United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket launched 27 more Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon from Cape Canaveral, bringing the constellation's total to 129 in orbit. By the end of the year, Amazon expects over 200 satellites will be deployed, with commercial service starting in several countries by early 2026. Spaceflight Now reports: This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low Earth orbit constellation. [...] The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. Control will shift over to the Project Kuiper team at their 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. The separation sequence began about 20 minutes after liftoff, concluding about 15 minutes later. From there, they will confirm satellite health, and eventually raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth.

The biggest trees in the Amazon are growing larger and more numerous, according to a new study that shows how an intact rainforest can help draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in bark, trunk, branch and root. From a report: Scientists said the paper, published in Nature Plants on Thursday, was welcome confirmation that big trees are proving more climate resilient than previously believed, and undisturbed tropical vegetation continues to act as an effective carbon sink despite rising temperatures and strong droughts.

However, the authors warned this vital role was increasingly at risk from fires, fragmentation and land clearance caused by the expansion of roads and farms. "It is good news but it is qualified good news," said Prof Oliver Phillips from the University of Leeds. "Our results apply only to intact, mature forests, which is where we are watching closely. They suggest the Amazon forest is remarkably resilient to climate change. My fear is that may count for little, unless we can stop the deforestation itself."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's oceans have failed a key planetary health check for the first time, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, a report has shown. In its latest annual assessment, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity had crossed a critical threshold for marine life. This makes it the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting scientists to call for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and other human-driven pressures that are tilting the Earth out of a habitable equilibrium. The report, which follows earlier warnings about ocean acidity, comes at a time of recordbreaking ocean heat and mass coral bleaching.

Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and play an essential role as a climate stabilizer. The new report calls them an "unsung guardian of planetary health", but says their vital functions are threatened. The 2025 Planetary Health Check noted that since the start of the industrial era, oceans' surface pH has fallen by about 0.1 units, a 30-40% increase in acidity, pushing marine ecosystems beyond safe limits. Cold-water corals, tropical coral reefs and Arctic marine life are especially at risk. This is primarily due to the human-caused climate crisis. When carbon dioxide from oil, coal and gas burning enters the sea, it forms carbonic acid. This reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, which many marine organisms depend upon to grow coral, shells or skeletons.

Near the bottom of the food chain, this directly affects species like oysters, molluscs and clams. Indirectly, it harms salmon, whales and other sea life that eat smaller organisms. Ultimately, this is a risk for human food security and coastal economies. Scientists are concerned that it could also weaken the ocean's role as the planet's most important heat absorber and its capacity to draw down 25-30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Marine life plays an important role in this process, acting as a "biotic bump" to sequester carbon in the depths. In the report, all of the other six breached boundaries -- climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities -- showed a worsening trend. But the authors said the addition of the only solely ocean-centerd category was a alarming development because of its scale and importance.

Fossil fuel burning is not just damaging the world's climate; it is also threatening the health of at least 1.6 billion people through the toxic pollutants it produces, data shows. From a report: Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from fossil fuel burning, does not directly damage health, but leads to global heating. However, coal and oil burning for power generation, and the burning of fossil fuels in industrial facilities, pollute the air with particulate matter called PM2.5, which has serious health impacts when breathed in.

A new interactive map from Climate Trace, a coalition of academics and analysts that tracks pollution and greenhouse gases, shows that PM2.5 and other toxins are being poured into the air near the homes of about 1.6 billion people. Of these, about 900 million are in the path of "super-emitting" industrial facilities -- including power plants, refineries, ports and mines -- that deliver outsize doses of toxic air.

NASA aims to launch its first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years, as early as February. The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby to test systems, paving the way for future Moon landings under the Artemis program. The BBC reports: Lakiesha Hawkins, Nasa's acting deputy associate administrator said it would be an important moment in the human exploration of space. "We together have a front row seat to history," she told a news conference this afternoon. "The launch window could open as early as the fifth of February, but we want to emphasize that safety is our top priority." Artemis Launch Director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson explained that the powerful rocket system built to take the astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS) was "pretty much stacked and ready to go." All that remained was to complete the crew capsule, called Orion, connected to SLS and to complete ground tests.

The Artemis II launch will see four astronauts go on a ten-day round trip to the Moon and back to the Earth. The astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, of Nasa and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, will not land on the Moon, though they will be the first crew to travel beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The lead Artemis II flight director, Jeff Radigan explained that the crew would be flying further into space than anyone had been before. "They're going at least 5,000 nautical miles (9,200Km) past the Moon, which is much higher than previous missions have gone," he told reporters. Further reading: NASA Introduces 10 New Astronaut Candidates

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: Scientists have developed a new multi-layered metalens design that could revolutionize portable optics in devices like phones, drones, and satellites. By stacking metamaterial layers instead of relying on a single one, the team overcame fundamental limits in focusing multiple wavelengths of light. Their algorithm-driven approach produced intricate nanostructures shaped like clovers, propellers, and squares, enabling improved performance, scalability, and polarization independence. [...] Mr Joshua Jordaan, from the Research School of Physics at the Australian National University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS), said the ability to make metalenses to collect a lot of light will be a boon for future portable imaging systems. "The metalenses we have designed would be ideal for drones or earth-observation satellites, as we've tried to make them as small and light as possible," he said. The findings have been published in the journal Optics Express.

The Moon is rusting -- and it's Earth's fault. Nature: Scientists have found that oxygen particles blown from Earth to the Moon can turn lunar minerals into hematite, also known as rust. The discovery adds to researchers' growing understanding of the deep interconnection between Earth and the Moon -- and shows how the Moon keeps a geological record of those interactions, says Ziliang Jin, a planetary scientist at Macau University of Science and Technology in China. He and his colleagues reported their findings earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters.

Most of the time, both Earth and the Moon are bathed in a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. But for around five days each month, Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles. During that time, the Moon is exposed mainly to particles that had been part of Earth's atmosphere before blowing into space -- a phenomenon known as Earth wind. That wind contains ions of various elements, including hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. When those charged particles hit the Moon, they can implant themselves into the upper layers of lunar soil and trigger chemical reactions.

"New research suggests ash and soot from burning wildlands has caused more than 41,000 excess deaths annually from 2011 to 2020," reports the Los Angeles Times: By 2050, as global warming makes large swaths of North America hotter and drier, the annual death toll from smoke could reach between 68,000 and 71,000, without stronger preventive and public health measures...

In the span studied, millions of people were exposed to unhealthful levels of air pollution. When inhaled, this microscopic pollution not only aggravates people's lungs, it also enters the bloodstream, provoking inflammation that can induce heart attacks and stroke. For years, researchers have struggled to quantify the danger the smoke poses. In the paper published in Nature, they report it's far greater than public health officials may have recognized. Yet most climate assessments "don't often include wildfire smoke as a part of the climate-related damages. And it turns out, by our calculation, this is one of the most important climate impacts in the U.S."

The study also estimates a higher number of deaths than previous work in part because it projected mortality up to three years after a person has been exposed to wildfire smoke. It also illustrates the dangers of smoke drifting from fire-prone regions into wetter parts of the country, a recent phenomenon that has garnered more attention with large Canadian wildfires contributing to hazy skies in the Midwest and East Coast in the last several years. "Everybody is impacted across the U.S.," said Minghoa Qiu [lead author and assistant professor at Stony Brook University]. "Certainly the Western U.S. is more impacted. But the Eastern U.S. is by no means isolated from this problem."

"Astronomers have spotted a quasi-moon near Earth," reports CNN, "and the small space rock has likely been hanging out near our planet unseen by telescopes for about 60 years, according to new research." The newly discovered celestial object, named 2025 PN7, is a type of near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun but sticks close to our planet. Like our world, 2025 PN7 takes one year to complete an orbit around the sun...

The newly found 2025 PN7 is just one of a handful of known quasi-moons with orbits near our planet, including Kamo'oalewa, which is also thought to be an ancient lunar fragment. Kamo'oalewa is one of the destinations of China's Tianwen-2 mission launched in May, which aims to collect and return samples from the space rock in 2027. The Pan-STARRS observatory located on the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii captured observations of 2025 PN7 on August 29. Archival data revealed that the object has been in an Earth-like orbit for decades.

The quasi-moon managed to escape the notice of astronomers for so long because it is small and faint, said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, a researcher on the faculty of mathematical sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid who recently authored a paper about the space rock. The paper was published on September 2 in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, which is for timely non-peer-reviewed astronomical observations. The space rock swings within 186,000 miles (299,337 kilometers) of us during its closest pass of our planet, de la Fuente Marcos said.... "It can only be detected by currently available telescopes when it gets close to our planet as it did this summer," de la Fuente Marcos explained. "Its visibility windows are few and far between. It is a challenging object...."

Astronomers are still trying to figure out 2025 PN7's size. About 98 feet (30 meters) across is a reasonable estimate, de la Fuente Marcos said. It also has the potential to be 62 feet (19 meters) in diameter, according to EarthSky. The space rock is currently the smallest-known quasi-moon to have orbited near Earth, de la Fuente Marcos said.

Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shared this report from ZME Science Researchers from the University of Turku, in collaboration with Aalto University and Wageningen University, have developed a bio-based UV protection film for solar cells that not only blocks nearly all harmful ultraviolet light but also outperforms commercial plastic films. The key ingredient is a water extract made from red onion skins...

[T]he same sunlight that powers [solar cells] can also degrade their delicate components — particularly the electrolyte inside dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), a type known for their flexibility and low-light performance. To mitigate this, manufacturers typically wrap cells in UV-protective films made from petroleum-based plastics like polyethylene terephthalate (PET). But these plastics degrade over time and are difficult to recycle... Nanocellulose can be processed into thin, transparent films that serve as the perfect substrate for UV-blocking compounds.

Their breakthrough came when they dyed these films using an extract from red onion skins, a common kitchen waste. The result was a filter that blocked 99.9% of UV radiation up to 400 nanometers, a feat that outstripped even the PET-based commercial filters chosen for comparison... [T]he onion-treated filter excelled: it let through over 80% of light in the 650-1,100 nm range — an ideal sweet spot for energy absorption... Even predictive modeling based on early degradation trends suggested the CNF-ROE filter could extend a solar cell's lifetime to roughly 8,500 hours. The PET-based filter? Just 1,500 hours... [T]he red onion extract offered a rare combination of longevity, transparency, and sustainability...

The team envisions biodegradable solar cells for smart packaging, remote sensors, or wearable devices — especially in applications where recovery and recycling are not feasible. Their work is part of the BioEST project, funded by the Research Council of Finland, which supports sustainable innovation across electronics and materials science. This achievement taps into a broader movement to decarbonize every step of solar energy production. Plastic packaging is one of the overlooked sources of emissions in clean technology. Swapping out fossil-based plastics for biodegradable alternatives helps close that loop...

The findings appeared in the journal Applied Optical Materials.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Finnish tech firm Bluefors, a maker of ultracold refrigerator systems critical for quantum computing, has purchased tens of thousands of liters of Helium-3 from the moon — spending "above $300 million" — through a commercial space company called Interlune. The agreement, which has not been previously reported, marks the largest purchase of a natural resource from space.

Interlune, a company founded by former executives from Blue Origin and an Apollo astronaut, has faced skepticism about its mission to become the first entity to mine the moon (which is legal thanks to a 2015 law that grants U.S. space companies the rights to mine on celestial bodies). But advances in its harvesting technology and the materialization of commercial agreements are gradually making this undertaking sound less like science fiction. Bluefors is the third customer to sign up, with an order of up to 10,000 liters of Helium-3 annually for delivery between 2028 and 2037...

Helium-3 is lighter than the Helium-4 gas featured at birthday parties. It's also much rarer on Earth. But moon rock samples from the Apollo days hint at its abundance there. Interlune has placed the market value at $20 million per kilogram (about 7,500 liters). "It's the only resource in the universe that's priced high enough to warrant going out to space today and bringing it back to Earth," said Rob Meyerson [CEO of Interlune and former president of Blue Origin]...

[H]eat, even in small doses, can cause qubits to produce errors. That's where Helium-3 comes in. Bluefors makes the cooling technology that allows the computer to operate — producing chandelier-type structures known as dilution refrigerators. Their fridges, used by quantum computer leader IBM, contain a mixture of Helium-3 and Helium-4 that pushes temperatures below 10 millikelvins (or minus-460 degrees Fahrenheit)... Existing quantum computers have been built with more than a thousand qubits, he said, but a commercial system or data center would need a million or more. That could require perhaps thousands of liters of Helium-3 per quantum computer. "They will need more Helium-3 than is available on planet Earth," said Gary Lai [a co-founder and chief technology officer of Interlune, who was previously the chief architect at Blue Origin]. Most Helium-3 on Earth, he said, comes from the decay of tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) in nuclear weapons stockpiles, but between 22,000 and 30,000 liters are made each year...

"We estimate there's more than a million metric tons of Helium-3 on the moon," Meyerson said. "And it's been accumulating there for 4 billion years." Now, they just need to get it.
Interlune CEO Meyerson tells the post "It's really all about establishing a resilient supply chain for this critical material" — adding that in the long-term he could also see Helium-3 being used for other purposes including fusion energy.

"Betelgeuse may have competition for the most exciting star about to go nova near Earth," writes Space.com.

"Astronomers have discovered the secret of a strange star system that has baffled them for years, finding it contains a dead star about to erupt after overfeeding on a stellar companion." The supernova explosion of this cosmic cannibal could be as bright as the moon, making it visible with the naked eye over Earth even in broad daylight. The system in question is the double star V Sagittae located around 10,000 light-years from Earth, containing a white dwarf stellar remnant and its victim companion star, which orbit each other roughly twice every Earth day. The new research and the revelation of this white dwarf's imminent catastrophic fate answer questions about V Sagittae that have lingered for 123 years...

White dwarfs represent the final stage of stars with masses around that of the sun, occurring when they run out of fuel for nuclear fusion... [W]hite dwarfs that have a stellar companion can get a second lease on life and a more conclusive and explosive end... [T]he stolen stellar material piles up on the surface of the white dwarf until it pushes this stellar remnant past the so-called Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses. This is the mass limit that a stellar remnant has to exceed to trigger a supernova...

However, this team found something very different and extraordinary happening with the stellar material being stolen by the white dwarf in V Sagittae... This investigation revealed that there is a giant halo of gas comprised of material stolen from the companion star wrapped around both the cannibal white dwarf and its stellar victim... "The white dwarf cannot consume all the mass being transferred from its hot star twin, so it creates this bright cosmic ring," team member Pasi Hakala from the University of Turku said. "The speed at which this doomed stellar system is lurching wildly, likely due to the extreme brightness, is a frantic sign of its imminent, violent end."

"The matter accumulating on the white dwarf is likely to produce a nova outburst in the coming years, during which V Sagittae would become visible with the naked eye," Pablo Rodríguez-Gil from Spain's Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias said. "But when the two stars finally smash into each other and explode, this would be a supernova explosion so bright it'll be visible from Earth even in the daytime."
The research was conducted with the Very Large Telescope (four individual telescopes high in the mountains of Chile) — and published last week in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The high seas, the vast waters beyond any one country's jurisdiction, cover nearly half the planet. On Friday, a hard-fought global treaty to protect the "cornucopia of biodiversity" living there cleared a final hurdle and will become international law. From a report: The High Seas Treaty, as it is known, was ratified by a 60th nation, Morocco, crossing the threshold for United Nations treaties to go into effect. Two decades in the making, it allows for the establishment of enormous conservation zones in international waters. Environmentalists hailed it as a historic moment. The treaty "is a conservation opportunity that happens once in a generation, if that," said Lisa Speer, who directs the International Oceans Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

It is also a bright spot amid a general dimming of optimism about international diplomacy and cooperation among nations toward common goals. It will come into force just as the high seas are poised to become the site of controversial industrial activities including deep sea mining. The treaty provides a comprehensive set of regulations for high seas conservation that would supersede the existing patchwork of rules developed by United Nations agencies and industrial organizations in sectors like oil, fishing and shipping. Currently, less than 10 percent of the world's oceans are protected under law, and conservation advocates say little of that protection is effective. The treaty states a goal of giving 30 percent of the high seas some kind of protected status by 2030.

Governments worldwide are implementing heat protection laws as 2.4 billion workers face extreme temperature exposure and 19,000 die annually from heat-related workplace injuries, according to a World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization report.

Japan imposed $3,400 fines for employers failing to provide cooling measures when wet-bulb temperatures reach 28C. Singapore mandated hourly temperature sensors at large outdoor sites and requires 15-minute breaks every hour at 33C wet-bulb readings. Southern European nations ordered afternoon work stoppages this summer when temperatures exceeded 115F across Greece, Italy and Spain.

The United States lacks federal heat standards; only California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have state-level protections. Boston passed requirements for heat illness prevention plans on city projects. Enforcement remains inconsistent -- Singapore inspectors found nearly one-third of 70 sites violated the 2023 law. Texas and Florida prohibit local governments from mandating rest and water breaks.

Light pollution now doubles every eight years globally as LED adoption accelerates artificial brightness worldwide. A recent study measured 10% annual growth in light pollution from 2011 to 2022. Northern Chile's Atacama Desert remains one of the few Bortle Scale 1 locations -- the darkest rating for astronomical observation -- though La Serena's population has nearly doubled in 25 years. The region hosts major observatories including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachon.

Satellite constellations pose additional challenges: numbers have increased from hundreds decades ago to 12,000 currently operating satellites. Astronomers predict 100,000 or more satellites within a decade. Chile faces pressure from proposed mining operations including the 7,400-acre INNA green-hydrogen facility near key astronomical sites despite national laws limiting artificial light from mining operations that generate over half the country's exports.

If global temperatures continue rising, virtually all the corals in the Atlantic Ocean will stop growing and could succumb to erosion by the end of the century, a new study finds. From a report: The analysis of over 400 existing coral reefs across the Atlantic Ocean estimates that more than 70 percent of the region's reefs will begin dying by 2040 even under optimistic climate warming scenarios. And if the planet exceeds 2 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial temperatures by the end of the century, 99 percent of corals in the region would meet this fate. Today, the planet has warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures.

The implications are grave. Corals act as the fundamental building blocks of reefs, providing habitat for thousands of species of fish and other marine life. They are also bulwarks that break up waves and help protect shorelines from rising sea levels. A quarter of all ocean life depends on coral reefs and over a billion people worldwide benefit from them, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The home appliance industry would like you to believe that gas-burning stoves are not a risk to your health -- and several companies that make the devices are scrambling to erase their prior acknowledgements that they are. From a report: That claim is at the heart of a lawsuit the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers has filed against the state of Colorado to stop it from requiring natural gas stoves, which burn methane, to carry health labels not unlike those on every pack of cigarettes. "Understand the air quality implications of having an indoor gas stove," the warning would read.

The law was to take effect August 5 but is now on hold, and state officials did not respond to a request for comment. In its federal lawsuit, the Association -- whose board includes representatives of LG Electronics, BSH Home Appliance Corp. (which makes Bosch appliances), Whirlpool, and Samsung Electronics -- asserts that the labeling requirement is "unconstitutional compelled speech" and illegal under the First Amendment. It calls the legislation a climate law disguised as a health law and, most strikingly, it claims there is "no association between gas stoves and adverse health outcomes."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As Jonathan Roll neared completion of a master's degree in science and technology policy at Arizona State University three years ago, he did some research into recent developments by China's ascendant space program. He came away impressed by the country's growing ambitions. Now a full-time research analyst at the university, Roll was recently asked to take a deeper dive into Chinese space plans. "I thought I had a pretty good read on this when I was finishing grad school," Roll told Ars. "That almost everything needed to be updated, or had changed three years later, was pretty scary. On all these fronts, they've made pretty significant progress. They are taking all of the cues from our Western system about what's really galvanized innovation, and they are off to the races with it."

Roll is the co-author of a new report, titled "Redshift," on the acceleration of China's commercial and civil space activities and the threat these pose to similar efforts in the United States. Published on Tuesday, the report was sponsored by the US-based Commercial Space Federation, which advocates for the country's commercial space industry. It is a sobering read and comes as China not only projects to land humans on the lunar surface before the US can return, but also is advancing across several spaceflight fronts to challenge America. "The trend line is unmistakable," the report states. "China is not only racing to catch up -- it is setting pace, deregulating, and, at times, redefining what leadership looks like on and above Earth. This new space race will not be won with a single breakthrough or headline achievement, but with sustained commitment, clear-eyed vigilance, and a willingness to adapt over decades." "The key takeaway here is that there is an acceleration," said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "The United States is still ahead today in a lot of areas in space. But the Chinese are advancing very quickly and poised to overtake us in the next five to 10 years if we don't do something."

"There's other things along the lines of budget battles," Cavossa said. "We don't want to see the US government scaling back its reliance on commercial satellite communications. We don't want to see them scaling back commercial remote sensing data buys, which is what they've been doing, or at least threatening to do. We want to make sure that there's a seamless transition from the ISS to commercial LEO destinations, and then a transition away from old programs of record to commercial transportation alternatives. That's what the US government can do and Congress can do here in the next couple of years to make sure that we stay ahead."

Nature's editorial board urged governments on Tuesday to reverse decades of rail disinvestment as railways mark their 200th anniversary September 27, citing transport sector emissions that grew 1.7% annually from 1990-2022 and now generate one-quarter of global CO2. Rail produces one-fifth the emissions of cars per passenger kilometer yet carries just 8.4% of EU passenger traffic versus 73% for automobiles.

The journal called for broader investment criteria beyond narrow profitability metrics and noted only one-third of countries have incorporated transport into their Paris Agreement commitments. Global rail freight fell from 38% to 24% between 1980-2017 while US networks shrank from 400,000 to 200,000 kilometers since 1914. Africa operates 87,000 rail kilometers continent-wide compared to India's 65,000 kilometers in one-tenth the area. Transport emissions must decline 3% yearly to meet net-zero targets.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from IEEE Spectrum: The world's largest airplane, when it's built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that's sprouted wings — aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale.

Called WindRunner, and expected by 2030, it'll haul just one thing: massive wind-turbine blades. In most parts of the world, onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. This size constraint comes not from the limits of blade engineering or physics; it's transportation. Any larger and the blades couldn't be moved over land, since they wouldn't fit through tunnels or overpasses, or be able to accommodate some of the sharper curves of roads and rails.

So the WindRunner's developer, Radia of Boulder, Colorado, has staked its business model on the idea that the only way to get extralarge blades to wind farms is to fly them there... Radia's plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade, and land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms. This may sound audacious — an act of hubris undertaken for its own sake. But Radia's supporters argue that WindRunner is simply the right tool for the job — the only way to make onshore wind turbines bigger. Bigger turbines, after all, can generate more energy at a lower cost per megawatt. But the question is: Will supersizing airplanes be worth the trouble...?

Having fewer total turbines means a wind farm could space them farther apart, avoiding airflow interference. The turbines would be nearly twice as tall, so they'll reach a higher, gustier part of the atmosphere. And big turbines don't need to spin as quickly, so they would make economic sense in places with average wind speeds around 5 meters per second compared with the roughly 7 m/s needed to sustain smaller units. "The result...is more than a doubling of the acres in the world where wind is viable," says Mark Lundstrom [Radia's founder and CEO].
The executive director at America's National Renewable Energy Laboratory Foundation points out that one day blades could just be 3D-printed on-site — negating the need for the airplane altogether. But 3D printing for turbines is still in its earliest stages.