Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss the COVID-19 situation not only in India but across the world and what are the possible, what can you say, trends that we can talk about today. We have with us Dr. Satyajith Rat who has been with us throughout this pandemic and hopefully will stay with us till it is over. Satyajith, good to have you with us. Couple of quick questions that I know this is something a little painful for you because you ask this every time. Are we looking again at a fourth wave or not because we look at the world in some of the places we have about five, six countries and the numbers seem to have gone up fairly significantly 30,000, 40,000 has come down again and India numbers seem to be going up also but rather slowly in some of the cities and it seems to be that these are not really the kind of wave that we have seen earlier meaning very sharp rises but slow rises so maybe you would call it a ripple. So how do we differentiate when is it a wave likely to be a wave and when it is merely some numbers going up because of relaxation of norms, people not wearing masks, people party which is also what's happened not only here but in the US as you know even the leading lights of the establishment have been partying and have come down heavily with COVID. So how would you distinguish between what is a ripple and what is a new wave? So let's make two or three points clear. Firstly, as you implied, we're really not that interested in numbers alone anymore. What we are really asking is should we be worried all over again? And in order for us to answer that question, the three issues that make the answer uncertain is firstly, it's no longer clear if we are counting case numbers as reliably as we were a few months ago. This introduces enormous uncertainties into the counting game. Secondly, even though this uncertainty is there, the one factor that all of us seem to be ignoring is the fact that hospitalizations and what's more clearly COVID described death numbers are not rising even in the places where over the past three, four weeks there have been sort of case number rises. Death numbers are not rising, anecdotal reports say hospitalization numbers are not rising anywhere to the same extent, all of which would be expected if mild infection transmission is happening in primarily vaccinated communities with the many Omicron lineages. The last point that I want to make that rather than reducing the uncertainty compounds it is that in addition to not counting cases appropriately, we don't seem to be paying attention to mapping variants. So one of the few countries in the world which has been leading variant mapping has been South Africa. And as an unfortunate result, there are three variants that people are again referring to as South African lineages, which we should not, we should simply say they belong to the Omicron group of virus strains, but they are sort of descendants in the Omicron lineages, they're called BF4, BF5, etc. And those two or three descendant strains have some reason to carry potential for increased spread and or increased severity, none of that is proven anymore. It surprises me that countries across the world are not taking those lessons to heart and are not enhancing variant surveillance. Clearly in India, there is after a few weeks of fairly coordinated effort, the variant surveillance consortium has not provided any regular data output into the public domain. So we have no idea what's going on. And given that testing has now become sporadic, it won't surprise anybody if variant surveillance has become equally sporadic, because variant surveillance was dependent on testing. So on the one hand, there's a great deal of uncertainty. On the other hand, we do seem to be in the waning phases of the pandemic and therefore, numerical ups and downs are going to be local and frequent, but transient. As you noted, it's in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, that case numbers are rising, they're not uniformly rising across the country. But on the other hand, hospitalization deaths and deaths don't seem to be rising. That's sort of a summary if you like. Saty, that's interesting what you're saying that effectively, when you look at numbers, these are, as I've said earlier, quoting you in some discussion, there are more ripples than peaks. And unless a new variant emerges, probably this is what we'll continue to see. And I don't know when the experts will say this is endemic from pandemic, that will leave for another discussion. But effectively, all bets are going to go off if you have a new strain. And then of course, we'll have to see all over again. And new strains can be descendants of the current strain. So as we have seen with Omicron, some old strain, a new lineage is arising from that against which we don't have that many in amount of defenses. So Omicron in that sense, had a population which already had seen various infections, vaccines and so on. So it didn't prove that dangerous. What would have done if it was completely to a naive population milling no immunity whatsoever, we don't know. So given all those caveats, one to the other issues which we are now talking about. And again, these are to some extent artifacts, I will say, of statistics, which you already referred to, how many were testing, what we are seeing. One interesting anomaly, if you will, that case fatality ratios are seen to be rising. While we are saying Omicron is a much, much less dangerous in terms of putting people in the hospital. So how do you account for this? So let's get again, the difference between numbers and ratios in perspective. Death numbers are not rising, particularly dramatically. They are pretty much low now all over the world. And while there is some noise, there is no sustained steady increase in death numbers anywhere that I'm particularly aware of. However, what is showing a great deal of noise, rise, whatever is case fatality rate. Now the rate is not a number, the rate is a ratio. The numerator is the number of deaths. The denominator is the number of cases, the number of cases meaning how many people tested positive for the virus. Now, how many people tested positive is going to be determined in large part by how many people were tested in the first place. Number one, and number two, how many of the people who were testing reported their test in the second place to the documentation process. Both of these have now become extremely unpredictable and sporadic. Total test numbers are dropping in various places. The groups of individuals who are being tested are shifting characteristics. Some people are getting tested only because they are sick rather than they are being statistically sampled testing. And there is a great deal of home testing from which no report is coming to the documentation processes. As a result of this, in the ratio calculation, the numerators are what the numerators are because people die in hospitals. The denominator, which is the total number of positive cases, is fluctuating all over the place as a result of these uncertainties. It's not surprising that in some places the case fatality rate is apparently rising. And I would suggest that we pay really no attention to the case fatality rate. And we simply dismiss it as a consequence of the fact that we are no longer testing and reporting even as systematically as we were doing a few months. In fact, a lot of the people who get tested is because they are already in the hospital for other reasons. And then of course it enters into the case fatality ratio because they came sick with some other disease which needed hospitalization. Incidentally, the tests show they have also COVID. And so of course that skews the case fatality ratio if they are as serious cases for other reasons or they die. So yes, the artifacts of all of this must be bought in mind because a lot of this is how you create the data that seems to suggest a result which is contraindicated to what really it is.  And we have to be very careful about how you analyze it. Satyajit, another point that we also seem to have this vaccine debate going on. And that again is with respect to numbers that some vaccines are supposed to be more efficacious, some vaccines are not so good. And there is this concerted campaign coming from the West that how the Chinese vaccines are bad, the co-vaccine is not good, COVID shield somehow goes into a black hole, it's not mentioned. But what is mentioned repeatedly is the fact that mRNA vaccines have shown much more efficacy. And the quotes are like 90%, 93%, 87%, etc. Very high fingers compared to 53, 55, 65, 70 for other vaccines. Now the question is of course it doesn't take into account when you say this that you should only use mRNA vaccines because it needs cold chain which we know in a large part of the world is not possible. So what you do is of course create the demand that public health system should buy expensive vaccines, create a cold chain, essentially so that a few companies, pharma companies have monopoly. But how good is this so-called numbers of efficacy which are being trotted out of the drop of a hat that A is better, B is not so good. And also not taking into account how long the quote unquote antibodies from these vaccines last as another indicator for fighting against new variants that may emerge. So two questions really roll into one. Let's get a couple of issues on the table about this. Firstly, comparing protective efficacy of different vaccines has not been done and in general actually honestly cannot be done since it would have to be done in randomized clinical trials. So what everybody is doing is comparing real life protective effectiveness rather than efficacy. These two words in lay language mean the same thing but in technical language mean different things. Efficacies and controlled trials effectiveness is in real life. What all of us are comparing these percentages that you talked about is effectiveness in real life. And those are not from randomized clinical trials. They are results from different populations. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty and possibility of confounding. So a robust, rigorous comparison really cannot be made. Number one. Secondly, all of these percentages tend to set shifting goalposts. All vaccines have been formally rigorously tested and approved for usage on the basis that they protect against severe disease and death, not on the basis that they protect against infection and transmission of the virus. So asymptomatic and mild infection modification by vaccines has always been known to be modest. Severe illness and death has been well protected against. At the severe illness and death level, pretty much all vaccines do a very good job. Whether there is a real difference between 80% protection versus 90% protection cannot be clarified in the absence of well-designed trials, but they do very good jobs. At the other end, asymptomatic and mild infections are only very modestly protected against. Added to this is the next layer of confusion, which is that as variants shift, vaccines which are based on 2020 virus strains will inevitably, all of them begin to show some reduction in effectiveness. But again, over the past six, eight months, it has become very clear that reduction in the protection effectiveness for severe illness and death is relatively small. It goes down from 80, 85% to 75%. It's protection against asymptomatic or mild disease transmission, which goes down quite a bit from 50, 55% to as low as 35%. In all of this, therefore, there is a great deal of matrix of confusion that is loaded onto an already non-robust level of comparisons. Therefore, I think the WHO position, which does not practice vaccine discrimination, which clearly says that all COVID vaccines give very good protection against death due to COVID-19 and that protection against mild COVID-19 disease and transmission is much more modest with pretty much all vaccine strains is the only position that really needs to be taken serious. Now, as the last point, based on this background, it's very clear that very few of the claims made in public discourse that you are pointing out about COVID vaccines, even acknowledge any of these uncertainties, leave alone discuss them. So clearly, they read like tactics in advertising wars, whether the advertising is in support of purely commercial purposes or commercial political nationalist purposes. Therefore, what we should really talk about is the availability of the vaccine and the availability to be able to reach that vaccine to the people. Therefore, also the effectiveness of the public health system. And let's face it, mRNA vaccines are unsuitable in this context for large parts of the world, precisely because they need a cold chain, which most countries, most poor countries do not have. They already have been problems being able to provide vaccines. Africa, for instance, still has about only 12 to 14 percent of its people having two shorts, while rich countries have three shorts and some of them are also looking at four shorts. So, given this, I think this should be seen more as a pharmaceutical companies game rather than as a public health issue, because public health has to take availability and the ability to reach it to the people as well, not simply what is supposedly the vaccine efficacy. Last point, Satyajit, a bit of Indian health nationalism, if you will. Indian researchers have shown that Montelucast, which is used by a lot of my asthmatics like me, for instance, have some protective qualities against infection by COVID, by SARS-CoV-2. What is the evidence for that? Is it something which is interesting, but yet to be really validated fully? Where are we on that? So, it's an interesting research finding. It comes from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and the way that computational analysis has been put together with actual real wet bench experiments to show this is really very nice. That said, we have to keep in mind the past two and a half years of empirical evidence. In fact, the past many decades of antiviral drug research, but in the COVID context, the past two and a half years of empirical evidence, that so-called drug candidates which prevent virus growth in the test tube do not necessarily show clinical utility in real life, in patients. So, at this point, this is simply a very early phase interesting finding, and really nothing more than that. And I don't think anybody should be rushing out and buying Montelucast or drugs of that sort. Added to which is a point about antiviral drugs, which we've been making in these conversations for the past two years, which has been proven again and again in COVID cases. All the antiviral drugs in COVID-19 that have been shown to work, remdesivir, molnupiravir, Pfizer's combination called Paxlovid, the monoclonal antibodies, which is really the even more expensive versions that Roshan Regeneron are selling. All of these function as specific antiviral drugs that interrupt the viral life cycle, and they show clinical utility only if taken very early during the symptomatic phase of the disease. Meaning that if you've had symptoms for more than about three or four days, taking any antiviral drug is unlikely to increase your chances of changing your recovery trajectory. And as a result, the real issue with these drugs is not so much do we have drugs, do we need more drugs, but to be able to have oral drugs, drugs like Paxlovid, the Pfizer drug, and to be able to have them available in large amounts for early quick diagnosis and easy accessibility at affordable prices for everybody who's had 24-hour symptoms for COVID-19, if this is going to make any dramatic difference on the one hand to the epidemic. On the other hand, it is important for people with known immune compromised situations, people who are undergoing cancer therapy, people who are undergoing who've had transplants, people who are undergoing immune suppressions for auto immune diseases, rheumatoid diseases of a variety of kinds, that they should get tested for COVID-19 very early and at those very early stages, they should have access to these drugs. In none of this is the range of new antivirals the limiting factor. We already have adding more and more drugs is not the point. The implementation of a public health policy and program is the stomach. If modern the cost is off patents that the price would be much lower. So wouldn't that make it an easier drug to use? Yes, but I'm still arguing for the broader point. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Why on earth are we allowing commercial profiteering interests to trump public health needs? Whether the drug is an old drug or a new drug should make no difference to how we look at drug availability and implementation of public health policies. Which means we should break the drum decibel patent and make it widely available that we can do under the current Indian drug act that we have the basically the ability to do so and so as most countries because I think all countries have the provision during pandemic or epidemic they're allowed to break patents or do what is equivalent to breaking off patents. Exactly. Okay, so yes interesting but we have to see what happens but even if it does not prove efficacious there are other drugs which we can break patents make it cheaply available and Satyajit says why is it that we are not starting to do so in spite of the fact that India and South Africa have gone to WTO to say in this period of COVID-19 pandemic patents should not be enforced or they should be compulsory licensing should be followed and countries should be allowed to do so. Actually the countries have the power to do so. Why they haven't done so is still an open question and that's what Professor Rath is raising with us or raising with all and sundry including the drug authorities of our countries. Thank you Satyajit for being with us explaining to us the intricacies of looking at numbers of pandemic looking at how we should read these numbers as well as how the pandemic should be judged in its in its current course of development or waning whichever way it is at the moment and how should we look at the future not only for the pandemic but also for the drugs and the vaccines that have come in this period. Thank you very much we'll also be in touch with you discuss these issues with you as and when we think something new has arisen on the horizon which we need to address. This is all the time we have today for news click discussing COVID-19. Do log in to our website and do go to our YouTube channel.


And welcome back to tomorrow now before we get started with our interview with Emory I want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who helped to make this specific segment of this episode happen These are people who've contributed ten dollars or more to the specific episode. They're gonna access to our slack channel We've also got our tomorrow producers either people who've contributed five dollars or more to the This specific episode and they're gonna get access to free worldwide shipping from our swag store So thank you to everyone who contributed if you'd like to help crowdfund This is a shows of tomorrow head on over to patreon.com Slash TMRO easy for me to say all right this week. We bring on a long-time viewer and Multiple guest Emory Stagmer. He's gonna be talking about small sats Which I think is appropriate based on the number of launchers that we've been talking about and all the different Innovations that are happening in the small sat market and this is actually Emory an area that you you work in like daily Is it not? Right. Yeah, I'm a flight software engineer for satellite systems and for the last three to five years We've been talking to Internal and external customers within Northrop Grumman about making really really small satellites using the CubeSat form factor I first became aware of the CubeSats About ten years ago. There's a CubeSat conference that's held every year at Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo and I went like ten years ago and saw that the universities were doing some really interesting stuff with these super small satellites And then at the small sat conference in Utah Three years ago. We started to hear about people who were looking starting to look at this form factor for more operational units Where you could start to talk about, you know, high reliability the kinds of reliability and longevity on a system that You know, you would normally expect that of something the size of you know, maybe a refrigerator But here I've actually got a prop, you know, like props, right? This is the size of a satellite that we're talking about actually. This is a little bit bigger Wow CubeSat standard, right the CubeSat standard is 10 centimeters. This is 11 Okay, and it's 10 centimeters tall. This is 13 Because I just measured it with my, you know, handy-dandy caliper and and so this is not like the power box or the the You know the avionics or the the propellant tank. This is the whole satellite a One unit CubeSat now they make them in multiples. Okay, so they make, you know, three tall and That's a 3u CubeSat and if they make them, you know, three tall and two wide That's a 6u CubeSat, right? So we're talking about something, you know, this big And that wide Right, so you're talking about, you know, two serial boxes for an entire mission What can you do with something like that though? I mean you traditionally think of these giant satellites with huge solar arrays and huge powerful antennas Trying to shrink that into something that is smaller than a Kleenex box Seems like you have to give something up. So what utility do these CubeSats have? That's been the real interesting point is that the electronics the optics And the kinds of science instruments that you want to be able to fly Are getting smaller and smaller And it's kind of like the reverse of the of what we call the tyranny of the rocket equation Where every time something gets bigger on a rocket everything else gets bigger And then that thing gets bigger and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, right? Well the reverse of that is also true as soon as something gets smaller Everything gets smaller and then and then that gets smaller and smaller, right? So it's kind of like the reverse the smaller it gets the smaller it gets And so when you can start saying oh, I can take out the mass of the optics Or I can take out some of the mass for the electronics. Oh, well, then I don't need as much power Or I don't need as big a reaction wheels or I don't need as much propellant And so the satellites then get smaller and you start to get from You know a cubic meter satellite to a cubic foot satellite. Sorry, I'm mixing units.  Who's making electronics for these things? And what we found over the last three to five years is that There are multiple producers who are making electronics for these and unfortunately the The reliability and and the success of those missions has been significantly lacking They have a better than 50% failure rate And sometimes the missions are put it in orbit and and prove that you got it in orbit and talked to it Okay, and that mission fails, which means you never heard from it at all You know, they deployed it into orbit. You never got it back You never heard anything. So you don't know what happened Um, things like um light sail 2 for instance had a software problem And so you've got these kinds of both hardware and software failures that really limit the reliability Of these kinds of missions and generally, you know, they work for six months or a year, but they eventually You know, you're flying low cost low quality components. And so You know, you just can't have a reliability for sadly the last three five eight years with a with a predictable You know lifetime So that's where north of grumman started to take a look in the last couple of years at Well, what would it really take to Take the kinds of reliability that we've built into systems Uh for the last 20 or 30 years where we've never had an on orbit failure You know, um, I've worked on I've lost count 12 or 15 missions in the last 20 years We've never had an on orbit failure. We've never had a piece of hardware fail. We've never had a piece of software fail um And so if you can bring that kind of reliability To the cubesat environment Now you're starting to talk about being able to have a satellite that has a three to five Your reliability that only cost single-digit millions where they used to cost 100 million plus So north of grumman right now is working on taking, uh, you know, in my notes It says 24 years 30 missions of heritage of successful satellite missions But they're generally these Larger satellites, uh, that, you know fill up a good chunk of this studio space But taking that technology and compressing it down into something that's more of a cubesat size So you can actually reduce the size and cost of everything and potentially deploy a lot of these all at once instead of just one permission Yeah, absolutely And the kinds of deployers that people are are building people like planetary systems and some others Where they can bolt these things on to almost everything that's flying Including the space station the atlas five rockets the falcon nine rockets the Soyuz rockets. I mean just everything And so we're seeing we're starting to see numbers on the order of a couple of hundred satellites a year That are getting put up into low earth orbit in these cubesat form factors So a couple questions from the chat room if we could, uh, which is you talked about a greater than 50% failure rate on a lot of these cubesats What is the collision? This is from destruction 1701. What is the collision risk on these little things? Do they have is there like a keep out zone for these or is it just kind of you launch it and just hope for the best? Well, they launch them on a sequence and so the deployers will pop them off at a at a predetermined time in the launch profile So, um, they're not getting they're not interacting with each other. They're generally ejected at Some numbers of meters per second Single digit meters per second away from the rocket.  And so when you pull that pin closes a switch And the thing turns on but if it doesn't turn on You mission over, you know, but then we still have a space debris problem with Something like that. Are these at a low enough speed and altitude where they just kind of come back After a month or two or not even that and just burn up in the atmosphere sure the the total um orbital inertia mass and is is very involved in the um, The amount of energy that the satellite has And so the smaller the satellite is the more that atmosphere and things like that will affect it And so it'll it'll come back in, you know, into the arena of the atmosphere Much earlier than a larger satellite even in the same orbit now at north of grumman You're working on more than just the software control side of it, right? It's kind of a whole package for control. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. We're building an entire avionics system that We can use as the central You know piece of computer hardware and power systems in these super small satellites being able to bring You know the larger engineering organization and with a deep understanding of space physics and physics reliability Means that we're able to do some things that are pretty fancy The the biggest most expensive processor that you can fly in space right now is made by bae systems And it's that processor card. There's a whole card. It's got memory and everything on it But that processor card is multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars and runs at 100 megahertz and has a single core processor I know that's just mind-boggling to somebody Your phone your phone has more power than that My phone has 30 times as much power than that and I don't even know how much more memory it has But that's the processor you're using to do you worked on things like lcross is that a similar processor to what you used for Going to the moon. That was the processor. Yeah, it was the processor. We used on lcross That's the processor that we built the avionics not only for lcross But also for lro lcross was essentially a copy of lro's avionics and power system Right, we basically just duplicated it and bolted it on what's called an espa ring I don't remember what that stands for. I'm sorry. It's an acronym Um But it's basically the politely known as a sewer pipe That that hooks onto the top and then we bolted boxes around the outside It's the same diameter. It's essentially the interface adapter ring that goes in between the upper stage and the primary payload So it was the adapter ring that sat in between The centaur upper stage and the lunar reconnaissance orbiter And what we did is we bolted electronics and thrusters on the outside of that ring and made a satellite out of it But it's the same electronics as as lcross. So lcross and lro both flying this rad 750 processor So what we're doing in the cubesat environment is We're taking a a new processor by a different company and we're making our own processor card We make printed wiring boards, you know, does not only design them We have a manufacturing facility at our location. We made to say that we made the avionics We made the processing cards And the power system cards that went in those boxes So we're applying that same level of understanding reliability engineering to a processor card that's this big And that thick right and so you have a processor card Then you have a mezzanine memory card and then you have a solar array module interface card And a power switching card and you can stack them up and kind of multiple You need more you need more memory. You need more power. You need more solar rays. You can add more slices But just that simple stack is three quarters of a unit of a cubesat. So it's 77.5 centimeters by 10 by 10 centimeters So one of the reasons you have very large satellites is when you're out in space You don't have a magnetosphere to help protect against radiation. So you have to protect I mean big heavy boxes to protect against radiation because Radiation whipping through a processor can can really screw it up Do you have any sort of this has comes from? Anonym, I believe is how you pronounce that in small sets. Do you use any sort of radiation protection? For hardened controllers or processors or do you use redundancy or do you have something to protect against a space based radiation? A little bit of all of that you have two different kinds of radiation that you have to worry about you have single event Upsets, which is an ionizing piece of radiation that can flip a bit in a satellite and then you have something called tid total ionizing dose and that's how long A piece of electronics essentially can survive in a given radiation environment It can soak up so much radiation and generally that's in Kilorads thousands of rads so We we start talking about having a reliable thing that'll that'll live in space and we start talking about 100 to 300 k rad the processor Some of the processors that we've used in the past are mega rad But the new The new memory systems that we are now putting on these cube sets are mega rad So you're talking about a million rads of total ionizing dose before those things will have a problem so They can survive a very long time and their tolerance to single event upsets is very very high This one comes from blue glaceous You talked about the light sail project, which is a planetary society Solar sail essentially using oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So they flew that Mentioned there was a software fault, but they was essentially successful emissions plural Other than sales, are there any propulsion systems that can send cube sets from low earth orbit to lunar orbit? Because you there's a lot of Change in velocity required for that. Oh, there's a bunch. Um, and in fact, they're they're looking at Um Both ion drives And uh, I've seen one that actually uses instead of xenon Uses iodine That one is stupendous. The iodine drive is really cool. Um, I've seen some systems that have Many hundreds of meters of change in velocity A meter per second and change in velocity. So yeah, you could actually fly these small cubes. That's um out to out to lunar Um out the geosynchronous. That's a big idea right now Like the chinese satellite that you just showed along with you guys showed in the news segment along with the uh changong 2 The little the little satellite. I mean, it's um, that's a probably they didn't really say how big it was But it's in the cubic foot range, you know multiple maybe bigger slightly bigger than a cubic foot um and um Yeah being able to to then do that kind of observation It's one of the things that a lot of the agencies are looking to do is is have these super small satellites Uh, they're less expensive. They're a little bit more expendable um They're harder to detect So for now for now So, um, you know, if you're actively broadcasting you're fairly easy to detect because you know, you're emitting RF radiation because that's how you have to talk to the ground Um, but yeah, so they're they people would like to be able to go inspect other satellites And uh, yeah, there's there's any but any agency and any commercial entity that's looking to do anything in space Uh with earth observation Science observations communications Satellite to satellite kinds of things everybody's looking at cubesats So I got two questions that kind of relate to each other. One is from uh, peco De Niro, uh, which is why aren't people trying to send a cubesat to the moon? Although I think maybe they are and the second one is from curge in seven Which is are there any plans for lagrange point cubesats? So, uh, all right So maybe people are planning on sending cubesats to the moon, but why haven't they gone there yet? Um, I think it's just a matter of you had to have a satellite that had sufficient reliability Because to get to the moon, especially with a cubesat unless you're hitchhiking on something that's already going to the moon You've got to have a lot of delta v You've got to be able to have a large change of velocity in order to get from earth orbit to lunar orbit Even to lunar flyby And so it takes a long time it takes months if you're going to use An ion drive to get that far And so you've got to have a reliability that's going to you know, not only take you months to get there But then be able to survive months once you're up there and the moon's a much more harsh radiation environment You said you're outside the magnetosphere You have a lot more um Direct cosmic rays you're in the solar wind solar wind hits Things like a solar wind hits the moon at a million miles an hour and has all kinds of ionized particles on it including protons Uh, so the moon's radiation environment is pretty harsh Uh, are there any, um Plans to take what north of grumman is doing and just allow anyone to buy it Is that kind of how that works right now? So tomorrow wants to build a cubesat and I want to use what you guys are working on Am I able to do that or is this for more government agencies? Larger customers kind of thing. No, it's pretty much any customer But what it's still a fairly expensive proposition, right? This is we're not bringing the price of cubesats down to $5,000. We're still in the $100,000 million range here if you want to buy a cubesat from an organization like ISI space or pumpkin They have a cubesat kit is is the pumpkin place to go buy cubesat systems and Cubesat shop is the place to go. So I think that's that's isi space um You're talking about being able to buy All the pieces that you need to fly a satellite for I think the number's about $65,000 for a turnkey piece of hardware Okay That's a lot lower than I thought you were going to say actually But the reliability doesn't come with flight software. You got to provide that yourself It doesn't come right provide an instrument. It does provide power and and I think that that is that price might even include Uh might even include solar rays.  So if you're going to the moon or mars, that's that's a slightly different mission profile Right, that's still far less than what we what we would ever spend on anything else that we've ever used to go to the mars By by a large percentage.  Just due to the size of the vehicle I don't know about the uh, I don't know about the optics that we actually used for the of course with l cross We had pretty good size thrusters, right because we were trying to control the centaur. So We were moving the centaur upper stage around and it weighs two tons So you've got to have a lot of propellant when you're going to do that and that starts to drive your mass Um, if I just wanted to go and take pictures Actually, you can get a pretty decent camera with uh electronics and optics That'll survive and you can put that in a 6 u cube set and you could do a pretty slick mission to the moon Man, I'm seeing a Kickstarter campaign here. Wouldn't that be cool? A crowd funded mission to the moon Grab some pictures of like an earth rise type thing That seems like it'd be all sorts of awesome and you could do it for probably a million or less not including the launcher Right, so the launcher is kind of the hard part But we have you know, we've got all these small cube set launchers coming online. We've got the electron rocket We've got launcher one from virgin galactic. They're a bunch. I there's a number actually. I think you sent me the number It's something like 30 Different launchers. I believe how many launchers were were currently in development. It's crazy Is that because there's a huge new market for these small satellites? That's uh, you know Now that we're able to make these cube sets is everyone kind of clamoring to have these lower cost satellites Is that where all of this is coming from or is this just a bit of a bubble? It's it's coming at us. It's right on the horizon coming across the horizon at us Time-wise you're talking about a year or so away Um, and you know, like I said, there's hundreds of those cubes that's flying now You know, so People want to be able to launch those things today actually the launch vehicle market the launch vehicles are actually They're actually running behind That market exists for them today Um, nasa's paying to launch things every other government agency is paying to launch things any any agency that does anything in space Is paying to launch this stuff. So Neuro pilot asks do you think the 12 you large in quotes large, uh, cube sets have more utility than several smaller cube sets It all depends on the science package, right? Um, the the size of the optics that you need to fly or um If you have to have a lot of power for things like say you wanted to fly a radar mission on a on a cube set You could potentially do that. So it's power. Um, and it's heat and its optics are really driving the size um Yeah, so it really depends on the science that you need to do Uh, Dutta actually asked from our control room are the orbits of a cube set predictable Or is there any way to adjust the orbit and or attitude now? You mentioned some drives, but they're fairly low powered So can you make course corrections with the current propulsion systems on board or is that very limited? Uh, you can make course course corrections and the thing about the cube sets is they only weigh You know one kilogram per cube set unit on on average, right? So a six u cube set is only going to weigh six kilograms Uh, which is about 14 pounds rough and dirty. So I mean you're talking about a satellite that you can pick up and hold in your Hands, I mean Nellie said that big it doesn't weigh tons. It weighs, you know You know 15 pounds Um, and so being able to move that around You know, there are stock Cubes that size propulsion systems that people are selling today That you could bolt on to the avionics in the science package that you want and be able to get a pretty significant delta v Uh, those things are commercially available Um for for both large and small changes in velocity All right, we're gonna have to break in a moment, but there was a really interesting comment that just came in Uh, something that I hadn't considered before and this comes from k. McCoy, which is um, is there any sense that maybe the cube Set framework could become the standard for even larger satellites that everything will start to be built in multiples of 10 centimeter sizes So even these huge huge satellites for say the national reconnaissance office will actually be built on a common Cube set framework and they end up being huge still But there's this common framework between all satellites that go all the way down to 10 centimeters That seem like a viable thing or by the time you get to these large Satellites are they so specialized that that doesn't make any sense? Yeah, I think when you get above About 27u which would be 30 by 30 by 30 centimeters Beyond that then you start to talk about it doesn't make sense to use those stock frameworks Although it may make sense to use the kind of avionics that we are building Our avionics system is really quite capable and we'll use the exact same flight software that we've been working on for two decades It's flown on. I don't even know how many 17 missions. I think is our our stock You know marketing pitch it's 17th generation of flight software. It already runs on this cube set architecture The other really the really really fancy thing we did our electrical engineers are some of the best anywhere And we can now Look at using power on these satellites. That's greater than 500 watts On a on a 3u cubesat Generally those things have been 10 watts to 50 watts now. We're talking about 500 and above So are you guys providing? So you're providing more than just the software and prop you you have an entire framework For the cube set then as well. I mean it sounds like right so you have power generation All's I need to do I buy your package from you and all's I need to do is put my instrument on board. It sounds like Yep, we can provide that integration for you and all the way up to you know Integrating it for you and can you provide my instrumentation as well including my optics? So if I want to just buy the whole thing from you I say make it like this and you'll you'll just sell me the whole thing or do I need to do that last step Of course Awesome Where can uh, so uh, well, normally I have people just kind of go Where can I get more information on north of grumman? Although that that's fairly simple But where can people go for more information on north of grumman and what you're doing with cubesats as well as more information on you? Because I know that you do a lot of things in the kind of the new space community Um, I'm I'm pretty uh readily available. Uh, twitter.com slash of axe headroom facebook.com slash of axe headroom my uh My you can see behind me um the various electronics and uh things that are running behind me I'm actually up in my recording studio Uh at home and so my recording studio is untied music Dot com and untied music studio on youtube as an interesting note I think you're one of the few people who has music on the moon right now If I'm right, well, yeah, I had uh, we we got to put a piece of music as a memory test pattern On uh on the processor card on the lcross mission. So Uh, yeah, if the double e proms survived, it's uh, it's on the moon I don't think they survived that that was a shattered pretty well. There's a fairly energetic event On purpose. It was a fairly energetic event, but still very cool that you were able to do that Vax always a pleasure having you on the show. Uh, for those who don't know vax also came on It did a segment on c dragon, which was an absolutely We know we need to do another one of those because it felt like you only had Time to do some of the information It would be great to do like a refresher because and compare c dragon to space x's Bfr that they announced. I think that would be a lot of fun just to kind of do size comparisons and power comparisons But that is a fascinating episode. I think that was last year if I remember right it might have been two years ago But yeah, so search for uh Tmro c dragon, you'll find it Vax as always thank you for taking time out of your saturday and coming on the show. It was fascinating and awesome Absolutely love being here


on a proverb about working together. And we started with the Irish proverb, New New Yorker, Carla Kayla. So there's a nice top and tail to that. So thank you, Magnus. I feel that this is a great room to be in, because if we're talking about digitizing the grids that we all need in our power supply, but the threat of that is actually cybersecurity. So perhaps we've got the right people in the room to talk to each other. And I think there will be lots of questions from the audience. But it just seems pertinent to me to actually speak to Christine, first of all, because if Denmark is so far ahead of all the other countries in terms of offshore wind, and we have a lot to learn in Ireland, and as I said, I think there's offshore wind farms to be built in the very near future, down in Cork, but you have the lessons learned and you've also told us that what really needs to happen is for all of these neighboring countries to work together because the parks need to be cross-border, actually. So can you just speak a little bit more to that since we have partners in the room about what you would envisage for that future? Well, I think that the countries and just basically the framework that we discussed just a minute ago could provide some of at least the framework for the discussions to take place. The industry itself is also driving this basically across Europe sitting down, talking together what is needed for this actually to be realized because it's very difficult. And it's gonna take some time, but the most important thing is that we realize that this is the way forward. This is basically the only way we can decarbonize Europe and a lot more focus has to be sort of put into this now. Until now it's been a question of economy. It's basically the technology was too expensive. So everything was about one member state basically having its own support system. Now it's not so much a question of economy anymore. So now we basically need to sit together finding the right framework for this to continue and the international organization has a huge responsibility to making certain that this is gonna happen. And then the industry, of course, has to be able to deliver. But I think that that's not actually a problem. Okay, great, thank you. So I'll open the floor to questions and if you can, I'll take this lady at the front, she's in second row. Thank you, gentlemen behind her then. Hello, Christine, you mentioned like politicians need to listen. So let's say they do listen and we get a bunch more wind firms. What we do about regulations and following them because we're currently paying millions to the EU because we didn't follow environmental impact assessments and like in waterfare to a wind firm is currently being shut down because planning wasn't followed. So permission of planning wasn't followed. So what do you think politicians should do once they start listening? I think it's very important as we talked about before that you sort of have this dialogue and you have both with consistency and the people have a much more dialogue what actually has to happen to making certain that we actually get the wind farms up and running. We have exactly the same issues in Denmark right away. We see this as one of the major obstacles for actually reaching the goals is public resistance. So everybody in Denmark is talking climate. Everybody loves to be green. We see people are switching their diets away from meat. We're seeing an interest in finding other ways of transportation but when it comes to having a windmill nearby or a PV then nobody really likes it anymore. So we need to have this discussion. We also need to have some hard regulation maybe, harder regulation saying that this is a necessity and then much faster, fast track procedures, planning procedures when we're talking about green technology. Can I follow up on that question? So I think it's a great question and just for yourself Eric because you said that you had cross-party agreement that you were going to meet these goals and you had those targets but they didn't just go in a policy and they were kind of there written down somewhere where no one's following them. They were actually important. So is there lessons that we can learn from Norway in that regard? Yeah, I think that's one of the key success factors. Most of all the parties, maybe a part from one party agreed on this target and they also agreed that we should use the means that we have which are the measures that we have which is the tax system to promote the target, the achievement of the target. And that we have always had very high taxes of course so we have a lot to play with when it comes to the incentive structure. So we can remove taxes and then we have to be incentive. And removing taxes is much easier and more effective than having a grant. Yeah. A grant is based on a government and the government has to issue money to the company that gives out the grant. If you have a tax exemption, you just lose income. It's much easier system, it's more stable. You could also have a bonus malice system that would operate more or less in the same way because then the government expenditures are not involved. You have a malice, you have to pay extra to buy a gasoline diesel car and then you get that is used to finance a bonus to those who buy an electric car. That can be done cost-neutral for the government, for instance. You have a lot of tools. If you have a target and you want to meet the target, you just have to start using the tools. I do have to convince them to have the target. I mean, we will come back to Alec, but I'll just take a couple more questions. This gentleman here and there's another gentleman here after that, we'll bundle them in. Thank you. You can hear me. Thank you. Again, the question is to Christine but perhaps other members of the panel may wish to comment as well. In terms of, you talked about technological advances and obviously one assumes that also means efficiency. And I'm surprised that not to hear more about energy storage and perhaps you might say a word about in Denmark on energy storage, both at grid level or national level and then more particularly about a residential or commercial new build. What's happening there? Okay, can I take another question? We'll bundle those together to take your question, please. I have a deep concern that there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of this discussion and that is statistical reliability. With all due respect to the EA and Copenhagen, I will only have confidence in the reliability of our climate change statistics in Europe when the management of our statistical databases is taken over by Eurostat in Luxembourg. Okay, so I'm not sure any of our panel can address that but we'll note that comment certainly. So if we come back to the issue of energy storage, I know it's addressed to you, Christine, but actually it's something that I wanted to ask Magnus as well because hydrogen wasn't really coming there and hydrogen is a way of storing energy as well in a cleaner greener way. So Christine, if you'd like to come to that first. Well, I could talk 10 minutes or an hour on the hydrogen alone. I think as I just shortly mentioned, this is gonna be one of the future technologies and this is very much where all the focus in Denmark is being put into right now. So I would envisage that we will see some of the first test hydrogen facilities in connection with offshore wind being sort of the next step because hydrogen is basically the way that we see that we will be able to store the energy. And also I think it's gonna be interesting to see whether or not we can engage in a new cooperation with the oil and gas industry because there might be an opportunity to use some of the existing infrastructure basically to transport the hydrogen in the future. So some of the pipelines might be useful for basically getting the hydrogen towards the customers. So this is basically the only thing, power to X being talked about in Denmark now. And I think the politicians here will also will go and engage with them in how to combine the next offshore wind park. Maybe the tendering process has to be connected with facilities that can produce hydrogen. And that's where the support has to go next. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Christine. Magnus, can you speak to that energy storage question? First of all, we are very blessed with the hydro power in the Nordics. I mean, that's really our big battery. And that can be developed further for sure to be more flexible. But then we should also consider hydrogen that will come for sure. But it's also a matter of cost. I mean, I think we have lower hanging fruits that we can use this what we call sector coupling between for example, the heat and electricity system. And actually use the inertia, thermally inertia in buildings and so on. And that should be, and it's actually getting more and more used, but I think we are just starting. I mean, I think we can do a lot. Yeah, but do you think that those developments will happen in time for us to meet those measurable targets? I mean, for example, we need to see that the price volatility will go up so it can actually be part of the revenue. I mean, if you make an investment for storage of any kind, the value must be higher. I mean, the value should go up in time with more wind, for example, as all are to be there. Okay. Thank you, Magnus. And that's another question. Over here, this gentleman, forget the microphone. Well, Valacan, I want to ask the Danish lady and perhaps other members of the panel a question arising from a conference here a month ago which the IIEA were also involved in organizing. During that conference, the Oxford Energy Economist, Dieter Helms, talked about in terms of auctions for renewable power, whether it's solar or for wind or whatever else it might be. He mentioned that it should be based on equivalent firm power, which means that when the wind isn't blowing adequately to generate power and also when the sun isn't shining that the price awarded should be based on equivalent firm power. Is that a practice that's coming in in Denmark or in place else in the Nordic countries? Maybe I can say that, I mean, already, I mean, sometimes I speak with the wind developers and they say they actually project that they get 10% less paid in a number of years from now for wind. I mean, it's actually paid less because when the wind is there, the price go down and when it's no wind, of course, you get nothing. So I mean, and they're in between, you get good pay but I mean, it's actually, it should be taken by the market that is hour by hour. I mean, so the answer is that but still wind is being built with, I would say no subsidies in Sweden for the moment. I mean, they don't calculate for any subsidies but still they build a lot of big wind power, yeah. And is this something that you were talking about the digitization of the grid? If something like that is happening where less power is getting generated and we can tell immediately because it's digitized, is that something where the pay will be flexible for it? Could the digitization assist with that or is it a benefit, I'm not sure? Maybe that's another thing. I mean, it's more, I would say it's more better utilization of the assets. I mean, if it would be transmission lines or energy storage or something like that. So it's better utilization. And now we should not forget that it's very important to connect larger and larger areas. I mean, the more you connect, the less likely is that it will not blow any wind anywhere. I mean, if you connect larger areas, you need less of storage because you have more power transmission. If you talk electricity. Alex, can I bring this to you because the connectivity, if we looked at the Balmoral model, Ireland is very isolated. Other countries are very isolated in terms of, you might be depending on Russian oil, et cetera, but we are very isolated. We have one pipeline at the minute. Is this, are these conversations that have been happening in government? And if we go back to that question that the first lady had, how can we convince the politicians to yes listen and then act on the concerns? Yeah, well, just on the connectivity, that's been a big preoccupation of ours. And in fact, it's all the more relevant now and topical now in the context of Brexit. So that the connectivity that Ireland has, the island of Ireland, don't forget, we have on the electricity side, we have an integrated electricity market in Ireland, on the island of Ireland, North and South. And we need to have our connection and our connectivity to the rest of Europe. And it's essential, so there's initiative with France at the moment, which I think is terrific. And I think we need more initiatives like that to ensure that we have that high level of connectivity, that it's a policy driver for us as well as being something that will actually really pay dividends in terms of cost and for all sorts of reasons, and the variability of wind and solar and all of these issues that we all have to address all the time. So absolutely, that's critical. I mean, what was the question you asked me? Because I was just responding to what he was saying. The second, well, so that's the connectivity. The second question was, we've been discussing, Eric gives the example that the politicians decided all together that this is going to be our goal. And we have that on paper that it's a goal here, but really when a target is missed, what's happening? Political decisions happen kind of over a period of time. And very often when people say, they're politicians because of course, they're politicians is not an undifferentiated thing. There are lots of different politicians. So, and also different with different ideas and different approaches and different levels of commitment and so on. So I think that it's not an undifferentiated thing, but I think more and more of their politicians are realizing now that they have to engage with this because it's a critical economic imperative that we complete, that we adjust hugely the way we consume energy. And big decisions have to be made by government. So very often at conferences people, oh it's about, or people will say, well it's about individual action. Of course it's about individual action, but the system has to facilitate individuals to change. Yes, you cannot expect people, millions of different people just to make all of these separately motivated decisions to do the right thing. The system, the way we configure our system has to facilitate those changes and individual behavior. Magnificate. Maybe just one idea that I personally like, it's not the organization, but me is that we would put electricity tax as a percentage of the spot price on the market, for example, that would make like a gain that when the spot price goes up, it goes real and taxes goes up also. So it's not the same sector kilowatt hour, it's actually percentage of, I mean that could be one way to really make, I mean that would make flexibility and storage more profitable. I mean, as if they dare to do it, the politicians, I wouldn't know if I would do it, but I mean. Good luck, yeah, good luck. One in the, at least it has worked. And I guess it's important to throw those ideas around and trash them out because of the future that's there. Well, I'd like to thank sincerely all of our panelists, Eric Pigenbaum, Christine VanHet, Erwin Greenit, Alex White and Magnus Olufsens for a very, very interesting conversation on sustainability. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.


So we're here at the ID TechEx show here with NovaSantis and who are you? I'm François Genot, I joined NovaSantis about two years ago to focus on haptic application for this very unique polymer based haptic technology. So you can show us flexible haptic feedback, right, which is, you're the only ones in the world who can do this? We are right now the only ones in the world who can do that. The big benefit of our solution is that you can embed multiple actuators inside the surface of the product. So that could be in the wristband of my watch, for example? It could be in the wristband of the watch, it could be on a heart rate monitor kind of band, it could be on headphones, it could be in any kind of device that you wear on your e-textiles. You can feel, who's calling you on your shoulders maybe? You could feel directional information, so if you follow a trail running and your map is telling you to take a left turn or a right turn, you can feel the sensation that tells you to take a right turn or take a left turn. So how far are we from this being real? So we have announced about six months ago a relationship with our manufacturing partner Chemet, with making our product in high volume. High volume. So Chemet is a company that is a world leader in film-based capacity and to make our tweeters it's exactly the same way. And right here we can see it, the vibration. Yeah, so what's interesting about this demo is that you can see that our tweeters can move at any kind of speed, which means that we can create very different kind of sensation on each of the actuators. And as fast as the sound. If you actually go into the kilohertz range, then the vibration creates sound like any other speaker. So we can combine haptic feedback in the hundreds of volts, 50 volts, 30 volts kind of vibration. If you go into the kilohertz we generate sound. That's another kind of module that enables us to embed actuators in half surface kind of device. This could be a kind of a gaming controller, as with the wristband. We can embed multiple actuators in different locations of the device, so how do you hold it? Instead of having the full device shakes with only one frequency and you get an unknowing buzzing kind of vibration, we can create very localized sensation that can be underneath each of the fingers. So there's actually a vibrator there, one there, one there, one there, two there, and there are eight different actuators embedded into this kind of demonstrator. And you can again feel the sensation very locally. And if you want to vibrate all eight at the same time, you can do also. You can do that too. Yes. Another kind of interesting fact is that it will be a glow, where you can have embedded flexible glow that people can use to interface with virtual elements into the virtual world. And you could have actuators at the tip of each finger so that when you grab objects or when you scroll menus into your virtual world, you can feel sensation and feel the elements that you are touching. You can even have maybe up to six for each finger, like in front and behind. Is that too much? It's interesting to see that when people start to build prototypes and use our technology, they always want to put more, because they say, okay, how about the middle finger? How about this? How about the top of the hand? So we are working on a number of projects in the VR, AR kind of controller space where the number of actuators is more than five, more than just one for fingers. We have projects where the number of actuators is even greater than 10. So this is for the VR gaming market? It's not just gaming. VR and AR are becoming very successful in other market segments that are just gaming. And VR now is a combination of VR and AR, a combination of virtual elements and real world elements. You need to be able to grab objects in the virtual world. And you have technology that keeps track of your hands and protects your hands inside the virtual world, but you don't feel anything when you move them. This technology is a way to augment the experience by being able to feel when you interact with objects. You can feel textures, you can get a sensation when you grab things. But how would you record the feelings? You would have to create it later, but could you have a machine that will record what you should feel somehow? There is a number of universities and organizations that have recorded textures, for instance. They use a different kind of a system to measure the vibration that happens when you move across leather or glass or any kind of different kind of things. Can you simulate that? Can you simulate this by replaying the similar vibration that has been recorded when you actually touch it? So suddenly it feels like you're touching glass? So we still have some work to be done, but we can definitely create different sensations if you feel glass, if you feel plastic, if you feel garments, and... It's like based on vibration. It's based on vibration, that's the type of... It's based on the... Yeah, the problem with this material and that application is that you're a bit higher. This is what, in the real world, that's what's happening. Our sensors are sensing if you get a vibration as you move across different textures. This is the information we send to our brain. So our actuators can be used to recreate this type of vibration so that our brain is tricked by those and our brain feels that we are actually touching different type of structures. So if I touch the table, maybe it's a kilohertz, if I touch here it's 200 hertz. It's a little more complicated than that, but when you record the sensation you can really see and model the vibration very precisely. And we have a way to replay those kind of vibrations that you can record in the real world using deformation and vibration that mimic the real vibration. So I'm hoping that in the last few months and recently and in the near future you have a lot of big companies talking with you. We are already engaged with the number of companies now and we are working on projects that have the potential of being released towards the end of 2017. So a little bit longer we have to wait but it's coming longer. It is coming. Maybe some of those products will be announced by mid-2017 as a kind of prototype. But production is planned now for the end of 2017. Can you put this as a strap for my watch? I like to feel when somebody is calling me with patterns and this is the future of the smartwatch business. That's the idea, I think. Notification is a very important part of wearable devices. And if you use standard technology, that are small motors that vibrate and only vibrate with the zzzz, you can feel it on your wrist. Our brain is very good at detecting patterns in different locations of our body. So, on the left side or the right side. So we have the capability to create notification language through vibration, through haptics, that any user will be able to feel. So yes, the idea is to be able to feel different things, different sensations for different type of notification.  That's the only thing I do, pretty much, yes. And do people, like, say, yes, or there's some concerns? No, there is a lot of excitement about what we are doing. Now people are telling us, when can you deliver in volume? And we are going to be able to do that with our partners. And we expect to be able to support volume production again. And good price. By the end of 2017, the way we make our products is roll to roll. Kind of technology. So it will be cheaper than our traders. Problem is our friend, and with high volume, we will be able to make this product in a very cost-effective way. Maybe it's going to be in every garment, smart gown, shirt, smart jacket, smart everything. Absolutely. I mean, we have the potential to... That touch screen must have in any kind of display. People now touch displays, and if it's not a touch screen, people are surprised. We have the capability to create localized vibration in any device, any surface. We can make smart buttons anywhere. So we have the potential to have a really unique experience, which consists of getting the surface of the object we are using talk to us through vibration, through haptics. So everybody who's working the e-textile business, Google Project, JetCard, all these people, they need to consider using this. All right. So looking forward to the one line, buying the shirts, and watches and everything with this. Yep. Thank you.


Yeah, good morning! Morning is well, it's almost lunchtime. We're off the coast of, well, almost Portugal now, still probably Spain, but we're on the cusp. We're about 60 miles offshore and but actually I don't know why I'm pointing there because it's over there. Yes. Yes. I tacked earlier because although it looks not great in front of us there, I can promise you it looked even worse. Where I was headed, which was over there, there was a large growing cumulonimbus cloud. And yeah, so I had to get out of the way and as the Portuguese current, unlike the Portuguese trade wind, which has pissed off, Portuguese current is still here, which gives me about half a knot in a southerly direction all of the time. I'm randomly pointing at the horizon I should really point at my face, shouldn't I? Yeah, so that that current gives me a little bit of south all of the time, so I can afford to I'm not super close-hauled, but I'm I'm comfortably on a close reach Yeah, I can afford to take advantage of that current and still get a bit of south out of it. If we look on here, here's my heading, is 098. My course over the ground is 0-0-1, so you can see that current driving me a little bit. Yeah, so I've got the boat trimmed to sail between 50 and 60 degrees to the wind, to the true wind, and you can see this here.  So really, we're being steered by the wind, not by anything else. I've just trimmed the boat and if we look back here, although the tilapilot is still connected, it's in standby mode. This, by the way, is essential if you're going to use a tilapilot in any kind of weather because they just jump off the pin, and when they jump off the pin, you're in the poo. Speaking of which, a rather unpleasant task I have to undertake right now. I've just broken out the servicing kit for my, I'll look at the beautiful skies. I've just broken out the servicing kit for my baby Blake's toilet, and I can assure you I would not be doing that if there was any way to avoid it.  I'm swearing, mate. I tell myself I'm swearing in any of these videos.  Well, not the fan, but everywhere else. Okay, back to work. We were on the other tack for a long time, but the ship's compass is stuck. I'm gonna go and give it a tap. It's rubbish anyway, it needs a lamp. It's ornamental, rather like my wind-bane steering. I wanted to add, purely because I can hear all of the YouTube know-it-alls commenting already about how dangerous it is to have your tiller pilot taped to the rudder. What happens in an emergency if you have to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah? Well, I'll tell you first of all, in an emergency if I have to blah blah blah, I go to standby mode and do no rudder feedback steering using the buttons here. Helps me to steer the boat perfectly fine. But if that didn't work, then I simply remove the other end, swing it round and get it out of the way. So you see, there is no danger. And back in, there is no danger in taping the head of your tiller pilot. If, like mine, it tends to pop off when things get a bit interesting. And there we go. So that's for all the, all the, what do they call them these days? All the haters, all the haters on the YouTubes. There's your answer. Hi. Afternoon, 6th of July. It's been six hours since I lashed or held the rudder in place and I've not touched anything in six hours. We've just sailed 50 degrees to the true wind the whole time. We are again approaching the traffic lanes. That big growing queue, Nim in front of us there. That's a good sign, actually, because the traffic lanes are about 15 miles, nautical miles ahead of us, full of traffic, which we can't see at the moment. I did see one ship that was outside. It was still over there on the horizon. And I don't want to be messing around in the traffic lanes, especially in the evenings. So that queue, and then we'll be approaching that will be it's not quite a queue near me yet, but it's a baby one, it's growing. That will be the signal to tack. And then I'm going to end up going that way tonight, probably about over there. And there's no traffic over there, there's no weather over there. Certainly not the right direction, but it means I can have a nice, relaxing night time without having to panic about checking every five minutes who's nearby and what's going on. That'll be nice. In a very casual, even had a snooze in the cockpit. Duke Ellington for anyone who's not aware.


Today we had the wonderful opportunity to announce 15 and a half million dollars coming from the provincial government to the city of Surrey to raise a number of dykes that have been deficient and we look forward to global warming, rising sea levels, all those sorts of things we need to address and so 15.5 million dollars is spent here in Surrey. Any time that the provincial government wants to step up and provide the funding to the city and allow us to do the studies and use the money in the best way that works out for the city is a great announcement. So now we've got 7.2 kilometers of dyke area that's there that we need to raise on average about three meters between now and 2100 and we know that it's going to take time to do it but the best thing is that we have time. This area that we're in right now is Colbrook dyking area and these will be raised by a meter over the next five years in order to protect the agricultural lands that we have here. There's another two kilometers of dykes up in the Bridgeview Southwest Minster area that will be protecting residential as well as industrial lands up there. So it's a great announcement that it's all part of the flood protection strategy that we have here in the province of BC.