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[MIKA27]

Being A Celebrity Astronaut Is Tougher Than It Sounds

For a brief period in the American saga, the astronaut was the man of the moment. No profession commanded as much awe and admiration. Widely regarded as the personification of all that was best in the country, the first astronauts were blanketed with the adulation usually accorded star quarterbacks, war heroes, and charismatic movie stars. Yet this was never part of NASA’s agenda.

In fact, there were concerted early efforts to avoid such celebrity. However, the men chosen to be the first Americans in space were raised in a culture that revered the stoic aviator, and many saw themselves as the latest members of that select spiritual brotherhood.

Celebrated in headlines, fiction, and film, the leather-jacketed pilot personified a new aristocracy during the first half of the twentieth century: a young adventurer whose courage and daring bridged continents and cultures. Prior to World War I, fledgling aviators and their early aeroplanes were frequently depicted on the covers of mass-circulation magazines and on advertising posters throughout Europe. Shortly after hostilities commenced in 1914, nationalistic publications enthralled the public with stirring tales about the most decorated pilots and their bravery in the skies, feats far removed from the mechanised horror in the trenches below. During the interwar years, adventure magazines and cinema screens often featured romantic depictions of the solitary fighter pilot, silk scarf flowing in the wind, engaging his fellow knights of the air in aerial combat in the skies over France, while overhead across America, former military pilots risked their lives by supporting themselves as barnstormers and flying the first airmail routes.

Into this post-war culture arose aviation’s first superstar, Charles A. Lindbergh, the story of whose solo transatlantic journey was known to every schoolboy in America during the decades that followed. The media attention that transformed Lindbergh from a unknown pilot from the Midwest into the most famous living person on the planet set the model — and offered a cautionary warning — for the American press’s treatment of the astronauts a quarter-century later.

The initial group of seven astronauts got a sudden glimpse of their new public role on April 9, 1959, when they were first introduced to the world press in a crowded room in the Dolley Madison House in Washington D.C. The moment when the Mercury Seven first faced a barrage of clicking cameras and fielded unexpected questions from the Washington press corps is memorably recaptured in a key scene in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff. The press’s insatiable curiosity reflected the country’s fascination and hunger for heroes and, in John Glenn, many journalists wondered if NASA had found the Lindbergh of the space age.

“NASA wasn’t out to market or create heroes,” recalled Gemini and Apollo veteran Gene Cernan, who was introduced to the public as member of the third group of astronauts in 1963. “The hero status was created by the nature of what we did, and by the public’s response to what we were doing.” Yet, as Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham wrote a few years after his mission, “In the glory years of manned space flight, what the country kept forgetting was that we were people. The only thing we did not see ourselves as was heroes . . . that was something the public craved, and the media had created — not that we didn’t enjoy the myth, we just never fully understood it.”

Initially portrayed as both warriors in the fight to dominate outer space and modern-day exemplars of the idealised traits of the American pioneering spirit, the first astronauts quickly realised that their public images were largely a creation thrust upon them by an adoring press. This public portrait was further honed and developed as a result of the exclusive Life magazine profiles orchestrated — and, indeed, moulded — by NASA’s Public Affairs Office. At the same time, NASA tried to avoid making any one astronaut overshadow his comrades. There was a concerted effort to define them as members of a unified team of pilots and technicians. Indeed, Leo Braudy in his essential history of celebrity, suggests that NASA’s insistence on a heroic team of astronauts and technicians was directly informed by knowledge of the disastrous political fortunes of Lindbergh, who in his highly public role as a private citizen urged accommodation with Hitler’s Germany on the eve of World War II.

As the space race progressed, and NASA executed a number of “space firsts” during the Gemini program, the names of the second and third group of astronauts became nearly as well known. As perplexing as it was for the astronauts, especially the newer members of the team, it was part of the job — an occupational hazard that would follow them the rest of their lives. “No one could have predicted the public fascination with astronauts from the first unveiling of the Mercury Seven in 1959, through project Apollo,” wrote Roger D. Launius, a NASA Historian and Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Senior Curator for Human Spaceflight. “The astronauts as a celebrity and what that has meant in American life never dawned on anyone before. To the surprise and ultimate consternation of some NASA leaders, they immediately became national heroes and leading symbols of the fledgling space program.”

Wearing the mantle of instant celebrities — even if they hadn’t yet flown in space — the astronauts were often confronted by situations in which well-wishers desired an autograph or a photo or a handshake. Mindful of their place as official representatives of NASA and the American space program, they invariably tried to accommodate

the public. “You had to give them a little something — you had to try,” said Cernan. “You couldn’t turn your back and walk off. Everything depended on how you related to people.” But sometimes the effort resulted in long lines and huge crowds, which easily destroyed the best of organised schedules of the Public Affairs Office. As the highest-profile figures in a space program being sold to the public, the astronauts could not afford to be seen in a negative light or get a reputation for rudeness. Therefore, the Public Affairs officer assigned to an astronaut was often required to play interference. He could put a limit on the available time an astronaut had to stand and mingle, informing the crowd that he had only five, ten, or fifteen minutes left — and thereby giving the hero a graceful exit. “They could hustle you in and out sometimes,” Cernan recalled. “Sometimes you’d get people starting to form a line for autographs — even before you had flown a mission — like a rookie baseball card kind of thing. And so, the Public Affairs Office guy would hustle you through.”

During the early years of the manned space program, Shorty Powers and NASA’s Public Affairs Office carefully crafted the images of the first Mercury astronauts, primarily through the Life/World Book contract. But by the time the Gemini program was underway during the mid-1960s, a change had occurred. The military control over immediate information and the astronauts’ personal stories during the Mercury era disappeared with Powers’s departure in 1963. Even though the Life/World Book contracts were still active, the increased influence of Julian Scheer and Paul Haney signaled a marked difference in Public Affairs management, and with it fewer restrictions on information given to the media. During Mercury and some early Gemini missions, mission audio transcripts were commonly edited and cleansed for language and clarity. In contrast, Apollo was provided to the world unedited and unpolished. As Cernan described it, “We didn’t doctor up the movie, didn’t edit anything out. What was said, was said.”

The instantaneous and uncensored release of information to the press placed severe limitations on anyone attempting to carefully craft a public image. And for the astronauts working under stressful conditions, in a new spacecraft and in situations that were both unscripted and often prone to unforeseen challenges, the Apollo program revealed how greatly things had changed as early as the first manned mission. During the Apollo 7 flight in October 1968, the world heard the cranky and cantankerous voice of veteran astronaut Wally Schirra commanding his last mission. He battled not only a head cold and a flight plan he thought was littered with too many extra experiments and frivolous activities, but he also battled openly with his colleagues down at Mission Control. The result was damage, not only to his image but also to his crew in the eyes of the media and NASA’s management. “The heavy workload at the outset of the mission, combined with his discomfort, made Wally more irascible by the day,” wrote Cunningham in his 1977 memoir. “He didn’t miss an opportunity to nail Mission Control to the wall. Donn and I were amazed at the patience of those in the control center with some of the outbursts that came their way. On the ground, they were well aware that every word of the air-to-ground communications was being fed directly to the press center, a fact of which we had not been informed. So Wally’s bad temper was making big news back home.” By piercing the veil on the earlier image of the astronaut as calm, cool, fun-loving adventurer, Schirra made the mistake of reminding everyone that he wasn’t superhuman.

Even when the astronauts were not performing their job before the eyes and ears of world’s media, they were still in the limelight. “As astronauts, we were usually the biggest dudes in the crowd,” wrote Cunningham. “And frequently the only ones who couldn’t really pay their own way.” There were constant invitations wherever they traveled from businessmen, politicians, entertainers, and ordinary citizens — to attend parties, open houses, black-tie affairs, and the like. While the astronauts could not possibly accept all the invitations, they certainly accepted a good number of them. “In a convoluted way, NASA encouraged our socializing. We were mixing with the community and selling the program.” But the invitations usually had a catch — a favour, or the opportunity to use the astronaut’s celebrity to the benefit of the evening’s benefactor. Sometimes it wasn’t overt, but often it was, especially in the epicenters of Houston and the Cape. “There was the time we and the Schirras were attending a concert at the Houston Music Theatre — on passes,” Cunningham recalled. “We were introduced just before the show started and as we sat down, Wally smiled and whispered, ‘We just paid for our tickets.’”

In retrospect, it may seem amazing that access to the astronauts — among the biggest celebrities of the ’60s and early ’70s — reflected a bifurcated world: there was unfettered access down at the Cape or in Houston at social events, on the street or in a bar, while, at the same time, NASA Public Affairs and the Astronaut Office allowed only extremely limited access for official interview requests, especially in conjunction with a mission. “Access to the astronauts before a mission was extremely restricted due to their preparations,” veteran NASA Public Affairs officer Doug Ward recalled. “At that time, media interactions were usually during press conferences at the Manned Spacecraft Center and the Cape. Only a very select few might get a one-on-one interview.”

Veteran reporters were cognisant of the intense hours of training and preparation demanded of the astronauts in the weeks leading up to a mission, and they wouldn’t even bother requesting an interview. But for the hundreds — sometimes thousands — of reporters on a first trip to cover a mission, there was often bitter disappointment. Ward remembers that the Public Affairs Office would always have to turn them down. “These guys would get a stricken look and say, ‘Well I sold this to my editor on the assumption that I was going to get an astronaut interview.’” It just wasn’t possible. But that didn’t stop some of the reporters. “I remember, before Apollo 11 we had a guy come in from South America. He was just desperate and when he found out he couldn’t get access to the astronauts, he staked out their homes. We got a report from the local sheriff that he’d been turned in. He climbed up a tree adjacent to one of the astronaut’s houses and was trying to take pictures through the window. And John McLeish from our office had to speak to the sheriff and get the guy out of jail. Although there were rare occasions like that, the regulars who covered this thing as a full-time responsibility didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

Bill Larson, of ABC Radio and a veteran of local Florida reporting, described that period in his career as a lifestyle. “Back then you could walk into one of the restaurants or bars or whatever, and the chances were you would run into one or two of the astronauts. You could sit and talk, have a beer. And it was that kind of a feeling amongst the people here; the astronauts were like members of the family.” Gene Cernan agreed. “I had a lot of good friends in the press. We invited them into our house under the condition that, once they’re in our house, we have a beer or a scotch and soda, you leave the business outside.”

Naturally, that also made it difficult for journalists close to the astronauts to report on the personal side of their lives — the Life/World Book contract aside. “We got away with things that other people wouldn’t get away with, whether it was speeding or going places we couldn’t otherwise afford,” Cunningham recalled. “One thing after another came our way and we didn’t take the high road necessarily. We took advantage of a lot of those things. You couldn’t go anyplace without all the women in the place looking at you like, all of a sudden, you were Superman. It was an unreal kind of existence because, during those days, we were the celebrities’ celebrity.”

The reporters who covered the astronauts weren’t blind to what was going on. Like their counterparts in Washington, D.C., they chose not to report it. There was an understanding among the establishment press of that time to respect the boundaries between personal lives and professional lives. “Of course I knew about some very shaky marriages, some womanizing, some drinking, and I never reported it,” recalled Dora Jane Hamblin, one of the Life magazine reporters. “The guys wouldn’t have let me, and neither would NASA. It was common knowledge that several marriages hung together only because the men were afraid NASA would disapprove of divorce and take them off flights.”

While Life wouldn’t report these stories, it didn’t mean that more sensational outlets wouldn’t. The rumour mill was active and rampant. The astronauts, as celebrities, were exposed to all the temptations of modern day celebrity: groupies, hangers-on, wild parties, and handshake business propositions. Celebrity gossip magazines, such as Confidential, sent reporters to the Cape looking for stories, and some rumours couldn’t escape the ears of the local Florida and Houston gossip columnists. But the mainstream press tended to avoid these stories. They were committed to covering the big story and remained as focused on the goal of reaching the Moon as NASA and the astronauts.

During the ’60s and early ’70s, astro-gossip remained on the fringe. “Nearly all [of the media coverage] had us squarely on the side of God, country, and family,” wrote Buzz Aldrin in 1973. “To read those accounts was to believe we were the most simon-pure guys there had ever been. This simply was not so. We all went to church when we could, but we also celebrated some pretty wild nights.” In his memoir covering the same era, Walt Cunningham added, “What wasn’t realised at the time was the particular pedestal on which the media had placed us. In the years ahead they would contribute to protecting our reputations in a manner usually reserved only for national political figures.”

“In those early days, the PR people and the news people were very close and worked together,” added Larson. “Everybody was so closely knit on one desire: to get to the Moon. It was an amazing feeling. I’ve never been anywhere before or since with that sense of camaraderie and a belief in that you were involved in the greatest exploration in the history of mankind. It was a cooperative effort on everybody’s part.”Mark Bloom, veteran reporter for the New York Daily News and Reuters, concurred. “It was a great adventure story. We wanted them to make it. I wanted them to make it. We were very happy that they made it. But they weren’t perfect. We let a lot of the warts go by — I did. I let a lot of the warts go by.”

Conspicuously, one figure whose personal life generated little attention in the press was Neil Armstrong. Even when he divorced his wife of thirty-eight years, in 1994, the press barely noticed. Sometimes erroneously described as a recluse during the years after his retirement from NASA, Armstrong was not averse to making public statements and occasionally appearing at benefits supporting causes he championed. He even appeared in Chrysler television advertisements in 1979.

Armstrong and NASA management were keenly aware of what had befallen Charles Lindbergh in the years after his 1927 flight — the tragic kidnapping and death of his son, and the aviator’s controversial statements on the eve of World War II — and it has been widely reported that Lindbergh’s history influenced Armstrong’s decision to maintain a low public profile. In fact, Armstrong and Lindbergh, two shy Midwesterners with much in common in addition to their sudden fame, struck up a friendship shortly after the return of Apollo 11 and became active pen pals.

Equally aware of Lindbergh’s biography were the American journalists who had covered Armstrong’s years at NASA. Their decision to respect the privacy of “The First Man,” was continued by their successors during the last four decades of Armstrong’s life. The small number of news items published about Armstrong’s last forty years was both a reflection of Lindbergh’s shadow on the history of celebrity and a lasting testament to the unique bond that formed between the press and the astronauts during the Apollo era.

[MIKA27]

Tokyoflash Japan's Latest Space-Age Watch Is The Console Acetate

Tokyoflash is a Japanese watchmaker with a penchant for high tech. It has had some beautiful designs in the past, including the Tron-esque Kisai Seven, and the data-storing Kisai Upload. The latest Tokyoflash watch is the Console Acetate, and it looks like it belongs on Robocop’s wrist.

Available in blue and green, the “very limited edition” Kisai Console Acetate has a stainless steel case with an array of LEDs, each with a specific and inscrutable purpose; twelve hexagonal shapes for the hour (AM or PM), a multi-part gauge for five-minute intervals, and four chevrons for the minutes in between those intervals. We’re sure it’ll be easy enough to read after a little practice.

If you’re still unsure how to drive it, Tokyoflash has a handy Youtube tutorial.

The Kisai Console Acetate is currently US$99 as part of a launch promotion, but it’ll be a little more expensive after the launch window closes. [Tokyoflash Japan]

[Fuzz]

Tokyoflash Japan's Latest Space-Age Watch Is The Console Acetate

TokyoFlash watches are interesting. Though they can sometimes be a pain to read the time when you're drunk. I've got the RPM and Kisai 7, both in blue LED.

[MIKA27]

How Malaria Defeats Our Drugs

In the war against malaria, one small corner of the globe has repeatedly turned the tide, rendering our best weapons moot and medicine on the brink of defeat.

The meandering Moei river marks the natural boundary between Thailand and Myanmar. Its muddy waters are at their fullest, but François Nosten still crosses them in just a minute, aboard a narrow, wooden boat. In the dry season, he could wade across. As he steps onto the western riverbank, in Myanmar, he passes no checkpoint and presents no passport.

The air is cool. After months of rain, the surrounding jungle pops with vivid lime and emerald hues. Nosten climbs a set of wooden slats that wind away from the bank, up a muddy slope. His pace, as ever, seems relaxed and out of kilter with his almost permanently grave expression and urgent purpose. Nosten, a rangy Frenchman with tousled brown hair and glasses, is one of the world’s leading experts on malaria. He is here to avert a looming disaster. At the top of the slope, he reaches a small village of simple wooden buildings with tin and thatch roofs. This is Hka Naw Tah, home to around 400 people and a testing ground for Nosten’s bold plan to completely stamp out malaria from this critical corner of the world.

Malaria is the work of the single-celled Plasmodium parasites, and Plasmodium falciparum chief among them. They spread between people through the bites of mosquitoes, invading first the liver, then the red blood cells. The first symptoms are generic and flu-like: fever, headache, sweats and chills, vomiting. At that point, the immune system usually curtails the infection. But if the parasites spread to the kidneys, lungs and brain, things go downhill quickly. Organs start failing. Infected red blood cells clog the brain’s blood vessels, depriving it of oxygen and leading to seizures, unconsciousness and death.

When Nosten first arrived in South-east Asia almost 30 years ago, malaria was the biggest killer in the region. Artemisinin changed everything. Spectacularly fast and effective, the drug arrived on the scene in 1994, when options for treating malaria were running out. Since then, “cases have just gone down, down, down,” says Nosten. “I’ve never seen so few in the rainy season — a few hundred this year compared to tens of thousands before.”

But he has no time for celebration. Artemisinin used to clear P. falciparum in a day; now, it can take several. The parasite has started to become resistant. The wonder drug is failing. It is the latest reprise of a decades-long theme: we attack malaria with a new drug, it mounts an evolutionary riposte.

Back in his office, Nosten pulls up a map showing the current whereabouts of the resistant parasites. Three coloured bands highlight the borders between Cambodia and Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). Borders. Bold lines on maps, but invisible in reality. A river that can be crossed in a rickety boat is no barrier to a parasite that rides in the salivary glands of mosquitoes or the red blood cells of humans.

History tells us what happens next. Over the last century, almost every frontline antimalarial drug — chloroquine, sulfadoxine, pyrimethamine — has become obsolete because of defiant parasites that emerged from western Cambodia. From this cradle of resistance, the parasites gradually spread west to Africa, causing the deaths of millions. Malaria already kills around 660,000 people every year, and most of them are African kids. If artemisinin resistance reached that continent, it would be catastrophic, especially since there are no good replacement drugs on the immediate horizon.

Nosten thinks that without radical measures, resistance will spread to India and Bangladesh. Once that happens, it will be too late. Those countries are too big, too populous, too uneven in their health services to even dream about containing the resistant parasites. Once there, they will inevitably spread further. He thinks it will happen in three years, maybe four. “Look at the speed of change on this border. It’s exponential. It’s not going to take 10 or 15 years to reach Bangladesh. It will take just a few. We have to do something before it’s too late.”

Hundreds of scientists are developing innovative new ways of dealing with malaria, from potential vaccines to new drugs, genetically modified mosquitoes to lethal fungi. As Nosten sees it, none of these will be ready in time. The only way of stopping artemisinin resistance, he says, is to completely remove malaria from its cradle of resistance. “If you want to eliminate artemisinin resistance, you have to eliminate malaria,” says Nosten. Not control it, not contain it. Eliminate it.

That makes the Moei river more than a border between nations. It’s Stalingrad. It’s Thermopylae. It’s the last chance for halting the creeping obsolescence of our best remaining drug. What happens here will decide the fate of millions.

The world tried to eliminate malaria 60 years ago. Malaria was a global affliction back then, infecting hundreds of thousands of troops during World War II. This helped motivate a swell of postwar research. To fight the disease, in 1946 the USA created what is now the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s premier public health institute. After a decisive national eradication programme, the nation became malaria-free in 1951. Brazil had also controlled a burgeoning malaria epidemic with insecticides.

Meanwhile, new weapons had emerged. The long-lasting insecticide DDT was already being widely used and killed mosquitoes easily. A new drug called chloroquine did the same to Plasmodium. Armed with these tools and buoyed by earlier successes, the World Health Organisation formally launched the Global Malaria Eradication Programme in 1955. DDT was sprayed in countless homes. Chloroquine was even added to table salt in some countries. It was as ambitious a public health initiative as has ever been attempted.

It worked to a point. Malaria fell dramatically in Taiwan, Sri Lanka, India, the Caribbean, the Balkans, and parts of the south Pacific. But ultimately the problem was too big, the plan too ambitious. It barely made a dent in sub-Saharan Africa, where public health infrastructure was poor and malaria was most prevalent. And its twin pillars soon crumbled as P. falciparum evolved resistance to chloroquine and mosquitoes evolved resistance to DDT. The disease bounced back across much of Asia and the western Pacific.

In 1969, the eradication programme was finally abandoned. Despite several successes, its overall failure had a chilling impact on malaria research. Investments from richer (and now unaffected) countries dwindled, save for a spike of interest during the Vietnam War. The best minds in the field left for fresher challenges. Malaria, now a tropical disease of poor people, became unfashionable.

François Nosten always wanted to travel. His father, a sailor on merchant ships, returned home with stories of far-flung adventures and instilled a deep wanderlust. Nosten’s original plan was to work on overseas development projects, but one of his teachers pushed him down a different path. “He said the best thing you can do if you want to travel anywhere is to be a doctor. That’s why I started medical school.” As soon as he graduated, he joined Médecins Sans Frontières and started living the dream. He flew off to Africa and South-east Asia, before arriving in Thailand in 1983. There, he started treating refugees from Myanmar in camps along the Thai border.

In 1985, an English visitor arrived at the camps and Nosten took him for a random tourist until he started asking insightful questions about malaria. That man was Nick White. A British clinician, he was drawn to Bangkok in 1980 by the allure of the tropics and a perverse desire to study something unfashionable. The University of Oxford had just set up a new tropical medicine research unit in collaboration with Bangkok’s Mahidol University, and White was the third to join.

“The rosbif and the frog”, as Nosten puts it, bonded over an interest in malaria, a desire to knuckle down and get things done, and a similar grouchy conviviality. They formed a close friendship and started working together.

In 1986, they set up a field station for White’s Bangkok research unit: little more than a centrifuge and microscope within Nosten’s rickety house. Three years later, Nosten moved to Shoklo, the largest refugee camp along the Thai — Myanmar border and home to around 9,000 people. Most were Karen — the third largest of Myanmar’s 130 or so ethnic groups — who were fleeing persecution from the majority Bamar government. Nosten worked out of a bamboo hospital — the first Shoklo Malaria Research Unit.

Malaria was rife. Floods were regular. Military leaders from both Thailand and Myanmar occasionally ordered Nosten to leave. Without any electricity, he often had to use a mirror to angle sunlight into his microscope. He loved it. “I’m not a city person,” he says. “I couldn’t survive in Bangkok very well. I wasn’t alone in Shoklo but it was sufficiently remote.” The immediacy of the job and the lack of bureaucracy also appealed. He could try out new treatments and see their impact right away. He trained local people to detect Plasmodium under a microscope and help with research. He even met his future wife — a Karen teacher named Colley Paw, who is now one of his right-hand researchers (White was the best man at their wedding). These were the best years of his life.

The Shoklo years ended in 1995 after a splinter faction of Karen started regularly attacking the camps, in a bid to force the refugees back into Myanmar. “They came in and started shooting,” says Nosten. “We once had to hide in a hole for the night, with bullets flying around.” The Thai military, unable to defend the scattered camps, consolidated them into a single site called Mae La — a dense lattice of thatch-roofed houses built on stilts, which now contains almost 50,000 people. Nosten went with them.

He has since expanded the Shoklo Unit into a huge hand that stretches across the region. Its palm is a central laboratory in the town of Mae Sot, where Nosten lives, and the fingers are clinics situated in border settlements, each with trained personnel and sophisticated facilities. The one in Mae La has a $US250,000 neonatal care machine, and can cope with everything short of major surgery. Nosten has also set up small ‘malaria posts’ along the border. These are typically just volunteer farmers with a box of diagnostic tests and medicine in their house.

“I don’t know anybody else who could have done what François has done,” says White. “He’ll underplay the difficulties but between the physical dangers, politics, logistical nightmares, and the fraught conditions of the refugees, it’s not been easy. He’s not a shrinking violet.”

Thanks to Nosten’s network, locals know where to go if they feel unwell, and they are never far from treatments. That is vital. If infected people are treated within 48 hours of their first symptoms, their parasites die before they get a chance to enter another mosquito and the cycle of malaria breaks. “You deploy early identification and treatment, and malaria goes away,” says Nosten. “Everywhere we’ve done this, it’s worked.”

Victories in malaria are often short-lived. When Nosten and White teamed up in the 1980s, their first success was showing that a new drug called mefloquine was excellent at curing malaria, and at preventing it in pregnant women. Most drugs had fallen to resistant parasites and the last effective one — quinine — involved a week of nasty side-effects. Mefloquine was a godsend.

But within five years, P. falciparum had started to resist it too. “We tried different things like increasing the dose, but we were clearly losing the drug,” says Nosten. “We saw more and more treatment failures, patients coming back weeks later with the same malaria. We were really worried that we wouldn’t have any more options.”

Salvation came from China. In 1967, Chairman Mao Zedong launched a covert military initiative to discover new antimalarial drugs, partly to help his North Vietnamese allies, who were losing troops to the disease. It was called Project 523. A team of some 600 scientists scoured 200 herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine for possible antimalarial chemicals. They found a clear winner in 1971 — a common herb called qing hao (Artemisia annua or sweet wormwood). Using hints from a 2,000-year-old recipe for treating haemorrhoids, they isolated the herb’s active ingredient, characterised it, tested it in humans and animals, and created synthetic versions. “This was in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution,” says White. “Society had been ripped apart, there was still a lot of oppression, and facilities were poor. But they did some extremely good chemistry.”

The results were miraculous. The new drug annihilated even severe forms of chloroquine-resistant malaria, and did so with unparalleled speed and no side-effects. The team named it Qinghaosu. The West would know it as artemisinin. Or, at least, they would when they found out about it.

Project 523 was shrouded in secrecy, and few results were published. Qinghaosu was already being widely used in China and Vietnam when the first English description appeared in the Chinese Medical Journal in 1979. Western scientists, suspicious about Chinese journals and traditional medicine, greeted it with scepticism and wasted time trying to develop their own less effective versions. The Chinese, meanwhile, were reluctant to share their new drug with Cold War enemies.

During this political stalemate, White saw a tattered copy of the 1979 paper. He travelled to China in 1981, and returned with a vial of the drug, which he still keeps in a drawer in his office. He and Nosten began studying it, working out the right doses, and testing the various derivatives.

They realised that artemisinin’s only shortcoming was a lack of stamina. People clear it so quickly from their bodies that they need seven daily doses to completely cure themselves. Few complete the full course. White’s ingenious solution was to pair the new drug with mefloquine — a slower-acting but longer-lasting partner. Artemisinin would land a brutal shock-and-awe strike that destroyed the majority of parasites, mefloquine would mop up the survivors. If any parasites resisted the artemisinin assault, mefloquine would finish them off. Plasmodium would need to resist both drugs to survive the double whammy, and White deemed that unlikely. Just three days of this artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) was enough to treat virtually every case of malaria. In theory, ACTs should have been resistance-proof.

Nosten started using them along the Thai — Myanmar border in 1994 and immediately saw results. Quinine took days to clear the parasites and left people bed-ridden for a week with dizzy spells. ACTs had them returning to work after 24 hours.

But victories in malaria are often short-lived. In the early 2000s, the team started hearing rumours from western Cambodia that ACTs were becoming less effective. White tried to stay calm. He had heard plenty of false alarms about incurable Cambodian patients, but it always turned out that they were taking counterfeit drugs. “I was just hoping it was another of those,” he says.

It was not. In 2006, Harald Noedl from the Medical University of Vienna started checking out the rumours for himself. In the Cambodian village of Ta Sanh, he treated 60 malaria patients with artesunate (an artemisinin derivative) and found that two of them carried exceptionally stubborn parasites. These infections cleared in four to six days, rather than the usual two. And even though the patients stayed in a clinic outside any malaria hotspots, their parasites returned a few weeks later.

“I first presented those data in November 2007 and as expected, people were very sceptical,” says Noedl. After all, a pair of patients is an epidemiological blip. Still, this was worrying enough to prompt White’s team to run their own study in another nearby village. They got even worse news. The 40 people they treated with artesunate took an average of 3.5 days to clear their parasites, and six of them suffered from rebounding infections within a month. “Rapid parasite clearance is the hallmark of artemisinins,” says Arjen Dondorp, one of White’s colleagues based in Bangkok. “That property suddenly disappeared.”

Despite the hopes that ACTs would forestall artemisinin’s expiry, resistance had arrived, just as it had done for other antimalarials. And, as if to rub salt in the wound, it had come from the same damn place.

Why has a small corner of western Cambodia, no bigger than Wales or New Jersey, repeatedly given rise to drug-beating parasites?

White thinks that the most likely explanation is the region’s unregulated use of antimalarial drugs. China supplied artemisinin to the tyrannical Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, giving Cambodians access to it almost two decades before White conceived of ACTs. Few used it correctly. Some got ineffective doses from counterfeit pills. Others took a couple of tablets and stopped once their fever disappeared. P. falciparum was regularly exposed to artemisinin without being completely wiped out, and the most resistant parasites survived to spread to new hosts. There is a saying among malariologists: “The last man standing is the most resistant.”

Genetic studies hint at other explanations. Early last year, Dominic Kwiatkowski from the University of Oxford showed that some P. falciparum strains from west Cambodia have mutations in genes that repair faults in their DNA, much like some cancer cells or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In other words, they have mutations that make them prone to mutating. This might also explain why, in lab experiments, they develop drug resistance more quickly than strains from other parts of the world. Evolution is malaria’s greatest weapon, and these ‘hypermutators’ evolve in fifth gear.

Kwiatkowski’s team also found that P. falciparum is spookily diverse in west Cambodia. It is home to three artemisinin-resistant populations that are genetically distinct, despite living in the same small area. That is bizarre. Without obvious barriers between them, the strains ought to regularly mate and share their genes. Instead, they seem to shun each other’s company. They are so inbred that they consist almost entirely of clones.

Kwiatkowski suspects that these parasites descended from some lucky genetic lottery winners that accumulated the right sets of mutations for evading artemisinin. When they mate with other strains, their winning tickets break up and their offspring are wiped out by the drug. Only their inbred progeny, which keep the right combinations, survive and spread.

It undoubtedly helps that South-east Asia does not have much malaria. In West Africa, where transmission is high, a child might be infected with three to five P. falciparumstrains at any time, giving them many opportunities to mate and shuffle their genes. A Cambodian child, however, usually sees one strain at a time, and is a poor hook-up spot for P. falciparum. The region’s infrastructure may also have helped to enforce the parasites’ isolation: local roads are poor, and people’s movements were long constrained by the Khmer Rouge.

West Cambodia, then, could be rife with P. falciparum strains that are especially prone to evolving resistance, that get many opportunities to do so because antimalarial drugs are abused, and that easily hold on to their drug-beating mutations once they get them.

These are plausible ideas, but hard to verify since we still know very little about how exactly the parasites resist a drug. Earlier cases of resistance were largely due to mutations in single genes — trump cards that immediately made for invincible parasites. A small tweak in the crt gene, and P. falciparum can suddenly pump chloroquine out of its cells. A few tweaks to dhps and dhfr, the genes targeted by sulfadoxine and pyrimethamine, and the drug can no longer stick to its targets.

Artemisinin seems to be a trickier enemy. Curiously, P. falciparum takes a long time to evolve resistance to artemisinin in lab experiments, much longer than in the wild. Those strains that do tend to be weak and unstable. “I suspect you need a complicated series of genetic changes to make a parasite that’s not lethally unfit in the presence of these drugs,” says White. “It would be unusual if this was a single mutation.”

Practices such as unregulated drug use and misuse may help encourage and accelerate the rate of such changes out in the field. Kwiatkowski’s study suggests that the parasites may have evolved artemisinin resistance several times over, perhaps through a different route each time. Several groups are racing to find the responsible mutations, with news of the first few breaking in December 2013. That’s the key to quickly identifying resistant parasites and treating patients more efficiently. (Currently, you can only tell if someone has artemisinin-resistant malaria by treating them and seeing how long they take to get better.) “We want to be able to track resistance using blood spots on filter paper,” says Chris Plowe at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, whose group is one of those in the race.

But time is running out. From its origins in Cambodia, resistance has reached the Thai — Myanmar border. Nosten has shown that the proportion of patients who are still infected after three days of ACT has increased from zero in 2000 to 28 per cent in 2011. Most are still being cured, but as artemisinin becomes less effective, its partner drug will have to mop up more surviving parasites. Plasmodium will evolve resistance to the partner more quickly, driving both drugs towards uselessness.

This is already happening in western Cambodia, where ACTs are failing up to a quarter of the time and many people are still infected a month later. Long-lasting infections will provide parasites with more chances to jump into mosquitoes, and then into healthy humans. Malaria cases will rise. Deaths will follow. “This is the silence before the storm,” says Arjen Dondorp. “The threat is still slightly abstract and there’s still not that much malaria, which doesn’t help with a sense of urgency. If we suddenly see malaria exploding, then it will be a clear emergency, but it will also be too late.”

In his office at Mahidol University, Nick White is surrounded by yellowing monographs of old malaria research and overlooked by a wall-mounted mosaic of drug packets made by his daughter. He is now the chairman of the Mahidol — Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit and a mentor to the dozens of researchers within. He is gently ranting.

“Everything to do with change in malaria meets with huge resistance,” he says. He means political resistance, not the drug kind. He means the decade it took for the international community to endorse ACTs despite the evidence that they worked. He means the “treacle of bureaucracy” that he and Nosten swim through in their push to eliminate malaria.

“The global response to artemisinin resistance has been a bit pathetic. Everyone will tell you how important it is and there have been any number of bloody meetings. But there is little appetite for radical change.” He misses the old days when “you could drive a Land Rover across borders in your khaki shorts and spray things and do stuff”.

From the outside, things look rosier. Malaria is fashionable again, and international funding has gone up by 15 times in the last decade. Big organisations seem to be rallying behind the banner of elimination. In April 2013, the World Health Organisation published a strategy called The Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance…

“It’s a marvellous plan,” he says drily. “It says all the right things, but we haven’t done anything.” It follows two other strategies that were published in 2011 and 2012, neither of which slowed the spread of artemisinin resistance. Elimination became a dirty word after the noisy failures of the 1950s and 60s, and the new strategies look like the same old tactics for controlling malaria, presented under the guise of eradicating it. “They’re prescriptions for inertia,” says White.

Worse, they are channelling funds into ineffective measures. Take insecticide-treated bednets, a mainstay of malaria control. “We’ve had meetings with WHO consultants who said, ‘We don’t want to hear a word against bednets. They always work.’ But how cost-effective are they, and what’s the evidence they work in this region? The mosquitoes here bite early in the evening. And who’s getting malaria? Young men. Are they all tucked up in their bednets by 6 o’clock? No. They’re in the fields and forests. Come on! It’s obvious.”

He says that resources could be better devoted to getting rid of fake drugs and monotherapies where artemisinin is not paired with a partner. That would preserve ACTs for as long as possible. The world also needs better surveillance for resistant parasites. White is helping with that by chairing the World-Wide Anti-Malarial Resistance Network — a global community of scientists who are rapidly collecting data on how quickly patients respond to drugs, the presence of resistance genes, the numbers of fake drugs, and more.

White also wants to know if artemisinin-resistant parasites from South-east Asia can spread in African mosquitoes. Hundreds of mosquito species can transmit malaria, butP. falciparum is picky about its hosts. If resistant strains need time to adapt to new carriers, they might be slow to spread westwards. If they can immediately jump into far-off species, they are a plane ride away from Africa. “That changes your containment strategy,” says White, “but stupidly, it’s cut out of every research application we’ve ever made.”

He is pessimistic. “I’m pretty confident we won’t win but I think we should try a lot harder than we have been. If we didn’t pull out all the stops and kids start dying of artemisinin-resistant malaria, and we can trace the genetic origins of those parasites to South-east Asia, we shouldn’t sleep easy in our beds.”

The Mosquito breederWhen Nosten’s team first arrived at Hka Naw Tah in February, they slept and worked from the village’s unassuming temple. Using development funds from their grant, they put up a water tower and supplied electricity for the local school. In return, the villagers built them a clinic — a spacious, open-sided hut with a sloping tin roof, benches sitting on a dirt floor, a couple of tables holding boxes of drugs and diagnostic kits, treatment rooms, and a computer station. It took just two days to erect.

The Karen respect strong leadership but there is an easy-going camaraderie in the clinic. When we arrive, one of the research assistants is napping across a bench. Nosten walks over and sits on him. “You see, and I think this is a good sign, that it’s hard to tell who’s the boss and who’s the patient,” he says.

Most of the villagers don’t seem sick, but many of them have malaria nonetheless. Until recently, Nosten’s team had always searched for the parasites by examining a drop of blood under a microscope. If someone is sick, you can see and count thePlasmodium in their red blood cells. But in 2010, they started collecting millilitres of blood — a thousand times more than the usual drops — and searching forPlasmodium‘s DNA. Suddenly, the proportion of infected people shot up from 10 — 20 per cent to 60 — 80 per cent. There are three, four, maybe six times as many infected people as he thought.

“We didn’t believe it at first,” says Nosten, “but we confirmed it and re-confirmed it.” Perhaps the tests were giving false positives, or picking up floating DNA from dead parasites? No such luck — when the team treated people with ACTs, the hidden parasites disappeared. They were real.

These ‘sub-microscopic infections’ completely change the game for elimination. Treating the sick is no longer good enough because the disease could bounce back from the hordes of symptomless carriers. The strike will have to be swift and decisive. If it’s half-hearted, the most resistant parasites will survive and start afresh. In malarial zones, you need to treat almost everyone, clearing the parasites they didn’t even know they had. This is Nosten’s goal in the border villages like Hka Naw Tah. He has support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the few large funders to have truly grasped the urgency of the situation and who are “very much in the mood for elimination”.

Killing the parasites is easy: it just involves three days of ACTs. Getting healthy people to turn up to a clinic and take their medicine is much harder. The team have spent months on engagement and education. The clinic is dotted with posters explaining the symptoms of malaria and the biology of mosquitoes. Earlier this morning, Honey Moon, a Karen woman who is one of Nosten’s oldest colleagues, knocked on the doors of all the absentees from the last round to persuade them to come for tests. As a result, 16 newcomers turned up for treatments, bringing the team closer to the full 393. Nosten is pleased. “In this village, I’m quite optimistic that most people will be free of the parasite,” he says.

Another village down the river is proving more difficult. They are more socially conservative and have a poorer understanding of healthcare. There are two factions of Karen there, one of which is refusing to take part to spite their rivals. “It’s a good lesson for us,” says Nosten. “These situations will be elsewhere.” Eliminating malaria is not just about having the right drug, the deadliest insecticide, or the most sensitive diagnostic test. It is about knowing people, from funders to villagers. “The most important component is getting people to agree and participate,” says Nosten. It matters that he has been working in the region for 30 years, that the Shoklo unit is a familiar and trusted name in these parts, that virtually all his team are Karen. These are the reasons that give Nosten hope, despite the lack of political will.

If the strategy looks like it is working after a year, they will start scaling up. Eventually, they hope to cover the entire sinuous border. I ask Nosten if he would ever consider leaving. He pauses. “Even if I wanted to go somewhere else, I’m more or less a prisoner of my own making,” he says. He would need to find a replacement first — a leader who would command respect among both the Karen and malaria researchers, and would be willing to relocate to a place as remote as Mae Sot. It is hard to imagine a second person who would tick all those boxes. Surrounded by airborne parasites, spreading resistance, and border-hopping refugees, François Nosten is stuck. He would not have it any other way.

[MIKA27]

The Insanely Expensive F-35 Is Delayed Again, For Australia Too

A United States Government report reveals that the F-35 will be delayed yet again. This time, the problem is stalled software development. It’s just the latest in a long line of delays and problems. Australia’s F-35 order, for at least 14 jets, is looking more and more like throwing money into the wind.

Australia might take as many as 72 F-35s, if they ever reach a final production stage. With total acquisition costs up around $US400 billion, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive Department of Defence project ever. Everything has gone wrong in its development. It’s been grounded, delayed, and it costs a lot more than the DOD would have ever agreed to pay in the first place.

Ars Technica points us to a new GAO report indicating that the F-35 will not will probably not be ready for fighting in July 2015, as anticipated. The problem this time? The software keeps getting delivered late, and when it is delivered, it doesn’t work.

Challenges in development and testing of mission systems software continued through 2013, due largely to delays in software delivery, limited capability in the software when delivered, and the need to fix problems and retest multiple software versions.

So the F-35 is going to be at least year late, and of course, it’s going to cost even more money…

To execute the program as planned, the Department of Defence (DOD) will have to increase funds steeply over the next 5 years and sustain an average of $US12.6 billion per year through 2037; for several years, funding requirements will peak at around $US15 billion. Annual funding of this magnitude clearly poses long-term affordability risks given the current fiscal environment.

…which the GAO and DOD both point out is gonna be tough impossible to pay for:

Additionally, the most recent cost estimate for operating and supporting the F-35 fleet is more than $US1 trillion, which DOD officials have deemed unaffordable

The problem? Poor planning from the very beginning. And who knows if this plane will ever fly a combat mission. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder that things always take longer and cost more than we think they will.

[MIKA27]

Watch Two Crazy People BASE Jump From One World Trade Center

Brace yourselves. This newly-uploaded video shows two people walking to the edge of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere — One World Trade — and jumping off. And here we were, thinking that a 16-year-old was all that for sneaking past a guard or two .

Though the jump took place on September 30, 2013, it was just uploaded to YouTube today. In fact, this helmet cam footage is the spoils of an operation to find the jumpers, which concluded with their arrests this morning. Four Long Island guys, Marko Markovich, 27, Kyle Hartwell, 29, Andrew Rossig, 33, and James Brady, 32, were arrested after what Long Island Newsday calls “a five-and-a-half month investigation” of video footage from around the area. All three are being charged with third-degree burglary, a Class D felony, and second-degree reckless endangerment, a Class A misdemeanour.

“The intent was for nobody to ever find out and for nobody to get hurt and nobody did get hurt. I’m just trying not to go to jail,” Rossig told the NY Post this morning. It sounds as though the foursome might have even slipped through the same fence hole as Justin Casquejo, who snuck up to the WTC roof last weekend. But according to the Post, the band of Long Islanders went one step (or uh, many thousands of steps) further than their teenage comrade: They walked up all 105 flights of stairs rather than taking the elevator.

Weirdly, the most hand-shakingly scary part of the incredible video isn’t the falling — it’s the cameraman coaxing the first guy to jump in the first place (“you got this, you got this”). I wonder if any investment bankers saw them float by and assumed they must be hallucinating from sleep deprivation.

[MIKA27]

This Cedar Cooler Promises To Totally Class Up Your Next Tailgate Party

Tailgate parties aren’t exactly known as the classiest of get-togethers. But thanks to Williams Sonoma’s new cedar-encased cooler, even a Sunday afternoon spent in a parking lot with thousands of drunken sports fans can feel like you’re having high tea with the queen.

Functionally, this cooler works like any other. You just fill it with ice and beverages and it ensures everything stays cold for as long as possible. But the cooler itself is wrapped in a classy Western red cedar chest, adding some much-needed style and sophistication to your BBQ. It’s on legs, too, which means your guests no longer have to bend over to fetch a drink like peasants.

It’s yours for $US400, but for an extra $US50 you can have it personalised with up to 15 characters. Because if it doesn’t say Williams Sonoma, how will people know you have a taste for the finer things in life?

[MIKA27]

If the moon was a pixel: a scale model of the solar system

Get your scrolling hand ready. An interactive web page has created a scale model of the solar system, where the moon is the size of just one pixel.

If the usual artistic depictions of our solar system are anything to go by, everything's packed in pretty tightly, and the relative sizes of the planets and the sun aren't really that different. Artistic depictions, however, are usually incorrectly scaled to a massive degree. There's a very good reason for this: the distances and sizes involved are so large that it's hard to make a scale model that fits a single image, and a physical model with realistic distances would look, well, pretty strange.

A web page, on the other hand, can scroll for as long as you need it to — making it the perfect platform, as a project by artist and designer Josh Worth demonstrates. Called "If the moon were only one pixel", it does exactly what it says on the box. The moon (3474.8 kilometres) takes up one whole pixel, and everything else in the solar system is scaled down accordingly.

As it turns out, space is mostly just that: space. The solar system is arrayed along a horizontal page and you can scroll through using the bar (we preferred a touchscreen, but your mileage may vary), with a ruler indicating relative distance. You can also skip to planets using the legend at the top of the page, although you'll miss out on some of the trivia Worth includes along the way.

"I was talking about the planets with my five-year-old daughter the other day. I was trying to explain how taking a summer vacation to Mars in the future will be a much bigger undertaking than a trip to Palm Springs (though equally as hot)," Worth explained on his blog. "I kept trying to describe the distance using metaphors like 'if the earth was the size of a golf ball, then Mars would be across the soccer field' etc., but I realised I didn't really know much about these distances, besides the fact that they were really large and hard to understand. Pictures in books, planetarium models, even telescopes are pretty misleading when it comes to judging just how big the universe can be. Are we doing ourselves a disservice by ignoring all the emptiness?"

Worth isn't the first to attempt such a project on the web — Andrew Corden's 2010 websiteScale Solar System is similar in a vertically scrolling sort of way, but lacking the tidbits of information and the scale ruler that helps contextualise the distances. Real-world projects, such as the Warrumbungle Solar System Drive, also help scale the solar system — but of course, that makes it a bit more difficult to view the planets' relative sizes.

If there's one thing Worth's project makes clear, it's that there's a very good reason humans will probably not make it outside of our own planetary system for a very long time — if ever — never mind to another Earth-like planet.

Check it out for yourself here.

[MIKA27]

LAMBORGHINI RAT ROD

Looking like something Bruce Wayne would take to a local car show, this aggressive looking concept car was created by Pawel Wisniewski and his friend Jans Slapins. After the two watched a drag racing video (Lambo vs Rat Rod), the designers decided to create the first ever Lamborghini Rat Rod.

To create the concept, Wisniewski used his sketching abilities, while Slapins mocked up the 3D models. The vehicle looks just like the classic rat rod, but with some modern Lamborghini influence. This 4-seater is constructed from a lightweight carbon fiber, and has been outfitted with a twin-turbo small block V8 engine that pumps out power through a sequential 6-speed transmission. The most interesting aspect to the concept build is the wheels, which have been equipped with built-in brake rotors. While this particular creation is nothing more than a concept, it’s still an awesome one nevertheless.

Original Willys Classic RAT ROD: 1945

[MIKA27]

HERCULES TRAILER

Not to be confused with ‘The Legend of Hercules’ released at the top of the year, the latest film following the life of Zeus’ son will star none other than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

After a huge let down with Renny Harlin’s Hercules film earlier this year, this trailer shows that Brett Ratner’s version could be well worth the wait. While we have been fans of the People’s Champ since his early WWF days, we must admit that we are just as excited to see the beautiful Irina Shayk make her cinema debut as well. The Brett Ratner directed film cost $110 million to make, and will be hitting theaters this summer on July 25th, 2014.

[MIKA27]

The Unlikely Fate Of NYC's Last Floating Church

A sailor’s life in the early 1800s wasn’t easy. If you weren’t getting blown to smithereens or developing scurvy, you were probably drinking grog to dull the boredom of life at sea. Coming into New York harbor to find a wooden church floating in the East River probably felt like actual salvation — or at least a refreshing mirage.

But these churches were very real. Built and operated by the Seamen’s Church Institute, which as Untapped Cities’ Matt Nestor explains, was founded in 1834 and still exists today. But the SCI’s heyday was the mid-19th century, when it operated three successive floating church for incoming sailors at the foot of Pike Street (where the Manhattan Bridge stands today). There, sailors could hear sermons or partake in a reading room and a temperance society. In other words, it was a place to stay out of trouble.

The first church, known as the Church of Our Saviour was built in 1843. But by 1866, due to the “decay of this boat and building rendering it untenantable,” the institute had it torn down and replaced with the Church of the Holy Comforter, which lasted until the rent on its dockside location on Dey Street, on the Hudson, became too expensive. The third church — back on Pike Street — lasted for another 41 years.

So what happened to the final church once its congregation had dwindled? According to the SCI archives, the church was towed across the Buttermilk Channel to its final resting place, in Staten Island — but it doesn’t say much more than that.

A little research turns up more info.

Just before Christmas in 1910, the old church (and its organ) floated across the channel to a debt-stricken parish of Mariners’ Harbor, in Staten Island. There, it sat in the harbor hosting services for four years; largely the same church that had given sailors a place to go for 40 years, just across the bay.

But the parish had big plans for their waterlogged house of worship. By 1914, they had raised enough money to build a foundation for their floating church, and that summer, workers unmoored it and hoisted the wooden building out of the harbor. According to Nycago, they laid it on its new foundation, and despite the fact that the corner stone wasn’t laid until months later, sermons began immediately:

So, for another 44 years, the sailor’s church became a beloved idiosyncrasy on Staten Island — until tragedy struck, in 1958, when a massive fire all but destroyed it. The gutted building was demolished, and soon after, construction began on a permanent replacement.

It would seem that’s the end of the last floating church. But a fragment of it still exists somewhere in the world. Though the fire destroyed its structure, the church’s organ — which was built back in 1869 when the original church was constructed on the East River — survived.

Its whereabouts today are a mystery. All we know is that the organ was bought by one Ralph Clauson, who restored it and shipped it out west. The last record found for the organ ends with a short note: “Gone to California.” So who knows, Californians — maybe an organ from New York’s last floating chapel ended up in your own hometown church.

[MIKA27]

Astronomers Found A Minor Planet With A Ring System Like Saturn's

For the first time ever, astronomers have identified a small planet with a ring system. They previously thought that such a phenomenon could only happen on large planets like Saturn and Jupiter. But this special space rock, known as 10199 Chariklo, is a small planet called a Centaur.

The discovery came down to the blinking that these kinds of bodies produce when they pass by stars, an effect known as asteroid occultation. “We were amazed to see that the star didn’t just blink out and come back — there were very short blinks before and after the main dip, which could only be explained by rings,” says Colin Snodgrass of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, who helped find the ring. The European Southern Observatory also played a major role.

The most curious thing about 10199 Chariklo isn’t just the fact that it has rings, but how they stay put. Astronomers think that they’re able to remain in orbit thanks to small objects known as shepherds that provide a gravitational push. It’s kind of poignant when you think about it, huh?

[MIKA27]

The Best Kitchen Prank Is Putting A Human Head In A Jar Inside A Fridge

This prank is genius. Thanks to the wonders of optics and a simple Photoshop technique you can easily make a jar with a pickled human head inside. This will make anyone scream in the office or at home as soon as they open the fridge — such a great effect.

You only need to make a continuous graphic by taking two photos of your face from the front and the side, and then merge them in Photoshop like this:

Then print it out, fill the jar with tinted water (make that tint acid-free to maintain the print in a good enough state for a long time), and put the print inside.

Andrew Liszewski’s tip for extra realism: take the front photo with your face against a glass, so you get some deformation on the nose!

Check out the detailed tutorial here.

[MIKA27]

You Can Decide What NASA's Next Spacesuit Prototype Will Look Like

The Z-2 suit is the newest prototype in the Z-series, NASA’s next-generation spacesuit platform. After creating the Z-1 prototype, the U.S. space agency wants you to get involved to the development process, because they have three quite different design concepts — and, some times, professionals need a little help.

They say:

After the positive response to the Z-1 suit’s visual design we received, we wanted to take the opportunity to provide this new suit with an equally memorable appearance. The cover layer of a prototype suit is important as it serves to protect the suit against abrasion and snags during the rigors of testing. With the Z-2, we’re looking forward to employing cover layer design elements never used in a spacesuit before. The designs shown were produced in collaboration with ILC, the primary suit vendor and Philadelphia University. The designs were created with the intent to protect the suit and to highlight certain mobility features to aid suit testing. To take it a step further, we are leaving it up you, the public, to choose which of three candidates will be built.

So here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: choose your favourite design over at NASA’s voting page! Voting is open through April 15, 2014 at 11:59pm EDT.

Here are the three new suit designs (concept images and descriptions are all from NASA).

“Biomimicry”

This suit draws from an environment with many parallels to the harshness of space: the world’s oceans. Mirroring the bioluminescent qualities of aquatic creatures found at incredible depths, and the scaly skin of fish and reptiles found across the globe, this design reflects the qualities that protect some of Earth’s toughest creatures.

The design specifically includes segmented pleats at the shoulder, elbow, hip and knee, and electroluminescent wire across the upper torso, which becomes apparent in reduced light.

“Technology”

It pays homage to spacesuit achievements of the past while incorporating subtle elements of the future. By using Luminex wire and light-emitting patches, this design puts a new spin on spacewalking standards such as ways to identify crew members.

The design specifically includes electroluminescent wire and patches across the upper and lower torso, exposed rotating bearings, collapsing pleats for mobility and highlighted movement, and abrasion resistant panels on the lower torso.

“Trends in Society”

[Or you could say: normcore.] It is reflective of what every day clothes may look like in the not too distant future. This suit uses electroluminescent wire and a bright colour scheme to mimic the appearance of sportswear and the emerging world of wearable technologies.

The design specifically includes gore pleats with contrast stitching throughout to highlight mobility, an exposed bearing at the hip, and electroluminescent wire and patches of varying styles across both the upper and lower torso.

[MIKA27]

The Lonely Process And Lovely Work Of Hong Kong's Neon Craftsmen

Hong Kong’s neon sign trade is fading in the face of new technology, but there are still skilled workers who craft the glowing lights by hand. The process is, by their own admission, painstaking, solitary, thankless, and steadily losing popularity, but these guys are still going at it. Watching them make the magic fixtures is mesmerising — they are really good at what they do.

This mini-doc offers an intimate look at men who have been manipulating glass and gas for decades.

They know what style of script to pair with each commission; can estimate heights, dimensions, and characters without so much as touching a ruler; and they’re able to masterfully manipulate tubes heated with the tip of a flame — the middle isn’t quite hot enough — until it bends exactly they way they want it to. They use materials with names like “chicken intestines,” “iron heart transistors,” and “thousand-layer paper,” and know, based on practice, how to shape each piece to avoid burning fingertips.

The end result is beautiful, but sheesh, the biz seems tough. “A lonely profession with nothing exciting to offer you,” is one description that belies how fascinating it is to watch them do their thing.

The vid is part of a larger project by M+, the city’s museum for visual culture, which launched an online exhibition devoted to preserving the practice. For the next three months, a ton of new stuff will be added to the site: essays, galleries, timelines, and even an interactive map where visitors can upload specific locations and pics of notable must-sees.

As mass-produced LED illumination continues to phase out the old specimens and take over the streets, this kind of documentation might eventually be all that remains of the practical art — a strange reality that isn’t lost on those behind the effort. Curator Aric Chen writes:

It might seem ironic that this project, dedicated to neon signs, resides on one of the mediums that’s replacing them: a digital screen. However, as a craft born of industry, there has always been something inherently anachronistic about neon, and perhaps it’s fitting that it’s as an anachronism that neon signs might live on.

Explore the growing collection here.

[MIKA27]

Honda Goes Full-Blown Anime With Its Latest Bonkers Bike

While some motorcycles are built for riders hoping to channel Steve McQueen or Marlon Brando, Honda created just the thing for navigating the streets of a post-apocalyptic dystopian metropolis.

The NM4 Vultus, Latin for countenance or facial expression, was created by a team of 20- and 30-year-old designers, who–by Honda’s own admission–borrowed heavily from the aesthetics of Japanese manga and anime. If you’ve ever seen Akira or read the original manga, the Vultus’s angular lines and sharp geometry will look familiar.

“Our intention was to make something that makes every moment feel cinematic,” says project leader Keita Mikura says. “And we want riding it to be an event.” The bike was just unveiled at the Osaka Motorcycle Show.

Underneath the jet fighter-like bodywork is a drivetrain pulled straight from Honda’s parts bin. Its 745cc twin-cylinder engine is from the the NC750X, as is the dual-clutch transmission. Riders can choose between fully automatic shifting, or manual gear selection using triggers mounted on the grips. That might sound vaguely futuristic to some, but Honda’s offered the tech on some models for more than five years. Depending on which drivetrain mode you chose, the backlit dashboard will change between white (neutral), blue (automatic), pink (sport), and red (manual shift). If that’s not enough variety, the dash can be set to one of 25 colors to create a custom display.

The Vultus’ engine produces 54 horsepower and comes in at a rather portly 540 pounds. That won’t do much for acceleration, but Honda claims it will hit 80.2 mpg, or around 185 miles on a tank of gas.

The Vultus comes with a few other conveniences to appeal to the “young social media-engaged urbanite” that Honda says is their target audience. Similar to the NC700X’s gas tank helmet compartment, the Vultus’ rear end has a 1 liter storage space with an integrated 12-volt adaptor for charging the essential devices for maintaining said social media urbanite lifestyle. There’s also another big cubby on the opposite side for more gear, and the passenger seat can flip up to become a backrest for long rides.

Honda hasn’t made any formal announcements about production of the Vultus. For now, something slightly futuristic–like the Ducati Diavel–will have to do.

[MIKA27]

TENTSILE SUSPENDED TREE TENT

Suspended tents have been around for some time, but it was Tentsile who helped put the hammock inspired sleeping quarters on the map. After garnering plenty of attention with their original concept, the Tentsile tree tent is finally available on the retail scene.

With the camping season finally upon us, this beauty couldn’t have come at a better time. The tent was designed by architect and treehouse designer Alex Shirley-Smith. While the tent is quite large, the brand insists that is very portable at the same time. The tent is broken up into three different chambers for additional privacy, and includes a deployable ladder to gain access. Seeing that it’s suspended, you don’t have to worry about any unwanted guests finding their way in during the middle of night. It’s also great for camping in wet weather conditions, helping you stay elevated and dry while catching some Z’s. All the comfort of a hammock, with the security of a tent. [Purchase | Via]

[MIKA27]

St. Petersburg From Above

Recently, photographer Amos Chapple spent some time in Saint Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. He used a small drone to lift his camera high above the cathedrals and fortresses, capturing some amazing aerial photos. Chapple:

"There's a legend in Russia that Saint Petersburg was constructed in the blue heavens and lowered in one piece into the marshland, 'for how otherwise could a city so beautiful exist in a region so bleak.'"

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood during a squally autumn morning. The church marks the spot where the reformist Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a bomb-rolling revolutionary.

The angel atop the Alexander column. Built after Russia's victory over Napoleon, the column's 600 ton granite trunk was tipped into place by 2,000 soldiers.

The Hermitage Pavilion wreathed in dawn mist. The little "whipped cream" pavilion was an example of the decadence which would eventually topple the Tsarist autocracy. It was famous for parties where tables laden with food would rise from beneath the floorboards into groups of delighted guests.

The Peter & Paul Fortress, Saint Petersburg's founding point, juts out into the frozen River Neva. At the time of the fort's construction the islands of the Neva were populated only by a ragtag collection of fishermen's huts. It was deemed "too wild, too wet, too unhealthy" for human habitation, the equivalent of founding a capital city in the upper reaches of Hudson Bay.

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built only as an epitaph to the murdered Tsar and wasn't intended for public worship. A patch of the cobbled street on which the Tsar lay mortally wounded is preserved within the old church, now open to the public as a museum.

Visitors walk on fallen leaves in the Summer Garden, central St. Petersburg's oldest Park.

Mikhailovsky Castle, commissioned by Emperor Paul I, whose premonitions of assassination drove him to create the fortified residence. Forty days after moving into the castle he was murdered in his own bedroom in 1801

Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral in Peterhof, the palace and gardens in the background. Beyond, the Finnish Gulf is obscured by fog. During World War II, German armies occupied Peterhof, destroying it almost completely on their retreat.

The Palace at Peterhof, perched on a bluff overlooking the sea some 30km (19mi) from central Saint Petersburg. In his later years Peter the Great kept a study in the palace from where he could look out to the distant spires of Saint Petersburg, and the island fortress of Kronstadt guarding his new capital.

Saint Isaac's Cathedral, partly under renovation. Many Finnish laborers were employed in the Cathedral's troubled 40-year construction, resulting in the Finnish idiom "To build like St. Isaac's" in reference to something taking far longer than it should.

Smolny Convent at sunset. The building once housed a finishing school for Russian noblewomen. Delicate young graduates were known to have "some education.. strictly ceremonious manners" and a "thirst for expressing their feelings."

Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral rising through winter mist.

[MIKA27]

The U.S. Air Force Just Fired 9 Nuclear Missile Commanders For Cheating

This is a little unsettling. A year-long investigation into alleged cheating on proficiency exams has resulted in the dismissal of nine nuclear missile commanders at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. The military expects to punish dozens of junior officers, as well.

You probably didn’t even realise that nuclear missile commanders have to take exams, but it’s very important. After all, these are the men and women guarding a nuclear arsenal! They should be up to speed on how the missile launch systems work in case, you know, it’s needed. And the Air Force isn’t interested in failure. The investigation found that the military maintained a “100 per cent or failure” policy. In other words, these commanders couldn’t get a single answer wrong. If that seems too strict, remind yourself that these are the folks responsible for weapons that could literally end human civilisation as we know it. The Air Force now says it will lower the passing grade to 90 per cent.

It gets worse. The Air Force actually found out about the alleged cheating during an investigation into 11 officers accused of drug possession. So the guardians of nuclear missiles are doing drugs and cheating on tests? Apparently they are. As NBC News reports, “The investigation found that officers were texting answers to each other, and that others knew about the cheating but did not report it.” So it’s just like high school only, instead of working toward a good report card, these airmen are supposed to be keeping nukes safe.

It actually gets even worse. This unsettling news arrives just a few months after we learned that Air Force officers were leaving the blast doors to the missile silos open . At the time, the Associated Press reported on a number of problems with the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile force “including a failed safety inspection, the temporary sidelining of launch officers deemed unfit for duty and the abrupt firing last week of the two-star general in charge.” And that’s not even getting into the whole boondoggle of the fact that the nuclear launch code was 00000000 for 20 years.

Sorry for the scary news. At least the fancy new planes still work! Oh wait, no they don’t.

[MIKA27]

Tissot's Rugged Touchscreen Watch Uses The Sun To Charge

Long before Samsung’s Galaxy Gear entered the picture with its colourful LCD display, Tissot introduced a touchscreen watch to help alleviate button clutter. It was far from what we would now consider ‘smart’, but it made accessing the T-Touch’s various functions a lot easier. And while the latest version still doesn’t connect to your smartphone, it’s now able to soak up the sun for near-infinite battery life.

Compared to the myriad smartwatches that are coming and already released, the T-Touch Expert Solar doesn’t pack a lot of functionality into its half-screen monochrome LCD display. The standard ABC basics (altimeter, barometer, and compass) of an outdoor watch are included, but there’s no wireless syncing or any connectivity whatsoever.

Sure, that means the watch won’t remind you about upcoming meetings, but it also won’t need to be charged every night. So as long as you spend some time in the sun every few days, you may never need to swap out the battery.

[MIKA27]

Watch A Woman Get A New 3D-Printed Skull

It’s not news that we can 3D print bones or even successfully implant 3D-printed skull fragments. But a team of Dutch brain surgeons has taken things to the next level by replacing the bulk of a woman’s skull with a 3D-printed dome. It’s a little bit gnarly to watch.

Nevertheless, it was a life-saving operation. The 22-year-old patient suffered from a rare condition that caused her skull to thicken, increasing the pressure on her brain. At the time of the surgery, the bone was 5 centimeters thick — over three times the normal thickness. The team of doctors at Utrecht University’s UMC made a perfect copy of her skull using a 3D printer and fitted it to her head in a 23-hour-long surgery. The entire procedure took three months and is the first of its kind, according to the hospital.

“Implants used to be made by hand in the operating theatre using a sort of cement which was far from ideal,” explained Ben Verweij, who led the operation. “Using 3D printing we can make one to the exact size. This not only has great cosmetic advantages, but patients’ brain function often recovers better than using the old method.”

The patient is now doing great. And, with her new transparent, plastic, 3D-printed skull, she’s probably a shoe-in to play the next Bond supervillain.

Warning: If you watch this video, you will see human brains. It’s graphic.

[MIKA27]

Holy Wow, The Full Length Trailer For Jupiter Ascending Is Incredible

All right. OK. Wow. After getting teased with an itty bit of Jupiter Ascending, we now get to see the full trailer and it’s all kind of fantasy sci-fi perfect. A battle for Earth, spaceships, machine porn, alien worlds, superpowers, guessing when Sean Bean will die, The Wachowskis, the movie seems to have it all.

Who knows if the full movie will be any good or if we’ll be able to get over Channing Tatum’s ears but the trailer is loads of fun and awesome enough that it almost makes me want to forgive the Wachowskis for the last 2 Matrix movies.

MIKA: I love Sci-Fi and will watch this movie, but I really dislike the casting.

[MIKA27]

These Are The Loneliest Houses In Chicago

Some call them “orphan buildings,” others call them “nail houses”: Homes that remain despite waves of hungry developers who have long since bought and demolished the neighborhoods that once surrounded them. They’re the ultimate holdouts, isolated artifacts of long-extinguished communities.

Over at Chicago Magazine, Whet Moser profiles a photographer named David Schalliol, whose new book Isolated Building Studies is a beautiful collection of photography focused on real estate development in Chicago. Schalliol seeks out houses that are the last remaining structures standing on once-dense city blocks — anomalies that remain long after their neighbours have been torn down.

Back in the 00s, when the real estate bubble was at its zenith, developers bought and demolished huge sections of the city’s South and West sides, anticipating a building boom. The boom never materialised, of course, and few of the houses escaped unscathed.

It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen in Detroit and Baltimore, too. Not to mention China, where the term “nail houses” first emerged — named for the stubbornness of their owners. Check out some of Schalliol’s photos and stories below, and tell us in the comments if your city has nail houses of its own.

Grand Boulevard, October 2009 “I met a woman who was a nurse for the woman who owned the building. The owner was really proud of being able to maintain it in the way that she had and was hoping that, when she passed on, someone would pick up the torch.”

Englewood, December 2008 “This is one of those blocks that’s special in the city because it no longer has buildings behind [where I stood to take the picture]. The street was literally cut in half by the Dan Ryan, which is across the street.”

Englewood, November 2012. “This house in the northeastern corner of the neighbourhood is going to be demolished to make way for the expansion of Norfolk Southern’s 47th Street intermodal yard,” says Schalliol. “This one is still occupied by a family that’s lived in it for many years. I think it’s one of the most beautiful buildings in the neighbourhood.”

[MIKA27]

Pentagon Airlifting Deep Diving Sub To Australia To Help Hunt For Flight 370

As the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 becomes more focused following the discovery of debris, the Pentagon is planning on sending a Bluefin-21 submarine to aid in any possible search and salvage mission.

The Bluefin-21 measures 17 feet in length, nearly two feet in diameter, and weighing just over 1,700 pounds.

And if anything is likely to find wreckage from Flight 370 beneath the rough waves, it is this autonomous underwater survey vehicle developed by Bluefin Robotics.

The Bluefin-21 is specially designed for deep sea investigation, capable of reaching depths of 14,700 feet for as long as 20 hours.

“It carries a state of the art modular sensor suite, including a side scanning radar and a multibeam echo sounder, as well as an HD camera for capturing images of items it discovers through its acoustic payload. The Bluefin-21′s inertial navigation system operates in tandem with its on-board GPS to provide precise coordinates of everything it finds.”

The Bluefin-21 is set to augment an already massive search team operating west of Australia. The U.S. alone is sending a black box locator to the region, and it has already committed P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft to the search.

Below is a video from Bluefin Robotics detailing in depth the submarine’s capabilities.

[MIKA27]

How Engineers Are Moving A Town Two Miles Away

The city of Kiruna, Sweden, is sinking — the iron mines beneath it are making the ground collapse. So, over the next two decades, its 20,000 residents will be relocated, along with their homes, offices, stores, and schools, to another, brand-new city about two miles to the east.

As Sweden’s northernmost city, just inside the Arctic Circle, Kiruna is very much a company town: many of the city’s residents are employed by the government-owned mining corporation Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB). In 2004, LKAB announced that mining operations would cause damage to certain buildings on the edge of town, which would thus need to be relocated. Soon the mine’s plan evolved so that the entire city would need to move. LKAB has committed over $US600 million to the project already and will likely spend millions more than that.

Moving a city due to mining damage is sadly not a unique scenario . But in Kiruna’s case, the city acted quickly, turning its situation into a global design competition which resulted in some extremely visionary ideas for its future. The winning proposal, called Kiruna 4 Ever, was created by White Arkitekter AB, and the groundbreaking for the new city center begins this month.

Gizmodo talked with Åsa Bjerndell, one of the firm’s partners, about how they plan to not only move the city, but to build a more livable, sustainable one.

How is the damage from the mines to the city seen in everyday life? Can you see sinkholes and buildings sagging?

Yes, you can definitely see sinkholes. There are also some homes that have been evacuated and more will have to leave soon. A big part of the existing city center will be gone in a couple of years. The train station is gone and a new temporary one has been installed. The city hall is next to be evacuated — a new one is planned as one part of the first step in the moving of the city center.

What are some of the biggest ways the new town will improve upon the old town?

The character of the new city will be a compact, urban structure in the vast arctic landscape. For many of its inhabitants this is one of the big attractions of Kiruna. You get the service and social and cultural offerings of a city combined with the recreational possibilities of the landscape.

The old town does not make the most of this duality. It is too spread out to deliver the required density and also isolates the city center from nature. This will be corrected by “fingers of nature” coming all the way into the heart of the new city.

“Fingers of nature” will allow the city to grow east to west while introducing these north-south areas which connect the city with the surrounding natural landscape. This will be done with a zoning strategy that includes preservation areas and outdoor recreation uses

Moving people’s homes sounds like a huge emotional challenge. What was the most important thing you had to do to keep the city’s culture and vibrancy intact?

You are right — it is most definitely an emotional challenge! “Kiruna 4 Ever,” our motto for the competition entry, is all about that. If there is anything that defines a city, it’s the people who live and work there. The systems of social and economic ties are what binds Kiruna, and if there is anything to be moved, it is these connections and relationships. If we are going to talk about successfully moving a city, we have to make sure that the move strengthens existing relations and helps create new ones in the process.

So your proposal actually goes beyond the physical design of buildings and streets.

It’s all about regaining trust so that people dare to invest energy, time, and money in Kiruna. They need to trust to Kiruna will be a fantastic place to live in the future. “Kiruna 4 Ever” is about that feeling. Information and different levels of participation are crucial so Kiruna residents feel involved. In the completion entry we proposed three different types of arrangements to achieve this.

The Kiruna Dialogue is about the most basic ways to get information out to anyone and give them the opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions. We proposed to use the already existing formal and informal networks in Kiruna — sporting clubs, day-care centres, libraries, churches, and so on — so that the information will come to the inhabitants; they will not have to go looking for it.

The new city center will include the new city hall designed by Henning Larsen Architects and gathering places for residents; the Kiruna Portal will be a place to recycle and reclaim elements from the town’s old structures

The Kiruna Portal is a physical and virtual meeting place for existing and new residents, the business community and property owners. Here, there will be an in-house factory that recycles the building materials from the demolition. The profit from this is also emotional — old memories can be preserved and become part of the new. The reuse of resources from the old town through the Kiruna Portal, holds new possibilities for the architecture as well as a sustainable way of handling accessible resources in an isolated region.

Finally, the Kiruna Biennale is an international biennial event where Kiruna will share their experiences and invite other cities in similar situations. We think that climate change and other challenges will force more communities to move in different ways, and that there will be a need to come together and learn from each other on a global scale. The Biennale will also be a city festival for the inhabitants and will be a way to establish new parts of the city as the town gradually morphs eastward, away from the mine.

All three of these events make the move become a collective experience — the whole town is involved, and they are still a very important part of the strategies now that the competition entry is been worked into official planning documents and timetables.

The city will shift along an east-west street in the center that builds upon the existing urban fabric, adding a cable car and freight railway connections

Not many cities get a chance to start over and correct what was wrong with their urban design. I can almost see Kiruna becoming a place for urban planners all over the world to visit and see what you’ve done. Are you thinking that other cities might be able to learn from you?

Sure! I think that what is important in our view is to understand the existing situation: the landscape, the climate, the culture, and also the political and social starting points. This is because the redesigning and relocation of a city center is a process and not a project. A city center has to exist and function from day one, and both the first step and the vision for the longtime result is important to build trust. The planning tools and strategies have be flexible to be able to adapt to unknown challenges and possibilities in the future.

A new transit station will have train connections to nearby communities as well as a gondola; a more dense, walkable urban center in the new Kiruna will include a busy shopping street

What is the feeling like for the residents who live there? Are they resigned to the fact that this is something that needs to happen, or is there still some controversy and protest?

What Kiruna residents now generally want is action. Uncertainty and certain insecurities exist, but the movement of the city is considered necessary. Discussions are mostly focused on is how it should be done. Not so much about how it will be, not after the competition. Maybe there will be more discussions now that the new development plan is being presented.

Maybe the most impressive part of this is not the engineering itself, but the way you’ve been able to convince 20,000 people to agree to it!

You need the inhabitants on board because they are the ones who are going to fill the new city center with life. If they do not believe in it and if they do not feel invited and empowered to take part in the change, it will not succeed. You can only plan so much after that. The life of the city has to take over to make the spaces thrive and develop — that is the only option for a sustainable development.