Month: November 2022

Enlarge / Artist's concept of the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover on Mars. (credit: Adrian Mann/Stocktrek Images)

The more than two dozen nations that make up the European Space Agency concluded their high-level "ministerial" meeting on Wednesday, establishing a budget and priorities for the next three years.

A German delegate chosen to chair the meeting, Anna Christmann, said the space agency's plans reflect a bold agenda for Europe to lead in climate science and maintain independent and launch capability. The goal is for Europe to stand alongside the United States and China as a major space power. "We've shown Europe is ambitious," said Christmann at a media conference to discuss results of the meeting.

Germany, France, and Italy remain the major players in ESA, combining to contribute nearly 60 percent of its overall funding. The member nations agreed to contribute 16.9 billion euro ($17.5 billion) to agency programs over the next three years. This is less than the 18.5 billion euro sought by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher but still significantly higher than the total for the previous three-year period of 14.5 billion euro.

Enlarge (credit: Theo Wargo / Staff | WireImage)

When “Chief Twit” Elon Musk launched a poll to decide whether to reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account, many wondered what happened to Musk’s plan to form a "widely diverse" content moderation council to help him weigh any decisions to reverse permabans. He had announced that plan after meeting with civil rights groups earlier this month but had never mentioned it since. It took four days of Trump not tweeting before Musk finally provided an update on that oversight council that he never formed.

In a tweet seemingly blaming activists for Twitter’s advertising woes, Musk claimed that he had only promised to form the council on the condition that activists promised to stop pushing advertisers to boycott his platform.

“A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition,” Musk tweeted. “They broke the deal.”

Enlarge / The Chevrolet Bolt EUV is one of the cheapest EVs on sale, starting at $27,200. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

You might have noticed that our car coverage is rather heavily biased toward electrified vehicles. Partly that's in recognition of the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now far higher than at any time since humans have walked the planet. But as I drive more and more EVs, it's also clear that they're actually just better in nearly every metric one might choose, other than when it comes to energy density and how long it takes to recharge. But this viewpoint puts me in a minority of Americans, according to a new survey of Americans, Canadians, and Australians.

The survey was conducted by Consider the Market, an Australian insurance comparison site, which found that only 33.8 percent of Americans say they'd prefer an EV to a traditional vehicle. By contrast, more than half (52.9 percent) say they want to stick with gasoline or diesel, a number that goes up to 70 percent in the 55–64 age bracket. Meanwhile, 43 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds would prefer an EV.

Which is unfortunate, because very few in that age bracket can afford them. In fact, purchase price ranked second as a barrier to EV adoption, at 54.5 percent. (The highest barrier to adoption was battery life and replacement costs, at 56.4 percent of survey respondents, which, as we've explained before, is more a problem of perception than reality.)