Month: March 2023

Enlarge (credit: Don Henderson via Getty Images)

Think of the worst invasive species you know. Kudzu: smothering trees and houses, growing a foot a day. Burmese pythons: stripping the Everglades of small animals. Asian carp: hoovering streams clean of plankton and swimming toward the Great Lakes.

They all came from somewhere else, arrived with no natural predators, outcompeted local flora and fauna, and took over whole ecosystems. But they all have their limitations: Kudzu dies in a hard freeze, carp can’t tolerate salt water, and pythons can’t cover long distances very fast. (Thankfully.)

Now imagine a species with all those benefits—foreign origin, no enemies—and no roadblocks to dominance: One that is indifferent to temperature, comfortable in many landscapes, able to run a lot faster than you, and muscular enough to leave a big dent in your car. That describes any of the possibly 6 million feral hogs in the United States, the most intractable invasives that most people have never heard of.

Enlarge / The Terran 1 rocket as seen on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. (credit: Relativity Space/Trevor Mahlmann)

Relativity Space, the ambitious company that aims to additively manufacture the majority of its rockets, will try again to make the debut launch of its Terran 1 vehicle on Wednesday evening from Florida.

The California-based company has a three-hour launch window that opens at 10 pm local time at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (02:00 UTC on Thursday). The current forecast for the launch attempt is splendid, with a 95 percent chance of acceptable conditions, according to the US Space Force officials operating the range.

If recent history is any guide, Wednesday's launch attempt may consume most of the three-hour window. Relativity's first attempt to launch Terran 1, on March 8, was scrubbed near the end of the window due to problems with a fuel-temperature sensor on the second stage. A second attempt three days later did not get off the ground due to an array of issues, including last-second aborts, weather concerns, and a boat in the protected area around the launch site.

Enlarge / Whoa-oh... purple is the color of my energy... (credit: Arkane / Bethesda)

When people think of the acclaimed developer Arkane Studios, stealth-action adventures like Dishonored or Deathloop probably come to mind. These kinds of "immersive sims" are known for letting players maneuver through a "clockwork world" where characters go about their daily lives and players complete larger, open-ended objectives. So it's a bit of a surprise to see the developers shifting to a more direct kind of looting and grinding-action RPG with the horror fantasy of Redfall.

After spending time with a single-player preview build of Redfall, I could still make out some hints of Arkane’s signature open-ended style amid the vampire slaying. But it's still a noticeable shift from the bleak worlds of Prey and Dishonored, with a team of charismatic vampire hunters that bring the vibe of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer to the gameplay of Borderlands.

Welcome to Redfall

The titular town of Redfall has come down with a bad case of vampires and human cultists. Together, these forces have created a supernatural eclipse that blocks out the sun, allowing the forces of the night to retain control of the town at all hours. Armed with tricked-out guns and makeshift vampire-killing weapons, your ragtag crew of supernatural experts has been sent in to retake the town while also uncovering the town’s mysterious history.