Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a telephone conversation with the head of SpaceX company Elon Musk. This is reported by the Anadolu agency, citing the Office of Public Relations of Turkey.
It is noted that they discussed cooperation between the public and private companies of Turkey and SpaceX in various fields, especially in the field of space technology.
Earlier, Erdogan reported on plans to send the first Turkish astronaut into space.
In many European countries even after the Christmas break, schools and universities remained fully or partially closed for quarantine. Decisions about the start date and extent of the resumption of full-time classes are made spontaneously — depending on the current infectious situation. Many observers are outraged by the authorities’ current treatment of children and young people.
The way schoolchildren are being treated during this crisis is outrageous, says The Observer:
“If the effects of Covid in most cases do not directly affect children’s health, children will still have to face the worst long-term effects of the pandemic. The results of students being out of school for months, combined with the financial impact of the coronary crisis, will be felt most strongly by children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This will have long-term consequences for their economic, physical, and psychological well-being. Yet the government has done little to prevent such a situation. Instead, the authorities have made it extremely difficult for teachers to adapt to the situation, issuing methodologies with vague content and making difficult decisions at the very last moment. »
The fact that schools are still operating in Hungary is not at all due to the authorities’ concern for children, Nepszava notes:
“When making certain decisions, our authorities only consider what risks they might pose in terms of the popularity of these very authorities in the eyes of the population. … Kindergartens and schools are not closed only because such a move would be met with hostility by parents and employers, that is, business. And then the economy would suffer … Responsible and complex expert decisions are out of the question here: we are dealing with decisions of an exclusively political nature.”
The new restrictions will once again hit children especially hard,” says Handelsblatt:
“While schools and kindergartens are closed, adults have to travel daily in crowded buses, streetcars, and electric trains to work — to office space, where there are also piles of people. In her latest decree, Merkel and the heads of the state governments, addressing the population, have again decided only to make a non-binding request to work remotely if possible. The government notes, however, that it is not always easy to switch to the home office. And that is quite remarkable because when it comes to schools, no one is outraged by the fact that distance learning is a pain in the ass. One can only speculate as to why the authorities are once again throwing the brunt of the crisis on the children. The simplest explanation seems to be that unlike adults, children do not protest at the top of their voices. And they don’t go to the elections either.
This Wednesday, the Irish government intends to decide whether to close schools for quarantine until the end of January. As The Irish Independent notes, this measure is unlikely to be avoided:
“In terms of epidemic protection, schools are not a particular risk area, as Health Minister Norma Foley said during her meeting with Opposition MPs. The only problem is the consequences of the decision not to stop face-to-face schooling and how the disease will migrate from one household to another — with children returning home after school. School employee unions are also increasingly concerned about the safety of their members. It makes no sense to go against them-especially after the work that educators in Ireland have done in the past year.”
Us Director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe said that Russia is not a “responsible space power”. He said this at a meeting of the National Space Council.
According to him, Russia, especially recently, behaved in outer space in a threatening and provocative manner, which created a potentially dangerous situation. Ratcliffe noted that Russia launched a satellite that performed maneuvers near the American government apparatus. In addition, Russia has launched a satellite that, according to US estimates, has the characteristics of a space weapon.
The Director of intelligence stressed that American interests are under threat, as Russia and China continue to develop and deploy destructive weapons that threaten the activities of the United States and its partners in space.
Earlier, the head of the Pentagon, Mark Esper, said that the United States was thinking about creating defensive weapons in space because of the actions of Russia and China. He noted that this is necessary, among other things, to protect non-military vehicles in orbit.
In September, Esper named Russia and China as the main strategic rivals of the United States. According to him, both States are modernizing their armed forces and expanding their capabilities in the space sphere and cyberspace.
The first space tourists who will travel to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Crew Dragon of entrepreneur Elon Musk’s corporation SpaceX have signed a contract. This was reported by the American firm Axiom Space on a Twitter account.
The international crew will consist of three private astronauts and the commander, NASA Explorer Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria. “In other words, the first-ever private crew has been formed to go into orbit,” the entry says. The first flight will take place no earlier than the end of 2021.
In March, Axiom Space agreed with SpaceX to deliver three space tourists to the ISS. It is assumed that the duration of such a tour will be 10 days: two days of flight and eight days of rest at the station.
In July, Space Adventures revealed that the space tourist’s spacewalk will take place in 2023 and will last about 90-100 minutes. This corresponds to one orbit of the ISS around the Earth. Two tourists will go to the ISS on the Soyuz MS spacecraft. One of them, together with a professional Russian cosmonaut, will enter open space from the Russian segment of the ISS.
It became known that already at the beginning of November, namely on the 2nd, an asteroid may fall to Earth. This forecast was voiced by the American astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, noting that the dimensions of the celestial body correspond to the refrigerator.
“Asteroid 2018VP1, a space rock the size of a refrigerator, is rushing towards us at a speed of more than 25 thousand miles per hour,” the scientist shared, adding that the estimated date of the asteroid’s collision with Earth is November 2.
At the same time, the celestial body, according to the scientist, will not harm the planet, even if it falls on it, since its size, as mentioned earlier, is small. It is known that the asteroid 2018 VP1 belongs to the Apollo group. Space objects of this group are characterized by a flight path that crosses the earth’s orbit.
