Large Hardon Collider

[Kuya]

Why should it be surprising that our ancestors could get cancer too? Cancer seems like a simple thing. Something wrong with DNA? Boom, cancer.

[kuronosan]

I really wish people would stop talking about cancer like it's something recent. It's been around since DNA existed and probably predates Earth.

[Salodin]

It's because we label it like it's a "thing". If we educated people into thinking of it like cells gone wild instead of something you get from playing outside too much then things would be different.

[Mizango]

Its funny because we have dino fossils that have signs of cancer. Bone marrow cancer in an Allosauraus about 10 years ago iirc. The news would like you to think this is a byproduct of modern living, which is most certainly is not.

[Blubbartron]

Its funny because we have dino fossils that have signs of cancer. Bone marrow cancer in an Allosauraus about 10 years ago iirc. The news would like you to think this is a byproduct of modern living, which is most certainly is not.

Has the rate increased at all? It would make sense that we're advancing technology and subjecting people to more and different forms of radiation faster than we can adapt to it.

[BaneTheBrawler]

i think the rate has increased, but its not like cancer popped out of the first internal combustion engine and started having its way with people.

i believe the currently accepted cause is "genes and also shit happens." Much like Crohn's.

[RKenshin]

Life expectancy differences certainly plays a significant part too.

[Kryssan]

Has the rate increased at all? It would make sense that we're advancing technology and subjecting people to more and different forms of radiation faster than we can adapt to it.

From the older surveys, out of every 10000 radiation workers, an additional 4 will die of cancer related in some way to nuclear power over the number that would have died of cancer received through other means ( I don't really have more up to date information on this, assuming that it is available ). This risk is based upon the idea of radiation exposure at the limits that everyone has generally accepted / agreed upon, though most corporations use far more conservative limits for *reasons*. Since their limits just have to agree with the standards, they can vary by great amounts.

As a correlation to Fukushima, for example, a rough and dirty calculation you can do is that for a group of 10000 exposed to 1 REM in an acute dose, an additional 8 people in that group would die of cancer. For a 25 REM exposure, the number would be 200, and so on and so forth. You can also use the old RIFC formula ( Radiation Induced Fatal Cancer ) which states 4% per Sv ( 100 REM ) for exposures to low doses and low dose rates.

So yes, the rate has increased - obviously we did not have nuclear power at one point in time in history. We should also note that radiation exposure effects are a highly contested item; enough newer surveys have now been published showing data from experiments in the 80s-90s timeframe concluding that low dose radiation exposure over the life of a human may actually be a good thing ( which would be nice, seeing as we're all getting bombarded anyway~ ).

On a side note ( from the same old studies ), out of every 10000 people in the US, we expect 2000 to die of cancer. Obviously these numbers are affected by life expectancy ratios, living conditions, etc. How much these numbers have changed though is probably something that will remain a mystery, unless they manage to find an ancient civilization's worth of bones ( at least a relatively nice sample size, lets go with 10k 'cause easy math ) from the same time period and can take a percentage from that for those that had cancer ( because even if you could do that, I doubt you'd be able to tell conclusively they actually died of said cancer ).



Back to news:

More fun with cancer! Half of UK population 'will get cancer in lifetime'

The number of people in the UK who will get cancer during their lifetime will increase to nearly half the population by 2020, a report has forecast.

Macmillan Cancer Support said the projected figure of 47%, up from the current 44%, would put huge pressure on the NHS.

People living longer is thought to be a major reason for the increase.

But the charity said that more people were surviving cancer compared to 20 years ago.

In 1992, the proportion of people in the UK who got cancer during their life was 32%. This increased to 44% in 2010, an increase of more than a third.

Macmillan said this figure would continue rising over the next decade, levelling off at around 47% between 2020 and 2030.

The charity said this was likely to be an underestimate of the true risk facing people alive in 2020, as life expectancy increased and more people developed cancer.

To produce their figures, Macmillan used data on cancer incidence, cancer mortality and deaths from all causes from across the UK.

They collected figures on cancer survival rates too.

In 1992, 45,000 people, or 21% of those who had cancer, did not die from the disease.

This increased to around 90,000 (35%) in 2010 and is predicted to rise to four in 10 people (38%) surviving cancer and dying from another cause by 2020.

Other causes of death are most commonly heart disease, respiratory disease or stroke.

Gruelling treatments
Macmillan puts the increased survival rates from cancer down to a greater focus on early diagnosis, advances in cancer treatments and better cancer care.

The growth in the number of people getting cancer is explained by the fact that people are living longer, because as the population ages the incidence of cancer rises.

Although the charity said the survival trend was "encouraging", it said there was growing evidence that many cancer patients did not return to full health after gruelling treatments and the serious side effects of the disease.

Prof Jane Maher, chief medical officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "Many patients can be left with physical health and emotional problems long after treatment has ended.

"People struggle with fatigue, pain, immobility, or an array of other troublesome side-effects.

"We need to manage these consequences for the sake of the patient, but also for the sake of the taxpayer. We should plan to have more services to help people stay well at home, rather than waiting until they need hospital treatment."

Ciaran Devane, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said the predicted cancer incidence figures posed "a herculean challenge for the NHS and for society".

"The NHS will not be able to cope with the huge increase in demand for cancer services without a fundamental shift towards proper after-care, without more care delivered in the community, and without engaging cancer patients on their own health."

Sean Duffy, NHS England's national clinical director for cancer, said the NHS had been set the challenge of saving an additional 5,000 lives from the disease a year by 2014-15.

"We also recognise that local NHS teams need to consider providing a new range of care services for cancer survivors to tackle their needs and improve their quality of life."

He added: "Through our strategic clinical networks for cancer, we aim to share best practice and develop clinical pathways that help deliver better outcomes for patients."

Cancer specialist Professor Greg Rubin, from the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: "This is welcome evidence that people are increasingly likely to survive cancer but a powerful reminder that survivors have complex needs that health services, particularly in primary care, will need to respond to."

And on a noncancer note:

Arc protein 'could be key to memory loss', says study

Scientists have discovered more about the role of an important brain protein which is instrumental in translating learning into long-term memories.

Writing in Nature Neuroscience, they said further research into the Arc protein's role could help in finding new ways to fight neurological diseases.

The same protein may also be a factor in autism, the study said.

Recent research found Arc lacking in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

Dr Steve Finkbeiner, professor of neurology and physiology at the University of California, who led the research at Gladstone Institutes, said lab work showed that the role of the Arc protein was crucial.

"Scientists knew that Arc was involved in long-term memory, because mice lacking the Arc protein could learn new tasks, but failed to remember them the next day," he said.

Further experiments revealed that Arc acted as a "master regulator" of the neurons during the process of long-term memory formation.

The study explained that during memory formation, certain genes must be switched on and off at very specific times in order to generate proteins that help neurons lay down new memories.

The authors found that it was Arc that directed this process, from inside the nucleus.

Dr Finkbeiner said people who lack the protein could have memory problems.

"Scientists recently discovered that Arc is depleted in the hippocampus, the brain's memory centre, in Alzheimer's disease patients.

"It's possible that disruptions to the homeostatic scaling process may contribute to the learning and memory deficits seen in Alzheimer's."

The study says that dysfunctions in Arc production and transport could also be a vital player in autism.

The genetic disorder Fragile X syndrome, for example, which is a common cause of both mental disabilities and autism, directly affects the production of Arc in neurons.

The Californian research team said they hoped further research into the Arc protein's role in human health and disease would provide even deeper insights into these disorders and lay the groundwork for new therapeutic strategies to fight them.

And back to nuclear:

San Onofre California nuclear plant to shut down

A California nuclear power plant will close permanently amid doubts it could operate safely, 18 months after a small radiation leak was discovered.

The San Onofre plant near Los Angeles halted operations in January 2012 after radioactive water tubes were damaged.

Operator Southern California Edison has faced a series of regulatory inquiries.

San Onofre powered 1.4 million homes but regulators say they can supply sufficient electricity through the summer barring threats to other plants.

"[The plant] has served this region for over 40 years," Chief Executive Ted Craver of parent company Edison International said in a statement.

"But we have concluded that the continuing uncertainty about when or if [the plant] might return to service was not good for our customers, our investors, or the need to plan for our region's long-term electricity needs."

With the plant off-line, officials have warned the wildfires that regularly scorch Southern California during the dry summer months could cause power shortages.

Over the last eight months Southern California Edison had sought permission from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to restart one reactor and run it at reduced power for five months, in hopes of stopping the vibrations that had damaged the tubing.

California US Senator Barbara Boxer applauded the decision to close the plant permanently, saying it had a defective design and posed a danger to the eight million people who live within 50 miles (80.5km).

Now if we just had something better to replace a design created so long ago...


And now back to happier things:

Invisibility 'time cloak' developed

An "invisibility" time cloak which is able to hide events in a continuous stream of light has been developed by scientists.

The cloak works by manipulating the speed of light in optical fibres and means any interaction which takes place during this "hole in time" is not detected.

That is, a beam of light can be manipulated along its path.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

The research builds upon a time cloak described last year that was only able to hide single brief events of time in an optical beam.

Hidden data
This work is different to other "invisibility cloaks" in that it hides events in time, rather than spatial objects - which similar efforts have looked into.

The team from the Purdue University in Indiana has shown it can hide events in the path of a continuous light beam by having several "holes in time".

The researchers were able to cloak nearly half the data put in the beam's path, which they would otherwise be able to detect.

Cloaking, just as it sounds, is where an object or event is hidden from vision. This can apply to frequencies of light or sound. For example, stealth war planes can be difficult to detect on enemy radar.

"We were able to push the light forward and back using commercial telecoms components, that are controlled by electrical signals," said Andrew Weiner, who co-authored the paper.

"When one sends high-speed data over an optical fibre in the existing infrastructure, in many cases it's just 1s and 0s (binary code).

Bendy light
"In our system, we can hide the 1s and 0s. There can also be other kinds of disturbances in the light but this cloak provides a zone where one doesn't see how the light is being changed," Prof Weiner told BBC News.

He compared how a stream of light is manipulated to a flowing river.

"Think about taking a region of that river and pushing some of it forward, and some backwards so there are holes where there isn't any water. Maybe there's a dam, and we can pop the dam on and off very quickly, to somehow disturb or divert the water.

"If we part the water so it doesn't see the dam popping up and down, it isn't disturbed, and afterwards we can put the water back together so it looks like a nice calm river again.

"That's how we control the flow of the light. We're pushing it forward and backwards in time, so it avoids events that would otherwise disturb it," Prof Weiner explained.

Though called a time cloak, it's actually "not a manipulation of time, it's a manipulation of light" explained Greg Gbur, who specialises in optical physics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The researcher, who was not involved in the study, said it showed a huge advance in the work on the time cloak.

"In the first time cloak paper, they discussed hiding events of a few billionths of a second once in a while. Here, they are talking about being able to hide data 46% of the time. This really suggests that this has gone from a curiosity to something that could be used in optical communications and data processing," added Dr Gbur.

Ortwin Hess, a physicist at Imperial College London, said the study was a "remarkable extension of the previously demonstrated time lens principle".

'Undesirable communication'
"An important part of the present paper exploits the principle of space-time duality, which means that like in the original concept of a temporal cloak, one of the directions of spatial cloaking had been replaced by time.

"It shows how beautiful the space-time principles are that can be used in optics. While previous cloaks are interesting as well, in the sense that they change optics in space, now we can change the way light, and thus information, behaves in space and time," Prof Hess told BBC News.

The research has several possible applications, he added. It could make data more tamper proof, could be used to monitor "undesirable communication" and could be used by governments or large firms that handle sensitive or confidential information.

And on another note, there's not enough stuff for a science forum.

[Kuya]

Any specifics on what the arc protein is? nuclear receptor? promoter or inhibitor? Bah let me just google this shit.

[Kyreth]

I also look at "OMG, more people are dying of cancer" in the sense that "Duh, of course they are- we're figuring out more ways around dying via other sources."

After all, if you were dying of smallpox before you would have died of cancer, and suddenly *bing* vaccinations prevented your death from smallpox- well, you now have something else down the line that'll kill you instead. Cancer risks increase with age, and as we get more and more people into that age range, cancer becomes a bigger share of the reaper's pie. Until we figure enough cures for the stuff, of course. Death by some types of cancer have dropped off even as the odds of someone having it have increased.

[myreality]

http://rt.com/news/floating-nuclear-plant-russia-759/

World’s first floating nuclear power plant to begin operating in Russia in 2016

In three years, Russia will have the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, capable of providing energy and heat to hard-to-get areas as well as drinking water to arid regions.

The unique vessel should be operational by 2016, the general director of Russia’s biggest shipbuilders, the Baltic Plant, Aleksandr Voznesensky told reporters at the 6th International Naval Show in St. Petersburg.

The Akademik Lomonosov is to become the spearhead of a series of floating nuclear power plants, which Russia plans to put into mass-production.

The floating power-generating unit, aimed at providing energy to large industrial enterprises, port cities and offshore gas and oil-extracting platforms, was designed on the basis of nuclear reactors which are equipped on the icebreakers ships. The technology has proved itself for over 50 years of successful operation in extreme Arctic conditions.

The floating power plant is a vessel with a displacement of 21,500 tons and a crew of 69 people. It’s non-self-propelled and therefore has to be towed to the desired destination.

Image from www.okbm.nnov.ru

Each ship will have two modified KLT-40 naval propulsion reactors together providing up to 70 MW of electricity or 300 MW of heat, which is enough for a city with a population of 200,000 people.

The floating nuclear power plants are expected to be used in remote regions of Russia’s high north and Far East, which currently see economic growth suffering from a lack of energy.

For export purposes, the floating power plant can also be modified as a desalination plant able to produce 240,000 cubic meters of fresh water on a daily basis.

15 countries, including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Namibia, Cape Verde and Argentina, have previously expressed interest in acquiring such power stations.

The manufacturer stresses that the process of fuel enrichment on the vessels complies with the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) dealing with nonproliferation of nuclear arms.

Like every atomic station the floating power plant is designed with a safety margin, exceeding any possible threats, which makes the reactors invulnerable to tsunami waves or crashes with other ships or on-land structures.

The power-generating unit is to be replaced by a new one after 40 years, with the used reactor returned to a specialized facility for re-utilization.

The vessels are said to be safe for the environment as they don’t release any hazardous substances during operation.

The construction of the maiden floating nuclear power station, Akademik Lomonosov, began in 2007 at the Sevmash Submarine-Building Plant in Severodvinsk.

A year later it was transferred to the Baltic Plant, but was stalled for the last two years due to a lack of financing.

The new deal to finalize the construction of a floating power unit for the floating nuclear power plant was signed between the Baltic plant and the Russiam state Rosenergoatom company in December 2012.

Would be interesting to see just how much this could take off.

[BaneTheBrawler]

For export purposes, the floating power plant can also be modified as a desalination plant able to produce 240,000 cubic meters of fresh water on a daily basis.

this sounds like it could be a Big Fucking Deal. Desalination plants are expensive; put one of these in an area that needs one long enough to get things moving so the local economy can support building one themselves, then haul ass to the next spot.

i have no idea if thats enough volume to make that effective, though

[Mizango]

Kryssan can give you better insight on that. My boy is wicked in that dept.

[Kyreth]

this sounds like it could be a Big Fucking Deal. Desalination plants are expensive; put one of these in an area that needs one long enough to get things moving so the local economy can support building one themselves, then haul ass to the next spot.

i have no idea if thats enough volume to make that effective, though

There's a lot of problems in the world that would be solved by cheap enough power generation. Fresh water, that's a big one. Even as a temporary relief measure though, those reactor tugs could be a gawdsend, especially if local power generation is damaged beyond easy repair/flooded out and there's a way to graft the tug into the city power grid instead.

Edit note: And speaking of desalinization processes, this one was relevant to my interests.

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2013/06/2...ter-at-a-time/

[Buffy]

We're a bit off-topic, but whatever.

In his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman argues there are only really two problems in the world: Power and Information. With enough power, new wells and methods of producing water could be developed and distributed so every country in the world could feed themselves (he specifically was targeting Africa in this part of the book) and information is available via the internet. He asserts that electricity would fix the water issue and internet access would fix the information issue. After that point, people would have the bare minimum tools they needed to start to bootstrap themselves to a higher standard of living. Natural creativity and initiative would start to pick up the rest of the slack from there.

It's an interesting thought at the least.

[Chun Liroy]

Anything involving science is never off-topic!

[Kryssan]

This is not really news. The SMT design theory has held this principle up for evaluation for decades now. As they note, the Ruskies have been trying to build this for years ( not talking about R&D, just trying to build it). Rosatom and the other involved parties keep having 'financial' difficulty with it. If they ever get it going, like actually commissioned, floating, and operating, it'll be interesting to see how they implement it. The idea was exciting when it was first introduced, but given all the issues they've had actually implementing it...

The Russian ice-breaker fleet at least is still going, though most of the ships are beyond useful lifetime. I like how the article calls out that fleet, and mentions it's safety record in the arctic - too bad they forgot about the Loss of Coolant Accident aboard the Taimyr. At least that incident was handled well by Russian authorities. They're trying to build more of those as well, we'll see how that goes. That fleet already has seen interesting uses, including providing 'arctic cruises' for people that don't mind being away from home for a while.

A little known factoid is that America used to have a nuclear powered civilian ship, the NS Savannah (link). The US Army considered the possibility of deploying the Savannah in a similar method, but instead during times of emergency to respond to disasters. The failure of the Savannah's viability is still oft quoted as a reason you don't see nuclear powered civilian vessels ( even though the Savannah's 'failure' is easily noted as trying to be too much show and too little use ) - there have only been four such ships built ( owned by the US, German, Japan ), and of course the Russian ice fleet ( 5? vessels, which is also currently owned by Rosatom, IIRC ). Outside of all the standard issues that are attached with the word 'nuclear', money / income ratios is the biggest driving factor in why these platforms never seem to do all that much.

The current advantage of this barge system is that it has no propulsion. I know that statement probably makes you quirk your head, but here's the thing; most nuclear powered ships waste a great deal of their steam capacity for generating electric power on their engine's turbines. That's why even though America's carriers are huge, with reactor plants that can rival some production facilities, they aren't that good at actually supplying power to a city's grid.

By using what is essentially a barge / float with no engines, all the power of the reactor can be utilized instead for electric production, and all the space you needed for engine-only components can instead be replaced with electric turbines. The water treatment plant aspect of it is not a surprise ( all nuclear powered ships have water plants aboard, and all of them make lots of water - they're advertising this as IAEA compliant, so there's a big driver reason ), but it'll obviously help whoever they're providing power to seeing as the capacity is far and beyond what the ship should ever need. The disadvantage of not having an engine is a big deal, but might get replaced here in the near future as the 'all-electric' design becomes more viable ( particularly the ONR's NGIPS ).

[Mizango]

Kryssan can give you better insight on that. My boy is wicked in that dept.

.

[Mizango]

Really great explanation.

[Kryssan]

So, wonder who'll win.

Nasa Launch Pad Money Battle

KENT, Wash. — Thanks to Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' backing, Blue Origin is one of the country's most financially stable rocket ventures, but it has also had one of the lowest profiles — until now.

Now the company, based in an industrial area south of Seattle, is waiting to hear whether it can take over one of NASA's crown jewels: Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the first and the last space shuttle flight blasted off. And Bezos is competing with another billionaire, SpaceX's Elon Musk, to get it.

SpaceX is one of the biggest success stories in space nowadays: The company that Musk founded in 2002 with his dot-com fortune has flown three successful unmanned missions to the International Space Station, has dozens of launches on its manifest, and is said to be turning a profit.

Meanwhile, Bezos' Blue Origin has been quietly working for almost 13 years on a suborbital launch system that would send passengers and payloads on short blasts into space, as well as an orbital system that could deliver astronauts to the International Space Station or other destinations.

With financial backing from NASA, Blue Origin has developed an innovative launch pad escape system as well as a rocket that has gone as high as 45,000 feet (13.7 kilometers). But it hasn't yet put anything in outer space, and the crash of its prototype suborbital spacecraft in 2011 was a significant setback.

"We're a company that doesn't take the easy path," Blue Origin's president, Rob Meyerson, told NBC News during an interview at the company's headquarters in Kent. "These vehicles are challenging."

Low profile, high commitment
Meyerson, a veteran aerospace engineer who began his career in 1985 at NASA's Johnson Space Center, acknowledged that Bezos' style is to keep a low profile. The billionaire himself rarely talks to the press about his rocket venture, leaving that to Meyerson and other executives. But Bezos' commitment to enabling "human access to space at a dramatically lower cost and increased reliability" is as strong today as it was at the beginning, Meyerson said.

"His vision has stayed absolutely rock-steady," Meyerson said.

Last Thursday's interview marked the first time that a working journalist was admitted into Blue Origin's headquarters, Meyerson and other company representatives said.

No photos were allowed — but as we walked through the building, there was time to marvel at the two-story-high rocket sculpture (with fireplace) in the lobby, a 10-foot-wide inflatable globe spinning in an entryway, and displays featuring scale models of Hollywood spaceships. A Starship Enterprise model (used for the first three "Star Trek" movies) sat in the lobby. The Discovery One spaceship from "2001: A Space Odyssey" hung from the ceiling. A miniature geodesic dome from "Silent Running" sat on a pedestal in a hallway.

The point of the visit wasn't to gawk at the decor, however. Meyerson wanted to get the word out about Blue Origin's ambitions for Launch Complex 39A.

Surplus launch pad
With the shuttle fleet retired, 39A is now considered surplus. NASA plans to use the other shuttle launch pad, 39B, for development and launch of its next-generation heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. But to save money, the space agency wants to turn the operation and maintenance of 39A over to a commercial concern in October.

Both Musk and Bezos are eyeing the launch pad because, for all their billions, it's still challenging to build an orbital launch pad from scratch. Kennedy Space Center would be ideal, because it already has the infrastructure as well as the coastal range clearances for orbital launches. As an illustration of how tough it is to create a new pad, SpaceX has been looking into creating a new commercial launch facility for more than two years, but a deal still hasn't been reached.

SpaceX spokeswoman Christine Ra told NBC News that 39A wouldn't take the place of a future commercial launch facility. "Top priorities for 39A would be for commercial crew [launches to the space station] and Falcon Heavy missions, though we'd be able to launch all missions on our East Coast manifest," Ra said in an email.

SpaceX currently launches its Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned Dragon capsule on cargo flights to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which is near NASA's space center. The company plans to upgrade the Dragon for crewed missions by as early as 2015, and it wants 39A for those additional flights.

Blue Origin also is looking for an orbital launch facility. The company currently assembles hardware at the Kent facility and tests its suborbital rockets at a 18,600-acre spaceport that Bezos built amid hundreds of thousands of acres of rangeland he owns in West Texas.

Meyerson said the Texas spaceport would continue to be the base for suborbital operations, but Launch Complex 39A would be used for assembly and launch of orbital spacecraft. Commercial operations, perhaps including flights to the space station, would begin in 2018, he said. Meyerson said it was too early to estimate how many jobs would be created for the Florida operation. Blue Origin currently employs more than 250 people, while SpaceX has more than 1,800 employees.

Blue Origin would run 39A as a multi-use facility, allowing other launch providers to send their rockets into space from the pad for a price. "We're open to everyone," Meyerson said. "We think we have the technical background and we have the long-term financial commitment to make a multi-user pad at KSC successful."

Other rocket companies on board
One of Blue Origin's customers could be United Launch Alliance, which currently sends government and commercial payloads into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. ULA's Atlas 5 rocket is slated to be used by two other SpaceX competitors, the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp., to send crews and cargo to the space station and perhaps other orbital destinations as early as 2016. Blue Origin may also use the Atlas 5 while it develops its own rocket.

Blue Origin's director of strategy and business development, Bretton Alexander, said ULA and at least one other launch provider are supporting Blue Origin's bid for Launch Complex 39A. In an emailed statement, ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said a multi-user pad could offer a cost-effective option for launches, and could "serve as a backup to our existing sites."

The financial details of Blue Origin's and SpaceX's proposals for running Launch Complex 39A are shrouded in confidentiality, and NASA does not have a formal timetable for deciding which bid will be accepted — other than that the space agency wants to make the handover by Oct. 1.

It's not clear how much money would change hands under either of the proposed arrangements, if any. NASA is already committed to paying SpaceX $1.6 billion for 12 cargo flights to the space station, plus $440 million for the current phase of development for a crew-capable Dragon spacecraft. If SpaceX's bid is accepted, the company would presumably pay out a portion of that money for operation and maintenance of pad facilities.

In this clash of the billionaires, Blue Origin has at least one clear advantage: Bezos' net worth is estimated at $25.2 billion, almost 10 times Musk's estimated net worth of $2.7 billion. Meyerson has said that Bezos intends to be in the rocket business for decades to come. However, he made clear that Blue Origin would eventually have to pay its own way. Launch Complex 39A would be part of that strategy.

"You have to find a way to generate revenue," Meyerson said. "We're committed to the multi-user site. You have to get the price reasonable, you have to find ways to do the job at the right price point, and you have to market. ... This is a different model."