This undated handout photo provided by SpaceX shows the DragonLab in orbit.
This undated handout photo provided by SpaceX shows the DragonLab in orbit.
This undated handout photo provided by SpaceX shows the DragonLab in orbit.
This undated handout photo provided by SpaceX shows the DragonLab in orbit.

Pioneers of the final frontier


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The world was captivated by the battle between the US and Russia to put the first people into orbit and beyond, and the new space race is no less competitive, being privately funded and profit driven. Ivan Gale looks to the stars

There is a new space race going on but this time the battle lines are drawn between some of the richest entrepreneurs on the planet rather than the world's superpowers.

While Virgin Galactic is ahead of the field with its first space tourism flights expected in late next year or early 2012, other companies are conducting their own testing with the goal of commercial, "manned missions".

XCOR Aerospace of California has designed its Lynx rocket-powered craft to reach an altitude of 110km, while Armadillo Aerospace of Texas is also working on a spacecraft to briefly escape the earth's gravitational pull and is considering the feasibility of trips to the moon.

"Virgin Galactic is probably ahead of the competition but many people are working diligently and are also very close to having solutions," said Anousheh Ansari, who became the first woman to pay her way into space in 2006 when she flew with the Russian space programme.

The first space race between the US and the USSR gripped the world between 1957 and 1975 under the backdrop of the Cold War.

This time many projects are backed by billionaires whose fortunes were amassed in the IT boom of the past two decades, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Elon Musk of Paypal, Sergey Brin of Google, John Carmack of id Software and Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, an entrepreneur who defies categorisation. Microsoft's Paul Allen was also involved with the development of Sir Richard's Virgin Galactic spacecraft.

"Tech entrepreneurs are very much in love with space," says Ms Ansari, a key patron of the X Prize Foundation, the not-for-profit organisation that runs public competitions to encourage technological development in the private space flight industry. Ms Ansari, an Iranian-American, in 2000 sold a telecommunications company she co-founded for US$550 million (Dh2.02 billion), paving the way for her 11 days orbiting the earth on the International Space Station, for which she paid $20m.

These companies are all vying for supremacy in a market estimated to be worth billions of dollars in areas such as space tourism, and providing government space agencies with research and cargo services.

Virgin Galactic and other commercial companies have set their sights initially on sub-orbital flights, which reach altitudes of 100km and achieve several minutes of weightlessness.

Some designs are two-stage flights, such as Virgin Galactic in which a mother ship carries the space module to heights of 15km before releasing it as a second rocket fires it into space. Other designs are one-stage, with a single spacecraft designed to carry out a vertical take-off and landing.

The second wave of flights would orbit the earth in a similar way to the decades-old US space shuttle and Russia's Soyuz programmes. This would open the way for commercial space stations. Far distant goals include holiday trips to the moon and, one day, Mars.

Pioneering new forms of space travel is costly, of course. In 2004, Mojave Aerospace Ventures won the Ansari X Prize by reaching 100km in altitude twice in a two-week period. But in winning the $10m prize it spent an estimated $25m in developing the craft.

High costs and undefined market size are, perhaps, the main reasons that today's field of competitors largely excludes the big US aerospace companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

"[Space] is not a cheap investment," says Ms Ansari. "It requires investors with a longer vision for the return." But through the X Prize Foundation, human competitive spirit is pushing the boundaries of what is possible, organisers say, in a process that will gradually lower flight costs and increase safety.

Those objectives are behind the $30m Google Lunar X PRIZE for the first team to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon.

"We like the approach of using competition to stimulate the private sector to achieve important goals more quickly and affordably," says Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder.

An altogether different market stimulant is provided by the US government, which has decided to hire private companies to carry out much of its space-related work.

Last month, politicians gave the green light for the NASA space agency to authorise $1.3bn for the commercial transport of astronauts to the international space station, starting as early as 2015.

Yet other enticements include the possibility of "growing" materials in orbit more efficiently and quickly than on Earth, due to the lack of gravity.

Research has already begun on growing crystals such as diamonds in orbit, and even the cultivation of human tissue has been mooted.

In addition, orbiting space capsules may one day be able to harness the sun's energy through solar receptors and turn it into electricity to be beamed to Earth for distribution, without any constraining factors such as cloud cover or night darkness.

"Because you don't have the force of gravity, there are lots of possibilities," says Ms Ansari. "It's endless."

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SERIES INFO

Cricket World Cup League Two
Nepal, Oman, United States tri-series
Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu
 
Fixtures
Wednesday February 5, Oman v Nepal
Thursday, February 6, Oman v United States
Saturday, February 8, United States v Nepal
Sunday, February 9, Oman v Nepal
Tuesday, February 11, Oman v United States
Wednesday, February 12, United States v Nepal

Table
The top three sides advance to the 2022 World Cup Qualifier.
The bottom four sides are relegated to the 2022 World Cup playoff

 1 United States 8 6 2 0 0 12 0.412
2 Scotland 8 4 3 0 1 9 0.139
3 Namibia 7 4 3 0 0 8 0.008
4 Oman 6 4 2 0 0 8 -0.139
5 UAE 7 3 3 0 1 7 -0.004
6 Nepal 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
7 PNG 8 0 8 0 0 0 -0.458

Fines for littering

In Dubai:

Dh200 for littering or spitting in the Dubai Metro

Dh500 for throwing cigarette butts or chewing gum on the floor, or littering from a vehicle. 
Dh1,000 for littering on a beach, spitting in public places, throwing a cigarette butt from a vehicle

In Sharjah and other emirates
Dh500 for littering - including cigarette butts and chewing gum - in public places and beaches in Sharjah
Dh2,000 for littering in Sharjah deserts
Dh500 for littering from a vehicle in Ras Al Khaimah
Dh1,000 for littering from a car in Abu Dhabi
Dh1,000 to Dh100,000 for dumping waste in residential or public areas in Al Ain
Dh10,000 for littering at Ajman's beaches 

PREMIER LEAGUE FIXTURES

Tuesday (UAE kick-off times)

Leicester City v Brighton (9pm)

Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United (11.15pm)

Wednesday

Manchester United v Sheffield United (9pm)

Newcastle United v Aston Villa (9pm)

Norwich City v Everton (9pm)

Wolves v Bournemouth (9pm)

Liverpool v Crystal Palace (11.15pm)

Thursday

Burnley v Watford (9pm)

Southampton v Arsenal (9pm)

Chelsea v Manchester City (11.15pm)

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Company Profile

Name: JustClean

Based: Kuwait with offices in other GCC countries

Launch year: 2016

Number of employees: 130

Sector: online laundry service

Funding: $12.9m from Kuwait-based Faith Capital Holding

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
About Karol Nawrocki

• Supports military aid for Ukraine, unlike other eurosceptic leaders, but he will oppose its membership in western alliances.

• A nationalist, his campaign slogan was Poland First. "Let's help others, but let's take care of our own citizens first," he said on social media in April.

• Cultivates tough-guy image, posting videos of himself at shooting ranges and in boxing rings.

• Met Donald Trump at the White House and received his backing.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN GAZA

Starring: Nader Abd Alhay, Majd Eid, Ramzi Maqdisi

Directors: Tarzan and Arab Nasser

Rating: 4.5/5

The specs: 2019 Haval H6

Price, base: Dh69,900

Engine: 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder

Transmission: Seven-speed automatic

Power: 197hp @ 5,500rpm

Torque: 315Nm @ 2,000rpm

Fuel economy, combined: 7.0L / 100km

Most sought after workplace benefits in the UAE
  • Flexible work arrangements
  • Pension support
  • Mental well-being assistance
  • Insurance coverage for optical, dental, alternative medicine, cancer screening
  • Financial well-being incentives 
The burning issue

The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE. 

Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on

Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins

Read part two: how climate change drove the race for an alternative 

The specs
 
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
HIV on the rise in the region

A 2019 United Nations special analysis on Aids reveals 37 per cent of new HIV infections in the Mena region are from people injecting drugs.

New HIV infections have also risen by 29 per cent in western Europe and Asia, and by 7 per cent in Latin America, but declined elsewhere.

Egypt has shown the highest increase in recorded cases of HIV since 2010, up by 196 per cent.

Access to HIV testing, treatment and care in the region is well below the global average.  

Few statistics have been published on the number of cases in the UAE, although a UNAIDS report said 1.5 per cent of the prison population has the virus.

The specs

Engine: 1.5-litre turbo

Power: 181hp

Torque: 230Nm

Transmission: 6-speed automatic

Starting price: Dh79,000

On sale: Now

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Diriyah%20project%20at%20a%20glance
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Uefa Nations League: How it works

The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.

The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.

Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.