Prepper's Web

Cast your mind back to the year 2012 and you might stumble upon a very similar story, but this isn’t a flashback: There’s a new startup in town that wants to mine asteroids, and this one claims to be ahead of the game.

AstroForge, which came onto the scene last May with the announcement of a successful $13 million seed round, says it has two launches planned for this year to deploy a demonstration orbital refinery and scout an asteroid for mineable resources.

“With launches secured and partners on board, we’re charging on an accelerated path to make asteroid mining a near-term solution to preserving Earth’s declining resources,” the company said.

Speaking to Bloomberg, AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich, a veteran of Virgin Galactic and Bird, said the company ultimately plans to mine and refine rare Earth minerals directly on asteroids. For now, however, there’s the matter of proving the technology works.

During its April mission, AstroForge claimed its “orbital refinery” will be loaded with asteroid-like material, similar to tests the company has done in a vacuum chamber on Earth. Said material is superheated and vaporized into a gas, Gialich told us, and then bombarded with plasma in order to ionize it.

A mass spectrometer is used to determine what sorts of materials have been sampled. Then it’s just a matter of extracting what’s wanted, dumping the rest and turning it back into a solid form. Easy peasy, the biz claims, although boffins might beg to differ.

AstroForge’s refinery being tested in a vacuum (click to enlarge)

Gialich told The Reg the metals refined from the test machine are very pure, but he said as the technology is scaled, purity will decrease. Gialich said the decreased purity wouldn’t leave the metals inferior or less usable, though.

As for why AstroForge needs to send a second mission to scout an asteroid that NASA likely already has data on, Gialich says it’s a matter of practicality.

“We’re not 100 percent sure about the type or surface of the target asteroid. We’re 90 percent sure we know what it is and what its surface looks like, but this could be just like Bennu and its surface could be a surprise,” Gialich said.

Bennu was the landing site of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2018, and when NASA arrived astronomers were surprised to find a surface full of rubble, unlike the smooth, sandy surface Earth-based observations suggested.

Gialich also said the scout will serve as a model verification mission. “If this succeeds we’ll be the first commercial company to launch a deep space mission,” he said, adding that Elon Musk’s launch of a Tesla into space doesn’t count.

An industry with a miner problem

AstroForge, founded and led by Gialich and SpaceX veteran Jose Acain, has a tough road ahead of it, and not only because the technology needed to mine asteroids doesn’t exist outside of its lab.

It also has to face the fact that some big names, like filmmaker James Cameron and his business partners Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Google, have tried and failed to exploit the riches of near-Earth space.

Cameron, Schmidt and Page’s company, founded in 2012, was known as Planetary Resources; it slowly declined until purchased by a blockchain company.

Another space mining outfit known as Deep Space Industries was formed in January 2013 but later switched to satellite development before being purchased by Bradford Space in 2019.

Gialich admitted to Bloomberg that the road will be tough, but said he learnt from DSI and Planetary Resources’ failures – a decade of additional technological development hasn’t hurt, either.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last 10 to 15 years since those two companies really existed … primarily around launch. I can now buy a rideshare mission to the moon,” Gialich said.

One of the ways AstroForge claims to have differentiated itself is by outsourcing most of its infrastructure to private space companies like OrbAstro, which is building AstroForge’s scout craft for the October launch, and SpaceX, which its partnering with on both planned launches, Gialich told Bloomberg.

That, Gialich claims, frees up time for AstroForge to focus on its zero-g refining tech and planning missions, two more of which are tentatively scheduled for the next couple of years.

Gialich described the choice of outsourcing to other space companies as a logical one – other companies already know how to build rockets and satellites. “OrbAstro has been a great partner, but they’re just building the craft,” Gialich said. The payload in the craft, its trajectory and operation fall to AstroForge.

If the first two launches go to plan, a third mission will be sent to the previously-scouted asteroid to attempt a touchdown. A fourth would then return to extract and refine metals to take back to earth Earth.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is currently headed back to Earth with a sample bay full to the brim (minus the bits leaking out) with asteroid dirt. The craft is finally due back on Earth in September of this year after launching in 2016.

In other words, if asteroid mining succeeds this time, it’s going to take a while. ®

Eagle Township prepping land for ‘mega’ factory – WILX

Eagle Township, Mich. (WILX) – Turning farmland into factories, that’s what has some Clinton County residents concerned Tuesday. Just south of I-96 in Eagle township, 1,400 acres of farmland are being prepped for a large factory.

Land with purchase agreement in place for proposed manufacturing site(WILX)

“Just the other day, I said to my son that we won’t be moving again because this is our forever home,” said Kristina Dawkins.

Dawkins doesn’t want to move, but fears that she might have to. The Dawkins family just moved to Eagle for peace and quiet.

“The culture of the agricultural community in Eagle, is at risk,” said Dawkins.

Purchase agreements are in place for a possible manufacturing site. Some Eagle residents started attending government meetings to voice their concerns.

“We asked a lot of questions, we got no answers, we got a lot of run around,” said Courina Feldpausch.

We don’t know what will come, but we do know that officials are prepping the land to become industrialized. They are working to make the land “attractive” to potential developers. That includes gathering properties and completing initial surveys of the land and community.

“We believe that this is going to be one of the best mega-sites,” said Quentin Messer, CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

The Lansing Economic Area Partnership said the proposed site is ideal due to its size and location. They hope to bring jobs to the county through a possible vehicle battery or chip plant.

“To make Michigan as competitive as it possibly can. and having ready sites, for transformative opportunities, is critically important,” said Messer.

Eagle Township officials did not respond to requests for comment. Residents have begun to organize after feeling their concerns have been ignored.

“We are hoping to get the word out to everybody, that if we take action maybe we can stop it,” said Feldpausch.

Feldpausch started a Facebook group for members of the community that share her viewpoint. It’s called ‘Stop the mega site, Eagle MI’

There will be a presentation and discussion on the proposed factory site on March 2. It’s hosted by Eagle Township at their town hall, but it may relocate to fit a larger crowd.

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David Crosby Was Prepping Tour Return: ‘He Hadn’t Lost His Fire’ – Ultimate Classic Rock

David Crosby had been preparing to return to touring prior to his death.

According to friends and collaborators, the rocker had been rehearsing with an eye towards hitting the road this summer.

“David didn’t think he was gonna last for years, which he joked about all the time. But there was no sense that we weren’t gonna be able to do this show and these tours,” guitarist Steve Postell, who was poised to be part of the trek, revealed to Variety.

“We were talking tour buses, and what kind of venues, and the whole team was all back together again — the road manager and tour manager and sound guys — on top of this band we’d put together,” Postell continued. “There was not even a remote sense that we weren’t about ready to hit the world. And it’s a shame people didn’t get to hear it.”

The fact that Crosby was prepping to hit the road is notable, considering the rocker had previously insisted his touring days were over. “I’m too old to do it anymore,” the folk singer declared during a 2022 interview. “I’m too old to do it anymore. I don’t have the stamina. I don’t have the strength.”

Conversely, Postell insisted Crosby was “practically giddy” to return to the stage. “He was showing us new songs, like, ‘What do you think of these lyrics?’ He hadn’t lost the fire. I’d like people to know that he was on it. He was writing, playing, singing his ass off and preparing a fantastic show. That’s what he was doing. He was not lying in a bed for two years, out of it. That’s not what happened at all.”

26 Rock Stars Inducted Into the Hall of Fame More Than Once

Some of the biggest names in music history – along with a few surprises – have repeated the feat.

Prepping your home and car for freezing temps – FOX 5 Atlanta

How to protect your car and home before big freeze

As Georgia braces for cold weather, here’s some advice on how to prep your car and home for the big freeze.

COBB COUNTY, Ga – The freezing weather is on its way to Georgia. While many people are looking to protect people, pets and plants, there are also things that should be done to protect homes and cars.

Before hitting the road, drivers should take a look at the car, starting with the battery.

“Every time we have a temperature spike, anytime up or down, we always have a lot of people coming in with dead batteries, just because those fluctuations in temperature, that are extreme, will kill batteries,” said Cameron McKenzie with Revolution Auto.

McKenzie says also take a look at the tires, they lose pressure when the temperature drops.

He says also ensure the car is not low on coolant.

“It can cause the heat not to work properly and not a good time of year for your heat not to work,” said McKenzie.

Cunningham says for outside spickets, turn off the valve in the house, then go outside, disconnect the hose and open the spicket to let any water drain out.

“If there’s water still left in there it can still freeze,” said Cunningham.

Keep those faucets dripping, both hot and cold water.

“At my house the kitchen sink is on an exterior wall so that night I’ll leave my faucet dripping and open the exterior cabinets to let the warm air get inside,” said Cunningham.

Superior Plumbing, on their website, has an entire list of things homeowners can do to prevent frozen pipes and what to do when a pipe is frozen.

Tips for prepping your home for bitter temperatures – KTTC

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – Frigid temperatures are headed for Southeast Minnesota and Northeast Iowa, so it’s time to ensure your home is prepped for some bitterly cold nights.

Of course, this weather isn’t new for the Midwest, but some HVAC and plumbing experts are giving some reminders. One of the most important things to remember is preventative maintenance is key when prepping your home.

This means keeping your water moving to avoid frozen pipes and checking if your furnace filter has been changed in the last three months in order to avoid a plugged furnace. This will keep your home air quality high and your energy bills low.

“That’s really going to help with everything in the house and again back to indoor air quality, the health of the house and also yourself. If it gets to dry it can cause some issues for your house and your own health as well,” Haley’s Comfort project manager Bob Speedling said.

Experts compare changing your furnace’s filter to changing the oil in your car. If you don’t it will lead to serious problems down the road, like a plugged filter.

Another concern of freezing temperatures is the air quality inside your home, one option for maintaining good air quality is buying a humidifier. they say the humidity levels in your home should be between 30-35%.

Making sure your furnace is working properly is just one part of prepping your home for bitter temperatures, you should also take preventative measures for the pipes in your home.

“Kitchen sink lines and even the water supply lines will freeze up on cold nights. We encourage everyone to keep the cabinet doors open down below so the warm air can travel up through the cabinet area and you’re not trapping a bunch of cold air into that,” Jetter Clean owner Lee Cummings said.

Many people believe letting your faucet drip is a great way to prevent your pips from freezing, but these experts say in the longer stretches of freezing temps, a great tactic is to run a garden hose away from your house to keep the water moving.

“You are better off running a garden hose because if you go to work, you could come home to a heck of a mess because your pipes have frozen and you’ve been gone all day, you’ll flood your home,” Cummings said.

If the freezing temps get the best of your home some safety reminders are to never use a stove top or oven to heat your home and let the sun in by opening curtains or blinds when the sun is out to warm your home.

Making math fun by prepping for friendly competition – MIT News

Mark Saengrungkongka, a first-year MIT undergraduate student, stood at the blackboard and explained his solution to a math problem similar to the ones that might appear on the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition, a prestigious annual math competition for college students in the United States and Canada administered by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). After he finished presenting his proof, the class gave a round of applause. “That was a very nice solution,” math professor Yufei Zhao told the class.

It was a few weeks into the semester, and while there were a few latecomers, students in Class 18.A34 (Mathematical Problem Solving) paid close attention to the intricate proofs presented by their fellow students on the blackboard. The audience asked probing questions and pointed out gaps in the arguments.

This undergraduate seminar, better known as the Putnam Seminar, brings together first-year students who are interested in the annual competition. In recent years, MIT has finished first in the December exam, and all five top-scoring students, known as Putnam Fellows, were from MIT the past two years.

But the Putnam exam is also designed to just instill a love of math to all who attempt the insanely hard problem sets. One of the goals of Zhao’s class is to make solving these problems more like participating in a fun group puzzle rather than a stressful competition. For many first-year students, it’s also a nice way to ease into MIT life.

“The students in the seminar usually come in with a strong preparation from math competitions,” says Zhao. “But college is rather different from high school math Olympiads. A goal of the seminar is to help them transition from a high school math Olympian to a successful college student and beyond.”

Each week, Zhao starts his seminar gently, with a casual discussion. He asks the classes how they are feeling about the semester and talks about life as a college math student. Discussions include class selections, dealing with setbacks, and career paths. One student asks about how to find research opportunities; another student asks about recommendation letters.

Zhao knows that his students are already thinking ahead about upper-level math classes, but he hopes to slow them down a little so that they can take their time to really understand and appreciate what they are learning. “There’s a tendency for these students to do too much,” he says.

About 10 minutes after the start of the class, Zhao wraps up the discussion and starts the student presentations.

Mohit Hulse presented a solution to a combinatorics problem from the 2018 Putnam Competition. When he realized that he made a small mistake in the middle of his presentation, there was some supportive laughter, and he confidently continued on. The audience was respectful, and his classmates often helped with an idea.

When he was finished, Zhao added compliments and tips. “I suggest looking up the proof of the Chernoff bound, which is quite similar,” he says. “That was a nice solution.” He then pointed to the board and gave some suggestions. “I thought this step could be omitted.”

In addition to discussions and student presentations, the seminar also features weekly lectures by upper-year students, including veterans of the Putnam Seminar. The lectures highlight math problem-solving techniques useful for the Putnam Competition as well as provide a lens into advanced mathematics.

This year, roughly 60 incoming first-year students applied to the Putnam Seminar, among which 21 were selected. The seminar is internationally diverse, with students from 10 countries outside the United States: Australia, Armenia, Canada, China, Georgia, India, Korea, Portugal, Singapore, and Thailand.

“This class builds connections,” says Zhao. “All of them are new to MIT, and many are arriving in the U.S. for their first time. They are all interested in mathematics. I hope that the seminar will help them meet other students and form a supportive community.”

Any MIT student is welcome to attend the lectures, although the presentation sessions are restricted to the seminar students. These problem sets are also made available through MIT OpenCourseWare for other interested students and teachers.

Practicing presentations

The seminar is designed to provide a rare chance for first-years to develop their mathematical communication skills, including blackboard presentation and proof writing. Zhao says he has been innovating on the format of the seminar in recent years, with ever-increasing emphasis on oral presentation practice and feedback.

“Undergraduates don’t get a lot of presentation opportunities, especially blackboard presentations,” says Zhao. “We hear a lot from MIT alumni that they wish they had received more training in communication skills at MIT.”

Two previous seminar students, senior Dain Kim and sophomore Tomasz Ślusarczyk, help the class as undergraduate assistants. Last year, Kim ranked sixth place in the competition, and was awarded the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize for being the top female scorer, and Ślusarczyk earned an honorable mention. As undergraduate assistants, Kim and Ślusarczyk hold regular office hours where students come to practice presentations to a small audience of a few other students, without the professor present. These office hours started last year in response to students seeking more presentation opportunities outside classroom hours.

Kim says that she benefited a lot from taking the seminar as a first-year student.

“Especially in math classes at MIT, it is hard to get a chance of giving a presentation to other students, unless it is a CI-M [Communication Intensive in the Major] class, because most classes are lecture-based,” Kim says. “I could hear from other students how they approached the problems that I could not solve, and I could also practice math presentations.”

Ślusarczyk, who took the seminar last year, credited the class with transitioning some of his math contest approaches and mindset to research-oriented mathematics. “Combining the problem-solving focus with a higher level of mathematical maturity was definitely a great educational experience and improved my Putnam skills a lot,” he says. “The skills developed in the seminar were invaluable during problem-set sessions, office hours, or research meetings. The class definitely helped me a lot with my career plans — I learned a lot about research-oriented math and decided that I want to pursue research in a math PhD program after graduation.”

The competition

The Putnam exam was founded in 1927 by Elizabeth Lowell Putnam in memory of her husband William Lowell Putnam, and has been offered annually since 1938, administered by the Mathematical Association of America.

Last year’s grueling six-hour exam featured 12 proof-based math problems, each worth 10 points, drawn from calculus, algebra, geometry, combinatorics, number theory, and more. The 2021 exam was taken by 2,975 undergraduates from 427 institutions, 150 of them from MIT.

The top score was 119 out of 120 points, with the median score a mere four — which meant that most students did not fully solve a single problem. But of the top 105 scorers who finished with honorable mention rankings or higher, 63 were MIT students.

The top five scorers receive the prestigious title of Putnam Fellow. For the second time in the competition’s history, all five Putnam Fellows came from MIT, and they were all Putnam Seminar alumni. In the more than 80 years of the Putnam Competition, only eight competitors achieved the rarified four-time Putnam Fellow status, including three from MIT. MIT math professor (and former MIT Putnam coach) Bjorn Poonen was one such four-time Putnam Fellow when he was an undergraduate at Harvard University.

Back in 1973, when MIT math professor Richard Stanley started teaching at MIT, he noticed that MIT had a large number of students taking the Putnam. He had taken the exam three times during his Caltech years.

“My best result was ninth overall,” he recalls. “At that time, Caltech was the dominant Putnam school. I can remember my freshman year one of the persons in my student house complaining that although he was seventh in the country, he was only fourth at Caltech and second in his hallway!”

When he looked at how MIT students fared on the exam, he thought that there was room for improvement.

“I thought that a seminar on problem-solving might stir up some interest and benefit the students,” he recalls.

Stanley’s undergraduate seminar on mathematical problem-solving featured his weekly lecture devoted to a Putnam-related topic such as number theory, linear algebra, generating functions, or inequalities. “These are huge subjects, but the lectures were very narrowly focused on providing background and examples for doing well on the Putnam,” says Stanley.

He would then assign two problem sets each week, one based on the lecture, and another dedicated to “fun” problems. The second class that week had students discuss their solutions.

“The class’s second focus was just the enjoyment of problems,” he says. “Many math students enjoy problem-solving and the opportunity to learn interesting tidbits from all areas of math that are not likely to be found in standard classes. They also like the camaraderie of friendly competition.”

Stanley was also the Putnam coach for about 35 years, later joined by Professor Hartley Rogers. The Putnam class seemed to pull MIT students into many first-place team victories. Eight alumni from that seminar eventually became Stanley’s PhD students, and he wrote a book, “Conversational Problem Solving,” based on his seminar.

Above all, Stanley emphasizes putting the fun in Putnam. Besides, he says, there’s a downside to all the winning.

“It is as if the Red Sox dominated all other teams every year and won every World Series in four games,” says Stanley. “Great for Boston fans, but not for baseball in general.”

As a first-year student in 2006, Zhao attended the Putnam seminar taught by Stanley and Rogers and went on to earn three Putnam Fellow spots; he missed the fourth by a single point. When he returned to MIT in 2017 to join the faculty, he began teaching the Putnam Seminar.

Zhao credits Stanley for creating high-quality problem sets, which are still being used in the seminar. And Zhao is also continuing Stanley’s goal to steer students away from seeing the seminar as simply training for Putnam.

“The class helped me to take the Putnam exam as a by-product,” says Kim. “Every week I solved a problem set, and I enjoyed trying some hard problems. It helped me to get used to Putnam-type problems. But this is not just a ‘Putnam preparation class.’ Although we are talking about Putnam problems and some concepts appear there, the goal of the class is not ‘raising the scores of participants.’”

At the beginning of a late-November seminar, Zhao asked his students how they felt about the upcoming exam in less than two weeks, and a few mentioned the word “stressed.” But others said how much they just enjoyed working on the problems. “I want to take it without much pressure,” said one student. Added another, “What works for me is that I’m competing with myself, and not others.”

Zhao then gave the class his most valuable advice: “Make sure you get lots of sleep the days leading up to the exam.”

Prepper's Web

Von der Leyen prepping plans for 30+ EU members – POLITICO Europe

Prepping your home and plumbing for cold weather – WCTV

Bengals prepping for ‘playoff game in November’ vs. Ravens – Yahoo Sports

Prepping for Arizona: An inside look at Day 13 of training camp – DenverBroncos.com

Space mining startup prepping to launch ‘demo’ refinery… this April – The Register