New Nasa lunar contest could pit Elon Musk against Jeff Bezos, as US fears China will win race to Moon

By Ian Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University

The United States and China are locked in a contest to be the first country to send humans to the lunar surface in half a century. But there’s a developing twist: an emerging competition between American companies to build the landing vehicle that could win this new Moon race for the US.

The dust-up over the lunar lander could pit Elon Musk against his billionaire rival Jeff Bezos. And it has already sparked a war of words between Musk and Nasa’s acting chief, Sean Duffy, which exposes fault lines over the direction and leadership of the US…

Read complete article

~	Conflict and the climate crisis may mean it’s time to rethink what we mean by responsible investing

~	The shutdown – and the House’s inaction – helps pave Congress’ path to irrelevance

~	A brief history of comic book vampires – including a homage to Donald Trump

~	‘You can’t eat electricity’: how rural solar farms became the latest battlefront in Britain’s culture war

~	Bamako under siege: why Mali’s army is struggling to break the jihadist blockade of the capital

~	Jihadists have blockaded Mali’s capital. What’s at stake

~	Peace in Sudan? 3 reasons why mediation hasn’t worked so far

~	Bugonia: a brilliant abduction thriller with Yorgos Lanthimos’s distinct absurdist stamp

~	A landfill tax could halt the vast amounts of healthy soil that are needlessly thrown away

~	How the Day of the Dead is being used to protest violence against women