To the Stars with Data: February 20 2022
Circularity and its impact on climate change, how simulations teach AIs to drive, an announcement of the first civilian spacewalk, and more
Hello Datanauts!
Though those of you in the United States already know, it was Presidents’ Day today! I like to take a bit of a break on three-day weekends, so this is coming to you on Monday instead of Sunday. Regardless, I packed some pretty great stuff in this issue for you.
Now, let’s go to the stars with data!
Thought-Provoking Data Viz
🔁 2021 Circularity Gap Report released
Quick hits. Recently, the 2021 Circularity Gap Report was released and it’s full of good information and beautiful, compelling data visualizations. According to the report, our economy is at 8.6% circularity. If we can increase the circularity of our economy by another 8.4% (alongside other climate mitigation efforts), we are on a path to “well below” 2.0C degrees of warming by 2032 (according to the Climate Action Tracker, we are currently at 1.2C degrees of warming). If you want to skip the scroll-based storytelling on the website, here’s a direct link to the report.
Digging deeper. In order to understand the report, it’s important to understand a few concepts. First, “circularity”: this simply means that a product’s end-of-life of considered during its planning (e.g. instead of just “throw it in the trash” or “it’s recyclable!” you might find “return it to the manufacturer for reuse in future products”). The circularity gap, the report’s namesake, is the gap between where we are now—8.6%—and where we need to be—17%—to live in a world without rampant climate change. Unfortunately, we are on a downward trend. The 2018 Circularity Gap report showed a circularity of 9.1%, 0.5% higher than in 2020/2021.
Earth News
🤖 This virtual world is a driving school for AI (possible paywall)
Quick hits. Waabi, an autonomous vehicle (AV) startup, is taking a bit of a different approach than other AV startups to train their vehicles: using nothing but simulations until the vehicles are almost ready for driving on roads in the real world. Interestingly, the simulated environments are controlled by dueling AIs; one tries to drive safely and the other tries to throw obstacles in the others’ path (literally and figuratively). Simulated environments are becoming crucial for AV startups as they allow companies to train their AIs much faster than in real-world environments. Just think: it’s nearly impossible to find something that would only happen once in a lifetime in the real world to train an AI while it’s super easy to do so in a simulation.
Digging deeper. Though this article isn’t news, I think it provides some great context on autonomous vehicles, how they’re trained, and how and why simulations are used in their training. Notably, AIs can’t train in just simulations. This is because they have a tendency to take advantage of quirks in the simulation itself. If not trained in the real world, the AIs might make some unthinkably irrational decisions. Though they might make sense in a simulation, they would endanger lives in the real world.
Other Earth News
🩸 For the first time, researchers converted lungs to a universal blood type. To do this, the researchers treated lungs containing Type A blood with a pair of enzymes that remove antigens that distinguish red blood cells. Within 4 hours, the enzymes removed 97% of the antigens!
🍃 New York state broke ground on their new 130MW offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Island. This is big news because it’s one of the first wind farm projects of the many to come for the United States. Additionally, this is an important milestone for New York state in its goal for its grid to become carbon-neutral by 2040.
Space News
👩🚀 SpaceX announces Polaris Program, first spacewalk
Quick hits. SpaceX recently announced the Polaris Program, which includes SpaceX’s first spacewalk. (Spacewalk, or Extravehicular Activity (EVA), simply means activity outside a spacecraft while in space.) The program will include 3 separate crewed missions, the first of which will take place at the end of 2022. The third will hopefully take place on Starship, SpaceX’s game-changing rocket. The mission will be led by Jared Isaacman, who also led the most recent Inspiration4 mission in September 2021.
Digging deeper. The details of this announcement are unsurprising in a number of ways. Chief among them is the continued trend towards private/commercial spaceflight. We can expect to see this trend grow even more pronounced as SpaceX and others continue their unabashed push for getting humans in space / on other planetary bodies. Additionally, it presents a glitzy goal for Starship, which still has a ways to go before it’s ready for civilian passengers (see updates below in “Other space news”). What’s more exciting than a flashy show for a spaceship that will literally change the space game if it’s successful?
Other space news
🚀 Elon Musk provides updates on Starship, SpaceX’s game-changing rocket. If you don’t feel like watching the entire 1.5-hour-long video, here’s a summary. Here’s a hype video if you want to feel awed.
🎂 Perseverance celebrates its first year anniversary on Mars and Ingenuity takes its 19th flight. If you ever feel alone and want a 1-ton companion, here’s a Perseverance tracker. Here’s a video from last year to commemorate the occasion. Is it bad that I teared up a bit while watching? 😅
✈ Virgin Galactic is now selling ticket reservations for trips on its spaceplane for $450,000. Oh, and don’t forget the $150,000 down payment. I’ll wait for the price to come down in a decade or two, thank you very much.
Future-Thinking Companies
✈ Destinus. Based in Switzerland, they make liquid hydrogen-powered planes that glide at 60km in the air and reach speeds of up to Mach 15. They raised $29m Seed in Feb 2022.
💨Re-Wind. Based in Ireland, they repurpose wind turbine blades for infrastructure projects. Here’s a thought-provoking article about them on Grist.