STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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NASA’s Space-Suit Drama Could Delay Our Trip to the Moon

‘It’s a serious issue’ that some experts think should have been solved in the 1990s.

After years of planning, NASA is finally launching a new effort to send astronauts back to the moon and then onward to Mars.

The space agency is developing a new capsule spacecraft, a super-heavy rocket to boost the capsule into space, and a moon-orbiting station that, if it deploys on schedule in the mid-2020s, could serve as humanity's main waystation for ever-longer missions farther into the solar system.

But one important piece of technology is missing: a new space suit.

The first spacewalk in US history was made by astronaut Edward H. White during the Gemini 4 mission, on June 3, 1965.

Fifty-three years after astronaut Ed White stepped outside his Gemini 4 capsule on the first-ever spacewalk for an American, NASA is stuck using decades-old suits that critics say are too old, too bulky, too rigid, and too few in number for America's new era of space exploration.

"It's a serious issue," Pablo de León, a space suit-designer and professor at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, told The Daily Beast.

Astronauts could need as many as three different kinds of space suits for a single mission. They might wear a simple, military-style flight suit while safely inside their spacecraft. For spacewalks—extravehicular activity or EVA, in space parlance—they'd need a suit that provides pressure and breathable air and protection from radiation.

Surface missions to the moon or Mars add their own requirements. An EVA suit can be fairly rigid, for example—especially in the lower body. But if an astronaut is going to walk around on Mars, they should be able to bend their legs.

NASA has plenty of flightsuit options, but its EVA suits are old and dwindling in number. And the agency doesn't have any suits specifically for surface missions.

Time is running out to make up the space suit shortfalls. NASA plans to launch Exploration Mission 1, the first test of Orion and its heavy rocket, as early as 2020. The Lunar Gateway station could be ready for use five or six years later.

Despite these looming deadlines, NASA "remains years away from having a flight-ready space suit... suitable for use on future exploration missions," the agency's inspector general warned in a 2017 audit. NASA failed to respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Today NASA uses an incomplete mix of space suits. While riding in Russian Soyuz capsules to the International Space Station, astronauts wear Russian Sokol flightsuits, replacing the orange "pumpkin suits" that astronauts wore aboard the Space Shuttle before NASA retired the Shuttle in 2011.

Boeing and SpaceX have both designed their own, unique flightsuits for passengers aboard spacecraft they're developing, and which NASA might hire for some missions.

Crew aboard the International Space Station wear casual clothes for routine work. For spacewalks, NASA stores on the station a few Shuttle-era Extravehicular Mobility Unit EVA suits that the agency first designed in the mid-1970s. Russian crew on the station have their own, equally-aged Orlan EVA suits for spacewalks.

But no one has walked on the surface of the moon or any other planet besides Earth since astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt donned A7-LB pressure suits for the Apollo 17 lunar mission in 1972. The A7-LBs deteriorated quickly in the harsh lunar conditions. Today the surviving Apollo suits are museum pieces.

NASA built 18 Extravehicular Mobility Unit EVA suits for the Shuttle program. As of 2017, just 11 of the suits were still operational, according to the NASA audit. Several suits were destroyed in the crashes of the Shuttles Challenger and Columbia.

Astronaut Susan J. Helms, STS-102 mission specialist, is pictured March 10, 2001 on the mid deck with both Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) space suits designated for extravehicular activity (EVA). Helms is one of two astronauts assigned to space walk duties after the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station (ISS) link in Earth orbit.

Overlapping efforts in recent years to replace the EVA suits burned through $200 million without producing operational space suits, the audit found.

"These are very sophisticated pieces of equipment," Roger Launius, NASA's chief historian until his 2016 retirement, told The Daily Beast. "They are in themselves little spaceships." And for decades, NASA designed space suits like it did spaceships. That is to say, big and rigid.

The agency's current EVA suit is a 275-pound monstrosity with 14 layers. It comes in only three sizes: medium, large and extra-large. Poor fit raises the risk of shoulder injuries, according to the NASA audit. To prepare for the suit's 4.3-pounds-per-square-inch internal pressure and pure-oxygen air supply, a wearer must spend as long as four hours "pre-breathing" and slowly adjusting to the suit's conditions.

The closest thing NASA has to a next-generation space suit is the Z-2, a prototype suit for surface missions that borrows elements from the older, Shuttle-era EVA suit but is lighter and more flexible.  

But NASA's suit-design philosophy "has definitely run its course," Dava Newman, a former NASA deputy administrator who now designs space suits at MIT, told The Daily Beast.

With only a little NASA seed money, Newman and her team are developing a new form-fitting space suit that replaces the pressurized internal gas atmosphere of the current EVA suit with direct mechanical pressure that the suit itself directly applies to the wearer's body.

Newman's "biosuit" is lighter than NASA's current suit is, and is custom-made for each wearer. "I want folks using the majority of their energy to do work, not fighting a gas-pressurized suit," she said.

NASA could incorporate elements of Newman's design into a new generation of suits for spacewalks and surface missions. But the agency hasn't widely requested input from independent experts such as Newman ... yet. "I just want to be ready," Newman said.

De León has his own ideas for NASA's next space suit. He said that, in addition to being lighter, more flexible and easier to put on and take off, a new suit should be pressurized in a spacecraft whose atmosphere is eight pounds-per-square-inch, compared to 14.7 PSI today, in order to shorten the pre-breathing time.

And if it's going to work for spacewalks and surface missions with only minimal modification—for instance, add-on boots for the surface work—a new space suit should have as few bearings as possible. Metal bearings likely wouldn't last long in the dusty moon and Mars environments, de León pointed out.

The evolution of the NASA spacesuit.

NASA's Z-2 prototype has several metal bearings, including a large one around the waist. "That may bring you problems," de León said.

The space agency should have addressed these problems decades ago but didn’t, de León said. "A new program to develop a new suit is something should have been done in early ’90s."

Delays in developing a new space suit could become a crisis as early as 2024. That's when the Trump administration wants to retire the International Space Station. Under the best-case scenario, the moon-orbiting Lunar Gateway station should still be under construction in 2024. In that gap between stations, NASA could struggle to test a new suit design in actual space.

Realistically, the agency has between now and 2024 to design, build and test new space suits. There’s "little margin for delays," the NASA audit warned.

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PLANTATION PINEAPPLE RUM

Inspired by a formula from 1840 and a tribute to the character created by Charles Dickens in the Pickwick Papers, this rum was developed by spirits writer David Wondrich and Master Blender Alexandre Gabriel in 2011. The rum doesn't add generic pineapple flavoring but instead infuses the barks of Victoria pineapples with Plantation 3 Stars rum while the fruit of the pineapple is infused with Plantation Original Dark rum separately. The two are finally blended, creating a truly unique spirit that is a welcome addition to dozens of cocktails and is just as pleasing to sip on its own.

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Did Stephen King's Son Just Solve a 44-Year-Old Murder Mystery?

What do Jaws and an infamous cold case have in common? Bestselling author Joe Hill presents a theory linking two events that took place in 1974 Cape Cod.

In 2015, Joe Hillstrom King sat in a New Hampshire movie theater with his three teenage sons, stoked to see a special 40th anniversary screening of Jaws, his all-time favorite film, for the first time on the big screen as it was intended. Better known by his pen name Joe Hill, the comic book and horror-thriller writer—and son of Stephen King—watched with rapture. But 54 minutes in, he leapt out of his seat, his arms prickled with goosebumps and his heart pounding, at a scene that startled him for the first time despite the many times he had watched the movie.

It wasn't your typical jump-scare, no image of a hungry Great White Shark attacking a beachgoer. Instead, it was a scene in which a crowd boards a ferry on the Fourth of July, a seemingly innocuous moment in Steven Spielberg's iconic masterpiece. In the shot, a female extra wearing a blue bandana over her auburn hair caught Hill's attention. She was "almost a twin of the figure" in a forensic recreation image he recently saw of the Lady of the Dunes, the still-unidentified murder victim discovered in Provincetown in 1974—the very same year Jaws was filmed on nearby Martha's Vineyard.

Joe Hill.

"The movie and the murder overlap geographically and chronologically," Hill tells Esquire.com. "Allowing for the possibility that the Lady of the Dunes was in the right place at the right time—or, rather, the wrong place at the wrong time."

Hill first developed a macabre fascination with the Lady of the Dunes after reading about her death in Deborah Halber's 2014 book, The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America's Coldest Cases, which details the modern phenomenon of citizens using Internet resources to identify unidentified human remains.

Thought to be in her mid-20s to -30s, the Lady of the Dunes was discovered on July 26, 1974, about a mile east of the Race Point Ranger Station on the northern tip of Cape Cod. The nude, decomposing body was discovered by a 13-year-old girl who was walking her beagle in the dunes; the woman was estimated to have been deceased for up to three weeks.

Her long, reddish-brown hair was pulled back in a glittery hair-tie, and she had seven gold crowns in her mouth that were worth thousands of dollars. Her hands were cut off and missing, presumably so she couldn't be identified through fingerprints. Her skull was crushed, she was nearly decapitated, and her body was lying on a beach towel "as if she’d been sharing it with a companion," according to the Provincetown Police Department.

Her head rested on folded Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana—very similar to the outfit worn by the extra in the ferry scene from Jaws.

Left: an image, taken from Joe Hill’s blog, of the female extra in Jaws; right: a 2010 composite sketch of the Lady of the Dunes.

After the immediate shock, Hill sat back down in his seat, his pulse returning to normal. "I was like, 'No way,'" he recalls of his disbelief. "I have the kind of imagination that churns out ghost stories almost automatically. I’ve just done it so much that I told myself, 'You’re telling yourself a ghost story!'"

Still, he couldn't get the woman from Jaws—her blue bandana, her auburn hair—out of his head. When he got home, he rewatched the movie on his laptop, thumbing through the ferry scene frame by frame. He told friends about his theory, including a buddy who works for the FBI, who said it "was interesting, and [that] sometimes very cold cases have been caught by stranger ideas."

"I thought there really might be something there," says Hill. "[So I did] what any sane person would do: I put it on the Internet!'"

He described the idea in a Tumblr post, noting the similarities between the Lady in the Dunes and the extra from Jaws:

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Blue bandana. About 30. Fit, 145 pounds. I don’t believe those are Wrangler jeans, but a lady presumably owns more than one pair of jeans.

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I admit its pretty goddamn wild speculation. 

And yet… And yet.

Let’s go a little further down this very dim, very narrow alley of fantastic conjecture. 

It is impossible to say with complete precision when they filmed the “July 4th - Crowd Arrives” sequence, which is where this shot appears. But we know it was almost certainly shot in June, because they filmed all the “on island” scenes they could early. The water was too cold for swimming, and the malfunctioning shark wasn’t ready for the “at sea” material until late July.

We also know the Lady of the Dunes was alive in June and that the filming of JAWS was a big deal locally. Lots of folks turned up to try and get a peek at the stars, or the shark, or to see if they could sneak into a shot.

 

He included the caveat that he literally makes up stories for a living (Hill's most recent book, Strange Weather, is a collection of four short chilling novels).

Quote

 

I am under no illusions about the situation here. I was watching Jaws, under the influence of The Skeleton Crew, and my subconscious invented an exciting little story about the Lady of the Dunes on the spot. It was so good, I persuaded myself it might be true.

It IS a helluva what-if, isn’t it? What if the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn’t even know they were looking at her? What if the ghost of the Lady of the Dunes haunts Jaws?

 

Hill's theory went viral this summer after it was featured on Inside Jaws, a podcast devoted to Steven Spielberg’s journey from inexperienced director to influential filmmaker. And it's not the first time his idea has been picked up. In 2015, VICE published an article about it, and Hill even told the publication he received offers from other amateur sleuths to search for payroll records for Jaws extras and to hunt down data that could help solve the mystery.

Three years ago, a writer from Entertainment Weekly took interest, offering to help track down the name of the extra, which—if she were alive—could disprove Hill's wild theory. Hill claims a Universal Studios archivist told the writer they couldn't find the extra's name; Shari Rhodes, the casting director for Jaws, died in 2009.

Facial reconstruction images created by forensic experts.

Hill never went directly to the police with his idea; he feels "silly," he says, about the possibility of wasting an officer's time. Provincetown Police have not returned Esquire.com's request for comment at the time of publication. According to their website, however, the body of the Lady in the Dunes was exhumed in 2000 in "an attempt to confirm her identity." In May of 2010, a new composite was created using state of the art technology and computer analyses.

According to a 2014 Boston Globe article, detectives have consulted dentists and psychics in an attempt to solve the case. They’ve also used "ground-penetrating radar" and made a plaster reconstruction of her face.

"How does someone end up here, of all places, not to be identified for 40 years?" Detective Meredith K. Lobur of the Provincetown Police Department, the lead investigator on the case, told the publication. "She’s always some part of my day... Some murders are never solved. I refuse to believe this is one of them."

Lobur works on the case on her days off, according to the Globe, and is convinced that the killer will be found when the victim is identified.

"I know there’s a murderer out there somewhere loose," retired Acting Chief Warren Tobias, who led the search for 22 years, told the paper. "There’s a family out there that needs closure."

Meanwhile, Hill recognizes that his theory is a fantastical one, and "there's probably nothing" to the connection between the unknown murder victim and the unknown Jaws extra. "But at the same time," he says, "two incredible things happened in the area of Cape Cod in the of summer 1974. One, a woman was killed. The other was that Jaws was filmed and became the summer film to define all other summer films. It’s not that hard to believe that a person in the area of Provincetown might have scooted off to Martha’s Vineyard… to see all the movie stars [and wound up being an extra].

"My subconscious kind of spun up this possibility," he continues. "If nothing else, it’s a pretty good little ghost story."

Hill says his father, the master of horror and suspense, also thinks the story is a powerful one. "He always enjoys puzzling over a bizarre bit of Americana," says Hill. "Old, unresolved stories [is] something of a family hobby."

At the very least, Hill hopes bringing attention to the case might lead to more clues—or encourage someone with information to talk.

"A woman died and she’s never been identified," he says. "She's someone's daughter—you have to hope sooner or later there will be a resolution. But I keep wondering how come that woman [in Jaws], if she's [not the Lady in the Dunes]... Why hasn’t she—or someone that knows her—come forward to say, 'This is me'?"

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THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA AIRBNB STAY

Originally built to keep hostile invaders at bay, the Great Wall of China has long been out of commission as a functional fortification. Still, it’s considered one of the great man-made monuments alongside the pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge – certainly one of the world’s wonders to witness before you die. Now, you can spend the night in the Great Wall, courtesy of Airbnb.

Should it be your great fortune to win the contest to stay at the Great Wall’s temporary hotel, you will win an unforgettable experience. Nestled at the crest of the ancient portion of the wall, guests at this open-air hotel room can gaze out at the stars and imagine the many predecessors who did the same. Your stay will include a gourmet dinner and a sunrise hike along the Wall, guided by an expert on the Great Wall’s heritage. To win, all you have to do is go to the Airbnb website, and give your answer as to why you believe that it is ‘now more important than ever to break down cultural barriers, and how you would build new connections and links between different cultures.’

 

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AUCTION BLOCK: 2017 MERCEDES-AMG GT3 LAUREUS

A fierce, chromed out road warrior, this Mercedes-AMG GT3 has both the bark and bite to satisfy any passionate petrol head. The GT3 itself is a champ, earning 85 overall wins, along with 168 class victories, in 450 races so far and this particular version can be yours if you have the pockets to handle it.

Everything about this car is unique, including its chassis, as its total output is an uprated 650bhp thanks to different software and hardware modifications, including the removal of its FIA-required restrictors. It’s also fitted with a performance exhaust system that lacks mufflers, leaving the car with plenty of exposed carbon fiber parts, which include the front and rear diffusor, rear wings, hood louvres and radiator grille. A unique matte black paint is used for interior parts, such as the chassis, passenger seat and various exposed carbon fiber pieces like the center console and door panels. What’s particularly stellar about this auction item is that the proceeds of the sale will benefit the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, along with the “Passion for Good” initiative, which uses the power of sports to support disadvantaged children around the world.

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BASIL HAYDEN'S TWO BY TWO RYE WHISKEY

Inspired by the legend of a family recipe that dates back to 1796 when rye whiskey and corn whiskey were blended, Two by Two is the latest spirit to join the Basil Hayden's line. The whiskey is a blend of 5-year-old Kentucky Straight Rye, a 7-year-old Kentucky Straight Rye, a 13-year-old Kentucky Straight Bourbon, and a 6-year-old Kentucky Straight Bourbon. The four whiskeys are expertly fused to create this light-bodied, flavorful dram that is bottled at 80 proof and adorned with a hand-applied green parchment bib label and signature copper belt.

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TRITON X ASTON MARTIN PROJECT NEPTUNE SUBMARINE

Combining the former's technical prowess with the latter's aerodynamic designs, the Triton x Aston Martin Project Neptune Submarine is a spy-worthy submersible. It's built on Vero Beach-based Triton's Low Profile (LP) three-person platform, with a maximum depth of 1,640 feet, a top speed of five knots, and a run time of eight hours. Its signature bubble housing allows for near 360-degree views, and to make sure you're comfortable while exploring the deep, Aston's in-house design team has outfitted the interior with hand-stitched leather and carbon-fiber trim, with further customization available via Q by Aston Martin. Deliveries are expected to begin early next year.

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The New Star Wars Live-Action Series Will Be One of the Most Expensive TV Shows of All Time

Disney's massive investment into the Star Wars universe has paid off. The latest installments of the main saga have been massive box office hits, and the studio plans to take that success to the smaller screen with an upcoming live-action series. From creator John Favreau, the new series—which will debut on Disney's streaming service next year—takes place seven years after Return of the Jedi. And in a new feature on the future of Disney, the New York Times included a staggering detail about the upcoming Star Wars series.

The show will cost roughly $100 million for 10 episodes, the New York Times reports. At a price tag of $10 million an episode, that makes the upcoming Star Wars series one of the most expensive TV shows of all time. To put it into context, the sixth season of Game of Thrones cost something around $10 million an episode, and its final season will cost something around $15 million. The budget for Star Trek: Discovery, which CBS used to launch its own streaming platform, was between $8 and $8.5 million. The budget for Star Wars: The Last Jedi was between $200 to $250 million, and that film made more than $1.3 billion worldwide at the box office.

This makes sense, considering Disney is using this show to launch its own streaming platform. A lot is riding on the success of this show, not to mention the massive expectations of fans. Even though it had critical and box office success, crybaby Star Wars fans still bitched about The Last Jedi.

Disney can throw all the money at this thing they want, but they'll still never make everybody happy.

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Hacking Whiskey

I'm sure we have all sipped our fair share of whiskey, so perhaps it’s time to try something new. Not a new spirit, mind you, but rather new ways of enjoying our favorite booze.

Hacking Whiskey: Smoking, Blending, Fat Washing, and Other Whiskey Experiments from author Aaron Goldfarb takes whiskey enthusiasts on a journey to learn about fascinating ways they can play with their beverage of choice. From homemade blends to unique infusions, you’ll find more than a few new ways to down your Jack Daniels. What kind of crazy hacks are we talking? How about doing bone marrow luge shots, infusing your whiskey with marijuana smoke, or blending different bourbons to make Poor Man’s Pappy? We are down for any and all of it. You can pre-order Hacking Whiskey now and receive it when it hits shelves on September 25.

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The Mendocino Complex Fire Is Now The Largest In California's History

An enormous bushfire in northern California has become the largest on record for the state, less than a year after the Thomas Fire in southern California earned that dubious distinction. It’s the latest reminder that we now live in an era of fast-growing, hard-to-contain megafires.

The Mendocino Complex fire, which includes the Ranch and River fires burning side by side in Lake and Mendocino counties, currently stands at a combined 283,800 acres, placing it above the Thomas Fire as the largest bushfire in modern Californian history.

Containment remains low, and the fires are still growing. Considering the conditions, state officials believed it highly possible that the fire would overtake the Thomas Fire.

“Look how big it got, just in a matter of days,” Scott McLean, a deputy chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire), told the LA Times. “Look how fast this Mendocino Complex went up in ranking. That doesn’t happen. That just doesn’t happen.”

Indeed, the fires exploded into existence just 10 days ago on July 27, and have been consuming land at breakneck speed. The larger of the two — the Ranch Fire — makes the top 10 list in its own right. As of yesterday, the blaze had torched 225,000 acres and was just 21 per cent contained. The River Fire, meanwhile, was closing in on 50,000 acres and nearly 60 per cent containment.

Thousands of personnel are working to contain the fires, which together threaten thousands of structures. But with scorching temperatures and little rain on tap for the next few days, they may prove hard to stamp out.

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump declared a “major disaster” in California, ordering that federal funds be made available to help the state cope with its destructive blazes and help residents affected by the Carr Fire, another enormous bushfire burning not too far away in Shasta and Trinity counties.

Trump also took to Twitter to blame California’s “bad environmental laws” for the situation, and to falsely assert that the state is somehow diverting water it could be using to fight fires into the ocean. So, there’s that.

The truth is that mega-fires such as the Mendocino Complex are increasingly becoming the norm in the US West thanks to a combination of more humans living at the bushland-urban interface, persistent drought, misguided policies that caused large amounts of vegetation (AKA fire fuel) to build up on landscapes, and climate change.

“Our contribution to climate warming has effectively made fuels 50% drier and doubled the amount of western forests that have burned since 1984,” Jennifer Balch, a fire ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, told us via email.

John Abatzoglou, a climate scientist at the University of Idaho, noted several climate and weather factors that set the stage for the Mendocino Complex conflagration. There was the very wet winter of 2016-2017, which “helped created a bumper crop of grasses last summer,” as Abatzoglou put it in an email. This year’s fire season has been incredibly dry, with unusually hot nights since July that have inhibited fire-suppression activities.

Abatzoglou also pointed to the long-term trend, noting that the dryness of fire fuels and frequency of hot nights have trended upwards in recent years.

The rise in extreme fire activity across the US West has been on display over and over in recent months, and it’s clear we the US needs to get its crap together. A bushfire fix in the 2018 omnibus spending bill was a step in the right direction, allowing US federal agencies to access disaster funds rather than tapping their normal budgets to deal with the biggest blazes.

But there’s still plenty more work to do, from allocating additional resources toward removing vegetation on bushfire-prone landscapes to setting and enforcing strong building codes to holding those who start fires accountable. People could also try doing something about climate change.

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JACK DANIEL’S BOTTLED-IN-BOND WHISKEY

The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 was enforced so that spirits, such as whiskey, were to be aged and bottled in line with a set of legal regulations, in order to guarantee authenticity and quality at a time where unsafe, randomly blended whiskey was commonly sold. Jack Daniel’s christened their new Tennessee whiskey with the name of that act as a testament to always delivering quality fire water that hits the spot just right.

Jack Daniel’s new whiskey uses a recipe that’s 120 years old, bringing us a unique flavor that has stood the test of time. This bottle serves as a reminder that Jack Daniel’s has always been committed to giving us quality whiskey from the very beginning, even before the Bottled-in-Bond Act was passed. Delivering us whiskey that’s always full of flavor, their Bottled-in-Bond exclusive has an aroma of caramel mixed with mild hints of banana, vanilla and toasted oak flavors. Bottled at 100 proof, this smooth whiskey is only available at airports.

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Michigan Man Starts 'Amish Uber' With Horse And Buggy

An Amish resident of the Colon village in Michigan has launched his own ride-sharing service with his horse and buggy, and he’s calling it “Amish Uber”.

For $US5 ($7), Timothy Hochstedler will escort riders across the Amish-populated area in a carriage pulled by a Morgan horse.

For someone immersed in a culture that is resistant to modern technology, Hochstedler does seem to have an understanding of developments in transportation networks.

“Uber is the cool thing,” Hochestedler told local CBS affiliate WWMT. “You know, every so many years something new comes in. Uber’s hot right now, so we have the Amish Uber buggies, and just go and deliver people to their front door steps.”

But aside from being a transportation service, Hochestedler’s operation has nothing in common with Uber. Riders don’t use phones to hail the buggy — they just wave it down. And Hochestedler isn’t an official Uber driver or employee. He just refers to his enterprise as “Uber”.

Uber did not respond to a request for comment on this use of their branding. But the company does not provide ride-hailing services in Colon. So for now, Hochstedler doesn’t have much competition.

 

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Joël Robuchon: The Chef of the Century

We remember the famed French chef and restaurateur who amassed more than 30 Michelin stars.

Paris might seem a long way to go for mashed potatoes, but in 1985 that plebeian dish is exactly what drew me there as a critic for Time magazine

And not only for mashed potatoes—A.K.A. pommes purée—but to sample the fare that won the chef-proprietor Joël Robuchon’s elegantly glowing 16th arrondissement restaurant, Jamin, three Michelin stars in as many years.  

Considered a step forward from the cuisine dubbed “nouvelle,” Robuchon’s innovative culinary style was most often labeled “moderne” or “courante,” as in trendy, which it indeed became. Long after Jamin closed, and with an international chain of his L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, he amassed more than 30 Michelin stars—more than any other chef on earth, and in 1990 was dubbed one of the Chefs of the Century in the Gault & Millau guide.

Learning of his death from cancer in Geneva on Monday at 73, I look back with a mixture of  joy and sadness as I recall the two days I spent in his restaurant and kitchen thirty-three years ago. There, his elegant inventions were realized by a kitchen staff of 18 while in the dining room 30 servers coddled 45 diners. The whole time his wife, Janine, kept an eye on the checks. A seemingly shy and courtly man (he was even given to kissing a lady’s hand by way of greeting) and with a generally rosy cherubic demeanor, he could become a dogged master as he insisted upon his staff’s exactitude, not only in cooking, but in realizing the colorful pointillist dots of herbs, sauces and vegetables that garnished and enhanced his dishes. As intricate as those jewel-like decorations where, Robuchon’s philosophy was simple: “It is important to respect the integrity of the ingredients by preserving their flavors and aromas,” he told me. Certainly, the recipe for his storied potatoes is simple as it calls for one pound of butter to be whisked into one pound of cooked, peeled and puréed potatoes, with a dash of salt and a drizzle of milk or cream to achieve the airy chiffon texture.

If mashed potatoes was his most iconic triumph, I recall even more sustaining specialties in offerings such as canette rosée, a juicily braised and roasted crisp skinned duckling that he enhanced with an Asian spicing of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, anise and coriander. His version of the classic tête de cochon, presented a silky gelatin that shimmered around bits of tender pork head meat, sprightly with parsley and shallots. But of all the things I sampled, none made as much of an impression as his poulet en vessie, young chicken, its breast skin underlined with slices of black truffles all poached in an aromatic broth held within the vessie—a pig’s bladder. And when the vessie was opened...Oddly, I am embarrassed to say, I critiqued that dish then as needing a little more salt!

One of the surprises in that kitchen was a somewhat removed station where I spied plastic bags filled with food floating in a slow-simmering bath. Boil-in-the-bag at Jamin, I asked? Turns out long before we ever heard the term “sous-vide,” the inventive Robuchon was perfecting prepared portioned meals for first-class passengers on the French railway’s Paris to Strasbourg route.

In later years, I was to sample Robuchon’s even more modern moderne at his first counter restaurant in the lobby of the Pont Royal Hotel where I often stayed, and still later at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, where we had a happy reunion. Being something of a procrastinator, I failed to try his latest L’Atelier across from New York’s Chelsea Market and I doubt that I ever will now, if indeed it even continues.

Having grown up fairly poor and at loose ends in the French city of Poitiers, Robuchon slowly found his way to the kitchen via years of working menial training jobs. When I asked him about a small Lincoln-like figure that appeared on the Jamin menu looking like a wayfarer, he explained it was a compagnon, an itinerant apprentice in the French tradition that he had performed. “I am a compagnon, and will always be one,” he said.

So one can only hope that his next apprenticeship will be at the Pearly Gates Café where he will surely blithe the angels with an innovative Cuisine Céleste.

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2019 POLARIS SLINGSHOT GRAND TOURING AUTOCYCLE

Polaris' three-wheel Slingshot is getting a new top-end model for 2019 — the Grand Touring. The Grand Touring has a complement of new features that make for effortless long trips. The most noticeable change is the Slingshade, a semi-enclosed hardtop with hinged t-tops above the rider and passenger. A 7" glove-compatible touchscreen is included with navigation, backup camera, and a 100-watt audio system by Rockford Fosgate. And to make sure that trip is as comfortable as possible, new softer, quilted seats are inside. The Slingshot might is one of the quirkiest, most smile-inducing vehicles on the road, and now it's ready for cross-country travel.

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Explorers Research a Mysterious Volcanic System in Guatemala

A dream team set out on a mission to study the world’s most active lava-dome complex in order to help people living in a volcano's shadow.

A trio of explorers sit atop Guatemala’s Santa María volcano, looking down on one of the world’s most active lava-dome complexes. They’d climbed 12,375 feet (3,772 meters) of steep terrain, lugging cameras, tripods, tents, and enough water for the entire expedition strapped to their backs. Ready to begin their research on the formation, they’d set up their camp at the volcano’s summit.

Santiaguito, a complex of four lava domes—round mountains made of viscous lava—lies at the base of the volcano. Since 1922, there have been small but nearly continuous volcanic eruptions from the lava domes, expelling jets of gas and ash. In November 2017, Stephanie Grocke, Gabby Salazar, and Ross Donihue—all National Geographic explorers—set out on a month-long expedition with local guides and tourism police to study these active volcanoes, test a new method to monitor lava dome activity, and develop methods for predicting eruptions. (See Why a Volcano Has Erupted Almost Every Hour for 94 Years)

On a mission to collect data about volcanic behavior, the team took a multilayered approach, blending scientific and media tools used by the three explorers: a volcanologist, cartographer, and photographer/filmmaker.

Ross Donihue, Stephanie Grocke, and Gabby Salazar sit at the summit of Santa María volcano, above the Santiaguito lava-dome complex.

“Santiaguito is truly a great natural laboratory for doing this expedition,” said Grocke, a volcanologist. During the expedition, Grocke used cutting-edge photogrammetry techniques. “I was doing ground-based, time-lapse photogrammetry, which involved taking nearly continuous time-lapse images of the surface of the active lava dome,” said Grocke.

To accomplish this, she set three cameras with telephoto lenses and radio receivers on tripods at three different locations around the region. She triggered the cameras remotely using a transmitter so each one would be taken simultaneously from a separate vantage point. “We can bring all those photographs together into a time-lapse, which will be used to help track and quantify the surface motions of the volcano,” said Grocke.

She’ll use those photographs to create a 3D digital elevation model and reconstruct the activity of the volcano. “I did this before with [my academic advisor], but we perfected this method with the expertise from Gabby and Ross,” Grocke said.

“We were camped out on the edge of the volcano with all cameras pointed at the most active lava dome, called El Caliente, which erupts quite frequently. It’s part of the Ring of Fire and is going through an active cycle now,” said Donihue, a cartographer specializing in map-based storytelling. “The Ring of Fire is essentially this area where plates are colliding and creating this subduction zone where one plate is going beneath another and creating these rifts.” 

Volcanologist Stephanie Grocke and cartographer Ross Donihue watch as the plume from an eruption at Caliente lava dome rises above the cloud layer.

Donihue joined the team in Guatemala during a break in his graduate school program. “Before going, I had some concepts in mind, downloaded some base data, and identified the perspective to show the complex as a whole and the anatomy of the volcano.” To add to that information, he took GPS readings and used a drone to collect data and take aerial photographs. “My main duty was to get the maps and infographics done,” Donihue said.

The team hopes to learn how the dome reacts before, during, and after an eruption—information that may be helpful in predicting eruptions. “If we can improve our understanding of future volcanic activities then we can give people more warning,” said Donihue.

Salazar, a photographer and videographer, documented the expedition by taking thousands of photos and recording the group’s activities, but she was also crucial in the scientific data collection. “Her expertise as a photographer helped with the science too. By getting better images, setting up the cameras at night and in the daytime, she helped us collect better data,” said Grocke.

The team gathered the data and images they needed after summiting the volcano twice, but they weren’t finished with their work. They wanted to share what they’d learned with the people living in the shadow of the Santa María volcano, so they created and installed a photo exhibit highlighting life near an active lava dome.

Nearly 1,259,600 people call the 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) around the volcano home, according to a report by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History Global Volcanism Program. “For locals, this volcano has been erupting in their backyard for over ninety years pretty continuously,” said Grocke. “The photos tell the story about what it’s like to live with active volcanoes, plus the benefits and hazards posed by volcanic activity.”

The Caliente lava dome rests at the base of the Santa María volcano.

“Eruptions can happen in Guatemala that can be very devastating and we can’t yet predict or forecast what is going to happen. We were there as a reminder and educational tool, trying to instill a general awareness,” Grocke said.

The photo exhibit was donated to El Instituto Guatemalteco de Turismo. "One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was watching Stephanie answer questions about volcanoes using the photos and infographics—the audience was fascinated by her responses and the visuals helped facilitate their understanding of many complicated concepts, including plate tectonics and volcanic hazards," said Salazar.

Having returned from the expedition, the team has yet another task: analyzing the data, creating a 3D model, and hopefully helping the community predict these eruptions.

“The easy part’s over, and now we need to figure out how to analyze the data. Since the technology is sort of new, so is the data processing that comes after collecting the data. Right now, we are trying to get the most out of the data we have, so we can create 3D elevation models,” says Grocke. The team plans to compare their most recent images and data to information Grocke collected two and four years ago. Through this analysis, they hope to closely monitor the domes’ changes over time. “It’s a really dynamic, evolving system and we are starting to recognize cycles of how the volcano inflates and deflates,” she says. “By speeding up the process through time-lapse photography, we can start to see those changes that are occurring before eruptions.”

The end goal is both scientific and humanitarian. She explains, “We are trying to get a better idea [of] when the next big eruption may happen.”

Grocke climbs to the team's camp at the summit of the Santa María volcano after setting up a photogrammetry radio. The radio is connected to three cameras that will be triggered remotely.

A lizard crawls across a rock in the Santiaguito complex.

Gas and ash rise from Caliente, which can be safely viewed at eye level from Mirador, a pre-Columbian Mayan settlement.

Rick Stanley, one of the expedition team members, hikes through a pine forest near the summit of Santa María.

The team waits for an eruption during early morning monitoring of the complex.

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Aether Voyage Sunglasses

SALT. and Aether have teamed up again for a third eyewear collaboration, an all-new pair of sunglasses called the Voyage, a sleek aviator frame with a slight industrial flair that excels in extreme weather conditions without sacrificing style or design. The limited edition collaboration is built for adventure, every detail considered, the Voyage sunglass fuses superior design with thoughtful craftsmanship. They feature a memory metal in the bridge and top bar that puts almost no pressure on the bridge and brow, allowing for frame flexibility in active conditions, and always returns to its original shape. The Vented side shields are made of industrial strength silicone that blocks peripheral light and allows eyes to breathe. 

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FUENTESECA EXTRA ANJEO 21-YEAR-OLD TEQUILA

One of the oldest tequilas in the world, this 21-year-old expression from Fuenteseca is a legendary spirit. The tequila uses agave from plantings in 1984 that were harvested in late 1993 before distillation. Double copper column stills were used to distill the liquid before they were aged in casks that previously held Canadian whiskey for ten years in an earthen-floored room in Atotonilco el Alto. The tequila then traveled to the cooler climate of Chapingo, Jalisco for the next 11 years of maturation, before being bottled at 87 proof in 2014. HAAS Brothers $900

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ROLLS-ROYCE ENGINE MAINTENANCE ROBOTS

Jet engine maintenance can be expensive and slow, thanks to their closed nature and the need to take the engine off the aircraft completely to perform some tasks. Rolls-Royce's Engine Maintenance Robots envision a future where that's not necessary. Developed in collaboration with the University of Nottingham and Harvard University, they include a set of collaborative Swarm robots that measure just 10mm in diameter and go inside the engine, sending live video back to the mechanics and speeding up inspections. They get inside the engine via snake-like Flare robots that travel through the engine like an endoscope and are helped by permanent periscope robots named Inspect. Finally, a remote boreblending robot would allow a maintenance team to install it inside the engine, then hand over operation to remote specialists who could then perform more complex maintenance tasks.

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Slender Man Trailer

Slender Ma  will be released in Australia, Thursday, 23 August 2018

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The Quack Doctor & the Monkey Gland Cocktail

This classic cocktail was inspired by the popularity of a very suspect medical procedure designed to extend life.

Back in 2004, in his watershed book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh resurrected a number of old drinks. One of the recipes that caught my attention was the pre-Prohibition gem, the Monkey Gland. While its ingredients were fairly staid, the name was unique to say the least. So, I began to look into its history and what I found was stranger than any story I could have imagined.

The cocktail was a cheeky reference to the controversial work of Dr. Sergei Voronoff, a Russian-born surgeon who spent most of his career in France and Switzerland. His raison d’être was centered around the theory that the sex glands of living organisms hold the key to health, vigor, and drive. It only gets weirder. There is no delicate way to say this, he grafted the testicles of monkeys onto his patients. He sums up his theory in his 1920 book, Life: A Study of the Means of Restoring Vital Energy and Prolonging Life:

Quote

“The sex gland stimulates cerebral activity as well as muscular energy and amorous passion. It pours into the stream of the blood a species of vital fluid which restores the energy of all the cells, and spreads happiness, and a feeling of well-being and the plentitude of life throughout our organism…The idea of capturing this marvelous force, of placing it at our service when its natural source begins to dry up as we advance in age, had haunted my mind for a number of years…”

In the early years of his work, he claimed that his patients were enjoying Fountain of Youth-like results from the procedure. Patients flocked to France to meet with this modern-day Ponce de Leon. By 1927, Voronoff had done more than 1,000 procedures, promising, in a story that ran in the Asbury Park Press, “a life span of 125 years and an old age of a few months.”

Dr. Voronoff, popularly known as the rejuvenation expert, is seen at work in his laboratory in Menton on the French Riviera in March, 1929.

Inevitably, as the years rolled on, a chorus of critics grew louder and louder, expressing their skepticism of Voronoff and his work. By the 1940s he and his research were largely discredited.  He died in September of 1951, still believing in his theories and the validity of his life’s work.

Okay, let’s get back to the world of drinks, you look like you could use one right about now. Just like contemporary times, when every spicy news event, scandal or epic feat yields a new cocktail, it was no different back in the day. The last year before the start of Prohibition, 1919, saw reports from Britain that one of London’s bartenders had created a new drink to commemorate Voronoff’s work. A widely-syndicated New York Times story carried the headline, “MONKEY GLAND’ LATEST COCKTAIL,” noting that “The ‘monkey gland’ cocktail has arrived. Orange juice, gin and a dash of absinthe are the principal ingredients.” By 1923, the Monkey Gland was reportedly all the rage in Paris.

How did the drink get from London to Paris? My theory is that the drink was invented in London by legendary bartender Harry MacElhone (who was at Ciro’s in London at the time), and he brought it with him to Paris when he bought the famed New York Bar in 1923, and, of course, renamed it Harry’s New York Bar.

That said, in 1923 the Philadelphia Inquirer, (reprinting a syndicated item in the New York Herald) claimed that “Frank (Meier), the noted concocter behind the bar of the Ritz, has devised a new series of powerful cocktails, favorite of which is known as the ‘monkey gland’ or, as it is popularly called, the ‘McCormick.’” And for those who couldn’t get their hands on the banned absinthe, the story noted that bartenders “have found anise a substitute with a sufficient kick.”

But it wasn’t just the bartenders of the day who riffed off ol’ Sergei’s work, the drink found itself on the silver screen. In the very first Marx Brothers film (The Cocoanuts, made in 1929), you’ll find an Irving Berlin tune called “The Monkey Doodle Doo,” and it a-went a-something like this:

Quote

 

“Let me take you by the hand over to the jungle band.

If you’re too old for dancing, get yourself a monkey gland,

And then let’s go–my little dearie, there’s the Darwin theory,

Telling me and you to do the Monkey Doodle Doo.”

 

I know, hard to believe the same man who wrote the epic “White Christmas” could be capable of such nonsense, but there you are.

Voronoff’s procedures even graced the pages of poetry of the day; here’s an excerpt from E.E. Cummings’ poem “XVIII” from his 1926 collection “is 5”:

Quote

 

“How did the traffic get so jammed?

bedad it is the famous doctor who inserts

monkeyglands in millionaires a cute idea n’est-ce pas?

(whereas, upon the other hand, myself) but let us next demand.”

 

But this being a cocktail column, let’s get back to the libations of the day inspired by Dr. Frankenstein, er, I mean Voronoff. In the 1928 book, 370 Recettes de Cocktails, Jean Lupoiu (a French bartender plying his trade in Saigon, then the capital of the French colony of Indochine) offered the potent and aptly named Voronoff Cocktail. (It was a mix of vodka, rum, Scotch and Zubofka, which I think was a herb-and-bison-grass-infused spirit.)

Dr. Voronoff wasn’t able to forstall his own death and passed away on September 3, 1951, at the ripe old age of 85.  It’s not known if he ever performed his vaunted procedure on himself, or if he ever enjoyed one of the drinks he inspired.

Monkey Gland - INGREDIENTS:

• 1.5 oz London dry gin
• 1.5 oz Fresh orange juice
• 1 tsp Grenadine
• 1 dash Absinthe

Glass: Cocktail or coupe

DIRECTIONS:

Add all the ingredients to a shaker and fill with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass or coupe.

Note: This recipe is from Harry MacElhone’s 1923 book ABC of Mixing Cocktails, which includes the notation, “invented by the author, and deriving its name from Voronoff’s experiments in rejuvenation.”

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How NASA's Parker Solar Probe Will 'Kiss the Sun'

The six-and-a-half-year journey will take it 20 million miles closer to the sun.

Ever since NASA opened for business in 1958, spacecraft have explored our cosmic neighborhood, orbiting Mercury, flying by Venus, studying Saturn for over a decade, even speeding by Pluto just three years ago.

There is however, one place we’ve never explored: The sun.

That’s about to change. At least it was—NASA was scheduled to launch the Parker Solar Probe from Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Saturday morning but two minutes before launch it postponed the mission due to a technical glitch.

It was supposed to begin a six-and-a-half year journey to cozy up to our solar system’s star. And that's going to be huge when the Parker Solar Probe does take off: the spacecraft will be the first to visit the sun, coming within just four million miles of our solar system's star.

“We've been studying the sun for decades, and now we're finally going to go where the action is,” Alex Young, a NASA solar scientist, said in a statement on the mission.

No spacecraft has ever done this before. The closest previous solar mission got within 25 million miles of the sun; the Parker Solar Probe will break that record seven times over. Scientists have wanted to study the sun for over 60 years, but the technology needed to protect a spacecraft that approached the sun so closely never existed.

And while studying the Sun from Earth works in some ways, there are major mysteries about this giant fusion reactor that requires a mission all its own.

The Parker Solar Probe has three main mission objectives while on its stellar journey. First, it will study why the corona (the sun’s atmosphere) is hotter than the surface of the sun. Logic tells us that the further out you get from a heat source the cooler the temperature should be, but that is not what happens at the sun. The average temperature on the surface of the sun is around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit while the corona can be up to three million degrees hotter.

Scientists have no idea why this disparity exists and Parker Solar Probe will hopefully help solve this riddle.

The probe will also attempt to understand the mechanism that forces solar wind to shoot outwards into space at a million miles per hour. Relatedly, it will try to understand why coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, spit high energy particles outwards at (almost) the speed of light.

“Mars probably lost its atmospheric water because of the solar wind over and over hundreds of millions of years.  We now know the solar wind blew away the Martian atmosphere,” Eric Christian, Deputy Principal Investigator for the Parker Solar Probe’s Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun, or ISIS instrument, said. So understanding why the solar wind behaves the way it does can help us piece together mysteries from the entire solar system, not just the stellar neighborhood.

The solar wind was first theorized by the spacecrafts namesake—Eugene Parker. Parker was a physicist who upended the field of heliophysics when he first proposed not just that the solar wind existed, but that the sun’s magnetic field was shaped like a spiral. "There are some theories about why the the solar magnetic field behaves this way,” Christian said—but we can’t know without going to where the action is.

Understanding why and how these phenomena happen are important to understanding not only the cycles of the sun, but also their practical application for us earthlings. High energy particles and large magnetic burps from the sun can be harmful to our satellites. Being able to better predict solar weather can save our electronic resources, allowing us to have warning before a large solar storm is due to impact Earth’s magnetic field. And those particles accelerated out into space are harmful to astronauts as well.

But how does anyone design a spacecraft to study the sun so close? Four million miles from the sun’s surface might sound far, but the heat from that distance is enough to melt lead and aluminum. The Parker Solar Probe will not only study the sun for the first time, but also be the first spacecraft ever built capable of withstanding these scorching temperatures.

The truth is that despite the Parker Solar Probe’s announcement that it will “kiss the sun,” nothing can come close to touching the sun without getting totally destroyed.

Heat shielding strong enough to keep the spacecraft from vaporizing on its mission was only recently developed. Parker Solar Probe’s heat shield, also called the Thermal Protection System is made of from special carbon foam sandwiched between two carbon sheets. While it will be able to withstand temperatures of up to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, it is only eight feet in diameter, 4.5 inches thick and 160 pounds. This white shield will reflect as much sunlight as possible, and will bear the brunt of the heat during the mission.

“The front side of the heat shield will get hot enough to melt aluminum,” Christian told The Daily Beast. In order to protect the fragile instruments on board, the spacecraft and its shield will stay facing the sun during the entirety of its mission.

Remarkably, despite the scorching lead-melting temperatures on the front of the spacecraft, “on the back side, by the time you get to the instruments the heat is down to room temperature.” They spent years developing the heat shield before they even began building the rest of the spacecraft because we knew without the heat shield we didn’t have a mission."

To prepare for these temperatures engineers at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland created special ovens and lamps to get up to solar temperatures. They shook the spacecraft, warmed it up again to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit until they were sure it was ready for its journey to the sun.

The Parker Solar Probe and its carbon sandwich heat shield have already revolutionized the kind of thermal pressure a spacecraft can take, though it has miles to go before it reaches its destination.

After the spacecraft launches on Saturday, it will spend just over six years traveling towards the sun. When the spacecraft departs Earth it will take some of earth’s energy with it, speeding it up. But in order to arrive at the sun, the Parker Space Probe needs to slow down—a lot.

In order to do this it will fly by Venus, where it will give away some of its energy. It will act as a sort of a reverse gravity assist where we can use planets to speed up spacecraft. In this way, the Parker Solar Probe will use Venus’s gravity to slow itself down.

And although the spacecraft will be averaging speeds of 443,000 miles per hour, it will have to fly by Venus seven times over the next six years, sloughing off some of its speed each time in order to slow down enough so that it can fall into orbit around the sun. Each flyby will nudge it closer and closer to the sun, until it reaches its closest approach of four million miles from the surface. While it do-si-do’s around the sun and Venus, it will be collecting data about the solar wind, running engineering check ups in preparation for arrival and teaching us more about the environment of the inner solar system.

A mission to the sun has been waiting to launch for 60 years, but it’s finally going to have a chance to leave the launchpad and the team is thrilled.  “This is a mission that NASA has wanted to do since the very start of NASA,” says Christian. “Now we finally have the technology that we can actually do it. It’s very exciting.”

NASA’s rocket finally blasted off successfully on Sunday night (Australian time) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a seven-year mission to “touch the sun”.

 

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What The Hell Is A Pegaso Z-102?

If you didn't realise there was a small Spanish state-owned company building beautiful V8 convertibles in the early 1950s, well... there was. Now you know. And this video is the perfect introduction to Pegaso, and plain old eye candy for everybody.

This Petrolicious film focuses on Rafael Pueche's 1955 Z-102, a strikingly smooth off-white sport touring car made by Pegaso. Pueche explains that only 86 were built, all different, and that only 68 are thought to still exist today.

Apparently the car was four times as expensive as a Jaguar XK, which made it a tough sell in its day, but since the Pegaso herd is so thin 60 years later I reckon the cars appreciated nicely. As long as you can find a buyer who knows what the heck they're looking at. A Hagerty had an article from a few years ago featuring a fixed-roof Pegaso, and mentioned that it sold at auction for nearly $US800,000 ($1,095,440).

The Z-102 car is really pretty and, as usual, Petrolicious' cinematography is, as always, quite a few cuts above the average YouTube car video.

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Sony Releases a New Launch Trailer for Marvel’s Spider-Man Game

Marvel’s Spider-Man will be released exclusively on PS4 on September 7th

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TAKE A PERSONAL TOUR INSIDE EMIRATES’ AMAZING FIRST-CLASS “ONBOARD LOUNGE”

Our condolences to mountain climbers but Everest can officially cark it [That's Aussie slang right there  ] the Emirates A380’s new onboard lounge is now the coolest place to reside in the stratosphere.

The UAE company’s flagship Airbus was hardly due for a makeover, having received a multi million dollar interior upgrade only last year, but you certainly won’t hear us complaining. And with Business Class tickets going from around $8000 (First Class from $11,000) you’d expect to be sipping your champers in the latest-in-luxury.

Highlights of the lounge include:

Trademark horseshoe shaped bar
More seating space (along the windows on each side)
Design reminiscent of a private yacht cabin
Each seating area has a table and window view
Can accommodate up to 26 passengers comfortably
Light champagne colour scheme, accompanied by a glossy dark wood trim
Soundproof curtains
Mood lighting
55 inch LCD screen
Gourmet canapés and hand-picked wines
Limited edition spirits and signature cocktails

For those of you who love to live vicariously, feast your eyeballs on this new video Emirates released yesterday, for a private, 360-view of what you’re missing. For those who have the money (or budgeting skills) to be capricious, the onboard lounge is open to both business and first class customers, so snagging a business class flight aboard an A380 is the best value way to experience the toe wriggling pleasure that is a delectable whisky at 40,000 feet.

On second thoughts however... It might be cheaper to go to Everest. 

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Samsung Galaxy Home

The Samsung Galaxy Home is the on-demand assistant for those in the Samsung ecosystem. If you are, congrats, because this is the sharpest home assistant yet, as it boasts a flower-shaped body that rests on a sleek tripod base. Galaxy Home features the Bixby assistant that phone owners are no doubt familiar with, so you can fire off your requests with a simple “Hi, Bixby.” The only AI speaker that moves a wave of sound directly toward you when you ask a question, the Galaxy Home channels sound your way no matter where you are in relation to it. The Galaxy Home also functions as a SmartThings hub, so should you use those products you can operate them by voice when you install this virtual assistant. Stay tuned for pricing details and release date.