David Kramer

Dec 1, 2023 | pubs.aip.org | David Kramer |Alex Lopatka

NASA’s April 2023 introduction of the members of the Artemis 2 crew—the first humans scheduled to go to the Moon in over half a century—is a sign that the US and its international partners are serious about human lunar exploration. That is new. Two presidents—the Bushes—gave major speeches announcing that astronauts would return to the Moon and venture on to Mars. But no lasting program emerged from either pronouncement.

Sep 18, 2023 | pubs.aip.org | David Kramer |Toni Feder |N. David Mermin |Laura Fattaruso

The world’s most powerful x-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source II (LCLS-II) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, officially produced its first x rays on 12 September. A $1.1 billion upgrade more than a decade in the making, the x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) is now capable of firing 1 million x-ray pulses per second—8000 times as many as the first-generation LCLS, which began operation in 2009. Each pulse is 10 000 times as bright as those of the original LCLS.

Jul 1, 2023 | pubs.aip.org | David Kramer

In addition to technology development and financing, the rate at which CCS and DAC projects are deployed will hinge on the EPA’s issuance of permits required for CO2 injection wells. To date, the EPA has been agonizingly slow to approve the so-called Class VI permits, critics say. The US has sufficient geologic storage capacity for trillions of tons of CO2, enough to store the entirety of the nation’s emissions for hundreds of years, according to DOE.

Apr 18, 2023 | aip.scitation.org | David Kramer

Feb 7, 2023 | foreignpolicy.com | David Kramer