Month: May 2020

Enlarge / Rick Bright, then-deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response for Health and Human Services (HHS), speaks during a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, March 8, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Whistleblower Rick Bright plans to tell Congress that "2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history" if the United States ignores warnings from scientists that it's too early to fully reopen the economy.

Bright, who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) until he says Trump administration officials forced him out of his position, is scheduled to testify tomorrow at a House hearing on the topic of "protecting scientific integrity in the COVID-19 response." Bright's written testimony was posted online today by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health, which is holding the hearing.

Bright wrote:

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  Meet the new Astrovan, with Launch Complex 39A in the background. [credit: Jim Bridenstine/NASA ]

On Wednesday, with just two weeks to go before the much-anticipated launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, NASA revealed that astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will ride to the launch pad in a stylized Tesla Model X.

"Here’s some @Tesla news that everyone should love," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted. "Check out the Model X that will carry @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug to the launchpad for the Demo-2 mission!"

For nearly three decades NASA's astronauts rode in the iconic Astrovan. From 1984 through the end of the shuttle program in 2011, crews flying aboard that vehicle would suit up inside a facility at Kennedy Space Center and then make the nine-mile journey to the launch pad in a modified Airstream Excella RV.