Short Takes – 4-24-23

The Supreme Court is about to hear a landmark online threats case. TheVerge.com article. Pull quote: “But in part because of the internet’s ubiquity and its norms of communication, the case has broad implications that make many civil liberties advocates uneasy. The case has drawn supporting briefs from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among others. They argue that threats should require a level of intent — not rely on determining whether the message is “objectively” threatening.”

SpaceX’s Starship Kicked Up a Dust Cloud, Leaving Texans With a Mess. NYTimes.com article. Pull quote: “Mr. Roesch, who runs the environmental policy blog ESG Hound, said he believed the dust and debris came largely from a giant crater formed during the rocket’s liftoff. Normally, major launch sites are engineered with a trench or water system that helps to divert the rocket’s flame away from the ground and to dampen the impact, he said.”

China’s Space Dream Is a Legal Nightmare. ForeignPolicy.com opinion piece. China is building launch facilities in Djibouti, which is not a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty. Pull quote: “As a party to most of the major space-relevant international legal instruments, China must abide by certain limitations on its behavior. For example, it is barred from stationing nuclear weapons in space, may not claim sovereignty over celestial bodies like the Moon, and must provide aid to astronauts in distress, among many other obligations. China fulfils these obligations through domestic regulation of private sector space entities, but it is not clear how these rules would apply to or be enforced on Chinese commercial operators overseas. Djibouti’s lack of experience with any form of space law does little to raise hopes for effective oversight of activities originating from its soil.”

China discovers strange glass beads on moon that may contain billions of tons of water. LiveScience.com article. Pull quote: “The tiny glass spherules, collected in lunar soil samples and brought to Earth by China's Chang'e-5 mission in December 2020, could be so abundant that they store up to 330 billion tons (300 billion metric tons) of water across the moon's surface, the new analysis, published March 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience(opens in new tab), shows.” How many tons of soil would have to be processed to obtain one ton of water?