What's The Difference Between A Rocket And A Space Shuttle?

With SpaceX now launching its reusable Falcon 9 rocket up to several times a week, the U.S. company has quickly become a giant of global spaceflight.

This is a far cry from the days of America's Space Shuttle, which launched an average of 4.5 times a year during its lifetime between 1981 and 2011. People sometimes use the terms "rocket" and "Space Shuttle" interchangeably, but there's an important difference between the two.

A rocket is the launch vehicle that carries a crew or payload to space, while the Space Shuttle was a specific reusable orbiter that used rockets to get to orbit before returning to land like an airplane. Put simply, the rocket is the delivery system, while the Space Shuttle is the vehicle riding on it.

If you watch a Space Shuttle launch, you can clearly see its two side rockets powering the vehicle to space. After a couple of minutes, when the Space Shuttle is well on its way, these two side boosters detach and fall into the ocean before being recovered for reuse.

Meanwhile, the Space Shuttle's three integrated rocket engines continue to propel the vehicle into orbit. Similarly, a Falcon 9 launch involves the first-stage rocket booster powering the upper stage, including the crew or payload, toward space. Like the Space Shuttle, the booster detaches from the rest of the vehicle, but instead of being recovered from the ocean, it lands upright back on Earth.

Modern rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9 comprise a first stage and an upper stage supporting the crew capsule or payload, which sits atop the vehicle. The Space Shuttle had three main components: two side rocket boosters that fell away and were later recovered, an external fuel tank that was discarded, and the plane-like section for the crew. The shuttle launched in a similar way to conventional rockets, using rocket engines to thrust upward to escape Earth's gravity.

But differences emerge once a mission starts. The shuttle, for example, released its two rocket boosters and fuel tank before reaching orbit, whereas Falcon 9's first stage returns to Earth for reuse, and the upper stage delivers the crew capsule to orbit before separating from it.

Coming home, the shuttle reentered Earth's atmosphere at high speed, with the underside heat shield resisting the extreme temperatures. It then glided like a plane toward its destination, landing on a runway before deploying brakes and a parachute system to bring it to a stop.

After 30 years of operations, the U.S space agency's final Space Shuttle mission took place in 2011. Becoming one of NASA's most expensive space projects ever, it found the system too costly to maintain. Safety was also an ongoing concern following two tragic accidents — Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 — in which all of the crew members perished.

To reduce spending, NASA encouraged private firms to start making commercial rockets to carry crews to orbit in separate capsules — similar to how the space agency sent astronauts to orbit in the Gemini and Apollo programs in the 1960s and 70s.

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Science: There Are Only Two Sexes

Are there only two sexes? A generation ago, this might have seemed like a silly question. But given the rise of gender theory, transgenderism, intersexuality, and all of their related phenomena, the question now appears to be both complex and pressing.

What differentiates human males from human females? Is it the number of sex chromosomes? Is it the possession of the appropriate sex organs? Is it the amount of testosterone or estrogen? The difficulty is that none of these standards always works: some individuals are born with extra chromosomes, such as XXYY or XYY. Some individuals are born with both pairs of sex organs. Some females have higher testosterone levels than many men.

Any single instance of an outlier counts as a serious objection to the binary sex distinction. Individual human beings are by nature either male or female just as by nature a number is either odd or even.

If one encountered even one number that is neither odd nor even, then this strange number would be enough to show that numbers are not "by nature either odd or even." If one encountered even one triangle that was four-sided, this would be enough to show that triangles are not "by nature three-sided." Similarly, if one encountered even one individual who did not fit the binary sex norm, then this single counterexample would be enough to disprove the traditional sex distinction.

Luckily, there are no non-odd-nor-even numbers. Nor are there no four-sided triangles, because four-sided triangles are a contradiction in terms. But is an intersex human being a contradiction in terms?

Biologically, intersex individuals seem to exist, as do people with other non-binary sex conditions. Hermaphrodites have male and female sexual organs. Some individuals with male organs have XX chromosomes. Some genetically male individuals have incomplete female sexual organs. What non-arbitrary but universal standard can there possibly be for determining sex?

Our sex—male or female—is determined by our basic capacity to engage in sexually reproductive acts. Consider the following thought experiment by Christopher Martin:

"Suppose we met a race of creatures—fairly clearly non-rational animals—that was very different from us: on Mars, say. And the question arises: are these creatures sexed? and if so, can we distinguish male and female? We need to think now how we would go about finding out these answers. We would not do it by investigating their psyches, nor even merely by just looking at (or cutting up) individuals. We would try to find out how they reproduced and what was the role of the different organs of the different individuals involved in reproduction. Thus, sex is a biological and teleological notion. Anything else which is called sexual is so called ultimately because it has some relation to this process, to these organs."

If we observe that the members of a species reproduce asexually, then we rightly conclude that neither male nor female exist in that species. But if we observe that two are required for reproduction to occur, we rightly conclude that the species reproduces sexually by the union of the two.

We name these two types differently — as male and female — based upon the roles they play in reproduction. Such is why Aquinas held to a binary account of sex: "The distinction of the sexes is ordained in animals to the generation which occurs through coitus." If human beings had no ordering to reproduction, or no sexual reproduction occurred, not only would one have no concept of gender, there would be no biological sex in human beings.

There, thus, can only be two biological sexes for human beings. In syllogistic form:

1. Biological sex is defined in relation to the roles played in sexual reproduction.
2. Sexual reproduction involves only two, namely, male and female.
3. Thus, biological sex is only two, namely, male or female.

Defects occur in nature, but defects imply a norm from which they deflect. A castrated man is still a male; a female with a mastectomy is still a female. The fact that one is born with ambiguous genitalia does not do away with one’s true sex. That it is hard to identify someone as male or female does not mean one is neither. Identical twins are hard to distinguish, but they are still distinct persons. Epistemological problems need not entail ontological ones.

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Ceasefire With Iran Is Likely, But Nuclear Deal Needs More Time

There is a possible agreement to end the war between the United States and Iran and it was announced last 14 June by U.S. President Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The deal includes stopping military actions, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and eventually lifting U.S. restrictions on Iranian ports. Still, Iran’s nuclear program, a key issue, has not been settled and will be discussed in future talks.

Even with this diplomatic progress, negotiators have delayed decisions about Iran’s nuclear activities.

According to Iranian officials, discussions during the ceasefire period will focus on sanctions relief and the future of Tehran’s nuclear program. Sources indicate that the issue remains among the most difficult issues facing both sides.

The dispute goes back years. During Trump’s first term, the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated under President Obama. After that, Iran increased its uranium enrichment and built up more than 400 kilograms (about 900 pounds) of uranium close to weapons-grade.

Former Biden administration State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller criticized the framework, saying: "We have no assurances the nuclear program will ever be addressed, but Iran has shown the world it can take the global economy hostage and get something from the U.S. in return."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham welcomed the ceasefire but stressed that future nuclear talks will be watched closely. "Under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review and a vote,” he said. “Congratulations to all on getting us to this point."

As negotiators prepare for formal talks in Switzerland, the focus is now on whether the ceasefire will last and if both sides can agree on Iran’s nuclear future.

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NASA Debunks Space Mysteries

Mankind is still a long way off from colonizing other planets, but that hasn't stopped our quest to learn more about what mysteries lay beyond the boundaries of planet Earth.

Despite our progress since the Space Age began, including the successful landing of astronauts on the moon in 1969, there's still so much we don't know about the universe. Little by little, though, we're starting to learn more about outer space as our technology advances, and scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have done much to highlight new discoveries and dispel age-old fallacies.

Since humans first started looking to the sky, there have been no shortage of misconceptions about space, and here are three examples of absurd space myths that NASA has helped debunk. As for our solar system's biggest debate, though, it seems there's growing momentum to make Pluto a planet again.

The Sun Is Burning The sun is hot — that is a fact. But why is it hot? If you're a connoisseur of 1960s rock 'n' roll, you're surely familiar with the Tommy James and the Shondells song, "Ball of Fire," which suggests that the sun is, in fact, a ball of fire in the sky. Alas, Tommy James might be one of the greatest recording artists of all time, but a scientist he is not.

The solar photosphere has ribbons of fire that shoot out from the sun's gaseous surface, but the sun itself isn't a ball of fire – it's a ball of gas fueled by nuclear fusion. Its heat comes not from flames, but from radiation, which is why you should never touch a meteorite with your bare hands. The "flaming tongues of fire" are a side-effect of the sun's heat interacting with the photosphere, and NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) showed as much during its measurements of the temperature levels of the various parts of the sun's atmosphere.

The Great Wall of China Can Be Seen From Space The legend goes that you can see the Great Wall of China from space. Naturally, China loves this story, since it posits the notion that this structure, which dates back about 2,700 years, could change the visage of the planet. This claim goes back hundreds of years — long before humans were able to visit outer space to make such a claim. Now that various nations of Earth have the technology, we finally have the data to verify or disprove the idea that the Great Wall can be seen from outer space.

During the Apollo 12 mission, NASA pilot Alan Bean looked, but could not find the Great Wall, or any other artificial structure. He said, "No man-made object is visible at this scale." Leroy Chiao, NASA commander on the International Space Station, took a photo, purportedly of the Wall, but it's far from definitive proof.

In truth, it takes extremely high-powered cameras to capture a photo where the Great Wall is clearly visible from space. Even from the ISS, which is far closer to the Earth than the moon is, the naked eye simply isn't capable of spotting the Great Wall of China unaided.

Death Is Imminent When Exposed To Space Much like the need to dodge asteroids, Hollywood would also have us believe that we would suffer an instant death if exposed to outer space without protection. The film "Mission to Mars" is one such example where (spoiler alert!) Tim Robbins' character removes his helmet in space, instantly freezing due to the harsh cold of the vacuum of space and preventing his wife from putting herself in danger in a futile attempt to rescue him. While not as sudden, Peter Quill nearly dies in "Guardians of the Galaxy" after just seconds of exposure to space.

In reality, neither scenario shows what would actually happen, and NASA proved it. In the vacuum of space, there aren't enough atoms to transfer one's body heat to that vast emptiness. Simply put, you'd retain your heat much longer than you would on, say, an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean.

That's not to say there's no danger in space. The lack of oxygen and the extremely low pressure would be detrimental to one's health for extended periods. In 1966, NASA technician named Jim LeBlanc was testing a prototype spacesuit in a vacuum chamber when he suffered accidental decompression. It took 87 seconds for the room to repressurize, and LeBlanc suffered no greater injury than an earache. While rapid changes in pressure can be dangerous and even fatal, it's not the instant death like many believe.

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Expect A Much Stronger El Niño This Year

The FIFA World Cup matches began this week, but that is not the only thing with global implications in recent days. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño has formed.

"El Niño has developed in the tropical Pacific," wrote a NOAA press release earlier this week announcing an El Nino Advisory. "El Niño, the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is predicted to intensify to a moderate or strong level this fall," the notice continued.

NOAA forecasters and experts around the world say there is a 63 percent chance that the sea surface temperatures in the eastern Central Pacific will exceed 2 degrees Celsius above the neutral threshold." For those of you who do not speak Celsius, that is 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. "If this threshold is surpassed, NOAA considers the event a "very strong" El Niño," the press release stated.

That could be conservative. While some climate experts weeks ago cautioned that it was too early to be conclusive about the strength of this event, all signs indicate that the "hype" may be warranted. El Niño is a part of a natural climate oscillation called ENSO. If temperatures are nearly 1.0 degree Fahrenheit above average or greater for consecutive months, then El Niño or the warm phase is declared.

La Niña is the cool phase. The ENSO cycle is related to a coupled relationship between winds, temperature, and pressure in the Pacific Ocean. The global models and indices used to diagnose and predict ENSO phases rely on an array of satellite, ocean, and atmospheric observations. Scientists have noted that global ocean observing systems play an important role in monitoring El Niño, which has significant impacts on agriculture, national security, energy, and other societal activities.

Both phases have an impact on global weather patterns. That's the "so what?" According to NOAA typical impacts for the U.S. include:

• Less active hurricane season in the Atlantic basin due to stronger upper-level winds, but enhanced storm development in the central and eastern Pacific basins.
• Stormy conditions in the southern tier of the country.
• Increase likelihood of high tide flooding and harmful algal blooms, particularly the West Coast.

"Dry regions of Peru, Chile, Mexico, and the southwestern United States are often deluged with rain and snow, and barren deserts have been known to explode in flowers," according to NASA's website. "Wetter regions of the Brazilian Amazon and the northeastern United States often plunge into months-long droughts," it continued. Agricultural, fishing, and other ecosystem services can be disrupted by strong events.

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