STARBASE, Texas—For the third day in a row, SpaceX engineers prepared to send the company's massive Starship rocket into space Tuesday after a technical problem and bad weather grounded the test flight on two previous launch attempts.

The one-hour launch window opens at 6:30 pm CDT (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC) at SpaceX's sprawling rocket development site in South Texas, just a couple of miles north of the mouth of the Rio Grande River at the US-Mexico border.

SpaceX called off a launch attempt Sunday after detecting a leak in the plumbing that flows super-cold liquid oxygen propellant into the rocket. Technicians fixed the problem in time for another countdown 24 hours later, but the risk of lightning in the area prevented Starship from lifting off Monday evening.

Now, the Starship launch team hopes the third time is the charm. SpaceX will begin loading more than 10 million pounds of cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket about an hour before launch Tuesday.

On this flight, SpaceX aims to launch Starship halfway around the world from Texas toward a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The three previous test flights failed before Starship reached its target. You can read more about the goals of the 10th Starship flight in our earlier story.

The failures illustrated the challenge SpaceX is trying to solve with Starship, the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built.

Don’t break the heat shield

"There are thousands of engineering challenges that remain for both the ship and the booster, but maybe the single biggest one is the reusable orbital heat shield," said Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, on Monday.

SpaceX started off flying Starships with roughly 18,000 hexagonal tiles, each about the size of a dinner plate. These tiles were made of ceramic material, similar to the design of the heat shield tiles that flew on NASA's space shuttles. Beginning with a test flight in January, SpaceX introduced its "latest generation tiles" and added a backup layer between the tiles and Starship's underlying stainless steel structure to protect it from heat shield damage.

A camera aboard Starship captured this view of a plasma sheath enveloping the vehicle during reentry over the Indian Ocean last year. Credit: SpaceX

Returning from space, the ship sees temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius), hot enough to melt aluminum. One of the reasons SpaceX chose stainless steel for Starship's primary structure is because of the metal's higher melting point.

Eventually, SpaceX wants to catch ships coming back from space with big mechanical arms on the launch pad, similar to the way SpaceX has shown it can recover the rocket's huge Super Heavy booster. This would allow SpaceX to theoretically stack a freshly flown ship on top of a booster right on the launch pad, then quickly refuel it and launch it again.

There are plenty of things SpaceX must prove before the company is able to do this. But SpaceX has already demonstrated it can handle some of the more obvious problems, such as repeatedly igniting the rocket's Raptor engines. The most definitive test will be SpaceX's success or failure with Starship's heat shield.

"We are confident in making a fully reusable orbital heat shield but it will require many flights, many iterations to figure out where the weak points are in the heat shield, where we need to change the design, either strengthening the tile or changing how big the gap is between tiles, or changing what’s underneath the tile," Musk said in a discussion broadcast on SpaceX's official livestream of Monday's Starship launch countdown.

The heat shield was one of the most vexing problems with NASA's space shuttle program. Thousands of tiles peeled off of the space shuttle Columbia when NASA first flew the orbiter on top of its modified 747 carrier aircraft in 1979. Tile damage was a regular occurrence throughout the shuttle program's 30-year service life, necessitating tile repairs and replacement inside the shuttle's hangar between missions.

"The space shuttle heat shield would come back essentially partially broken and would require many months of refurbishment in order to fly again," Musk said. "What we’re trying to achieve here with Starship is to have a heat shield that can be reflown immediately."

On each Starship flight this year, SpaceX has sought to test the performance of new tile designs, including metallic insulators and heat shield sections with "active cooling" to help dissipate the scorching temperatures of reentry into the atmosphere.

NASA's space shuttle <em>Columbia</em> lost thousands of thermal protection tiles during a 1979 flight on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified 747 jumbo jet. Credit: NASA

"There are 100 different variables that we could tweak with the heat shield tiles, but the only way to know exactly what we should be adjusting is to fly repeatedly and to be able to examine the ship upon landing," Musk said.

Before SpaceX can test the heat shield repeatedly, Starship must first make it through a single flight from start to finish. It has failed to do this on all three attempts this year, following a year of progress with Starship in 2024. SpaceX guided Starship to a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean on several occasions last year.

“We have successfully brought the ship back through the atmosphere and achieved a soft landing multiple times, so we know that this is possible," Musk said. "But we have, in the process, shed many heat shield tiles, so we need to be able to do this without shedding heat shield tiles and do so repeatedly."

SpaceX also must make sure the launch pad's catch arms don't damage Starship's heat shield when it comes in for landing. This will only be attempted after SpaceX officials are comfortable they have solved the heat shield problem during tests over the ocean.

"We need to make sure we don’t scrape the tiles off as we slide along the chopstick arms," said Bill Riley, SpaceX's vice president of Starship engineering.

Charlie Camarda, a former NASA astronaut, engineer, and materials scientist, worked on alternatives to the shuttle's heat shield beginning in the 1970s. One of his first jobs at NASA was to demonstrate the feasibility of a heat shield for the leading edge of the space shuttle's wings that used heat pipes for active cooling.

"We were interested in looking at the more durable systems," Camarda told Ars. "The first thing I ever tested was actually an all-metallic shuttle wing leading edge, and it used heat pipes, and it was built by McDonnell Douglas. It was a competitor with the reinforced carbon-carbon, the passive leading edge system."

Ultimately, NASA went with the reinforced carbon-carbon heat shield for the leading edges of the shuttle's wings and nose cap, while the belly of the shuttle was shielded by ceramic tiles. It was one of these reinforced carbon-carbon panels that broke on the space shuttle Columbia when it was hit by a piece of foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch in January 2003. The damage was undetected until the shuttle broke apart during reentry 16 days later, killing all seven astronauts onboard.

Camarda flew as a mission specialist on the next shuttle flight in 2005 after NASA developed techniques to repair a damaged heat shield in space.

"I did a lot of very early on radiant heating tests and hypersonic wind tunnel tests of this all-metallic wing leading edge, and it would basically take the heat from the lower surface and basically pump it up to the upper surface, so the entire wing leading edge would glow almost at the same temperature because it was such an effective two-phase heat transfer," Camarda said.

Camarda's work in the thermal structures branch at NASA's Langley Research Center was limited to ground testing in high-temperature wind tunnels. His designs never flew on the space shuttle.

"When I saw [SpaceX] was testing different kinds of metallic heat shields, the guys... in my old branch, were all saying, 'Wow, this is phenomenal! We wish we were young again and NASA was this vivacious, you know?' But unfortunately, we didn't get to see it."

Camarda said NASA's approach to testing is a lot different from the way SpaceX handles things.

NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson, STS-135 commander, right, and pilot Doug Hurley, left, examine the thermal tiles of the orbiter after the space shuttle <em>Atlantis</em> landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing STS-135, the final mission of the NASA shuttle program, on Thursday, July 21, 2011. Credit: Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

"It's amazing what these guys are doing, and they're doing it so rapidly, and they're testing a lot of things all at once," Camarda said. "I almost wonder if that's a smart thing to do. He's failing large. Is his vehicle that inexpensive that he could use it as a hypersonic flight test? Is it so inexpensive that he could afford to do that?

"At a research center, we had such limited budgets that we had to scrimp and save every little thing," Camarda said. "So, we would take a building block approach, and never be so bold as to do this very large test with multiple hundreds of changes. It's crazy."

The elephant in the room

SpaceX has blamed Starship's setbacks this year on fuel leaks and an engine malfunction. Apart from the program's in-flight failures, another Starship exploded during a ground test in June when a nitrogen tank failed.

Elon Musk didn't mention any of this when he appeared for roughly 20 minutes on SpaceX's live webcast Monday. Musk originally planned to provide a "technical update" on the X Spaces platform Sunday. In this format, Musk presumably could have answered questions from members of the space press corps and space enthusiasts hungry for details not just on the promise of a rocket as potentially revolutionary as Starship, but the obstacles SpaceX must overcome to make it a reality.

But SpaceX canceled the event without explanation. Instead, Musk appeared on SpaceX's official prelaunch livestream. Most of the discussion centered not on detailed technical updates, but on familiar Musk talking points: making humanity a multi-planet species, and why a rocket like Starship is necessary to make it happen.

After the heat shield, one of the next big test objectives for the Starship program will be in-orbit refueling. This is a crucial prerequisite for any Starship flights that travel into deep space. SpaceX's gigantic rocket is designed to haul up to 150 metric tons of payload into low-Earth orbit, but it can't go any farther without a recharge of its cryogenic propellant tanks.

This, like so much of the privately developed Starship program, is something that's never been done in space before. Musk said this is something he "hopes to demonstrate next year."

SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage stand fully fueled for launch Monday, moments before officials scrubbed the countdown due to bad weather. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

But the schedule is fuzzy. Musk has recently claimed SpaceX will send its first uncrewed Starships to Mars next year, too. That won't happen without acing orbital refueling, something that NASA officials believe will likely take multiple tries to master.

Why is NASA interested in Starship refueling? The US space agency has more than $4 billion in contracts with SpaceX to develop a human-rated version of Starship that can land astronauts on the Moon. With these contracts, NASA is counting on Starship being ready to deliver a crew to the lunar surface before China.

The Moon was conspicuously absent from Musk's discussion Monday. He said the word "Mars" at least 13 times, but didn't mention the Moon at all. During his previous presentation on Starship in May, he devoted just 40 seconds of a 40-minute talk to the Moon.

This is notable, but not a surprise. Musk has called the Moon a "distraction" and in January wrote on X that SpaceX is "going straight to Mars." Even before his falling out with President Donald Trump this summer, Musk told Ars in May that the Artemis program's "ambitions are too low."

"We should be going 1,000 times farther, and going to Mars," Musk said at the time.

Meanwhile, NASA's acting administrator, Sean Duffy, continues to reiterate the agency's goal of landing astronauts on the Moon with Starship on the Artemis III mission in 2027. Duffy, who also serves as the secretary of transportation, said last month he was assured by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell that the company is on pace with the Starship lander.

"They said if there's a hold-up for Artemis III, it's not going to be them," Duffy said.

But it's impossible to escape the tension between the government's goals in space and those of SpaceX. Maybe a successful Starship test flight would help break the ice.

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For many beer lovers, a nice thick head of foam is one of life's pure pleasures, and the longer that foam lasts, the better the beer-drinking experience. A team of Swiss researchers spent seven years studying why some beer foams last longer than others and found that the degree of fermentation—i.e., whether a given beer has been singly, doubly, or triply fermented—is crucial, according to a new paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids.

As previously reported, foams are ubiquitous in everyday life, found in foods (whipped cream), beverages (beer, cappuccino), shaving cream and hair-styling mousse, packing peanuts, building insulation, flame-retardant materials, and so forth. All foams are the result of air being beaten into a liquid formula that contains some kind of surfactant (active surface agent), usually fats or proteins in edible foams, or chemical additives in non-edible products. That surfactant strengthens the liquid film walls of the bubbles to keep them from collapsing.

Individual bubbles typically form a sphere because that's the shape with the minimum surface area for any volume and hence is the most energy-efficient. One reason for the minimizing principle when it comes to a bubble's shape is that many bubbles can then tightly pack together to form a foam. But bubbles "coarsen" over time, the result of gravity pulling down on the liquid and thinning out the walls. Eventually, they start to look more like soccer balls (polyhedrons). In a coarsening foam, smaller bubbles are gradually absorbed by larger ones. There is less and less liquid to separate the individual bubbles, so they press together to fill the space.

This "jamming" is why foams are typically far more rigid than their gas (95 percent) and liquid (5 percent) components. The more tightly the bubbles jam together, the less they can move around and the greater the pressure inside them becomes, giving them properties of a solid.

Various factors can affect foam stability. For instance, in 2019, Japanese researchers investigated a phenomenon known as "collective bubble collapse," or CBC, in which breaking one bubble at the edge of a foam results in a cascading effect as the breakage spreads to other bubbles in the foam. They identified two distinct mechanisms for the resulting CBCs: a so-called "propagating mode," in which a broken bubble is absorbed into the liquid film, and a "penetrating mode," in which the breakage of a bubble causes droplets to shoot off and hit other bubbles, causing them to break in turn.

Higher levels of liquid in the foam slowed the spread of the collapse, and changing the viscosity of the fluid had no significant impact on how many bubbles broke in the CBC. Many industrial strategies for stabilizing foams rely on altering the viscosity; this shows those methods are ineffective. The researchers suggest focusing instead on using several different surfactants in the mixture. This would strengthen the resulting film to make it more resistant to breakage when hit by flying droplets.

However, as the authors of this latest paper note, "Most beers are not detergent solutions (though arguably some may taste that way)." They were inspired by a Belgian brewer's answer when they asked how he controlled fermentation: "By watching the foam." A stable foam is considered to be a sign of successful fermentation. The authors decided to investigate precisely how the various factors governing foam stability might be influenced by the fermentation process.

Triple that fermentation

"Foamy!" Much of the pleasure from beer comes from a nice thick head of foam. Credit: 20th Century Fox Television

“The idea was to directly study what happens in the thin film that separates two neighboring bubbles,” said co-author Emmanouil Chatzigiannakis of ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. “And the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of bubbles and foams is beer.”

To that end, Chatzigiannakis et al. conducted experiments on six commercial beers: two triple-fermented Belgian beers (Westmalle Tripel and Tripel Karmeliet); two Swiss lagers (Feldschlösschen and Chopfab); and two additional Belgian beers: the single-fermented Westmalle Extra and the double-fermented Westmalle Dubbel.

Single-fermented lager beers had the least stable foam, with triple-fermented beers boasting the most stable foam; the foam stability of double-fermented beers fell in the middle of the range. The team also discovered that the most important factor for foam stability isn't fixed but largely depends on the type of beer. It all comes down to surface viscosity for single-fermented lagers.

But surface viscosity is not a major factor for stable foams in double- or triple-fermented beers. Instead, stability arises from differences in surface tension, i.e., Marangoni stresses—the same phenomenon behind so-called "wine tears" and the "coffee ring effect." Similarly, when a drop of watercolor paint dries, the pigment particles of color break outward toward the rim of the drop. In the case of beer foam, the persistent currents that form as a result of those differences in surface tension lend stability to the foam.

The researchers also analyzed the protein content of the beers and found that one in particular—lipid transfer protein 1 (LPT1)—was a significant factor in stabilizing beer foams, and their form depended on the degree of fermentation. In single-fermented beers, for example, the proteins are small, round particles on the surface of the bubbles. The more proteins there are, the more the foam will be stable because those proteins form a more viscous film around the bubbles.

Those LPT1  proteins become slightly denatured during a second fermentation, forming more of a net-like structure that improves foam stability. That denaturation continues during a third fermentation, when the proteins break down into fragments with hydrophobic and hydrophilic ends, reducing surface tensions. They essentially become surfactants to make the bubbles in the foam much more stable.

That said, the team was a bit surprised to find that increasing the viscosity with additional surfactants can actually make the foam more unstable because it slows down the Marangoni effects too strongly. "The stability of the foam does not depend on individual factors linearly," said co-author Jan Vermant, also of ETH Zurich. "You can't just change 'something' and get it 'right.' The key is to work on one mechanism at a time–and not on several at once. Beer obviously does this well by nature. We now know the mechanism exactly and are able to help [breweries] improve the foam of their beers.”

The findings likely have broader applications as well. “This is an inspiration for other types of materials design, where we can start thinking about the most material-efficient ways [of creating stable foams],” said Vermant. “If we can't use classical surfactants, can we mimic the 2D networks that double-fermented beers have?” The group is now investigating how to prevent lubricants used in electric vehicles from foaming; developing sustainable surfactants that don't contain fluoride or silicon; and finding ways to use proteins to stabilize milk foam, among other projects.

DOI: Physics of Fluids, 2025. 10.1063/5.0274943  (About DOIs).

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HUERFANO COUNTY — In a lonely part of southern Colorado between Rye and Walsenburg, the most off-road-looking, off-road vehicle maneuvers past craters, rolls over dirt mounds and kicks up a little dust as it drives in a location so obscure that even Google Maps has trouble finding it.

But there it was and similar to an early artist rendering: the Lunar Outpost Eagle. Or at least it was a prototype of the autonomous lunar terrain vehicle that may be on the moon by the end of the decade for astronauts to scoot around up there.

Two iterations of the solar-powered Eagle roamed the family ranch of Lunar Outpost founder Justin Cyrus, who invited TV cameras, journalists and other media to take a peek last week at what the Golden-based space company has been up to for the past few years.

Normally, few humans are wandering around the property. The cattle were moved out of sight. Cyrus warned that other wildlife could wander into the path. “Watch out for rattlesnakes,” he told the humans. “If you hear a rattle, make sure you stop, evaluate the situation and then go the other way.”

Lunar Outpost’s latest iteration of its Eagle Lunar Terrain Vehicle is being tested in Southern Colorado, near Rye. The Golden-based company’s rover is competing for a service contract for NASA’s Artemis mission to provide transport for moon exploration. On the left is the latest model, nicknamed Falcon. In the video, an earlier prototype called Raven, was offering rides. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

If all goes Lunar Outpost’s way, NASA will award the Lunar Dawn team — which includes partners Goodyear, GM, MDA Space and Leidos — a service contract for the lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV.

But there’s competition. NASA narrowed it down to three LTV finalists in April 2024 for the Artemis Program, the U.S. mission to get humans back on the moon. A winner could be announced by the end of the year. 

The other two finalists are Venturi Astrolab in the Los Angeles area, and Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which last year sent America’s first spacecraft back to the moon since the Apollo program in 1972. Intuitive Machines also carried Lunar Outpost’s first rover called MAPP —  short for mobile autonomous prospecting platform — to the moon’s South Pole in March. The lander landed on its side and in a crater causing MAPP to get stuck. It couldn’t recharge. But it arrived in working order. 

All three companies are part of a new effort to open space up to commercial companies. 

“The goal of Lunar Outpost is to help create a sustainable human presence in space,” said Michael Moreno, the company’s vice president of strategy. “It’s not enough to launch a rocket. It’s not enough to land in one place with a lander and sit there. We need to be mobile to expand humankind’s reach into space. 

“If we want to build a habitation, you can’t put it right next to a rocket landing site. You need miles. I mean, think about Kennedy Space Center. You’re not sitting right next to the launch pad. Mobility is the key to unlocking a sustainable human presence in space, which is why we focused on that.”

How Eagle’s training ground landed south of Rye

Cyrus cofounded Lunar Outpost with his older brother, Julian, and AJ Gemer and Forest Meyen. Younger brother Austin also works for the company.

The Cyrus brothers have a history with outer space. They grew up outside of Johnson Space Center in Houston, where their father worked for NASA.

Many of Lunar Outpost’s crew have ties to Colorado School of Mines or University of Colorado in Boulder, both of which are recognized for their curriculum and contributions to aerospace. Justin went to both schools, and has an CU engineering degree and ended at Mines with a Masters of Science.

“We go way back,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, a professor and director of the Center for Space Resources at Mines. “He and his brother, Austin, went through our space resources graduate program and we’ve been working with them closely.”

Many space companies work with Mines. The school recently opened a test facility with simulated regolith to mimic the ground layer found on the moon.  The manufactured moon dust is made from basaltic volcanic material and ground to the right consistency. Carcinogenic material is removed but anyone who steps in the room needs a special mask since the dust can get into lungs. In the 100-square-meter facility, a lighting system also replicates conditions on the moon. 

“It’s open to organizations like NASA or companies like Lunar Outpost, and other universities — anyone who wants to use this for rovers, excavators, drilling machines or any robotic manipulators or equipment,” Abbud-Madrid said. “You can even take your rover there and control it from anywhere in the world or space if you want so you can replicate how you’re going to be controlling such a vehicle from Earth. It even produces a delay in the signal.”

Lunar Outpost, which employs about 150 people, has its mission-control operations in Arvada, where employees can check in on the rover wherever it is.

But they needed a much more expansive, remote area where the rover could drive around with humans safely on the sidelines or in the vehicle and operate unnoticed by the public. The rovers operate autonomously, by manual control or are controlled remotely from Arvada. 

The family ranch in a remote part of Colorado seemed like a good solution so they started using it for the first mission about two years ago. 

“The Colorado School of Mines is a much better facility for geo-technically accurate regolith, for accurate lunar soil. But it’s fairly small in the grand scheme of things. You don’t get these massive landscapes. What we wanted to do is put our operators in mission control and train them like they’re on the surface of the moon — remotely and not have anyone touch the robot,” Cyrus said. “I just had to convince my parents to let me tear up the front of the ranch.”

On the ranch property, there’s an area to mimic the moon’s surface, with homemade craters, small hills and stacks of jagged shale rocks. On the back part of the property, there’s lots of space for a rover to roam. 

“Over there you’ll notice some pretty massive ravines,” said Cyrus, after taking spectators to an area that overlooked a valley bordered by cliffs and dotted with dull grasses and shrubs and lots of pale Colorado dirt. “You have a lot of very extreme features on the surface of the moon. You have giant craters. You have lunar lava tubes. You have massive boulder fields. This area in the back allows us to test a lot of those key features.”

They also test the rover’s operation up and down slopes of up to 20-degrees, a NASA requirement. Long slopes are a challenge for electric vehicles because of battery use. 

“We have to make sure the power management on these vehicles is very efficient as we’re going over these extreme environments,” he said. “Here, we’ll put a robot out autonomously and operate it for a week or two weeks at a time.”

It happened to hit 90°F that day, a more palatable temperature than the extremes on the moon of 250°F in daylight to -208°F at night, according to NASA.

The rovers have broken “dozens of times,” he said. “The good news, though, it’s never driven into a ravine. It’s never hit a giant rock. It’s never been totaled. The rover is doing very well.” 

And you’ll know you’re at the right place if you spot a metal sign that says, “Lunar Vehicle Test Site.” 

That’s the handiwork of Bill Mansfield, an owner of the Greenhorn Valley Ace Hardware in nearby Colorado City. He’d worked on other signage for the brothers’ father, who shares bits and pieces about the project whenever he stops by. A former Ace employee worked for the brothers, so there’s another local link. But no one in town is really buzzing about it because they probably don’t know.

“It’s kind of out there where nobody really is and I think that’s probably part of the reason why they picked that spot,” said Mansfield, who’s seen the LTV but not in action. “It’s really cool, especially if they can get it accomplished. It’s a neat project.” 

Behind the design

One of the most noticeable adaptations for testing on Earth are the vehicle’s tires. They’re regular rubber Goodyear Wrangler tires built for backroads terrain. 

On the moon, however, the rover will be fitted with something entirely different — metal tires that look like wire strands woven together, akin to a Medieval knight’s chain mail. That’s to prevent a broken piece from ruining the whole tire.

“They’re very low maintenance. These tires can last over 10 years on the lunar surface at a time without any maintenance,” Cyrus said. 

The proprietary metal tires, made by Lunar Dawn teammate, Goodyear, provide traction but also absorb impact. Cyrus showed how the metal tire bounced on the ground. 

The latest Eagle prototype, called Falcon, seats two astronauts and has a large bed to transport whatever space items are needed —  up to about 5,300 pounds. Many features on the vehicle were designed with humans in mind, from adding fenders to mitigate dust, ledges on the sides to provide work surfaces, and inlay lighting on the floors and exterior to help astronauts instantly know where they are around the vehicle. 

The seats have deep gaps in the back to handle astronauts’ oxygen tanks. Giant handles to steer the vehicle accommodate the pressurized gloves astronauts wear. A rack of useful metal tools, like a shovel, work light and sledgehammer are attached using a quick-connect system on a gridded panel inspired by their own off-road adventures using MOLLE panels.

There’s 360-degree cameras, multiple sensors and lidar to determine depth. Dual-sided solar panels for the roof slide to the sides as needed or can be deployed elsewhere. 

“One thing we’ve learned from all the mission operations of our early rovers is power is key,” Cyrus said. “You want to be able to drive as far as possible, stop, charge and download data, especially on the early missions where we’re limited to only 14 Earth days. Landers don’t survive alone at night so we have to get as much data down as possible.” 

Missing at least on this day was the meter-long robotic arm from MDA Space, which will help astronauts grab resources. The arm can also do it with zero human interaction “so it can accomplish a lot of science,” Cyrus said. Named SKYMAKER, the robotic arm was in Houston for additional testing. 

The vehicle is pretty large. It looks like it ate two or three Jeep Wranglers. Cyrus declined to say how much it weighed but they’re trying to keep it as light as possible. When it heads to the moon, it’ll ship nearly as is.

“It doesn’t fold at all,” Cyrus said. “The suspension is slightly compressed but that’s it. … Honestly, I’m just excited to be in the 2020s and having transportation that can fit something like this is awesome. … Yes, a SpaceX starship fits this.”

And if NASA picks the Eagle, the rover is scheduled to be on the moon in 2029.

Commercializing outer space

The world has gotten used to commercial companies like SpaceX sending reusable rockets to space. Commercialization has been in the works for years. In 2020, the U.S. was part of the Artemis Accords, essentially an outer space treaty with more than 50 countries committed to a “safe, peaceful and prosperous future in space.”

For Lunar Outpost, it’s already been to the moon. Its MAPP rover mission, the first commercial rover on the moon, carried goodies, aka payloads, including Adidas soccer jerseys for an Italian football club Juventus, Nokia’s cellular network in a box, and a laser-engraved key to unlocking a cryptocurrency stash.

More missions are planned. 

For the LTV mission, NASA’s paying for the service. It’s not buying the vehicle. According to NASA, the contract has a “maximum potential value of $4.6 billion.” 

If the Lunar Dawn team isn’t picked, there’s still a chance the Eagle will one day land on the moon. It just needs to find another customer.

“We are building this vehicle to exceed NASA standards,” Moreno said. “We continue to own the vehicles and they buy missions from us. It’s very intentional. It’s a new business model for NASA. They want to collaborate with commercial space and to do that, we need to be commercially viable without NASA as well.”

The interest in commercialization has also helped Colorado and aspiring space workers. Lunar Outpost officials estimate that about one-third of its local employees are from area schools like School of Mines.  

“It’s a big deal for the company. It’s a big deal for Mines. It’s a big deal for Colorado because Colorado has become the hub of all of these companies that are looking to have access to the moon for commercial purposes,” Abbud-Madrid said. “And if the LTV is awarded (to Lunar Outpost), that opens up all sorts of possibilities to whoever wants to use this vehicle, and NASA may want to use it.” 

Earlier this month, toymaker Lego began selling its Technic Lunar Outpost Moon Rover Space Vehicle, which includes the MAPP rover. The Adidas Lunar Outpost jersey collection appears to be sold out. 

“Other commercial customers have come out afterwards asking, hey, can we put this on the moon? Or can we do this with you? Everyone has a different angle they’re interested in,” Moreno said. “Now that we have demonstrated this, not only are we going back to the moon, but we are back. So now what? Let’s get creative.”

Bernie Rogoff is a Korean War-era Army veteran who’s spent his life advocating for fellow service members.

The 95-year-old led the push for Denver’s modern Veterans Affairs medical center, which opened in 2018 to serve Colorado’s nearly 400,000 veterans. Rogoff still calls it one of his proudest achievements. He remembers it finally felt like “someone is listening.”

That hospital was meant to be a cornerstone for veterans in Colorado — a place where they could get the specialized care Rogoff says they earned.

But since the second Trump administration began in January, that promise feels different.

Under Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, the agency has laid off thousands of employees and is sending more veterans outside the VA to private doctors and clinics, saying the goal is to get them seen faster and closer to home through a program called Community Care.

For Rogoff, though, the care veterans have a right to, and the sense of belonging that comes with it, is slipping away.

“We have veterans who go to the VA and sit in the atrium just to be among their buddies,” Rogoff said. “Can you imagine what they must feel? It hurts. It hurts me.”

He says the agency’s shift is a cost-cutting measure that puts veterans at risk.

VA officials push back on those concerns.

Amanda Villa, interim associate director for access at VA Eastern Colorado, says Community Care is an extension of VA services, not a replacement, especially in a state where many veterans live far from a VA facility.

“We have a lot of veterans that are living in rural communities down from Alamosa all the way up to Burlington, Lamar area,” Villa said. “Having that extra support from our community partners and having those providers really enhances our ability to extend that care.”

Villa acknowledges there are challenges with Community Care, in particular when veterans bounce between VA clinics and private providers.

Still, she says it’s another way to reach veterans who might otherwise go without care.

“I don’t necessarily see a trend that we’re going to completely go out to the community,” Villa said. “I think we’re always going to have a need for VA care, and we’re always going to have a need for community care to be our extender.”

That’s not how national VA policy expert Suzanne Gordon sees it.

She’s the cofounder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute and points out how, in many parts of Colorado, there simply aren’t enough community providers for veterans to use.

“You have 64 counties in Colorado, 53 have shortages of primary care providers, with 38 having severe shortages,” Gordon said. “That means, if you live in certain counties in Colorado, there ain’t no care there.”

Gordon adds that Colorado has triple the national average of patients to primary care providers.

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She says VA systems in all states are feeling the effects of moving toward private care, and the consequences won’t stop with veterans.

Gordon also describes the push to privatization as driven by what she calls “a toxic cocktail of ideological dogma and greed,” warning the shift could hollow out the VA entirely.

“If you start depriving the VA of patients and staff, then you don’t have enough to justify a health care system,” Gordon said. “You don’t have enough patients to maintain the skills of the staff. You don’t have enough patients to have the teaching programs and conduct the research. Eventually, what ends up happening is you turn the VA into a Medicare program, where you’re the payer, not the provider of care.”

David Ortiz is deeply concerned about that potential future coming to fruition.

Ortiz is a former state representative and Army veteran who was paralyzed from the waist down in a helicopter crash during the war in Afghanistan. He relies on specialized equipment such as wheelchairs and bathroom chairs that private health plans often don’t cover.

“If you ask any of my civilian counterparts, any wheelchair users that live with paraplegia, that have to deal with private sector health care, they can barely get one single chair,” Ortiz said. “Whereas, because I’m service-connected, I get a main chair, I get a backup chair, I get an extra set of brakes for when they go down.”

Ortiz says the VA helps him avoid constant battles for the equipment he needs, and that the agency should leave its Community Care program for times when there are gaps that VA in-house services can’t fill.

“The things that I am able to get through the VA versus how hard I would have to fight in the private sector are night and day,” Ortiz said.

He worries that substance abuse and suicide rates among veterans will spike if this shift continues – Colorado is in the top 10 states for veteran suicides.

Democratic state Rep. Chad Clifford is vice chair of the House State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. He says the VA’s move toward private care is creating instability and damaging an already fragile relationship between the agency and the veterans it serves.

“We are now creating red tape where people don’t even know what kind of care is available,” Clifford said.

Clifford adds that even lawmakers don’t know what’s coming next with veterans’ care and have no authority over VA policy.

“They cannot explain what is going to happen, nor can we,” Clifford said. “As the General Assembly, we don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. We are sitting on the front lines watching the television just like you to find out what might happen tomorrow.”

Veterans in the VA systek have, so far, been shielded from navigating the everyday civilian’s health care system, but that could change if privatization continues.

For the Korean War-era veteran Rogoff, that’s a mission worth fighting for.

“There is no private facility available that could provide what the VA provides,” Rogoff said. “I am concerned for my brothers and my sisters. We are at a precipice. It’s a critical moment in our history.”

Forty-four attorneys general signed an open letter to 11 chatbot and social media companies on Monday, warning them that they will “answer for it” if they knowingly harm children and urging the companies to see their products “through the eyes of a parent, not a predator.” 

The letter, addressed to Anthropic, Apple, Chai AI, OpenAI, Character Technologies, Perplexity, Google, Replika, Luka Inc., XAI, and Meta, cites recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters uncovering chatbot interactions and internal policies at Meta, including policies that said, “It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”

“Your innovations are changing the world and ushering in an era of technological acceleration that promises prosperity undreamt of by our forebears. We need you to succeed. But we need you to succeed without sacrificing the well-being of our kids in the process,” the open letter says. “Exposing children to sexualized content is indefensible. And conduct that would be unlawful—or even criminal—if done by humans is not excusable simply because it is done by a machine.”

Earlier this month, Reuters published two articles revealing Meta’s policies for its AI chatbots: one about an elderly man who died after forming a relationship with a chatbot, and another based on leaked internal documents from Meta outlining what the company considers acceptable for the chatbots to say to children. In April, Jeff Horwitz, the journalist who wrote the previous two stories, reported for the Wall Street Journal that he found Meta’s chatbots would engage in sexually explicit conversations with kids. Following the Reuters articles, two senators demanded answers from Meta.

In April, I wrote about how Meta’s user-created chatbots were impersonating licensed therapists, lying about medical and educational credentials, and engaged in conspiracy theories and encouraged paranoid, delusional lines of thinking. After that story was published, a group of senators demanded answers from Meta, and a digital rights organization filed an FTC complaint against the company. 

In 2023, I reported on users who formed serious romantic attachments to Replika chatbots, to the point of distress when the platform took away the ability to flirt with them. Last year, I wrote about how users reacted when that platform also changed its chatbot parameters to tweak their personalities, and Jason covered a case where a man made a chatbot on Character.AI to dox and harass a woman he was stalking. In June, we also covered the “addiction” support groups that have sprung up to help people who feel dependent on their chatbot relationships.

A Replika spokesperson said in a statement:

"We have received the letter from the Attorneys General and we want to be unequivocal: we share their commitment to protecting children. The safety of young people is a non-negotiable priority, and the conduct described in their letter is indefensible on any AI platform. As one of the pioneers in this space, we designed Replika exclusively for adults aged 18 and over and understand our profound responsibility to lead on safety. Replika dedicates significant resources to enforcing robust age-gating at sign-up, proactive content filtering systems, safety guardrails that guide users to trusted resources when necessary, and clear community guidelines with accessible reporting tools. Our priority is and will always be to ensure Replika is a safe and supportive experience for our global user community."

“The rush to develop new artificial intelligence technology has led big tech companies to recklessly put children in harm’s way,” Attorney General Mayes of Arizona wrote in a press release. “I will not standby as AI chatbots are reportedly used to engage in sexually inappropriate conversations with children and encourage dangerous behavior. Along with my fellow attorneys general, I am demanding that these companies implement immediate and effective safeguards to protect young users, and we will hold them accountable if they don't.”

“You will be held accountable for your decisions. Social media platforms caused significant harm to children, in part because government watchdogs did not do their job fast enough. Lesson learned,” the attorneys general wrote in the open letter. “The potential harms of AI, like the potential benefits, dwarf the impact of social media. We wish you all success in the race for AI dominance. But we are paying attention. If you knowingly harm kids, you will answer for it.”

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Updated 8/26/2025 3:30 p.m. EST with comment from Replika.

This morning, I wrote a story about how the United States and Europe are potentially working on a trade deal where both parties might agree to lower trade barriers by accepting each other’s standards. Here’s what the White House said:

With respect to automobiles, the United States and the European Union intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards.

We have no idea how this would play out because, as of publishing, no clarification has been given. But let’s have some fun. Let’s say a scenario happens where you can now import a brand-new European market car without having to convert it to U.S. standards. For the purposes of this exercise, the car has to be new and on sale in Europe right now. For this, we’re assuming the rule would not be retroactive. That means no Renault Avantimes or Smart Roadsters, sorry!

With those rules set, I have a couple of ideas for what I would buy. An obvious enthusiast pick would be the Alpine A110. I got to see one of these at the Lane Motor Museum, and I immediately fell in love. What I really like about the A110 is the fact that it’s not ridiculously overpowered and not bloated with all kinds of weight.

As MotorTrend once wrote, the A110 weighs an entire middleweight motorcycle less than a 2.0-liter Porsche 718 Cayman. It’s a small car that hits 60 mph in the low four-second range, hugs curves, and looks beautiful without all of the sharp creases and jagged edges that so many modern cars have. What’s not to love? Read Adrian Clarke’s review. I highly recommend it! I mean, he says, “It’s Sort Of A French Lotus But Better.”

The A110 is an easy pick, but what about regular cars? Admittedly, if given the chance, I’d probably try one of the new Smart electric crossovers. One of my life’s missions involves owning at least one of every Smart put into production. That means I’ll have to buy these “huge” Smarts, too. But honestly, these SUVs don’t even seem that bad.

Here’s the Smart #5, which I once said looked like a Jeep Renegade. I still think that, today. Now, this crossover thing is about the exact opposite of what a Smart is, but I’m sure I wouldn’t care, given its output of up to 638 HP. It even has nifty 800-volt architecture, 400 kW charging, and LFP batteries.

On the two-wheeled side of things, Europe also gets motorcycles that are apparently too cool for Americans. Let’s say that the proposed rule would include bikes. I would love to try out one of those new BSA Gold Stars and see if they’re just as fun to ride as a modern Royal Enfield.

I would also be more than crazy enough to try out the Italjet Dragster 700 Twin. I mean, who could say no to a sportbike in scooter clothes that has a top speed of 118 mph?

Here’s where I turn things over to you. Let’s say that, tomorrow, the American government says that you can now buy any new European car or motorcycle that you want. But it has to be new. What are you buying?

The post What New European Market Car Would You Buy If America Allowed You To? appeared first on The Autopian.