What Kamala Harris Means For Joe Biden's Campaign—and the Democratic Party's Future

By Molly Ball

    Joe Biden has picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, putting the first Black and Asian American woman on a major party ticket. He has also symbolically appointed an heir to take the Democratic party into the future.

    Harris ran against Biden in the Democratic primaries, and although she has been in consideration for the Vice Presidential pick for a while, the recent Black Lives Matter protests have boosted her support. Biden's increasing age was also a consideration, with Harris being two decades younger than him. "In Harris, he saw someone who could accomplish three things at once: help him win the November election, help him govern through a national crisis, and help him pass the torch to a new and diverse generation of Democrats."

    Harris's race is very important, as low Black turnout cost the Democrats many votes in swing states in 2016. She also has an interesting political history, having often shown conflicting policies due to her political malleability. Although this helped her in state elections, her lack of direction left many supporters wondering in the presidential race, leading to her eventual dropout.

    One important issue is that Biden and Harris have a history. Harris openly attacked him during an early debate on a policy that affected her and he supported. Biden struggled to respond, leading to a temporary rise in the polls for Harris. Although she never apologized, Biden doesn't hold any grudges. But his advisors thought otherwise, worrying that she might not be a loyal running mate. In the end though, she was the best choice - a white VP might have seemed ignorant to racial injustices, whereas some other candidates were too inexperienced.

TedEd: Football physics: The "impossible" free kick

A TedEd by Erez Garty

In a 1997 soccer game between France and Brazil, Roberto Carlos set up for a 35m free kick with no direct path to the goal. Carlos kicked it wide of the players, seemingly out of bounds. But just before going out, it turned and went into the goal. How is this possible? Newton's 1st Law of Motion states that an object will move in the same direction and velocity unless a force is applied on it. So what force turned Carlos's ball? When he kicked the ball, he kicked it so that it turned on its axis. As the ball moved through the air, the air moved against the spin of the ball on one side while going with the spin on the other side. This created areas of low and high pressure, and the ball curved to the low pressure side, going into the goal. This is called the Magnus effect, first discovered in 1670 by Sir Isaac Newton while he was playing tennis. This can occur with other kinds of ball sports, and even frisbee. The type of kick is called a banana kick, and it is very hard. If you kick it too wide, it goes out; too far in, it won't get past the defenders. If it has too much spin, it won't go into the goal, and too little, it will go out. So is it possible to kick the ball so hard that it comes back? No, it will be slowed by the air, increasing its angle of deflection, and making it go in a perpetual spiral. And to do even that, you would need to give it 15 times as much spin as Carlos.