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In his first and arguably most famous novel, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote tersely but lovingly about the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, during the seven-day Festival of San Fermín. "One man fell, rolled to the gutter and lay quiet," the protagonist, Jake, observes while watching from a balcony. "But the bulls went right on and did not notice him. They were all running together." A new analysis of the physics behind the dynamics of the crowds running from the bulls takes the probability of falling into account, according to a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Local legend holds that the running of the bulls dates back to northeastern Spain it the early 14th century. Cattle herders at the time found that hurrying the beasts through the streets was an efficient way to move livestock from fields or barges to the market—or the bullfighting ring. Young men started racing in front of the charging bulls, competing to see who could make it safely to the bull pens without being overtaken (or worse, trampled and gored). The race eventually became part of the San Fermín festival and is now the festival's most popular event.

Revelers run with Nunez del Cuvillo's fighting bulls during the eighth day of the San Fermin Running of the Bulls festival on July 13, 2017, in Pamplona, Spain. (credit: Gari Garaialde/Getty Images)

Per official records, 15 people have died during the running of the bulls in Pamplona since 1910, usually from being gored. Sometimes bystanders can be injured or killed, too, especially if they're trying to capture live footage of the event with their smartphones. That happened during a different bull run, this time in Villaseca de la Sagra, Spain. In 2015, a 32-year-old man was gored from behind while attempting to share his experience by way of a smartphone recording. The victim died of neck and thigh wounds. Hot tip: maybe running away from charging bulls isn't the best time to try to snap a selfie.

Enlarge / Blue Origin's BE-4 engine hot-fire tests take place at the company's facility in West Texas. (credit: Blue Origin)

Welcome to Edition 4.26 of the Rocket Report! This will be the final edition of 2021 due to a forthcoming (and much-needed) holiday break. As I write this, NASA and the European Space Agency are debating whether to press ahead with a launch attempt of the James Webb Space Telescope on December 24 or a few days later. Whenever the $10 billion telescope flies, my single Christmas wish is for a safe launch and deployment sequence. See you in 2022.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin launches six people for the first time. On Saturday, the company's New Shepard capsule sent six people on a suborbital trip for the first time, increasing the number of passengers from four. Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, and former NFL football player Michael Strahan were invited guests along with four paying customers.

Enlarge / Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 4. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The term “desktop replacement” is a bit out of fashion as a descriptor for laptops these days, if only because fewer people have desktop computers they’re trying to replace. But I struggle to think of a better term for something like Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Extreme, currently in its 4th generation.

Where other workstation-y laptops like Dell’s XPS 15 have dropped ports and offer only limited GPU options in an effort to slim down and become more mobile, the X1 Extreme still comes with a healthy selection of ports (both in number and variety) and offers GPUs all the way up to Nvidia’s RTX 3080. Its 16-inch screen is also subtly but noticeably larger than the 15.6-inch panels you’ll find in other laptops with similar speeds and weights.

(If you’re buying an X1 Extreme Gen 4, you could also check out the Lenovo P1 Gen 4, which is a workstation-branded version of an essentially identical laptop with Nvidia A- and T-series workstation GPUs in most models rather than RTX-series consumer GPUs. If you can get a P1 for cheaper than a comparable X1 Extreme, it’s a safe trade to make.)