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2019: fuga in massa del board del condominio polverizzato oggi, appena letto il rapporto dell'ingegnere
Why now? Perche' solo ora?
The Hill
Trump's newfound critics invite skepticism
Former Vice President Mike Pence says he was “proud” to certify the 2020 election results.
Former Attorney General William Barr says he knew former President Trump’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit.”
The pattern is clear. People who were once closely aligned with Trump are pushing away from him.
But skeptics have a simple question: Why now?
United Airlines aumenta la sua flotta
United Airlines Bets on Post-Pandemic Growth With Its Biggest-Ever Jet Order
The airline plans to buy 270 Boeing and Airbus planes as well as retrofitting some of its existing narrowbody fleet
United Airlines planes sat parked at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston last year.PHOTO: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
Alison Sider
United Airlines Holdings Inc. UAL -0.65% is making its largest ever plane order, adding Boeing and Airbus jets to fuel its post-pandemic growth plans.
The Chicago-based airline said Tuesday that it will purchase 200 of Boeing Co. BA -1.75% ’s 737 MAX jets and 70 larger Airbus EADSY -1.95% SE A321neos, a deal valued at more than $30 billion at list prices before customary discounts. United is looking to replace most of its 50-seat jets and other smaller, older aircraft with these larger planes that can carry more passengers and allow it to sell more premium seats as part of a strategy to expand flying out of its main hubs and to lure more high paying travelers.
The order—the largest by a U.S. airline since American Airlines ordered 460 new aircraft from Boeing and Airbus in 2011—is the latest sign of U.S. airlines’ growing confidence that travel is on course to snap back after being decimated by the coronavirus pandemic last year.
United lost more than $7 billion last year and accepted billions of dollars in government aid to continue paying workers. Now the airline expects to make money in July on an adjusted pretax basis, which would be its first profitable month since January 2020, the airline said in a separate filing Monday.
WSJ NEWSLETTER
The airline is also preparing to go on a hiring spree to support the new planes. United said it expected to hire 25,000 workers by 2026—a nearly 37% increase to its front-line workforce.
Unruly Passenger Behaviors on Airlines Rise as Travel GrowsAs passengers return to air travel in big numbers, the Federal Aviation Administration has reported an uptick in unruly and dangerous behaviors by travelers. WSJ’s Alison Sider explains. Photo: David Zalubowski/Associated Press
A year ago, airlines were parking planes in deserts and hunkering down for protracted pullback in travel. While many business travelers have yet to return and many lucrative international routes have yet to reopen, airline executives have said in recent months that the fast rebound in domestic leisure travel has given them confidence to restart hiring plans and start adding to their fleets.
United has operated fewer flights than other major airlines throughout the pandemic, charting a more conservative course. But its order is the airline’s latest wager on a strong rebound.
United began laying the groundwork for its order last summer, when executives met in a United Club at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, according to United Chief Executive Scott Kirby. Though the airport was still largely empty at the time, the executives began discussing how to position United to emerge from the pandemic. They decided, for example, not to permanently retire any aircraft types as some rivals had done.
“In a way, my what a difference a year makes. But in another way, this is about where we expected to be,” Mr. Kirby said.
Combined with orders already on its books, United has 500 new narrow-body planes set to arrive in the coming years—a rapid influx of jets that will help it increase flying by 4% to 6% annually, Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said.
United says it expects to hire 25,000 workers by 2026—a nearly 37% increase to its front-line workforce.PHOTO: TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
United’s fleet includes over 800 mainline jets along with 475 regional planes. About 200 of the planes on order will represent new growth while 300 will replace aircraft that are due to retire, including about two-thirds of its 50-seat jets.
Rather than expanding by adding new cities as some other carriers have, United plans to rely on boosting its seating capacity. United said the new planes would help it add almost 30% more seats per domestic flight and 75% more premium seats in first class or with extra legroom.
“It’s part of what we should have been doing for years,” Mr. Nocella said. “This is about taking little aircraft and making them bigger.”
United’s move follows recent jet orders from carriers including Southwest Airlines Co. and Alaska Air Group Inc. The recovery has helped Boeing clear most of its inventory of unclaimed MAX jets. United had previously unveiled plans to buy an additional 25 MAX jets and to accelerate delivery of dozens more to meet near-term demand, but the carrier said the orders unveiled Tuesday are part of a more detailed post-pandemic strategy.
United said Tuesday that all of the planes will be outfitted with such amenities as larger overhead bins and screens in seat backs. Some airlines had been shifting away from those entertainment systems in favor of allowing passengers to stream movies and TV shows only on their own devices, but United said it now believes the screens will be a selling point with customers. United also plans to retrofit all of its mainline narrow-body aircraft with matching interiors, including screens, by 2025.
The upgraded cabins and emphasis on high-paying customers pits United more directly against Delta Air Lines Inc. Delta has for years emphasized business travel and touted a higher-end––and often more expensive––experience, adding seatback screens while other carriers such as American Airlines Group Inc. have been removing them on single-aisle planes.
The airline’s plans to expand domestic hubs in Chicago, Houston and Denver and to boost international flying are a bet on travel at a time when the outlook is still uncertain. The business travelers who would typically fill the more expensive premium seats have yet to return, and travel patterns could remain in flux for years, analysts say.
“Everything we see every week makes us even more certain that business travel and international travel are ultimately going to come back,” Mr. Kirby said. “Some of them will be different, but they are ultimately going to come back at 100%.”
United told investors Tuesday that it has flexibility to adjust when to take deliveries of the planes and when to retire aircraft if recovery stalls.
Analysts have long expected United to detail its plans to refresh its fleet. “The company has significant chunks of aircraft in its fleet that are old enough to legally drink,” Evercore ISI analyst Duane Pfennigwerth wrote Monday.
‘The company has significant chunks of aircraft in its fleet that are old enough to legally drink.’— Evercore ISI analyst Duane Pfennigwerth
Though United split its order among the two major plane makers, the company’s move is a boost for Boeing’s 737 MAX. The aircraft had been grounded for nearly two years following a pair of fatal crashes, in late 2018 and early 2019, that took 346 lives. Boeing at one time halted production of the plane and some customers walked away from their orders as the pandemic worsened, providing an opening for rival Airbus to take market share.
United’s deal to purchase 150 Boeing 737 MAX 10 jets as part of the order announced Tuesday also bolsters that model, the largest variant of the single-aisle workhorse aircraft. Orders for MAX 10 jets have lagged behind the smaller MAX 8. The 737 MAX 10 recently took its maiden flight as Boeing conducts tests and works toward regulatory approval for the new jet.
E adesso che succede con gli altri condomini simili a quello polverizzato in Florida ?
In collapsed building’s twin, most residents are staying put
By TERRY SPENCER and RUSS BYNUM
FILE - This Thursday, June 24, 2021, file photo, shows a sister building of a condominium that partially collapsed earlier the same day, in Surfside, Fla. This building, erected a year later by the same company, using the same materials and a similar design, has faced the same tides and salty air as the building that collapsed. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — About a block from the Miami-area beachfront condominium tower that collapsed sits its sister building, erected a year later by the same company, using the same materials and a similar design. It has faced the same tides and salty air.
This has made some residents of Champlain Towers North worried enough to leave, though most have remained, saying they are confident their almost 40-year-old, 12-story building is better maintained. They say their building doesn’t have the same problems with cracking in support beams and in the pool area that 2018 engineering reports show the south tower had.
The collapse of Champlain Towers South in the town of Surfside on Thursday has drawn attention to older high-rise buildings throughout South Florida and prompted Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to order a 30-day audit of whether such buildings under her jurisdiction are complying with a required recertification of structural integrity at 40 years. She said she wants any issues raised by inspections to be immediately addressed. She’s also urged municipalities within the county to follow suit. Miami, for example, has launched a 45-day audit of buildings six stories and higher that are 40 years old or older.
Inspectors performed a quick-hit examination of the north building and Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said nothing was found that indicates the tower is in danger of collapse.
That didn’t reassure everyone.
“I’m petrified of returning,” said Rebecca Weinstock, a snowbird who bought a sixth-floor condo in the north building four years ago with her husband. She is in New York, where she was when the south tower collapsed early Thursday, killing at least 11 people and leaving 150 missing.
While she agrees the north building is well maintained, she said that’s not enough to satisfy her that it’s completely safe. It was completed in 1982, one year after the south tower, and built by the same developer, Nathan Reiber, through his firm, Nattel Construction. The possibility that the collapse was caused by a design or construction flaw means she won’t be returning anytime soon.
“I am out my investment, I am out my apartment, I am out my future, but we are talking about lives here,” she said. The only way she’ll return, she said, is if two independent engineers — not from South Florida — agree it’s safe.
North tower residents who want to temporarily relocate are being offered federal assistance, just as survivors from the south tower are.
But most residents interviewed Monday are taking the position of Philip and Nora Zyne, who are staying put in their fifth-floor condo. The Zynes bought their condo 12 years ago, and have lived there full time for six. They have several friends and acquaintances who lived in the south tower and remain missing.
“I’ve never seen any major structural issues” in the north building, said Philip Zyne, an attorney. “I’m not worried at all right now. I do want to get a full structural engineering and forensic examination done.”
Zyne said he’s seen numerous inspectors in his building since the collapse, and only a small number of people packing up to go.
“It’s not a mass exodus by any means. I’d say maybe a quarter of the building has left,” he said.
Salomon Gold, who spent 10 years as the condo association president for the north tower and 20 on the board, is convinced the building is safe, saying he and the other board members never skimped on maintenance. He compared the building collapse to airplanes: Just because one crashes doesn’t mean others of that same make and model will.
“We are in good shape,” said Gold, 89. The current condo association president, Naum Lusky, declined comment Monday.
Surfside Mayor Burkett said a deep-dive inspection of the north tower will be conducted Tuesday by an engineering firm hired by the residents. The town will inspect other older buildings soon. Given the results of the preliminary examination of the north tower, he said he doesn’t see a reason to order an evacuation. Still, he said, he’s not sure he would stay there.
“If you asked me if I wanted to spend the night in that building, I’d be a little ... I wouldn’t be willing to do that until we went through it,” he said.
Esther Drachman and her husband aren’t taking any chances. Drachman’s 91-year-old mother-in-law lives in the north tower.
“My mother-in-law is bedridden, so we took her out and brought her to our house,” Drachman said. “We just felt like we couldn’t get her out in five minutes” if a rapid evacuation became necessary.
Drachman said her mother-in-law wasn’t worried or very aware of the details of the disaster. She said she and her husband are waiting to see if a thorough inspection turns up any problems.
“We’ll see if that building’s fine,” Drachman said. “And if it is, we’ll put her back in.”
Associated Press reporter Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed to this report.
Papa e Blinken, faccia a faccia sulla comunione per Biden
Al centro del colloquio il ruolo dei vescovi americani e il documento che riguarda il presidente Usa
Huffpost
Papa e Blinken, faccia a faccia sulla comunione per Biden
Al centro del colloquio il ruolo dei vescovi americani e il documento che riguarda il presidente Usa
By Maria Antonietta Calabrò
VATICAN MEDIAANSAA handout image released by Vatican Media shows US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) during a meeting Pope Francis during a meeting with Pope Francis, at the Vatican , Vatican City, 28 June 2021. ANSA/ VATICAN MEDIA +++ ANSA PROVIDES ACCESS TO THIS HANDOUT PHOTO TO BE USED SOLELY TO ILLUSTRATE NEWS REPORTING OR COMMENTARY ON THE FACTS OR EVENTS DEPICTED IN THIS IMAGE; NO ARCHIVING; NO LICENSING +++
“L’atmosfera spirituale, l’arte divina, e l’impressionante architettura mi hanno lasciato senza parole. Davvero sbalorditivo”. Il Segretario di Stato americano Antony Blinken affida ad un tweet la sua impressione dopo aver visto la Cappella Sistina, il capolavoro di Michelangelo coevo della scoperta dell’America (venne consacrata solo nove anni prima dell’arrivo di Cristoforo Colombo nelle Indie occidentali). E cosi la Sistina diventa un po’ un simbolo dei rinnovati legami tra Stati Uniti e Vaticano. Si chiude definitivamente la guerra con Trump (e il suo alleato monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, l’ex Nunzio a Washington ). Usa e Vaticano voltano pagina . Finisce oggi l’ ultima e più moderna delle lotte per le investiture. Come quella medioevale erano in gioco i rapporti tra chiesa e potere politico
Viene archiviato “ lo schiaffo di Anagni”, mollato al Pontefice e al Vaticano dal predecessore di Blinken, Mike Pompeo, nove mesi fa, quando in visita a Roma li attaccò pubblicamente l’accordo con la Cina per la nomina dei vescovi .
I due soli (potere politico imperiale americano e quello papale) sono di nuovo allineati. il Trono non rema più contro l’Altare e questo sarà positivo per la parte finale del Pontificato di Francesco alle prese con i nodi che vengono al pettine nonostante otto anni dall’elezione (dalla pedofilia agli scandali finanziari) ed eviterà che il Vaticano diventi vassallo nei suoi rapporti con Pechino. Certamente servirà ad evitare che la Conferenza episcopale americana si erga come contropotere contro Roma.
Forse non è un caso che due giorni prima dell’arrivo di Blinken, la Usccb ha precisato che il documento che voterà a novembre sulla “coerenza eucaristica” (cioè sui criteri per cui i cattolici possono fare la comunione) non conterrà un divieto per il presidente Joe Biden (cattolico che ha appoggiato le leggi sull’aborto, del resto anche Andreotti firmò la legge sull’aborto in Italia e nessuno si sognò di non fargli fare la Comunione).
Blinken è arrivato in Vaticano alle 8 di mattina. Il colloquio con il Papa è durato più a lungo del solito: 40 minuti ha detto ai giornalisti il Portavoce della Sala Stampa, Matteo Bruni , in un ’ “atmosfera cordiale”. Il Papa ha ricordato il suo viaggio negli Stati Uniti del 2015 , quando Biden era vicepresidente di Barack Obama , e ha espresso il suo affetto e la sua attenzione per il popolo americano.
Papa Francesco ha parlato apertamente con Blinken del ruolo dei vescovi statunitensi nella realtà americana e il loro rapporto con il presidente Biden.
Al centro dei colloqui, secondo quanto appreso, anche la geopolitica del Medio Oriente e la presenza della Nato in Europa. Il segretario di Stato Blinken ha assicurato a Francesco l’appoggio della Casa Bianca in relazione al negoziato che il Vaticano sta portando avanti con il Venezuela, a patto che la mediazione sia gradita al presidente Nicolas Maduro.
Poi a seguire l’incontro con il Segretario di Stato cardinale Pietro Parolin e il suo vice Paul Gallagher. Oggi i temi che uniscono Vaticano e Stati Uniti ( crisi ecologica, immigrazione, povertà, diritti umani libertà religiosa, Medioriente, Iraq) sono più di quelli che li dividono. E si inizierà a preparare la possibile visita di Biden da Francesco a fine ottobre.
“L’incontro con il Papa è stato, a livello personale, un grande onore. La possibilità di parlare con lui è stato un momento memorabile”, ha commentato il segretario di Stato americano: “Abbiamo parlato di tante cose, sono estremamente soddisfatto dalla leadership di Sua Santità sulla pandemia, il clima, le migrazioni, i rifugiati”, ha aggiunto in conferenza stampa con il ministro Luigi Di Maio alla ministeriale anti-Daesh.
Reactionary Lullaby
It happens to all parents to stand near the cradle of their sleeping child and think about his tomorrow, with anguish, clutching his hand......
___________________________________________________________
Reactionary Lullaby
Lyrics
and music by Oscar Bartoli The fairy
tales that the others will tell you will be more interesting than those of
you father who repeats, without any conviction, consumed stories about
wizards and fairies. The smiles of all the other women will be
sweeter than those of your mother who reminds of your duties too much, while it is good to fly without a
target. And then
somebody will open your eyes, saying that you were suffocated in a
narrow-minded and reactionary place, that the family is something of the
past. If the world is like that of your father, why waste yourself in an
absurd battle? t’s better to find the ideal somewhere, it’s better to null
yourself and not think of anything? So then in your looks, my son, I’ll
maybe discover a lot of compassion for a life uselessly spent, serving every
master like a dog. How I
would like to protect you, little Chick? how I
would avoid your suffering? Sleep and smile, holding my hand Grazie Oscar, molto interassante, Hal |
Ninna Nanna Reazionaria
Succede a tutti i genitori di stare vicino alla culla del proprio figlio addormentato e pensare al suo domani, con angoscia, stringendogli la manina......
Ci sono ma non sanno che cosa sono
By
Shane Harris and Missy Ryan (TWP)
The U.S. government was unable to determine whether more than 140 unidentified flying objects, many of them reported by Navy aviators, were atmospheric events playing tricks on sensors or crafts piloted by foreign adversaries, or whether the objects were extraterrestrial in origin, according to a long-anticipated report released Friday by the nation’s top intelligence official.
The report finds no evidence that the objects, characterized as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, were the handiwork of alien beings. But in almost all of the 144 cases that a team of government experts examined, a lack of data stymied their efforts to say definitively what they were.
The largely inconclusive results of the report, which was required by Congress, are sure to fuel Americans’ long-running interest in unexplained sightings, which have received unprecedented levels of attention in recent years from government officials and lawmakers.
The mere existence of the report is a remarkable acknowledgment that human beings have encountered objects that perform feats we cannot explain.
“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion,” the report found. “In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”
Observers reported these unusual movements and “flight characteristics” in 18 separate incidents. The task force analyzing the UAP incidents will now focus additional analysis on that small number of cases, the report said.
At only nine pages in length, the unclassified report is also likely to prompt public speculation about what information the government chose not to reveal.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had seen the classified UAP report when he was serving in the Senate. “The hair stood up on the back of my neck,” he said in an interview. He also spoke with some of the pilots involved in the incidents it documented. “They know they saw something,” he said.
While NASA was not involved in writing the public report, Nelson, who spent six days orbiting the Earth during a space shuttle mission in the 1980s, said he had asked the agency’s scientists to study the incidents that the report addressed and their potential explanations. NASA has a small office devoted to searching for extraterrestrial life.
Nelson said his personal view was that the vastness of the universe suggested there must be alien life. “If the universe is that big . . . is there likelihood of life? My answer is yes.”
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that he was first briefed on UAPs nearly three years ago.
“Since then, the frequency of these incidents only appears to be increasing. The United States must be able to understand and mitigate threats to our pilots, whether they’re from drones or weather balloons or adversary intelligence capabilities. Today’s rather inconclusive report only marks the beginning of efforts to understand and illuminate what is causing these risks to aviation in many areas around the country and the world,” Warner said.
The report does find that not all the UAPs behaved in the same way, which led the experts to offer different hypotheses about what they might be. The objects “very clearly demonstrate an array of aerial behaviors,” said a senior U.S. government official who described the report’s findings to a group of reporters on the condition of anonymity because the document had not yet been released.
“There is no one answer about what these UAP are,” the official said.
The report offers five categories of potential explanations for the objects, which were observed between 2004 and this year. The first is, essentially, junk — man-made objects cluttering the air, such as balloons or even plastic bags, that are mistaken for craft. Only one of the 144 encounters was definitively characterized with “high confidence,” and it fell into this category. “In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon,” the report said. “The others remain unexplained.”
Then there is the air itself. Ice crystals, moisture or heat fluctuations could register as a flying object to cameras and sensors on aircraft or aboard ships at sea. Navy aircraft and vessels have tracked and, in some cases, recorded encounters with UAPs that appear to zoom across a field of vision at unexpected speed, which had led some experts to question whether the supposed objects were actually just tricks of light or water.
The third possible explanation, according to the report, is that the objects are some kind of craft designed by the U.S. government or an American corporation. But that explanation seemed unlikely, according to officials who had earlier been briefed on the report and were confident that the UAPs are not American technology.
The report’s authors noted, however, that they were “unable to confirm” that classified government programs account for any of the UAP cases they examined.
The objects could have been designed by a foreign adversary, the report found, offering a fourth explanation. China and Russia are making strides in hypersonic technology and directed energy, areas of increasing focus at the Pentagon.
But the task force said it lacked the data to indicate that the UAPs “are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary.”
The fifth and final category is one sure to entice ufologists and amateur sleuths, as well as U.S. officials: “Other.” The description is something of a catchall that could apply to encounters that were brief or generated too little data to advance a theory. Some of these encounters might be better defined with more information or through scientific advances to analyze the phenomena, the report finds.
The task force’s work doesn’t end with the release of the report. The Pentagon announced that it would develop a plan to formally carry on the mission, which will use artificial intelligence and machine learning, the report said, to recognize similarities and patterns in data from encounters.
There is now a formal process for Navy personnel to collect and report information about sightings, and efforts are underway to create a standard process across the military services and among government agencies, which should help generate more information for future study.
The report also found that the stigma around reporting encounters with UAPs, and facing ridicule for it, had hampered efforts to understand the phenomena.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said, “For years, the men and women we trust to defend our country reported encounters with unidentified aircraft that had superior capabilities, and for years their concerns were often ignored and ridiculed. This report is an important first step in cataloguing these incidents, but it is just a first step. The Defense Department and Intelligence Community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern.”
Prenotare i biglietti per lo Spazio
INVESTING IN SPACE
Virgin Galactic jumps 12% after getting the green light from the FAA to fly passengers to space
Michael Sheetz@THESHEETZTWEETZ
Virgin Galactic announced on Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company the license it needs to fly passengers on future spaceflights.
“The commercial license that we have had in place since 2016 remains in place, but is now cleared to allow us to carry commercial passengers when we’re ready to do so,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier told CNBC.
The company cleared the final two FAA milestones of that program with its spaceflight test last month.
VSS Unity is released from carrier aircraft VMS Eve during the launch of its third spaceflight on May 22, 2021.
Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic announced on Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company the license it needs to fly passengers on future spaceflights, a key hurdle as the venture completes development testing.
“The commercial license that we have had in place since 2016 remains in place, but is now cleared to allow us to carry commercial passengers when we’re ready to do so,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier told CNBC. “This is obviously an exciting milestone and a huge compliment to the team.”
While the FAA previously gave Virgin Galactic a launch license to conduct spaceflights, the license expansion allows the company to fly what the regulator calls “spaceflight participants.” The company completed a 29 element verification and validation program for the FAA, clearing the final two FAA milestones with its most recent spaceflight test in May. Colglazier noted the two last milestones were specific to the spacecraft’s flight control systems and inertial navigation systems.
Virgin Galactic’s stock jumped 12% in premarket trading following the announcement. Shares rose above $40 a share this week, after a tumultuous start to the year that saw the stock climb above $60 in February and then plummet to a low near $15 last month before rebounding.
Notably, Virgin Galactic chief astronaut trainer Beth Moses is the only non-pilot to fly on one of the company’s spaceflights. To date, five Virgin Galactic employees, including four pilots, have become FAA-recognized astronauts – as the U.S. officially views an altitude of 80 kilometers (or about 50 miles) as the boundary to space.
Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft Unity is designed to hold up to six passengers along with the two pilots. The company has about 600 reservations for tickets on future flights, sold at prices between $200,000 and $250,000 each.
Next spaceflights TBD
With three spaceflights tests completed to date over the last two years, Virgin Galactic now has three more spaceflight tests planned before it completes development. The company previously announced its next spaceflight would carry four passengers to test the spacecraft’s cabin, its second would fly founder Sir Richard Branson and the third will carry members of the Italian Air Force for professional astronaut training.
Sir Richard Branson, left, and CEO Michael Colglazier celebrate the company’s third spaceflight test on May 22, 2021.
Virgin Galactic
However, a report earlier this month by a blogger based in Mojave, California – where Virgin Galactic manufactures its vehicles – said the company is considering reorganizing its flight schedule to launch Branson next over the July 4 weekend. The report came shortly after Jeff Bezos announced he would fly on Blue Origin’s first passenger spaceflight, planned to launch on July 20 – suggesting Branson may yet try to beat Bezos to personally flying to space.
Colglazier said the FAA approval means “the flight test program shifts now” to demonstrating “the cabin experience” of the spacecraft.
“I know there’s a lot of interest and speculation out there but we have not announced either the date nor the people that would be on those,” Colglazier said. “We approach this very methodically, with safety as the first consideration, and when we have all those boxes checked and all the steps in place – that’s when we can move forward and announce.”
Development delays have pushed back the company’s promised beginning of commercial service from mid-2020 to early 2022.
Vince il centro
(The Hill)
President Biden’s deal with a bipartisan group of 10 senators is throwing a lifeline to one of Washington’s most endangered species: The political center.
The agreement announced outside the White House and captured in back-slapping photos that quickly ricocheted throughout Washington, came after significant doubt had been cast on the group’s ability to lock down a deal.
Many had predicted the talks would collapse or unravel, and had said Biden was wasting time.
Instead, Biden’s appearance outside the White House with the bipartisan Senate group marked a big win for Senate moderates and Biden himself, who campaigned as a dealmaker but struggled to break through with Republicans.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), in a rare gaggle with reporters on Capitol Hill, took a veiled jab at the naysayers.
“Folks around D.C. and around the nation will lament and say that bipartisanship is a thing that’s gone past. And you all have heard for weeks now people saying that a bipartisan agreement couldn’t happen,” Sinema said.
She said the deal “is proof that bipartisanship is alive and well in the United States Senate and in our country.”
Thursday’s breakthrough will only be the start of a weeks— if not months-long—slog to get an infrastructure package to Biden’s desk.
The bipartisan agreement is already facing pushback from both sides of the aisle.
Some Republicans warn that Biden’s threat to not sign the bill unless a larger package is passed through special budgetary rules sidestepping the filibuster is a “dealbreaker.”
Progressives want an “iron-clad” commitment that the bipartisan package won’t become law unless the sweeping Democratic-only bill has a clear path to Biden’s desk.
“The challenge now is to make sure the rest of our caucus on the Democratic side and the Republican caucus know what's in this bill and can join us on supporting it,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who acknowledged the challenge ahead.
Still, Thursday was undeniably a bright spot for Biden and centrists hoping to break the partisan fever and craft bipartisan deals.
“It’s important to recognize that when we say a bipartisan bill … that signal that it sends to the country. Again that we actually can work. That we actually can perform. That we can do something not for Republicans or Democrats but for Americans,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) quipped that the agreement helped show that “we're not just, you know, a hot mess here.”
The breakthrough came after a cycle of closed-door meetings that rotated between Portman’s basement hideaway, meeting rooms in the Capitol and Sinema’s Hart office, where staffers were frequently spotted bringing in water and boxes of pizza.
Even though the meetings jumped into the spotlight in recent weeks, senators have quietly been at work for months including when Biden was still negotiating with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).
The talks appeared to yo-yo throughout the week, appearing on the verge of collapse at one point only for negotiators to suggest that they were on the cusp of an agreement.
“I think you have to push positive vibes if you're going to get a positive result,” Tester said, asked why he continued to predict quick agreements even as others were pessimistic.
It’s the second win in roughly six months for the Senate’s moderates gang. Many of the same members were behind a bipartisan $908 billion framework that helped break the months-long stalemate late last year on a final coronavirus package during the Trump administration.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to show the rest of the world that we can still get big things done in a bipartisan way and lead the rest of the world,” Manchin said at the White House. Other senators were visibly exuberant as they touted their framework agreement.
Democrats argued there was little downside for Biden endorsing the agreement, even as they still need to win over enough support, noting it goes back to his political DNA as a centrist in the Senate.
“I think he wants to do as much as he can bipartisan. ...so long as the Dems don’t relinquish our right to use reconciliation, just like the GOP did, then I think it’s all for the good,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
And Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden ally, called the White House-Senate group framework a “big accomplishment” and declared Thursday a “great day for the American people, a great day for our democracy and for bipartisanship.”
Biden, speaking with the Senate group outside the White House, appeared to briefly reminisce as he said that the agreement reminded him of his own time in the Senate.
“This reminds me of the days that we used to get an awful lot done in the United States Congress. ...We get bipartisan deals. Bipartisan deals mean compromise,” Biden said, at one point gripping Portman on the shoulder.
“A lot of us go back a long way,” he added. “They have my word, I'll stick with what they propose. And they’ve given me their word as well. Where I come from that’s good enough for me.”
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The agreement announced outside the White House and captured in back-slapping photos that quickly ricocheted throughout Washington, came after significant doubt had been cast on the group’s ability to lock down a deal.
Many had predicted the talks would collapse or unravel, and had said Biden was wasting time.
Instead, Biden’s appearance outside the White House with the bipartisan Senate group marked a big win for Senate moderates and Biden himself, who campaigned as a dealmaker but struggled to break through with Republicans.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), in a rare gaggle with reporters on Capitol Hill, took a veiled jab at the naysayers.
“Folks around D.C. and around the nation will lament and say that bipartisanship is a thing that’s gone past. And you all have heard for weeks now people saying that a bipartisan agreement couldn’t happen,” Sinema said.
She said the deal “is proof that bipartisanship is alive and well in the United States Senate and in our country.”
Thursday’s breakthrough will only be the start of a weeks— if not months-long—slog to get an infrastructure package to Biden’s desk.
The bipartisan agreement is already facing pushback from both sides of the aisle.
Some Republicans warn that Biden’s threat to not sign the bill unless a larger package is passed through special budgetary rules sidestepping the filibuster is a “dealbreaker.”
Progressives want an “iron-clad” commitment that the bipartisan package won’t become law unless the sweeping Democratic-only bill has a clear path to Biden’s desk.
“The challenge now is to make sure the rest of our caucus on the Democratic side and the Republican caucus know what's in this bill and can join us on supporting it,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who acknowledged the challenge ahead.
Still, Thursday was undeniably a bright spot for Biden and centrists hoping to break the partisan fever and craft bipartisan deals.
“It’s important to recognize that when we say a bipartisan bill … that signal that it sends to the country. Again that we actually can work. That we actually can perform. That we can do something not for Republicans or Democrats but for Americans,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) quipped that the agreement helped show that “we're not just, you know, a hot mess here.”
The breakthrough came after a cycle of closed-door meetings that rotated between Portman’s basement hideaway, meeting rooms in the Capitol and Sinema’s Hart office, where staffers were frequently spotted bringing in water and boxes of pizza.
Even though the meetings jumped into the spotlight in recent weeks, senators have quietly been at work for months including when Biden was still negotiating with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).
The talks appeared to yo-yo throughout the week, appearing on the verge of collapse at one point only for negotiators to suggest that they were on the cusp of an agreement.
“I think you have to push positive vibes if you're going to get a positive result,” Tester said, asked why he continued to predict quick agreements even as others were pessimistic.
It’s the second win in roughly six months for the Senate’s moderates gang. Many of the same members were behind a bipartisan $908 billion framework that helped break the months-long stalemate late last year on a final coronavirus package during the Trump administration.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to show the rest of the world that we can still get big things done in a bipartisan way and lead the rest of the world,” Manchin said at the White House. Other senators were visibly exuberant as they touted their framework agreement.
Democrats argued there was little downside for Biden endorsing the agreement, even as they still need to win over enough support, noting it goes back to his political DNA as a centrist in the Senate.
“I think he wants to do as much as he can bipartisan. ...so long as the Dems don’t relinquish our right to use reconciliation, just like the GOP did, then I think it’s all for the good,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
And Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden ally, called the White House-Senate group framework a “big accomplishment” and declared Thursday a “great day for the American people, a great day for our democracy and for bipartisanship.”
Biden, speaking with the Senate group outside the White House, appeared to briefly reminisce as he said that the agreement reminded him of his own time in the Senate.
“This reminds me of the days that we used to get an awful lot done in the United States Congress. ...We get bipartisan deals. Bipartisan deals mean compromise,” Biden said, at one point gripping Portman on the shoulder.
“A lot of us go back a long way,” he added. “They have my word, I'll stick with what they propose. And they’ve given me their word as well. Where I come from that’s good enough for me.”
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Il condominio franato in Florida era stato giudicato instabile.....!
Collapsed Miami condo had been sinking into Earth as early as the 1990s, researchers say
Gina Barton, Kyle Bagenstose, Pat Beall, Aleszu Bajak and Elizabeth Weise
A Florida high-rise that collapsed early Thursday was determined to be unstable a year ago, according to a researcher at Florida International University.
© Amy Beth Bennett, South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP Part of the 12-story oceanfront Champlain Towers South condo collapsed early June 24 in Surfside, Fla.
The building, which was constructed in 1981, has been sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s, according to a study in 2020 by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment.
When Wdowinski saw the news that the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside collapsed, he instantly remembered it from the study, he said.
“I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” he said.
Wdowinski said his research is not meant to suggest certainty about what caused the collapse. The building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s and could have slowed or accelerated in the time since, he said.
In his experience, even the level of sinking observed in the 1990s typically results in impacts to buildings and their structures, Wdowinski said. He said that very well could have been the case for the Champlain building in the 1990s, based on his findings.
“It was a byproduct of analyzing the data. We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” Wdowinski said.
Daniel Dietch, who served as Surfside’s mayor from 2010 to 2020, warned against drawing conclusions too soon.
“This is an extraordinarily unusual event, and it is dangerous and counterproductive to speculate on its cause,” he said.
Workers sorted through the rubble Thursday afternoon. Officials said 35 people were rescued and confirmed at least one death, saying they expect the death toll to rise. At least 99 people remained unaccounted for.
According to Surfside Town Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer, “This was not an act of God. This was not a natural disaster. Buildings don't just fall.”
Water damage and cracks
The county requires commercial and multifamily buildings to be recertified every 40 years. The process involves electrical and structural inspections for a report to be filed with the town. It was underway for the condominium building but had not been completed, town officials said Thursday.
Salzhauer said no serious complaints about the building had been brought to the town’s attention.
"If a building had serious problems, we would certainly know about it," she said.
In 2015, a lawsuit alleged building management failed to maintain an outside wall, resulting in water damage and cracks. The owner who filed that suit had previously sued over the same issue, according to a court filing. The management company paid for damages in the earlier case, according to records.
The building, which was constructed in 1981, has been sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s, according to a study in 2020 by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment.
When Wdowinski saw the news that the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside collapsed, he instantly remembered it from the study, he said.
“I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” he said.
Wdowinski said his research is not meant to suggest certainty about what caused the collapse. The building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s and could have slowed or accelerated in the time since, he said.
In his experience, even the level of sinking observed in the 1990s typically results in impacts to buildings and their structures, Wdowinski said. He said that very well could have been the case for the Champlain building in the 1990s, based on his findings.
“It was a byproduct of analyzing the data. We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” Wdowinski said.
Daniel Dietch, who served as Surfside’s mayor from 2010 to 2020, warned against drawing conclusions too soon.
“This is an extraordinarily unusual event, and it is dangerous and counterproductive to speculate on its cause,” he said.
Workers sorted through the rubble Thursday afternoon. Officials said 35 people were rescued and confirmed at least one death, saying they expect the death toll to rise. At least 99 people remained unaccounted for.
According to Surfside Town Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer, “This was not an act of God. This was not a natural disaster. Buildings don't just fall.”
Water damage and cracks
The county requires commercial and multifamily buildings to be recertified every 40 years. The process involves electrical and structural inspections for a report to be filed with the town. It was underway for the condominium building but had not been completed, town officials said Thursday.
Salzhauer said no serious complaints about the building had been brought to the town’s attention.
"If a building had serious problems, we would certainly know about it," she said.
In 2015, a lawsuit alleged building management failed to maintain an outside wall, resulting in water damage and cracks. The owner who filed that suit had previously sued over the same issue, according to a court filing. The management company paid for damages in the earlier case, according to records.
Cracked walls or shifting foundations can be clues that sinking has affected the stability of a structure, according to Matthys Levy, a consulting engineer, professor at Columbia University and author of “Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail.”
Residents of the building might have noticed changes, he said.
“Had there been changes in the building? Cracks in the walls, in the floor? Floors not being level, things rolling off tables?” he said. That would indicate the building was shifting.
The city needs to invest in technology that can determine which buildings are at risk of collapse due to geologic processes, said Keren Bolter, a Florida-based geoscientist at the engineering firm Arcadis who has advised the Federal Emergency Management Agency on hazard mitigation.
“It's very sad that people are forced to be reactive. We're constantly putting out fires. I think there's a systemic problem we have,” she said. "Investing in preventative measures instead of reactive responses saves lives, money and time.”
Satellites, drones and other means are used to monitor where Florida is sinking and understand which buildings might be at risk, according to Ryan Shamet, a professor of engineering at the University of North Florida. Those efforts vary by jurisdiction and depend on whether structures are privately or publicly owned, he said. Aside from the analysis at the time of construction, monitoring is generally not done proactively, he said.
”Structural health monitoring is already there,” Shamet said. “But it's hard because we don't have the resources yet to monitor every single structure. You kind of have to know if there's an issue first before you start monitoring it.”
Progressive collapse
There is always concern for structures built on reclaimed land, according to Levy.
Reclaimed land, whether landfill or wetlands, can compact over time, leading to shifts in the ground under the building and potentially to the foundation.
“A milliliter may seem like a small number, but when you add them up over many years, it becomes a big number,” Levy said.
The building could have been especially vulnerable if the ground it was situated on was sinking at different rates, causing differential settlement.
“The fact that one part of it is still standing is important. The portion that collapsed might have been tipping compared to the other portion, which may not have been sinking as fast. So you have an unequal situation, and in between, things begin to crack and tilt,” Levy said.
“There has to be some trigger that occurs. If you have two parts of a building and one part is well-founded and doesn’t move that much and the other is not, then between the two, you get movement. That can cause distortion in the floor slabs. They can begin to crack; suddenly, you get cracking, breaking and fracturing,” he said.
That leads to what’s known as progressive collapse, when one part fails, then another and another until the entire structure fails. That is what happened to the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, he said.
“Buildings are not super strong; they’re not built to sustain an unusual event like this,” he said.
“If one part of the building fails, it drags the rest with it,” he said. “It just continues, you can’t stop. There’s nothing there to stop it, there’s no strong elements to hold it back. It’s a cascade.”
Impact of sea level rise and flooding
Over the past several years, Wdowinski and his team have researched which parts of the Miami area are sinking, primarily to identify where sea level rise and flooding could have the most impact. They obtained historical data from European satellites, which mapped the area by bouncing signals down to the ground and back to identify shifting elevations.
The data, collected from 1993 to 1999, showed that most of the Miami area was not sinking appreciably, save for a few hot spots. Wdowinski said most of those occurred in the western part of Miami, where the elevation is lower. The level of sinking at the Champlain condo was unusual, he said.
Wdownski said he doesn’t believe anybody in the city or state government would have had a reason to be aware of the findings of the study. The bulk of it focused on potential flooding hazards, not engineering concerns. The study’s mention of the “12-story condominium” was relegated to a single line.
“We didn’t give it too much importance,” Wdowinski said.
The incident has made him think about the possibility of using such data to identify areas of potential structural risk, he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Collapsed Miami condo had been sinking into Earth as early as the 1990s, researchers say
Residents of the building might have noticed changes, he said.
“Had there been changes in the building? Cracks in the walls, in the floor? Floors not being level, things rolling off tables?” he said. That would indicate the building was shifting.
The city needs to invest in technology that can determine which buildings are at risk of collapse due to geologic processes, said Keren Bolter, a Florida-based geoscientist at the engineering firm Arcadis who has advised the Federal Emergency Management Agency on hazard mitigation.
“It's very sad that people are forced to be reactive. We're constantly putting out fires. I think there's a systemic problem we have,” she said. "Investing in preventative measures instead of reactive responses saves lives, money and time.”
Satellites, drones and other means are used to monitor where Florida is sinking and understand which buildings might be at risk, according to Ryan Shamet, a professor of engineering at the University of North Florida. Those efforts vary by jurisdiction and depend on whether structures are privately or publicly owned, he said. Aside from the analysis at the time of construction, monitoring is generally not done proactively, he said.
”Structural health monitoring is already there,” Shamet said. “But it's hard because we don't have the resources yet to monitor every single structure. You kind of have to know if there's an issue first before you start monitoring it.”
Progressive collapse
There is always concern for structures built on reclaimed land, according to Levy.
Reclaimed land, whether landfill or wetlands, can compact over time, leading to shifts in the ground under the building and potentially to the foundation.
“A milliliter may seem like a small number, but when you add them up over many years, it becomes a big number,” Levy said.
The building could have been especially vulnerable if the ground it was situated on was sinking at different rates, causing differential settlement.
“The fact that one part of it is still standing is important. The portion that collapsed might have been tipping compared to the other portion, which may not have been sinking as fast. So you have an unequal situation, and in between, things begin to crack and tilt,” Levy said.
“There has to be some trigger that occurs. If you have two parts of a building and one part is well-founded and doesn’t move that much and the other is not, then between the two, you get movement. That can cause distortion in the floor slabs. They can begin to crack; suddenly, you get cracking, breaking and fracturing,” he said.
That leads to what’s known as progressive collapse, when one part fails, then another and another until the entire structure fails. That is what happened to the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, he said.
“Buildings are not super strong; they’re not built to sustain an unusual event like this,” he said.
“If one part of the building fails, it drags the rest with it,” he said. “It just continues, you can’t stop. There’s nothing there to stop it, there’s no strong elements to hold it back. It’s a cascade.”
Impact of sea level rise and flooding
Over the past several years, Wdowinski and his team have researched which parts of the Miami area are sinking, primarily to identify where sea level rise and flooding could have the most impact. They obtained historical data from European satellites, which mapped the area by bouncing signals down to the ground and back to identify shifting elevations.
The data, collected from 1993 to 1999, showed that most of the Miami area was not sinking appreciably, save for a few hot spots. Wdowinski said most of those occurred in the western part of Miami, where the elevation is lower. The level of sinking at the Champlain condo was unusual, he said.
Wdownski said he doesn’t believe anybody in the city or state government would have had a reason to be aware of the findings of the study. The bulk of it focused on potential flooding hazards, not engineering concerns. The study’s mention of the “12-story condominium” was relegated to a single line.
“We didn’t give it too much importance,” Wdowinski said.
The incident has made him think about the possibility of using such data to identify areas of potential structural risk, he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Collapsed Miami condo had been sinking into Earth as early as the 1990s, researchers say
American Airlines cancella voli per mancanza di personale...
American Airlines Just Made an Announcement No Company Wants to Make. Here's What You Can Learn From It
Minda Zetlin
American Airlines Just Made an Announcement No Company Wants to Make. Here's What You Can Learn From It
© Getty Images Airplane Traffic At JFK Airport in New YorkIf you're flying American in the next few weeks, check to make sure you aren't affected.
American Airlines announced this week it is canceling about 950 flights between now and mid-July. That amounts to about 1 percent of its total flights, the airline told Inc. More cancellations may be coming as American continues to evaluate its options. The company says it deliberately chose airports where there are many alternatives for getting passengers to their destinations. It says it will notify passengers well in advance, but if you have a flight booked on American in the next few weeks, it might be wise to check that it's still scheduled to fly.
Why are so many flights being canceled when planes are full and passengers are eager to fly? Because the airline doesn't have enough people to fly them. American, like other airlines, spent much of the past year reducing its workforce, encouraging people to take early retirement for example. In October, the airline announced it was suspending service to 15 destinations and reportedly furloughed 19,000 employees, including 1,600 pilots. That furlough may have been short-lived. American spokesperson Sarah Jantz told Inc. in an email that all 1,600 pilots were called back in December, in accordance with the extension of the Payroll Support Program, and that they've been returning to work "based on operational need."
At the time of the furloughs, Captain Dennis Tajer, an American pilot who heads communications for the Airline Pilots Association, warned that it might take 15 months for furloughed pilots to be able to fly again, due to FAA retraining requirements for pilots who haven't flown in a while. That warning seems to be coming true. "They're in the middle of retraining pilots who might have been idled during the pandemic," said CNBC reporter Leslie Josephs when asked to explain the crew shortage.
American Airlines spokesperson Sarah Jantz says severe weather has made things much worse. "On several days throughout the past weeks, we've experienced multi-hour ground stops that have had a serious impact not only on our aircraft routing, but also our crew routing," she told Inc. by email. "Major weather, like what we've seen in DFW [Dallas] and CLT [Charlotte, North Carolina], can have lasting impact on our crews as many exceed their eligible work time or need to be rerouted based on flight changes. While we have reserves, bad weather can quickly cause us to exhaust these additional crew resources."
With or without bad weather, taking a large portion of your product off the market just as demand for it is spiking is the last thing any company wants to do, especially in a highly competitive industry such as air travel. American isn't the only airline that's had to cancel flights during times of high demand. Delta canceled flights over Thanksgiving because of a pilot shortage, CNBC reported. And Southwest Airlines suffered three days of embarrassing delays and cancellations due to a series of technical glitches.
But canceling almost 1,000 flights weeks ahead of time because you know you'll be short of staff is a highly unusual move that reveals just how bad American's staffing trouble are. What went wrong? And what can business leaders learn from them?
1. Don't take on debt just because you can.
A year or so before the pandemic, American ran up some debt to finance a stock repurchase and to modernize its fleet. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that U.S. businesses had pushed corporate debt to record levels, apparently seeking to take advantage of low interest rates and a booming economy.
Increasing debt probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But when all large U.S. carriers were forced to borrow during the pandemic, American wound up with more debt than its peers--a total of about $50 billion. That extra debt may have meant the airline was particularly eager to cut costs by reducing its work force when it could.
High debt may also explain why American was quicker than some other airlines to offer more flights as air travel demand rapidly grew in recent weeks. "They have packed their scheduled a little but fuller than some of their closest competitors like Delta and United," Josephs said. "And what they're finding is there is a shortage of workers."
3. Don't take for granted that employees will be available.
Weather may cause flight delays, cancellations, and even employee routing problems in the short term. But the fact that American is canceling this many flight three weeks into the future suggests the airline has staffing problems that go beyond weather. Tajer told the Daily Mail that some of the furloughed pilots took other jobs, flying for delivery services for instance, and won't be returning to American anytime soon. If that's true, and if the same applies to other furloughed crew members, that would explain why American seems to have fewer people available to work its flights than it expected when it created its new schedule.
That's an important lesson for every business leader these days. Your company may be a great place to work, but employees have more choices than ever, especially those with hard-to-acquire skills such as flying or maintaining an airplane. The time is past when you could send people home and expect to bring them back whenever you were ready. Companies in all industries are so fond of saying that their "greatest asset is our people," that it's become a badly overused phrase. In today's tight labor market, many are learning the hard way just how true it is.
Chi sara' il primo?
Another billionaire space battle is brewing
Miriam Kramer, author of Space Axios
Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: Arif Hudaverdi Yaman (Anadolu Agency), James D. Morgan/Getty Images
The race between billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to make suborbital space tourism a viable business is heating up.
Why it matters: The disagreements between Bezos and Elon Musk capture the limelight, but the competition between Bezos' Blue Origin and Branson's Virgin Galactic could soon make space a destination for ordinary citizens.
Driving the news: Bezos announced earlier this month that he's planning to fly with his brother and two other passengers on the first crewed mission for Blue Origin's New Shepard space system on July 20.
If that happens, they will have leapfrogged Virgin Galactic, a company that many expected to fly its founder first.
Branson has long been expected to fly on one of the first operational flights for his company, and the blog Parabolic Arc recently reported he's going to try to beat Bezos to the edge of space.
"I think part of how they're shaping the competition is by putting themselves on the line as part of the face of the competition," Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation told me.
What's happening: The two companies go about getting people to suborbital space differently.
Blue Origin uses a rocket to launch a capsule carrying its passengers up to about 62 miles above the Earth. From there, the crew will experience minutes of weightlessness as they start their descent. The capsule’s parachutes will deploy, allowing for a soft landing.
Virgin Galactic uses a carrier aircraft to fly its space plane high above Earth. The plane drops from the carrier and its rocket engine kicks on, sending passengers on a flight to the edge of space before gliding back to the planet.
Neither of these systems are fast enough to go orbital, so unlike SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket, which brings astronauts to the space station, suborbital flights only last a matter of minutes.
The intrigue: It's not yet clear how many members of the public will be interested in these rides to the edge of space or whether the market for suborbital space travel will be sustainable in the long term.
"We're really at the early stages in terms of expanding how we're using space ... There's a possibility that there's room for both [Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin]," Samson said, adding the market may not be clear for another five to 10 years.
What’s next: Virgin Galactic — a publicly traded company — is squarely focused on suborbital tourism, but Blue Origin is looking to diversify its business and start sending payloads into orbit with its own heavy lift rocket that's in development.
What to watch: The billionaire competitions can affect the way the public understands and interacts with space in the future, for better or for worse.
Some are already voicing concerns that, if suborbital tourism does take off, it will interfere with the everyday lives of regular Americans because of the restricted airspace these flights require.
But the competitions between these billionaires also keeps space in the public conversation, and that could get more people interested in flying.
"In general, every mission that goes up, every rocket that's launched, every bit of progress we make does drive down costs, makes space more affordable [and] accessible to everybody," Jared Isaacman, the commander of the all-civilian Inspiration 4 mission to orbit with SpaceX, told me.
Le elezioni americane continuano, con “generosità”
Alberto Pasolini Zanelli
Le elezioni americane continuano, con “generosità”. Quelle per Camera e Senato del 2022, quelle per la Casa Bianca del 2024 e, ma soprattutto, quelle del 2020, concluse non tanto tempo fa, ma secondo cifre alcuni non accettano. Ora sappiamo che non sono “alcuni”, bensì milioni e milioni: un americano su tre. Accettano la parola “trucco”, quella che il candidato sconfitto Donald Trump ripete da mesi quotidianamente, smentito da tutte le fonti ufficiali e, fino a ieri, da una convincente maggioranza degli elettori.
Ma adesso è uscito un sondaggio, formalmente indiretto, ma finalmente importante e sorprendente: la “favola” quotidianamente raccontata da Donald Trump è creduta e accettata da più di dieci milioni di americani, soprattutto di quelli che hanno votato il primo martedì dello scorso novembre, eleggendo il democratico Joe Biden con qualche milione di voti di vantaggio sul repubblicano Donald Trump. Adesso, però, c’è un sacco di americani, compresi dunque gli elettori, che Trump ha convinto che l’intera consultazione è stata “una bugia”. Oppure, diremmo noi, un trucco. Nel senso che centinaia di migliaia di americani non hanno potuto votare e, soprattutto, milioni avrebbero votato più di una volta, senza incontrare contestazioni davanti alle urne, secondo Trump “presidiate” da attivisti democratici. Il candidato repubblicano ha da allora quasi ogni giorno denunciato questi “brogli”, sistematicamente in uno Stato dopo l’altro, incontrando prima quasi totali negazioni, ma ultimamente sensibili spostamenti di voti in alcuni Stati, soprattutto (ma non soltanto) nel Sud, incluso il popolatissimo Texas. Anche i mezzi di comunicazione, dalla televisione alla stampa, hanno fatto propri questi verdetti e stavano passando dalla indignazione alla irrisione nei confronti del chiassoso candidato sconfitto.
Ma adesso è arrivato un sondaggio nazionale con quella cifra imponente: un americano su tre non solo pensa che nel test elettorale ci siano stati errori, ma che si tratti di vere e proprie truffe. Questa ennesima consultazione non sarà sufficiente a dare ragione a Trump anche nella sua richiesta massima, cioè di annullare le elezioni e rifarle daccapo. Ma il “fatto nuovo” rafforza le sue contestazioni Stato per Stato, se non addirittura seggio elettorale per seggio elettorale e rischia di incrinare la credibilità e la “onestà” del partito che ha conquistato la maggioranza. Che appare confortevole, ma si sta rivelando più ristretta perché gli Stati contestati sono tra quelli più popolosi e che quindi hanno diritto al maggior numero di voti elettorali.
Un conteggio che non ha valore legale e quindi non confuta il risultato e anche gran parte delle contestazioni e denunce. Ma contribuiscono ad approfondire un dubbio emerso molto di recente e non riguardante un partito né l’altro. È “tecnico” e riguarda il sistema elettorale americano nel suo complesso, vale a dire anche differente fra Stato e Stato. Qualcosa in comune, però, c’è e cioè la “pluralità” dei metodi non solo di conteggio ma anche di votazioni. In Europa, nella maggioranza dei casi, gli elettori possono andare alle urne solo un giorno (o un giorno e mezzo per “arrotondare” la disponibilità quando è domenicale) e devono andare al seggio, presentare un documento di identità, ricevere la scheda con i nomi dei candidati, fare una croce su quello prescelto e restituire quel pezzo di carta. Negli Stati Uniti gli elettori sono attesi e “serviti” da migliaia di computer che “inghiottiscono” le preferenze e alla fine le contano.
Ma non è solo questo: in molti Stati si può cominciare a votare giorni o settimane prima della data elettorale, per posta o, sempre più spesso, ricevendo la scheda e infilandola in cassette pubbliche, sui muri delle strade. Di qui il sospetto che uno possa votare più di una volta, l’ultima delle quali nel seggio elettorale. Restringendo le occasioni di infilare le schede, diminuiscono le contestazioni, siano o no sufficienti a capovolgere il risultato. C’è chi ricorda che le prime complicazioni nel sistema elettorale furono in parte ispirate dal desiderio di molti americani bianchi di rendere più difficile l’accesso alle urne dei connazionali di pelle nera.
Un sistema ci sarebbe: che gli americani, una volta tanto, copiassero gli europei, i vecchi Paesi che non hanno inventato la democrazia, ma che l’hanno adottata in modo semplice: la Gran Bretagna, la Germania, la Francia. Inclusa l’Italia, dove l’ultima contestazione di un risultato fu avanzata con grande leggerezza nel referendum immediatamente postbellico di scelta fra Monarchia e Repubblica. Quest’ultima prevalse per due milioni di voti, le contestazioni durarono un paio di giorni o di ore, l’ultimo re, Umberto II, partì per l’esilio senza fare chiasso.
Biden: luce verde per base lunare
Biden Just Gave NASA the Green Light for a Cool New Moon Base
David Axe
President Joe Biden’s plan to spend a couple trillion dollars on infrastructure here on Earth is still working its way through a fractious Congress. In the meantime the Biden administration is going all in
on infrastructure in space.
That is to say, space stations.
In a rebuke of one of ex-president Donald Trump’s less popular space proposals, the Biden administration is working to extend the service life of the International Space Station. At the same time, the administration is clarifying plans for a new station that would orbit the moon.
The twin initiatives couldn’t have come at a better time for proponents of a slowly emerging orbital economy.
On Wednesday, the Chinese space agency launched the first long-term crew to China’s own new space station. If the United States were to falter in its efforts to keep people in space year-round, authoritarian China would be more than happy to become humanity’s main off-world host, experts said. That’s a chilling proposition for advocates of a free and democratic orbital community.
The International Space Station isn’t the world’s first space station. But the low-orbit habitat, circling Earth at an altitude of 250 miles, is the first enduring one. NASA’s three-person Skylab launched in 1973 and burned up in the atmosphere, as planned, in 1979. The Soviet Mir, also big enough to house three crew, lasted from 1986 to ’96.
A NASA-led international alliance, with Russia as a key member, started assembling the ISS back in 1998. More than 200 spacewalks later, the 310-foot, solar-powered station includes living quarters, science labs, engineering facilities, an observatory and attachments for several visiting spacecraft.
The ISS usually has six or seven people aboard. Two are Russian. In addition to several Americans, the crew usually includes a specialist or two from the European, Japanese or Canadian space agencies.
For more than 20 years, the ISS has supported humanity’s only long-term, off-world population. It’s a multi-billion-dollar anchor for what space boosters hope will eventually expand into a substantial, and self-sustaining orbital economy.
The station is also the main venue for the United States and Russia to cooperate in a high-profile way on, well, anything. Back on Earth, Russia hacks American infrastructure, interferes with American elections and threatens American allies. Relations are fraught. Longstanding U.S.-Russian treaties are collapsing at a record pace.
But in space, Americans and Russians don’t just get along. They rely on each other for mutual survival. While U.S. astronauts traditionally lead ISS crews, the Russian cosmonauts handle the station’s upkeep. They fix the wiring and plumbing. They dispose of the trash.
More significantly, Russian Soyuz space capsules were, for a critical nine-year period, the only vehicles capable of transporting crew to and from the station. NASA’s Space Shuttles helped to handle that mission until they were decommissioned in 2011. The U.S. space agency finally resumed its own crew-transport missions late last year using SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon capsule.
Dismantling the ISS before the United States and its allies have prepared alternative orbital habitats could be a serious blow to American leadership in space—as well as to what’s left of American-Russian goodwill. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration proposed to do back in 2018.
Trump was enamored of most things with the word “space” in the name. He did, after all, spend billions of dollars setting up a new military space bureaucracy—a.k.a., “Space Force”—even after his own defense secretary and many lawmakers dismissed the idea as duplicative and wasteful.
Space stations, however, seemed to leave Trump cold. His administration wanted to stop paying the ISS’s $4-billion-a-year operating costs by 2025. The plan, which died with Trump’s presidency, anticipated NASA handing off the station to private companies that would then use it for research, zero-gravity manufacturing, tourism, filmmaking—whatever.
At the same time, Trump’s determination to—some might say “obsession with”—returning astronauts to the moon by 2024, before the end of what he imagined would be his second term as president, warped NASA’s intricate plans for establishing a second space station, this one orbiting the moon.
As the space agency originally envisioned it, the Lunar Gateway station would function as a sort of pit stop for astronauts bound for the moon. Instead of flying directly to the moon the way the Apollo astronauts did back in the late 1960s and early ’70s (the first and last time anyone stepped foot on the moon), they would travel from Earth to the Lunar Gateway station. The station would then adjust its orbit and deposit explorers onto the lunar surface aboard back-and-forth landers.
The problem was, there was no way the Lunar Gateway was going to be ready in time for Trump’s 2024 deadline for a new moon landing. That left the lunar station in a kind of planning limbo.
Biden just yanked the Lunar Gateway out of this bureaucratic purgatory. New NASA administrator Bill Nelson endorsed the return to the moon but hedged on the deadline. “I think we have to put a dose of sobering reality into our analysis,” Nelson told the Associated Press last month.
Delaying the next moon landing by even a few months should allow NASA to return to the original plan of stopping over at the Lunar Gateway. “The Lunar Gateway is now a key part of NASA strategy,” Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, told The Daily Beast.
Not coincidentally, the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—Biden’s $250-billion science bill, which passed the Senate in early June and now awaits a vote in the House of Representatives—includes a NASA authorization provision that sets aside $10 billion for the Lunar Gateway’s landers.
In a separate interview with The Verge, Nelson also threw the ISS a lifeline. “I want to expand the life of the station to 2030,” he said, “and the idea would eventually be that you let private industry build the space station thereafter.”
As part of that extension, NASA has begun negotiating with the Russian space agency to continue its own role on the ISS. NASA did not respond to a request for comment.
Pavel Luzin, an independent space expert, told The Daily Beast Moscow is likely to sign on through the station’s eventual handover to private industry. “The most significant fact here is that the successful space program in cooperation with the West gives the Russian political system a domestic legitimacy as a great power status in international relations,” Luzin said.
If the goal is to get more people living and working in space, and paying their own way, timing is critical—and five years could make a huge difference. There was no way private industry was going to be ready to take over the ISS in 2025, experts said. But considering the pace at which the commercial space industry is expanding, it just might be ready by 2030.
Tourism companies could lead the way. “We’ve seen significant interest in orbital private spaceflight in the past couple of years,” Laura Forczyk, owner of Atlanta space consulting firm Astralytical, told The Daily Beast.
NASA has invited private firms to bid on two opportunities to bring paying customers to the ISS between late 2022 and late 2023. Each trip would involve four visitors and last two weeks—and could cost up to $200 million apiece.
So far, the only company to express firm interest in the ISS visits is Houston-based Axiom Space. Besides shepherding rich tourists to the ISS, Axiom is also developing its own habitat module—a kind of orbital spare room—that it hopes to eventually plug onto the ISS.
Handing over the ISS to viable private operators could be a boon to NASA, its partner space agencies and humanity in general. Companies could convert the ISS into a gravity-free orbital factory for producing highly specialized products—perfect crystals, for example—that could benefit NASA’s other projects.
But taxpayers would be off the hook. And NASA could spend the tens of billions of dollars it saves building up the Lunar Gateway before eventually handing it off to private industry, as well.
Think of NASA as a developer of space real estate. Like any developer in a free market, the agency has competition. China began working on its three-person Tiangong station—which in scale and design is more like Skylab and Mir than it is the ISS—way back in 2000.
After extension preparation, the Chinese station is finally ready to support people. Tiangong’s first long-term crew blasted off on Wednesday night and, a few hours later, arrived safely at the station in low Earth orbit.
U.S. law specifically bars China from participating in ISS. But it’s not clear Beijing would even want to be part of that international effort. The ISS is a strictly scientific—and, increasingly, commercial—platform.
By contrast, it’s possible Tiangong has a military mission, perhaps surveilling Earth’s surface or keeping tabs on U.S. and allied satellites. No one outside of the Chinese Communist Party knows for sure, because unlike the ISS, the Tiangong project is top secret and, for outsiders, unauditable.
It’s not hard to imagine that Chinese leaders hoped NASA’s own space station efforts would fail. If Trump had won re-election and turned off the lights on the ISS by the end of his second term while also sidelining the Lunar Gateway, there’s a scenario where, by the mid-2020s, humanity’s only available off-world real-estate would have been Chinese.
“The Chinese are very conservative regarding keeping things ‘Chinese only’ in space until they feel confident about success, but they certainly realize the prestige—and hence strategic value—and publicity accorded with issuing invitations to non-Chinese at some point,” Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island, told The Daily Beast. “This will be especially true when the West doesn’t have invitations to the ISS to offer.”
In that scenario, Beijing would have been in a strong position to dictate the terms as humanity, and the world economy, slowly expanded off Earth’s surface. With strong support for not one but two space stations, Biden has forestalled that takeover.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
That is to say, space stations.
In a rebuke of one of ex-president Donald Trump’s less popular space proposals, the Biden administration is working to extend the service life of the International Space Station. At the same time, the administration is clarifying plans for a new station that would orbit the moon.
The twin initiatives couldn’t have come at a better time for proponents of a slowly emerging orbital economy.
On Wednesday, the Chinese space agency launched the first long-term crew to China’s own new space station. If the United States were to falter in its efforts to keep people in space year-round, authoritarian China would be more than happy to become humanity’s main off-world host, experts said. That’s a chilling proposition for advocates of a free and democratic orbital community.
The International Space Station isn’t the world’s first space station. But the low-orbit habitat, circling Earth at an altitude of 250 miles, is the first enduring one. NASA’s three-person Skylab launched in 1973 and burned up in the atmosphere, as planned, in 1979. The Soviet Mir, also big enough to house three crew, lasted from 1986 to ’96.
A NASA-led international alliance, with Russia as a key member, started assembling the ISS back in 1998. More than 200 spacewalks later, the 310-foot, solar-powered station includes living quarters, science labs, engineering facilities, an observatory and attachments for several visiting spacecraft.
The ISS usually has six or seven people aboard. Two are Russian. In addition to several Americans, the crew usually includes a specialist or two from the European, Japanese or Canadian space agencies.
For more than 20 years, the ISS has supported humanity’s only long-term, off-world population. It’s a multi-billion-dollar anchor for what space boosters hope will eventually expand into a substantial, and self-sustaining orbital economy.
The station is also the main venue for the United States and Russia to cooperate in a high-profile way on, well, anything. Back on Earth, Russia hacks American infrastructure, interferes with American elections and threatens American allies. Relations are fraught. Longstanding U.S.-Russian treaties are collapsing at a record pace.
But in space, Americans and Russians don’t just get along. They rely on each other for mutual survival. While U.S. astronauts traditionally lead ISS crews, the Russian cosmonauts handle the station’s upkeep. They fix the wiring and plumbing. They dispose of the trash.
More significantly, Russian Soyuz space capsules were, for a critical nine-year period, the only vehicles capable of transporting crew to and from the station. NASA’s Space Shuttles helped to handle that mission until they were decommissioned in 2011. The U.S. space agency finally resumed its own crew-transport missions late last year using SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon capsule.
Dismantling the ISS before the United States and its allies have prepared alternative orbital habitats could be a serious blow to American leadership in space—as well as to what’s left of American-Russian goodwill. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration proposed to do back in 2018.
Trump was enamored of most things with the word “space” in the name. He did, after all, spend billions of dollars setting up a new military space bureaucracy—a.k.a., “Space Force”—even after his own defense secretary and many lawmakers dismissed the idea as duplicative and wasteful.
Space stations, however, seemed to leave Trump cold. His administration wanted to stop paying the ISS’s $4-billion-a-year operating costs by 2025. The plan, which died with Trump’s presidency, anticipated NASA handing off the station to private companies that would then use it for research, zero-gravity manufacturing, tourism, filmmaking—whatever.
At the same time, Trump’s determination to—some might say “obsession with”—returning astronauts to the moon by 2024, before the end of what he imagined would be his second term as president, warped NASA’s intricate plans for establishing a second space station, this one orbiting the moon.
As the space agency originally envisioned it, the Lunar Gateway station would function as a sort of pit stop for astronauts bound for the moon. Instead of flying directly to the moon the way the Apollo astronauts did back in the late 1960s and early ’70s (the first and last time anyone stepped foot on the moon), they would travel from Earth to the Lunar Gateway station. The station would then adjust its orbit and deposit explorers onto the lunar surface aboard back-and-forth landers.
The problem was, there was no way the Lunar Gateway was going to be ready in time for Trump’s 2024 deadline for a new moon landing. That left the lunar station in a kind of planning limbo.
Biden just yanked the Lunar Gateway out of this bureaucratic purgatory. New NASA administrator Bill Nelson endorsed the return to the moon but hedged on the deadline. “I think we have to put a dose of sobering reality into our analysis,” Nelson told the Associated Press last month.
Delaying the next moon landing by even a few months should allow NASA to return to the original plan of stopping over at the Lunar Gateway. “The Lunar Gateway is now a key part of NASA strategy,” Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, told The Daily Beast.
Not coincidentally, the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—Biden’s $250-billion science bill, which passed the Senate in early June and now awaits a vote in the House of Representatives—includes a NASA authorization provision that sets aside $10 billion for the Lunar Gateway’s landers.
In a separate interview with The Verge, Nelson also threw the ISS a lifeline. “I want to expand the life of the station to 2030,” he said, “and the idea would eventually be that you let private industry build the space station thereafter.”
As part of that extension, NASA has begun negotiating with the Russian space agency to continue its own role on the ISS. NASA did not respond to a request for comment.
Pavel Luzin, an independent space expert, told The Daily Beast Moscow is likely to sign on through the station’s eventual handover to private industry. “The most significant fact here is that the successful space program in cooperation with the West gives the Russian political system a domestic legitimacy as a great power status in international relations,” Luzin said.
If the goal is to get more people living and working in space, and paying their own way, timing is critical—and five years could make a huge difference. There was no way private industry was going to be ready to take over the ISS in 2025, experts said. But considering the pace at which the commercial space industry is expanding, it just might be ready by 2030.
Tourism companies could lead the way. “We’ve seen significant interest in orbital private spaceflight in the past couple of years,” Laura Forczyk, owner of Atlanta space consulting firm Astralytical, told The Daily Beast.
NASA has invited private firms to bid on two opportunities to bring paying customers to the ISS between late 2022 and late 2023. Each trip would involve four visitors and last two weeks—and could cost up to $200 million apiece.
So far, the only company to express firm interest in the ISS visits is Houston-based Axiom Space. Besides shepherding rich tourists to the ISS, Axiom is also developing its own habitat module—a kind of orbital spare room—that it hopes to eventually plug onto the ISS.
Handing over the ISS to viable private operators could be a boon to NASA, its partner space agencies and humanity in general. Companies could convert the ISS into a gravity-free orbital factory for producing highly specialized products—perfect crystals, for example—that could benefit NASA’s other projects.
But taxpayers would be off the hook. And NASA could spend the tens of billions of dollars it saves building up the Lunar Gateway before eventually handing it off to private industry, as well.
Think of NASA as a developer of space real estate. Like any developer in a free market, the agency has competition. China began working on its three-person Tiangong station—which in scale and design is more like Skylab and Mir than it is the ISS—way back in 2000.
After extension preparation, the Chinese station is finally ready to support people. Tiangong’s first long-term crew blasted off on Wednesday night and, a few hours later, arrived safely at the station in low Earth orbit.
U.S. law specifically bars China from participating in ISS. But it’s not clear Beijing would even want to be part of that international effort. The ISS is a strictly scientific—and, increasingly, commercial—platform.
By contrast, it’s possible Tiangong has a military mission, perhaps surveilling Earth’s surface or keeping tabs on U.S. and allied satellites. No one outside of the Chinese Communist Party knows for sure, because unlike the ISS, the Tiangong project is top secret and, for outsiders, unauditable.
It’s not hard to imagine that Chinese leaders hoped NASA’s own space station efforts would fail. If Trump had won re-election and turned off the lights on the ISS by the end of his second term while also sidelining the Lunar Gateway, there’s a scenario where, by the mid-2020s, humanity’s only available off-world real-estate would have been Chinese.
“The Chinese are very conservative regarding keeping things ‘Chinese only’ in space until they feel confident about success, but they certainly realize the prestige—and hence strategic value—and publicity accorded with issuing invitations to non-Chinese at some point,” Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island, told The Daily Beast. “This will be especially true when the West doesn’t have invitations to the ISS to offer.”
In that scenario, Beijing would have been in a strong position to dictate the terms as humanity, and the world economy, slowly expanded off Earth’s surface. With strong support for not one but two space stations, Biden has forestalled that takeover.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
La svolta diplomatica USA e il mancato incontro in Vaticano
La trasferta di Biden: la svolta USA e l’incontro mancato in VaticanoArticolo di Romano Prodi su Il Messaggero del 20 giugno 2021
Gli otto giorni di Joe Biden in Europa sono stati spesi bene. La prima ragione del viaggio era la riunione del G7 in Cornovaglia e, a mio parere, è stata la tappa meno produttiva. D’altra parte è lo stesso G7 che ha perduto progressivamente di importanza. Quando, nei lontani anni ‘70, si decise di dare vita a questo appuntamento annuale, i sette paesi membri (Stati Uniti, Canada, Giappone, Germania, Gran Bretagna, Francia e Italia) rappresentavano oltre il 50% dell’economia mondiale.
Ora arrivano appena al 30%, mentre l’economia asiatica raggiunge il 33%. È quindi sempre più difficile che i G7 prendano decisioni importanti per il destino di tutto il mondo. Così è stato anche in Cornovaglia.
Essi si sono infatti limitati a impegnarsi a donare, nel corso del prossimo anno, 870 milioni di dosi di vaccino ai paesi in via di sviluppo, rendendo con questo immuni meno di un mezzo miliardo di persone, cioè un decimo di coloro che debbono essere vaccinati per fermare l’epidemia. In secondo luogo, in assenza di Cina, India e Russia, i G7 non hanno potuto apportare novità degne di nota nei confronti della politica ambientale globale, riguardo alla quale sono stati sostanzialmente ripetuti gli impegni già presi.È rimasto infine ancora vago il programma di massicci investimenti in infrastrutture da realizzare nel terzo mondo come alternativa rispetto agli impegni cinesi programmati nell’ambito della via della seta. Più importanti, e portatrici di nuovi segnali politici, sono state le tappe di Biden a Bruxelles con i vertici dell’Unione Europea e della Nato e il suo incontro con Vladimir Putin a Ginevra.
A Bruxelles è stato riannodato il legame fra gli Stati Uniti e l’Europa, legame che era stato violentemente interrotto dal presidente Trump. Non ci si è limitati a dichiarazioni di amicizia, che pure erano necessarie, ma si sono chiusi contenziosi che duravano da tempo infinito (e che si erano induriti negli ultimi anni) come il conflitto fra Airbus e Boeing. Si sono inoltre tolte barriere daziarie (che in alcuni casi danneggiavano l’Italia) e Biden ha offerto un concreto ramo d’ulivo alla Germania, concedendo il semaforo verde al completamento del gasdotto Nord Stream2, che tanto preme sia ai russi che ai tedeschi, anche se non certamente agli italiani.
Il riavvicinamento all’Europa e le prospettive di cooperazioni future non possono essere sottostimate, anche perché costituiscono parte integrante della politica globale di Biden, volta a costruire un’alleanza democratica mondiale, vista soprattutto come contrapposizione alla Cina.
Su questo capitolo il fronte europeo si è mostrato compatto a fianco del Presidente Americano anche se, tanto nel mondo politico che in quello degli affari, è stato sollevato il problema di come regolare i rapporti economici con la Cina. Per mettere in rilievo la loro importanza basta ricordare che, proprio nell’anno in corso, il commercio fra Europa e Cina supera il commercio fra l’Europa e gli Stati Uniti e la presenza delle multinazionali americane ed europee (specialmente tedesche) nel mercato cinese ha raggiunto livelli senza precedenti.Trovare un compromesso fra la crescente durezza del confronto politico-militare e gli esistenti intrecci economici non è certo un problema di facile soluzione, anche se le possibilità di tale compromesso appaiono maggiormente possibili con l’empirismo di Biden che con l’intransigenza verbale di Trump.
Anche nell’incontro fra Biden e Putin a Ginevra si è aperto un colloquio prima interrotto, si è creato un clima di minore tensione e si è raggiunto qualche risultato concreto.
Nessun cambiamento radicale, ma un principio di dialogo che finirà col produrre relazioni meno instabili e pericolose. Dal punto di vista concreto verrà data immediata attuazione al ritorno degli ambasciatori che avevano lasciato la loro missione nel periodo di massima tensione e si sono poste le basi per una collaborazione sul cambiamento climatico e sul controllo degli armamenti nucleari.Si tratta di passi in avanti non definitivi e non certo rivoluzionari, ma che denotano un miglioramento di clima che, per diversi motivi, conviene sia a Mosca che a Washington.
Alle ragioni di convenienza diretta si aggiunge naturalmente l’ipotesi che questo cambiamento sia messo in atto per rendere meno stretto il rapporto fra la Cina e la Russia.
La Cina è infatti il riferimento di tutta la politica americana e il rafforzamento del fronte anticinese è stato una motivazione non secondaria del viaggio di Biden in Europa. Nell’analisi complessiva della missione del Presidente Americano si può quindi convenire che gli obiettivi che essa si proponeva siano stati in buona parte raggiunti, pur nei limiti sollevati in precedenza.
Non costituisce perciò eccesso di retorica definire questo viaggio come molto importante e complessivamente positivo, soprattutto perché denota un cambiamento di metodo che, certamente, contribuirà al contenimento dei conflitti e a una migliore collaborazione globale, almeno in settori particolari come il cambiamento climatico.
Alle riflessioni su questo viaggio si è aggiunta una certa sorpresa sul fatto che un presidente cattolico non abbia in esso incluso un incontro con Papa Francesco. Credo che la spiegazione sia nelle tensioni esistenti nella chiesa americana sulle recenti prese di posizione di Biden in tema di aborto.Mi auguro tuttavia che questa visita non tarderà nel tempo e che vedremo presto il presidente americano non solo in Vaticano ma anche a Roma.
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