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Plan to stop all respiratory viruses at once + Space Force prods military to innovate

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The Space Force is starting to lean into innovative launch concepts (design)
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/...-concepts/

EXCERPTS: . . . Using a refurbished booster [...] did save the Space Force money. ... However, the most important factor, according to the chief of the US Space Force, is tapping into American innovation.

“While innovation and speed inevitably come with risk, the biggest threat to our success is moving too slowly and refusing to change,” said Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations, in the release. “This launch proves the Space Force will smartly innovate to grow our national advantage in a contested space environment.”

[...] This is not the first time SpaceX has pushed the US military to adopt innovation. ... Additionally, the military has expressed an interest in SpaceX's "Starship" program that seeks to develop a fully reusable, super-heavy lift rocket. As part of a new "Rocket Cargo" program," the Air Force seeks to leverage emerging commercial rocket capabilities to launch cargo from one location and land elsewhere on Earth.

[...] The US military has a well-earned reputation for a stodgy approach to high-risk activities, like spaceflight. But it seems like one benefit of creating the US Space Force has been a prodding to think about space activities in a new way and a willingness to adapt to once-radical ideas... (MORE - missing details)


The plan to stop every respiratory virus at once (engineering, architecture)
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...ir/620000/

EXCERPTS: . . . The pandemic has already prompted, in some schools and workplaces, ad hoc fixes for indoor air [...] Modern buildings have sophisticated ventilation systems to keep their temperatures comfortable and their smells pleasant—why not use these systems to keep indoor air free of viruses too?

Indeed, hospitals and laboratories already have HVAC systems designed to minimize the spread of pathogens. No one I spoke with thought an average school or office building has to be as tightly controlled as a biocontainment facility, but if not, then we need a new and different set of minimum standards. [...] Changing the building codes, Bahnfleth said, is what will actually get buildings to change their ventilation systems.

The challenge ahead is cost. Piping more outdoor air into a building or adding air filters both require more energy and money to run the HVAC system. (Outdoor air needs to be cooled, heated, humidified, or dehumidified based on the system; adding filters is less energy intensive but it could still require more powerful fans to push the air through.) For decades, engineers have focused on making buildings more energy efficient, and it’s “hard to find a lot of professionals who are really pushing indoor air quality,” Bahnfleth said. He has been helping set COVID-19 ventilation guidelines as chair of the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force. The pushback based on energy usage, he said, was immediate. In addition to energy costs, retrofitting existing buildings might require significant modifications. For example, if you add air filters but your fans aren’t powerful enough, you’re on the hook for replacing the fans too.

The question boils down to: How much disease are we willing to tolerate before we act? When London built its sewage system, its cholera outbreaks were killing thousands of people. What finally spurred Parliament to act was the stench coming off the River Thames during the Great Stink of 1858. At the time, Victorians believed that foul air caused disease, and this was an emergency. (They were wrong about exactly how cholera was spreading from the river—it was through contaminated water—but they had ironically stumbled upon the right solution.)

COVID-19 does not kill as high a proportion of its victims as cholera did in the 19th century. But it has claimed well over 600,000 lives in the U.S. Even a typical flu season kills 12,000 to 61,000 people every year. Are these emergencies? If so, what would it take for us, collectively, to treat them as such? The pandemic has made clear that Americans do not agree on how far they are willing to go to suppress the coronavirus. If we can’t get people to accept vaccines and wear masks in a pandemic, how do we get the money and the will to rehaul all our ventilation systems?...

[...] In their Science editorial, Morawska and her co-authors wrote, “While the scale of the changes required is enormous, this is not beyond the capabilities of our society, as has been shown in relation to food and waterborne disease, which have largely been controlled and monitored.” Morawska is optimistic, which perhaps you have to be to embark on this endeavor. The changes might take too long to matter for this current pandemic, but there are other viruses that spread through the air, and there will be more pandemics. “My whole drive is to do something for the future,” she told me.

How much actually changes “depends on the momentum created now,” she said. She pointed out that the vaccines looked like they were going to quickly end the pandemic—but then they didn’t, as the Delta variant complicated things. The longer this pandemic drags on, the steeper the cost of taking indoor air for granted... (MORE - missing details)
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