'It all seems so inevitable'

Books Scaring the Ghosts: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (Part 5) It’s Halloween in Ludlow… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on July 10, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we continue Stephen King’s Pet Sematary with Chapters 19-21. The novel was first published in 1983. Spoilers ahead! Summary While Church is at the vet overnight post-neutering, Ellie stays awake sobbing. After Ellie’s “hoarse, angry cries became hitches and hiccups and moans,” then silence, Louis finds her asleep on the floor, hugging the cat bed Church rarely deigns to use. He settles her in her own bed. On impulse he writes a note: “I WILL BE BACK TOMORROW, LOVE, CHURCH.” When Church returns, Ellie makes much of him. Louis, ridiculously, mourns for the disappearance of Church’s feisty “gunslinger” walk. Now Church walks convalescent-carefully. He doesn’t fuss to go outside. He’s changed—ultimately for the better, Louis tells himself. Neither Rachel nor Ellie seem to notice what Church has lost. * * * In Ludlow, Indian summer slides into Halloween season. Louis settles into a “demanding but pleasant routine” at the university clinic. He presents a conference paper on the legal ramifications of student treatment, mentioning Victor Pascow under a fictitious name. Louis’s memory of the student’s death—and of his nocturnal trip to the Sematary—grows less intense. About what Pascow said to him, he doesn’t think at all. It’s a good season for the Creeds, down to the renewed vigor with which Louis and Rachel make love, and Louis’s deepening friendship with Jud Crandall. On Halloween, Louis takes a witch-costumed Ellie trick-or-treating. Norma Crandall drops the candy and apple she tries to put in Ellie’s loot-bag. There’s brief unpleasantness when Louis opposes Norma’s offer of an unbruised apple and Ellie complains that bruised apples are yucky. Norma wins. She continues to marvel over Ellie’s costume, and a newly arrived batch of ghosts, while Jud and Louis retire to the porch. Jud’s worried about Norma’s worsening arthritis, and the chest pains she won’t see her doctor about. A friend of hers recently died of cancer; Jud thinks she’s scared. Could he impose on Louis to examine her? No problem, Louis answers. Then he’s struck by a dizzying sense that “somewhere something has gone badly wrong.” Moments later, the little ghosts scream and Ellie yells that Norma has fallen down. In the kitchen, Norma lies on the floor amid spilled apples and candy. As Louis kneels beside her, he thinks it’s “Pascow all over again,” but he pushes the thought away. Norma’s near cardiac arrest. While Jud takes Ellie home, Louis administers CPR. Norma opens her eyes. Louis is horribly certain she’ll start talking about the pet sematary, but no. Jud returns with Louis’s medical bag, and Louis administers a dose of Isodil that stabilizes Norma’s heart. The ambulance arrives and takes Norma to the Bangor hospital. Louis takes Ellie back out trick-or-treating. She’s impressively calm about Norma’s sudden illness. People with heart attacks have more and die, she says. Then again, Norma’s old and will probably die soon anyway, as will Jud. How Ellie can be so matter-of-fact about her human friends and so hysterical about Church confounds Louis, but then who really understands kids? In bed that night, Louis must reassure Rachel that Ellie is fine. Toward morning the wind wakes him, and he hears dragging steps on the stairs: Pascow again, but this time he’ll be well decayed. “No,” Louis breathes. The footsteps still. Louis steels himself to check, finds no revenant, returns to bed. * * * Norma’s doctor gives her an optimistic prognosis, and she returns home within a week. Snow sets in before Thanksgiving. Rachel and the kids are nevertheless able to fly to Chicago to visit her parents. Seeing them off, Louis recalls how the Goldmans disliked him from the beginning. They considered Louis to be “from the wrong side of the tracks” and believed he was marrying Rachel so she could support him through medical school. Irwin even offered to pay Louis’s whole tuition bill if he’d break the engagement, which caused a furious argument from which their relationship has never recovered. The kids have helped, but Louis still prefers to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Crandalls rather than his in-laws. After his family’s departure, Louis visits with Jud and Norma. It should be a pleasant evening, but already he misses Rachel and the kids. Rachel phones just as Louis returns home to report safe arrival. “Great!” he says, but as he settles down for a talk, he thinks, “I wish to God you were here.” This Week’s Metrics What’s Cyclopean: King excels at the telling detail of a terrifying moment—in this case, the scent of spilled cider candies as Louis works frantically to save Norma’s life. The Degenerate Dutch: When performing CPR on an old woman, empathy doesn’t actually require imagining her breasts at 17. Weirdbuilding: Ellie tells Gage about the Headless Horseman and “Itchybod Brain.” Ruthanna’s Commentary Things that fixed male cats have done in my house this week: picked a fight with the poodle, marked territory on my kid’s bed, caught two mice and been extremely smug about it. I dunno about walking “like a gunslinger,” but my experience with the procedure given so much freight in Chapter 19 is that it… sometimes but not always results in less whizzing on the furniture. But maybe, like Rachel and Ellie, I’m just indifferent to the ineluctable masculinity of an unfixed tom. Or maybe Louis is feeling a wee bit of a threat to his masculinity. He shouldn’t, right? He’s got a loving wife and two kids, a good job, a good house, and a newly-discovered father figure. His wife stays home with the kids, not only so he can go to that good job but so he can hang out with that father figure—she only joins him in evening sociality when they’ve got a babysitter. It’s the threat of death that unmans him. Despite his medical understanding that there’s nothing more natural, his failure to save Pascow means he’s not the godlike protector that’s an ideal for men in general and doctors in particular. No, not just that. His inability to understand Pascow, and his inability to resist being drawn out to the Sematary, underline his lack of control. And manhood for Louis is about control, far more than the ability to muster a feline strut.  It’s telling that he lumps his nocturnal trip to the Sematary in with “his one visit to a whore in Chicago six years ago”—both events dissociated from the overall narrative of his life and selfhood. For some men, going to a prostitute might bolster their self-esteem. For Louis it was a loss of control, and indeed the timeline puts it shortly after Rachel became pregnant with Ellie. His manhood is all about controlling himself and protecting his family. (We get TMI about his current sex life with Rachel, just to assure us that he’s happily meeting his marital obligations now.) So having to get Church fixed as a form of protection… maybe it’s cognitive dissonance. Norma’s Halloween heart attack provides an opportunity to make up for his earlier failure. He doesn’t freeze as he did with Pascow. And unlike with Pascow, freezing would’ve made a difference—his swift action matters. He fears that whatever spoke through Pascow will possess Norma, but it doesn’t happen. And when the “dream” comes that night, he’s able to refuse the undead visitor. So much for the successes of the present. Chapter 21 turns us toward the past—the roots of the things that eventually are going to go wrong, failures of protection so far only foreshadowed. On a personal level, Louis shares with the reader what he hides from Rachel: that her father offered the bribe of med school tuition if he dumped her. Louis was too poor, too low-class, too unlikely to succeed. It’s a vicious scene, quickly sketched: Irwin taking out his checkbook, Louis losing his temper with thoroughly earned justification. Anyone would have trouble forgiving that; most would want their fiancée to know. But Louis chooses protection over collaboration every time. I wonder if there are parental conversations that Rachel’s never told Louis about. The other root is more historical but as swiftly sketched: Jud tells Louis about the Micmac resistance to the British 200 years ago—and to American incursions on their land now. “In those days the Micmacs had been pretty fearsome, he said, and then added that he guessed there were a few state and federal land lawyers who thought they still were.” It’s foreshadowing, but also plain sense: maybe one should take living on stolen land more seriously. Especially if the theft is, by some miracle, still being fought in the courts. Anne’s Commentary Chapter 19 opens with high drama and ends with a murmur of existential grief. Church’s overnight stay at the vet’s sends Ellie into “a crying tantrum of such ferocity that Rachel and Louis stared at each other blankly, eyebrows raised.” Since Ellie shrugged at his necessary absence when she first learned it was pending, her parents may well be surprised. Or should they be? A chapter later, Ellie’s alarm at Norma’s heart attack transitions within hours to acceptance of Norma’s mortality—that people with heart attacks and old people in general do die “pretty soon,” is her blase response to Louis’s attempts to reassure her. “Does anyone really think they understand kids?” he wonders. Rachel understands that Ellie’s crying jag resulted from her fears for Church; let her work it out on her own. Louis recognizes she’s done that when he sees her asleep at last with the cat’s bed in her arms. Though Church disdains the bed, preferring Ellie’s, it’s symbolic of him and his safety within the family. Louis further works the symbol by pinning “Church’s” I’ll-be-back note to its cushion. He has less insight into his own reaction to Church’s return, labeling his sadness as “ridiculous.” So what if Church is no longer the feisty “gunslinger” Louis admired. So what if he’s now docile to the point of letting Ellie feed him by hand. So what if he doesn’t want to roam anymore, even as far as the garage. Wasn’t that domesticity the whole point of his neutering? Won’t his change be ultimately for the better? Perhaps so, Louis concludes. That “perhaps” is telling. Preach reason to himself all day, and Louis still mourns Church’s loss of sexual potency. It’s a little death, his exclusion from the feline gene pool and the thrills of the amorous chase. In effect, it renders Church prematurely old. Lessened. Closer to the big death, no matter how many more years it buys him. This is not the Winston Churchill through whom Louis Creed could escape his own sexual anxieties. Wait, what sexual anxieties? Louis’s sex life is just fine! In this very chapter, post-Ellie-tantrum, the couple make love. In the next chapter, we learn that one of the benefits of their settling in Ludlow is that most nights after Louis returns from the Crandalls’ house, he and Rachel make love. “Never since the first year of their marriage had they made love so often, and never so successfully and pleasurably.” I’ve added the italics. By wondering how unsuccessful and pleasure-deficient the couple’s sex lives used to be, am I reading too much into the sentence above? Are the spikes in sexual frequency and quality simply one more aspect of the good life the Creeds are leading now? The opening of Chapter 20, after all, is all about the rising arc of the family’s fortunes, and even the Halloween crisis of Norma’s heart attack doesn’t depress it for long. Ellie handles the prospect of Norma’s death as “a matter of course, a given… with a very Louis-like shrug.” Rachel handles her role in the emergency well, albeit from across the road. Though Louis has another dream (not-dream?) about Pascow that night, he’s able to dismiss the approaching horror with a whispered “No.” There’s no second nocturnal jaunt to the pet sematary. Not yet. But this is Stephen King, who excels at taking readers up pleasingly normal slopes that crest at increasingly harrowing drops. Monsters dwell under his nice smooth tarmacs, as death underlies life. That’s just the way it is, Ellie can say, as long as the monster-fodder isn’t her cat. The following factoids are relevant to my maybe-not-entirely irrelevant interest in the Creeds’ intimate relationship. I wanted to figure out what year Pet Sematary is set in. The clues I latched onto were that, in the narrative so far, the kids watch two TV series: ZOOM and The Muppet Show. The original ZOOM ran on PBS from 1972 to 1978, with reruns until 1980. The Muppet Show ran in US syndication from 1976 to 1981. If we count the ZOOM reruns, Ellie and Gage could have been glued to both shows anywhere between 1976 and 1980. If we toss the reruns (as I do, these being my factoids), the novel takes place between 1976 and 1978. The point is, what are the parental Creeds doing with twin beds, a la fifties sitcoms, well into the seventies? You’d think that after that “narrow, sagging apartment bed” in which they coupled premaritally, they’d at least spring for a nice queen size. And why did Louis dread that Rachel’s father, Irwin, might have summoned him for a private chat because he’d learned about those five illicit nights? Arguably, that dread might have been inspired more by Irwin’s overbearing personality and ill-hidden disapproval of Louis than by any anachronistic prudishness on Louis’s part. Still. When it turns out that Irwin will pay all of Louis’s med school tuition in exchange for him breaking his engagement to Rachel, Louis blows up. Of course he does, at such an emasculating move on Irwin’s part! But why is it that a long time after the confrontation, Louis admits to himself that “part of his rage had been relief”? Relief for what? And a relief the memory of which Louis needed to suppress for so long? If I were an evil professor, I’d make the above an in-class essay question. Not being that evil, or a professor, I’ll ponder instead on what Victor Pascow might have wanted to discuss with Louis after Norma’s near-death experience. Norma doesn’t speak about the pet sematary in her distress. After all, she doesn’t die. Louis is able to revive her, as he couldn’t revive Pascow. And is it a good thing that Louis successfully refutes Pascow—or whatever speaks through him? Or might Pascow have had a critical reminder to pass on against some impending event? Like, don’t go beyond the barrier in the pet sematary. For whatever reason. Next week, join us for a tasty bite of eschatology in Megan Chee’s “The Worms That Ate the Universe.”[end-mark] The post Scaring the Ghosts: Stephen King’s <i>Pet Sematary</i> (Part 5) appeared first on Reactor.

Is NEW YORK a Battleground State Now?

The discovery of an immune system pathway that appears to be a driving force behind lupus could herald the development of targeted treatments for the autoimmune disease. With 1.5 million people affected in the US alone, this new study will be welcome news for scores of patients living with this long-term condition.Systemic lupus erythematosus, sometimes referred to as SLE or simply lupus, is a chronic autoimmune condition that causes a range of different symptoms. These commonly include joint and muscle pain, extreme fatigue, and a characteristic rash across the face, but people may also experience headaches, fevers, hair loss, and swollen glands, among others.Because the symptoms are so variable and mimic other conditions, it can take some time before a diagnosis of lupus is made. Treatments tend to work best when the disease is caught early, and moderate to severe forms of the disease can cause inflammation and damage to organs like the heart and kidneys, which can even be fatal.Although lupus affects millions of people worldwide, primarily women and people assigned female at birth, the causes have remained unclear.Scientists do know that it seems to be underpinned by problematic interactions between two types of immune cells, T and B cells. Patients typically have high levels of T follicular helper and T peripheral helper cells, which produce a pro-inflammatory molecule called CXCL13 that attracts B cells. Why this occurs, however, is more of a mystery.Treatment focuses on dampening down the immune system to stop it attacking the body’s own tissues, but this approach is not always effective and can lead to a range of side effects. “Up until this point, all therapy for lupus is a blunt instrument. It’s broad immunosuppression,” explained Dr Jaehyuk Choi, dermatologist and co-corresponding author of the new study, in a statement.Choi and colleagues have now identified a specific pathway in the immune system that appears to drive the disease process in lupus – and crucially, they believe they’ve found a way to fix it.“We’ve identified a fundamental imbalance in the immune responses that patients with lupus make, and we’ve defined specific mediators that can correct this imbalance to dampen the pathologic autoimmune response,” said co-corresponding author Dr Deepak Rao.The pathway in question is under the control of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR). Its usual function is to help cells respond to stressors like environmental pollutants and bacteria. When the AHR pathway is not sufficiently activated, you get overproduction of T peripheral helper cells, which in turn drives an increase in the autoantibodies that cause so many problems in people with lupus.To test their hypothesis, the team took blood samples from patients with lupus and added AHR activators. They observed that the T cells seemed to reprogram themselves to the Th22 subtype, which instead of causing inflammation and disease, may in fact promote healing.“We found that if we either activate the AHR pathway with small molecule activators or limit the pathologically excessive interferon in the blood, we can reduce the number of these disease-causing cells. If these effects are durable, this may be a potential cure,” Choi explained.Those two words, “potential cure”, are about the most exciting that someone with an autoimmune disease could hope to hear, but more research is needed before these findings can be translated into clinical therapies that could benefit patients. The authors have already begun this work, looking into ways that AHR activators could safely and effectively be incorporated into a treatment.Still, these results represent an important step forward in the search for better treatments for a condition whose causes remain poorly understood.The study is published in Nature.

Building sandcastles is one of the great joys of a day at the beach, but when you’re sourcing building materials it’s vitally important you don’t go digging giant holes. Why? Because statistics suggest that suffocating in the sand may be a bigger killer than shark attacks.The threat of sand suffocation comes down to the way it behaves when we stack it into heaps and create slopes made up of lots of moveable parts. According to The Conversation, most dry sand is stable up until a slope of around 33 degrees – which is known as its angle of repose – beyond which, it becomes unstable.The angle of repose may be greater if the sand is wet, but as it dries, it’ll drop down – meaning that great wall of quartz you’ve just stacked up could easily come tumbling down. That means the secure hole you created when the sand was wet can become very dangerous as it dries in the Sun, eventually collapsing on top of anyone who’s inside.Unlike avalanches that can form life-preserving air pockets for people trapped inside, collapsing sand fills every available space, meaning you have a matter of minutes to rescue someone before they suffocate. The most important first step is to try and create an airway by exposing the mouth of anyone trapped, but the safest way to retrieve them is to put out a plank and lower special tools to get them out. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you pack in your picnic bag, meaning for the average person enjoying a day at the beach, the chances of rescuing a loved one trapped in sand can be slim.A lot of us are more scared of quicksand than we realistically need to be.Image credit: William Visuals / Shutterstock.comThe news that dry sand can be so deadly might be surprising for anyone who watched movies in the 1980s or 90s, and has likely spent most of their life thinking quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be. Wet sand can be dangerous, but it’s actually quite difficult for a human to become completely submerged.Quicksand is a sludgy solution that can be made of any fine granular material, like sand, silt, or clay. When mixed with just the right quantity of water, it starts to look like a solid, but behaves like a semi-viscous liquid.It can act as a non-Newtonian fluid, which means if you punch it, it’ll look more solid and less sticky, but if you walk slowly across it, you’ll sink. If you then try to pull out your limbs with sharp, sudden movements, it’ll react similarly to being punched, becoming more solid and less like a sticky liquid. This is why people get stuck.Fortunately, you’re unlikely to go all the way under as a 2005 Nature paper found humans are about half the density of quicksand. This means you’re more likely to float provided you don’t struggle too much and accidentally bury yourself.“A person trapped in salt-lake quicksand is not in any danger of being sucked under completely,” reads the study. “Any unfortunate victim should sink halfway into the quicksand, but could then take solace from the knowledge that there would be no risk of being sucked beneath the surface."Your best bet should you wind up in such a sticky situation is to ditch any heavy items like rucksacks, then lean back so that your weight is more evenly distributed across the quicksand making it easier to get out. So, you probably don’t need to lose any more sleep over quicksand, but don’t go digging any holes.

A dinosaur with a hip bone the size of a dinner plate has been discovered in the UK, and it’s the country’s most complete to have been found in the last 100 years. The remarkable remains belong to an ancient herbivore that dates back 125 million years and marks a new-to-science species and genus that’s been named Comptonatus chasei.Unique features in the animal’s skull, teeth, and other parts made it apparent to University of Portsmouth PhD student Jeremy Lockwood that the team was dealing with something special. Among them is a very large pubic hip bone that is much larger than you’d typically expect in a dinosaur of its size.“It was probably for muscle attachments, which might mean its mode of locomotion was a bit different, or it could have been to support the stomach contents more effectively, or even have been involved in how the animal breathed, but all of these theories are somewhat speculative,” Lockwood explained in a statement.It was first discovered in Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight by the late fossil collector Nick Chase back in 2013, inspiring the scientific name: Comptonatus chasei. Comptonatus being a combination of Compton Bay and tonatus, the Latin for thunderous, and chasei in honor of Chase.The dinner plate for a pubic bone in question.Image credit: J Lockwood et al 2024, Journal Of Systematic Palaeontology, CC BY 4.0“This animal would have been around a ton, about as big as a large male American bison,” added Lockwood. “Evidence from fossil footprints found nearby shows it was likely to be a herding animal, so possibly large herds of these heavy dinosaurs may have been thundering around if spooked by predators on the floodplains over 120 million years ago.”And it’s a thunderous discovery in more ways than one, being the most complete dinosaur specimen to be found in the UK in a century, according to Dr Susannah Maidment, Senior Researcher and paleontologist at the Natural History Museum, London and senior author of the paper. "Its recognition as a new species is due to incredibly detailed work by NHM Scientific Associate Dr Jeremy Lockwood, whose research continues to reveal that the diversity of dinosaurs in southern England in the Early Cretaceous was much greater than previously realized,” she said."The specimen, which is younger than Brighstoneus but older than Mantellisaurus (two iguandontian dinosaurs [also known as the "cattle of the Cretaceous"] closely related to Comptonatus) demonstrate fast rates of evolution in iguandontian dinosaurs during this time period, and could help us understand how ecosystems recovered after a putative extinction event at the end of the Jurassic Period."The study is published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

The thing that gives you shivers is the sound. Despite light being faster, it's the vibration of the rocket that makes you realize just what a big deal this is. You can see the light from the rocket in the sky, stunning without a doubt, but it’s in the following seconds as the soundwaves catch up with the view that you (the building, and the jungle of French Guiana) reverberate with the roar. Making that roar is Ariane 6, Europe’s new way to get to space. The inaugural launch of Ariane 6 – the European Space Agency's (ESA) big new rocket – was a great success, despite the full mission concluding slightly earlier due to a technical issue, and IFLScience was right there to witness it.                                 The rocket flew as expected, releasing the payload and coasting in space for almost two hours before a test in the demonstration phase did not fully succeed. ESA and partner ArianeGroup were hoping to demonstrate the ability to reignite the Vinci engine on the upper stage in space. This is helped by an “auxiliary propulsion unit" (APU). Unfortunately, it didn’t work as planned, starting as expected but then turning itself off, leaving the upper stage in orbit. The Vinci engine problem didn’t dampen the mood in the room at all though. The atmosphere was electric and celebrations were definitely warranted. "We don't know why it stopped," Martin Sion, CEO of ArianeGroup, said in the post-flight press conference, that we attended. Analysis over the coming weeks will hopefully provide an understanding of what happened and a solution for the next test of this new technology. Speaking with the engineering team earlier this week, they remarked on the uncertainties of this phase of the flight. You can’t simulate microgravity to test an engine on Earth. You need to get to space.  The Vinci engine problem didn’t dampen the mood in the room at all though. The atmosphere was electric and celebrations were definitely warranted. This heavy launcher and the upcoming flights of the medium launcher Vega-C bring Europe back to the forefront of orbital deliveries. “I mean this is incredible! With Ariane 6, we are regaining access to space,” Dr Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General, told IFLScience in an exclusive interview after the launch. “Satellites are used for everyday life, for weather forecasting, navigation, telecommunications; many things where people depend daily on the data or information from the satellites. Ariane 6 is necessary to launch these satellites.”It’s Been A Long RoadThe rocket did take longer than expected to get here, with several delays over the years. Ahead of the inaugural launch, however, the mood was serene and confident. The day after the launch the vibe was that the delays gave them the time to get so much of it right. “We have done everything that could be done,” Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA Director of Space Transportation, told IFLScience, a sentiment immediately emphasized by Lucía Linares, ESA Head of Strategy and Institutional Launches, with an even stronger “Everything!”There is always a residual risk when it comes to space flight but the success of this historic inaugural launch is a testament to the hard work of the many people and organizations that worked on this rocket. Yesterday’s performance shows that Ariane 6 is a worthy successor to Ariane 5, the launcher that took to space some of the most groundbreaking astronomy missions of this century, including JWST. It was incredible to experience a launch in person.Image credit: Dr Alfredo Carpineti/IFLScienceThe new rocket goes above and beyond the enormous successes of its predecessor. Ariane 6 is bigger but lighter, which matters enormously in rocket science. Every gram you take up needs extra fuel to get to orbit. It's cheaper, it's more capable, and it is more environmentally friendly, although the full analysis of that also depends on yesterday’s data. There is going to be a second launch this year, likely in December, and then the launch schedule massively ramps up: six launches next year, eight in 2026, and then a regular of nine launches every year. ESA says it's staying booked and busy when it comes to Ariane 6.Geopolitics and competitionThat said, a spot just became available. Last week, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) decided to launch with SpaceX and not with Ariane 6, a decision described as “surprising” by Aschbacher. During the press conference, the mission team made clear that all the requirements for the launch of EUMETSAT were achieved within the first 18 minutes of the inaugural flight. The comparisons between this new rocket and SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy is a matter of intense debate online, in the sector, and in political halls across the member states of the European Space Agency. When Ariane 6 was conceived, SpaceX had not demonstrated that rockets can be reused on such a scale. A decade later, the Falcon fleet has that advantage compared to the latest Ariane, which gives them a financial edge in most configurations. This doesn’t mean that Ariane 6 is always a step behind SpaceX. In the Ariane 64 version (with four boosters), the European rocket has a payload edge. Not all SpaceX rocket launches are designed with recovery in mind, but in those where it is, Ariane 64 can bring more payload. This is because the reusable version needs to take into account the fuel to safely bring back the rockets and booster, and that eats at the payload capability. More payload can be taken on Falcon Heavy in its expendable variation, but it is more costly than Ariane 64.“We would like to make [Ariane 6] even cheaper and more versatile, to make sure we are ready for the future,” Dr Aschbacher told us in our discussion. He also mentioned the European Launcher Challenge bringing the commercial contract model that NASA has with SpaceX and Boeing to European launches. For that one, reusable rockets are seen as the logical step forward. Despite the comparison with what private industries Stateside are doing, Ariane 6 brought down costs by almost half compared to Ariane 5. Crucial to that has been taking lessons from the airways industry, such as horizontal assembly which allows for the mission engineers to speed up the testing, production, and assembly of each rocket.                                It is then moved to the Mobile Gantry building, a feat of engineering here at the Guiana Space Center. Unlike the launches at Florida's Kennedy Space Center where the rocket is brought to the launchpad from an assembly building, here it is the building that moves away from the launchpad. On the days of testing or launch its massive doors open (it's 90 meters high), freeing the rocket. It weighs more than 8,200 tons – “more than the metallic frame of the Eiffel Tower” an excited ESA engineer told me just before we saw it move.  Leaving The Earth… But In A Better StateIn the days and hours before the launch, the environmental considerations that went into the creation, transportation, and launch of Ariane 6 came up over and over again from different angles. Europe’s Spaceport is just on the outskirts of the city of Kourou, French Guaina but it is mostly tropical rainforest. Being just 5 degrees north from the equator – a very useful place for launch – and having a secure area of 690 square kilometers (266 square miles) with minimal presence of humans and buildings makes for a great nature reserve. Red deers, tapirs, and jaguars have been caught on camera traps here. There are also capybaras and a wide variety of birds, and of course sloths like Gérard who became famous for strolling into the livestream of ESA's JUICE launch on Ariane 5 last year. We have not seen a sloth but have seen monkeys and a stowawayfrog jumped on me on a bus. In terms of launch safety, Helene Escarguel, the Launch Range Mission Manager and Massimiliano Costantini, the Weather and Flight Safety Department Manager, made it crystal clear that if there was any danger for people or the environment due to an unexpected change in the trajectory of the rocket, they were ready to pull the plug. The possibility of having to blow up the rocket was there, but the risk to people was minimal as winds and weather conditions were monitored to the last second to make sure, nobody would be at risk. Those explanations felt very important in light of several environmental concerns raised after SpaceX's inaugural Starship launch. The spacecraft was detonated in flight and its pieces rained down on the Texas coast starting an official investigation. The launchpad was blown to pieces due to some features missing, the reason circulating being the launch was moved forward to allow CEO Elon Musk to make a weed joke (the test took place on April 20 eg 4/20).ESA is extremely clear that it wants to have minimal impact both on Earth and in space. The plan was to use the reignited engine to bring the upper stage down into Point Nemo in the Pacific. The space agency has a Zero Debris policy,  which is difficult to square with yesterday’s mishap. The engine failure meant it had to remain up there. However, the automatic system stopped the release of two payloads that were going to test the reentry. At least there is only one piece of space junk from this launch instead of multiple.                                 Ariane 6’s launchpad is designed to limit its carbon footprint and reuse the water in the deluge system over and over again. The rocket parts are built in Europe but they are delivered to French Guiana via a partially wind-powered cargo ship, and the hydrogen fuel is produced using solar power and water. This approach reduces the carbon emissions by 80 percent. A more detailed environmental impact analysis will be produced in the coming weeks, but the agency has big goals for the space center and its launches. “We work a lot on the greening of the site. We really invest a lot and by the end of this decade we will have a 90 percent reduction in the carbon footprint, which is quite enormous,” Dr Aschbacher told IFLScience. The future of Ariane 6 is not just green; several important scientific missions will reach space thanks to it. From delivering planet-hunting Plato to the first gravitational-wave observatory in space, LISA, this rocket will have a major impact on space and astronomy in the years to come. Experiencing the roar of the rocket launching was thrilling but it is the culmination of the work of so many people, the challenges, and even the politics that truly tell you that it was indeed a big deal. 

While not the barnburner for the ages that we saw on Monday, Tuesday’s White House press briefing was more staid as if someone (or some people) had a chat or talkin’ to, but they weren’t without hardballs for the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre on the Biden regime’s ever-shifting excuses and narratives on the President’s cognitive impairment. Fox’s Peter Doocy most notably was called on as Jean-Pierre was so tense with other reporters on Monday she avoided her chief sparring partner. Doocy started off with his trademark opening baseline that one might think is an easier question: “Does President Biden commit to serving a full second term if reelected?” After Jean-Pierre said “yes”, Doocy wanted to know what was up with Biden telling Democratic governors last week that while his health is fine, “it’s just his brain” that’s not working as well anymore and it best functions before 8:00 p.m.  Jean-Pierre tried to pass it off as a joke and no big deal, but Doocy used this to wonder who at the White House would decide to react if “the Pentagon at some point picked up an incoming nuke” at 11 p.m.  Doocy also tried to drill down on the curious journey of Hunter Biden into White House meetings as well as whether the White House isn’t testing Biden for dementia or Parkinson’s Disease because they’d recognize any diagnosis as an immediate death knell to the presidency:     Rewinding to the beginning, the AP’s Seung Min Kim led off with some touch questions of her own that, since the briefing, proved to be even more pertinent and exposed another White House lie as Jean-Pierre insisted neurologist Dr. Kevin Cannard’s White House visits weren’t additional stops concerning Biden’s health (when, in fact, one in January was) (click “expand”): KIM: [The letter from Dr. O’Connor] didn’t seem to explicitly describe in nature Dr. Cannard’s meeting with Dr. O’Connor. Can you say whether that one meeting was related to care for the President himself? JEAN-PIERRE: I can say that it was not. KIM: Okay. That’s great. And can I just ask why that information that was released last night — JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah. KIM: — just wasn’t said at the briefing yesterday. JEAN-PIERRE: Well, no, actually a lot of what is in the letter was said at the briefing, to be very, very clear. I said many of the things that were laid out in the letter — actually was repeated right here behind this lectern — at this podium yesterday. It was — KIM: The letter didn’t say that. JEAN-PIERRE: — wait — hold on — I said many of the things — many clarification. And we got cleric — cleric — clarification obviously from Dr. O’Connor but it was in line with what I said when I said only three visits — right — I said only three visits that this particular doctor had. I said a neurologist. What I was not able to confirm is the name and the reason why and the reason is because we do not share private information. That is something we respect and we wanted to make sure we protected our consultants here that work with the White House medical unit — their security as well. And so, that is the one thing I was not able to confirm. Obviously, Dr. O’Connor’s letter confirms that but we had to get permission from Dr. Cannard and also the President in order to put that information and it is not normal and that also states that in Dr. O’Connor — but many of the things that I said right here at this podium is in the letter. Kim also called out Jean-Pierre for having yet another instance “where the briefing had prompted a need for later clarification on questions about the President’s health.” Jean-Pierre interjected to claim she’s said “a lot of things” that were in the letter and those in the press “incorrectly assumed and insinuated that the president had seen Dr. Cannard more than three times.” Biden regime potted plant Mary Bruce of ABC stated her concern for her friend in the Oval Office: “[H]ow worried is the President that despite his best efforts, he’s not going to be able to close the book on these concerns?” Having taken a far tougher line in briefings since the debate, CNN’s M.J. Lee repeatedly grilled Jean-Pierre on whether she’d “reconsider any specific statements that you might have made” as of late (i.e. whether you want to apologize for lying): CNN’s @MJ_Lee: “The White House has obviously fielded a lot questions in recent days about the President's health, whether the White house has forthcoming or not about that issue. And I just wondered, have the last 12 days made you reconsider any specific statements that you… pic.twitter.com/zQ121IXT1A — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 9, 2024 Lee specifically brought up how Jean-Pierre handled two signs of Biden’s mental decline with one being him calling out for a Republican congresswoman even though she had recently died and reports he skipped a dinner with world leaders because he needed to go to bed:     NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez came after Doocy and one of his questions was one that’s been batted around in the weeks since the debate: If Biden had a cold, why in the world was he shaking hands, taking pictures, and visiting a Waffle House afterwards? NBC’s @GabeGutierrez: “The White House and also the campaign has said that he had a cold that night. He then went to a watch party afterwards, which you have brought up. I was at that watch party. If he did have a cold, why then push him to another event where he spent some 45… pic.twitter.com/xwRG1N1zb9 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 9, 2024 CBS’s Ed O’Keefe was back at it following his explosive throwdown with Jean-Pierre a day earlier and, after someone clearly got to him, toned it down. That said, however, he had this important question concerning one of Biden’s many troubling answers in his ABC interview (click “expand”): O’KEEFE: One thing I don’t think we have gotten public clarification about yet. JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah? O’KEEFE: In the interview Friday night, he was asked, did you watch the debate and he said, ‘I don’t think I did, no.’ Did he watch the full debate — JEAN-PIERRE: You know — O’KEEFE: — or what of it has he watched? JEAN-PIERRE: — that’s a good question. I should — I didn’t — never followed up with him and I meant to. I have not asked him that question. I was there in the room when he was being asked the question. I just never followed up. You know, that is something that, you know, we could follow up with him on. I have not. O’KEEFE: Okay. JEAN-PIERRE: I’m sure he’s seen clips. I’m sure he’s seen clips. I just — I haven’t — I haven’t had — asked him that full question. O’KEEFE: Hard — hard to avoid them. So, I could — yeah. One other thing that’s come up just — JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah, it’s getting round — round the clock coverage — right — from all of you. In one comical moment, Jean-Pierre had this to say about Biden and access to the media: KJP to ABC's @KarenTravers earlier: “I know we say this and I know sometimes you guys don't believe us, but [President Biden] does want to engage with you all. He does want to talk more to the press, and so, now we're — we're certainly going to continue to create opportunities… pic.twitter.com/IrfRQLE96d — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 9, 2024 The briefing ended with this eye-rolling bit from Jean-Pierre about Biden being a working class underdog in response to a question from AFP’s Aurelia End, who observed Biden’s been more combative and disgusted with critics: .@AureliaEndAFP : “So, we — we've seen the President like being on the ground more, but we've also heard a slightly new tone from him. He said he was frustrated with the elites of his party. He dismissed [inaudible]. He criticized media coverage, saying that journalists get… pic.twitter.com/JEknreWo8g — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 9, 2024 To see the relevant transcript from the July 9 briefing (including even more quesitons), click here.

Who makes decisions after President Joe Biden goes to bed? That's the pressing question Fox News senior correspondent Peter Doocy confronted the White House with on Tuesday.Last week, Biden told a group of Democratic governors that he plans to stop working after 8 p.m. so that he can go to bed early. 'He has a team that lets him know of any news that is pertinent and important to the American people.'The comments raised eyebrows after Biden's debate preparation schedule was made public: He didn't begin preparations until 11 a.m., and his staff always scheduled him an afternoon nap. Biden, moreover, typically has a late start to his work day and has few evening events scheduled. He also has a history of missing evening meetings on international trips.At the White House press briefing, Doocy asked the natural follow-up question to Biden's schedule, which is much less robust than those his predecessors maintained."Say that the Pentagon at some point picks up an incoming nuke; it's 11:00 p.m. Who do you call? The first lady?" Doocy asked.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could have answered the question any number of ways. One might have expected her to say that in such a critical situation, staffers would awaken the president so that he could carry out his constitutional duty as commander in chief.But she didn't take that route."He has a team that lets him know of any news that is pertinent and important to the American people," she responded. "He has someone — or — that is decided, obviously, with his National Security Council on who gets to tell him that news."A team.Doocy presumably invoked first lady Jill Biden because former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R) revealed this week that he attended White House meetings at which she was present. This, of course, is highly unusual. Later in the briefing, Doocy asked Jean-Pierre about the first lady's presence at those meetings, and she denied that Jill makes any decisions for her husband.It is notable, however, that Jean-Pierre did not dispute McCarthy's claim that Jill attends Oval Office meetings. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A mob of illegal immigrants who allegedly assaulted New York Police Department officers while they were attempting to check in on unsupervised children were recently indicted, Fox News Digital reported Tuesday.According to prosecutors, six suspects — Juan Munoz, 25; Alejandro Munoz, 42; Karina Navarro-Chavez, 42; Miguel Chiluisa, 23; Cristian Taipe, 30; and Natali Iza, 27 — were charged with attempted assault in the first degree, attempted gang assault in the first and second degrees, and other crimes related to the attack.'My office will vigorously prosecute.'The New York Post previously reported that the group was outside a Queens hotel that was converted into a shelter for illegal aliens when the assault occurred around 4:20 a.m. on June 17. Two NYPD officers were attempting to check in on three unattended children riding bicycles outside the shelter when the suspects surrounded them and began punching, kicking, and throwing objects.Chiluisa was also charged with second- and third-degree escape. Both Chiluisa and Iza are facing two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon.Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz stated, "Two police officers, who were checking on the welfare of unattended children at 4:20 a.m., were allegedly surrounded and punched and kicked by a group of adults in an assault outside a Long Island City hotel.""My office will vigorously prosecute those who harm members of law enforcement, and we will hold these defendants responsible for their alleged actions," Katz added.Fox News Digital reported that Iza allegedly pushed and struck one of the officers who approached the children. Iza also reportedly hit an officer with a bicycle. Chiluisa was accused of throwing and striking an officer with a children's bike. Navarro-Chavez was accused of striking an officer with an unknown object.Chiluisa allegedly attempted to flee the scene after being handcuffed. He was apprehended a short time later. Law enforcement stated that one of the handcuffs had been broken.Both of the officers were treated at a nearby hospital for their injuries, which included shoulder pain and abrasions.A large mob of illegal alien males attacked two NYPD officers earlier this year outside a shelter in Times Square. The brutal scuffle was caught on video. Six of the illegal immigrants were offered plea deals by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!