The Woman Who Sent a Spacecraft to Europa

Over at The New Yorker, you can find my coverage of the launch of Europa Clipper, NASA’s flagship to the Jovian system, and the story of one of the scientists who’s spent her career making it happen. A snippet:

Just after noon on Monday, a SpaceX rocket stood on the same launch pad that once sent men to the moon. Hurricane Milton had recently ripped across Florida, whipping up winds of a hundred miles per hour in Cape Canaveral, but now the skies were a featureless blue. From a restricted viewing area not far away, Louise Prockter, a graceful scientist with sandy hair, glanced at a countdown clock and then back at the rocket, which carried her lifework. “Surreal,” she said softly. “This just doesn’t feel real.” There were three minutes until ignition.

Read the rest here.

Update: This morning, NPR’s 1A invited me on to discuss Europa, its ocean, the Clipper mission, and the origins of life. Thank you to host Rupert Allman for the fun conversation.

A New Era of Moon Exploration

In my latest essay for The New Yorker, I explore why the moon is so busy these days, and what that means for life on Earth.

On February 22nd, a robotic lander named Odysseus touched down on the sun-washed highlands near the south pole of the moon. It was the first time since the Apollo 17 mission, fifty-two years ago, that an American spacecraft had landed gracefully on the lunar surface. And yet NASA hadn’t designed or built Odysseus; it was renting space onboard. Intuitive Machines, a relatively small aerospace firm based in Houston, was responsible for the lander, which launched atop a SpaceX rocket. The event was historic not just because it signalled a return to the moon but because it was the first time that a private company from any country had landed a spacecraft there. It won’t be the last: Odysseus marks the beginning of a new, relentless, and open-ended campaign of robotic and crewed lunar exploration. The program is called Artemis.

Read the rest here.

The Drop

For over a year now, I have written for The Drop, an online magazine edited by the inimitable Felicity Carter for Pix.wine. All good things come to an end, however, and despite the efforts of the best wine writers in the business, The Drop has published its final issue.

I owe more to Felicity than I can express in a mere blog post. She is not only the best editor in the wine business, but one of the best in all of publishing. If I wrote anything of quality for the The Drop, it was because of her deft talents with the blue pencil.

Below are a few stories I wrote for The Drop that I believe turned out quite well. I hope you enjoy them.

A Wine Tasting at the End of the World

I was there to research my next book, part of an expedition led by the South Korean government. But because space on $100,000 per-day expeditions is too precious to waste on writers, I was officially with the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, and one-half of a two-man team from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Our project, led by geophysicist Dr. Jamin Greenbaum, was to take readings of water temperatures, salinity, and currents beneath the glacier to better understand how the ocean is eating Antarctica from below.

I was also there as a smuggler.

Deep in my duffel bag were two bottles of wine. Before boarding, I had spent two weeks quarantined in a New Zealand hotel, conspiring with The Drop to drink wine in Antarctica and to write about it. I would do so no matter the cost.

Porch Wine After the Storm in New Orleans

After Hurricane Ida obliterated the New Orleans power grid earlier this year, it took about two days to accept the reality of the situation, and after that, things weren’t quite so grim. New Orleans is a subtropical city. Post-Ida, temperatures reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day with 97% humidity and stagnant winds overall. At night, it was like being slow-roasted. We knew only that electricity would be out for weeks, and maybe months.

Wine helped, in ways it could only help here, in one of the great wine cities of the United States.

On that second day, not long after 9 a.m., I brought to the balcony of my Prytania Street apartment a 2014 Burgundy from Jean-Jacques Girard, set out my best stemware, applied key to cork, and began to pour. It wasn’t my first bottle since Ida’s arrival, but now, with the rain stopped and cell service down, life was on pause. Wine was the order of the day.

5 Life-Changing Wines from Rex Pickett, the Author of Sideways

Rex Pickett wrote a novel from his heart, “Sideways.”

Everybody hated it.

It was inappropriately personal, said one. Another advised him to burn it. One editor asked why he even bothered submitting it. In all, Pickett received over 230 rejection letters. When it finally sold, it was for an insulting $5,000 — and the publisher acted like they were doing him a favor.

The story follows aspiring writer Miles, and his best friend Jack, on a road trip through Santa Ynez wine country in California. Jack is engaged, and this is a celebration of sorts. For Miles, a devoted Pinot Noir drinker, it is a journey of self-discovery.

And yet, it changed the wine world.

If the site goes down, I will republish my work here, and hopefully, elsewhere. As it stands, however, The Drop is dead. Long live The Drop.

Some Nonfiction I Liked in 2015

There's a great anecdote about Stanley Kubrick's search during the 1970's for the perfect novel to use as the basis for a film. His process involved reading the first 50 pages or so of a book, and if he didn't like it, throwing it against his office wall. This went on for some time and his assistant was accustomed to the daily, ritual thumping of book-against-wall. When the thumping stopped, the assistant became alarmed, fearing Kubrick had died. She bolted for his office, only to find him enthusiastically reading The Shining. I feel a lot like that, minus the genius and the assistant.  There were a few books I read this year that I absolutely hated, and a lot of books that disappointed me for their awesome potential ruined in execution. There's no need to call out the worst of the offenders, but of the 50-ish nonfiction books I read in 2015, there were enough letdowns to leave a good-sized hole in my office wall.

Any favorites list is going to be biased toward the second half of the year because I'm human, writing this for free, and not thinking too hard about it. So I can't say for sure that The Wright Brothers by David McCullough was my favorite work of nonfiction, as I read it the last week of December, but it's certainly one I didn't expect to enjoy and finished it in a single sitting. The book is great, but feels so effortless that I have to wonder if there was any need for a second draft. It's the work of a master, obviously, which helps, and it's a wonderful American story that everyone knows, kind of, but really doesn't. Upon reflection, I'm not sure if I was ever even conscious of the words on the page. The book was more absorbed than read, as though the information existed as a mist. McCullough wrote without ego, not once imposing himself on the work. There were no rhetorical tricks at work, or literary artifice. It was simply a story perfectly told. God, what a book. What a writer!

Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson was another unexpected pleasure. It's about treasure hunters who search for sunken pirate ships. It struck me as I was reading it: Wow, I am having a lot of fun reading this book. I love reading and enjoy reading, but I never have fun reading, exactly. "Fun" is video games or amusement parks. But this book was positively ebullient, like sitting across from the best conversationalist at a party, and being afraid to refill your wine glass lest you miss something she says.

I fully expected to love Church of Spies by Mark Riebling, and did. The pope's secret efforts to assassinate Adolf Hitler? It's hard to go wrong with a subject like that, but I was astonished how gripping the whole thing was and in awe of how much excruciating work must have gone into researching the subject. How do you even begin? How forthcoming is the Vatican for such a project, and how do you convince its leaders that you're not secretly writing a hatchet job? How do you convince them that there's any need for a book right now? I mean, the Catholic Church operates on a millennial timescale. World War II is only 70 years behind us. That the book even exists seems like an accomplishment. That's it is excellent seems like more than we deserve.