Edwin Kite

Mars terraforming research in Geophysical Research Letters: Atmospheric Dynamics of IR-Active Particles Released From Mars' Surface

Below is a note I shared with the NASA workforce outlining today’s Ignition event and how America will deliver the golden age of space exploration. 🧵

Getting fusion to work is one of the hardest science and engineering problems Getting it cheap enough to transform the primary energy supply civilization runs on is what ultimately matters

The @1cfenergy team is building open-source cost models across fusion pathways and publishing everything, including negative results. Here's the introduction to the initiative: 1cfe.substack.com/p/introducing-…

Built a space mirror, launching soon

Modelling the long-term impacts of artificial warming on the Martian water cycle and surface ice distribution Ashwin S. Braude, Edwin S. Kite, Mark I. Richardson, … arxiv.org/abs/2603.01539 [𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚘-𝚙𝚑.𝙴𝙿 𝚙𝚑𝚢𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜.𝚊𝚘-𝚙𝚑 𝚙𝚑𝚢𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜.𝚐𝚎𝚘-𝚙𝚑]

Mirrors orbiting Mars could warm its south pole and help thicken the atmosphere. If built as solar-sail spacecraft, they could fly themselves there at a fraction of today’s launch costs. Check out these preliminary results from one of Astera's Residency teams.

Terraforming Mars: Mass, Forcing, and Industrial Throughput Constraints Slava G. Turyshev arxiv.org/abs/2603.00402 [𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚘-𝚙𝚑.𝙴𝙿 𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚘-𝚙𝚑.𝙸𝙼]

@mckbrando This is a legal question. The relevant experts are national security law professors. They agree that OpenAI's contract allows the DOD to do whatever it wants. Why do companies composed of decent people behave dishonorably? One answer is Jackall's book (tiny.cc/4unz001).

This has all gotten a bit messy. It also seems that X isn't generally an optimal place for discourse like "based on what I've seen so far, this is a nuanced and important topic to get the details straight before I can provide a well-formed opinion. I am continuing to read. As I keep reading, I keep learning new information and that helps update my understanding of the situation. At some point, I hope to have a confident statement to make one way or another, but I'm still reading." ...but that's where I'm currently at. Ultimately, everyone I know at OpenAI has good intentions and is also trying to do the Right Thing. Where does my reservation of judgment come from? I'm not sure, maybe some combination of: - Working at a frontier lab, you get accustomed to reading external speculation/reporting from people that have incomplete information. In most cases, those speculations are ~incorrect. - Working on scientific research, you get accustomed to making hypotheses about your research, given everything you've seen in your career so far. In most cases, those hypotheses are ~incorrect. - Working as a manager, you sometimes have to resolve conflicts between groups of people, where one group thinks A happened and the other group thinks B happened. In most cases, neither group is correct. It is some complex blend of A and B, where the reality looked closer to A at some point in time, closer to B at some other point in time, and is now somewhere else, because the world evolves / peoples' opinions evolve / etc. ...or maybe this is just cope and i'm just a corporate shill. I don't think that's the case, but like I said, I am still reading.

A Mars warming precursor mission for the next decade (1/2)

(2/2) api.omarshehata.me/substack-proxy…

Solar sail trajectory from low earth orbit to Mars. (1) Escape from earth (spiral up from ~800km); (2) Navigate through interplanetary space; and (3) Spiral down / get captured at Mars. Top-down visualization, work by Ari Essunfeld and @astro_takubo, idea by @CJHandmer.

NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy sign-up: science.nasa.gov/astrobiology/s…

Congratulations to H.E. Dr. @ahmad_belhoul and the @uaespaceagency team on announcing the extension of the Emirates Mars Mission “Hope Probe” until 2028. This mission, which we have been working on alongside our colleagues at the Agency since 2014, has delivered over 10 terabytes of scientific data, contributed to more than 250 scientific studies, and, inspired by the vision of our leadership, helped build a great team of Emirati scientists. Today, the @HopeMarsMission continues to advance its achievements and further strengthens the UAE’s position as a global partner shaping the future of space exploration.

Search for Life Should Be Top Science Priority for First Human Landing on Mars, Says New Report nationalacademies.org/news/search-fo…