Kickstart: A rideshare to space

Think ride-sharing is just about using car or truck for a few hours? Think bigger. Like globally sharing resources.

The European Space Agency has developed a lightweight, carbon fiber module that fits on its Vega spaceship. The module is a shared vehicle to transport satellites into space in a system that can be easily adjusted and adapted. Vega launched the prototype early on Sept. 3 from Kourou, French Guiana.

The Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) modular rideshare will allow companies to get items into orbit without having to wait to hitch a ride on a major space launch program.

"This means Vega can offer affordable and convenient launch opportunities for small satellites, without the constraints of traveling as secondary payloads with much larger satellites," ESA said in a news release.

The module, made using carbon fiber from Toray Advanced Composites, can house up to 50 satellites per launch.

Earlier this week, Steve Toloken wrote about a couple of plastics-related bills in the California Legislature. One of them, a bill that would have required a 75 percent recycling or compositing rate on single-use packaging, failed to pass the Assembly.

But he's now revisited that story, asking what happens next. The likely move will see a statewide ballot question that would tax single-use plastic to fund recycling and cleanup, a referendum similar to the plastic bag ban California's electorate approved in 2016. (That bag ban passed, in case you don't recall.)

Backers of the single-use legislation expect to see a plastics packaging referendum go before voters in 2022 that would put a 1-cent fee on plastic packaging to fund recycling and environmental cleanup.

The auto show circuit may be really busy next spring and early summer.

The Los Angeles Auto Show just announced it will drop its 2020 auto show, which had been set for November, to May 21-31, 2021, a move first scooped by our sister paper Automotive News.

As AN noted, a rescheduled L.A. show would pit the event between April's New York show and June's North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The quick succession would force automakers to make tough decisions on which venues get the most significant unveilings.

That, of course, all relies on business getting back to "normal" by next spring.