A rendering of NASA's Lunar Gateway. Regardless of the outcome of this year’s election, the United States will have a new president in a few months. Although there are myriad issues of greater importance than spaceflight to most Americans, a new leader of the country will inevitably take a fresh look at the nation’s space policy. Among the highest priorities for the next administration should be shoring up NASA’s Artemis plan to return humans to the Moon. This ambitious and important program is now half a decade old, and while the overall aims remain well supported in Congress and the space community, there are some worrying cracks in the foundation. These issues include:

An early warning?

On Tuesday, October 8, one day after the justices convene for a new Supreme Court term, the Court will hear a case that could open up a massive loophole in US gun laws. The plaintiffs in Garland v. VanDerStok ask the Court to effectively neutralize a federal law requiring gun buyers to submit to a background check, as well as a separate law requiring guns to have a serial number to allow law enforcement to track firearms. The case involves “ghost guns,” weapons that are sold dismantled and in ready-to-assemble kits. Three Trump appointees on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit previously concluded that guns sold in these kits are exempt from the laws requiring background checks and serial numbers, thus making it easy for people with violent felony convictions to obtain guns simply by buying them in a disassembled state. By law, the background check and serial number requirements apply to “any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” They also apply to “the frame or receiver of any such weapon,” the skeletal part of a gun that houses other components, such as the barrel or firing mechanism. Thus, if someone purchases a series of firearm parts intending to build a gun at home, they still must face a background check when they purchase the gun’s frame or receiver. Ghost gun makers seek to evade these requirements by selling a kit with an incomplete frame or receiver — although, according to the Justice Department, it’s often trivially easy to convert the kit’s incomplete part into a fully functional frame or receiver. Some kits can be turned into a working firearm after the buyer drills a single hole in the kit’s frame. Others require the user to sand off a small plastic rail. The Fifth Circuit backed these attempts to evade the law. It claimed that frames missing a single hole are “not yet frames or receivers.” The three Trump judges also argued that ghost gun kits may not “readily be converted” into a working gun because this phrase “cannot be read to include any objects that could, if manufacture is completed, become functional at some ill-defined point in the future” — even if only a negligible amount of work is required to make the gun function. So the question now is whether a majority of this Supreme Court, which often takes an expansive view of gun rights, will sign onto this attempt to neutralize the background check and serial number laws. The good news for supporters of gun regulations is that the Court has already signaled that it will not do so. The Court first heard this case, albeit in an expedited process, in August 2023, and it voted to temporarily leave the background check and serial number requirements in full effect while the case made its way through the lower courts. The bad news is that the vote in that August 2023 decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the Court’s three Democrats. So if just one justice flips, the VanDerStok plaintiffs could prevail. VanDerStok turns on the question of when a partially manufactured gun becomes sufficiently gun-like that it should be regulated as if it were a fully operational firearm. Congress, by applying the relevant laws to operational guns, frames, receivers, and items that “may readily be converted” into an operational gun, clearly intended that a gun need not be fully complete to be regulated. At the same time, it’s also clear that there is a point when an incomplete gun is not yet subject to the background check and serial number laws. For example, if someone buys a bucket full of raw steel and wood that a skilled gunsmith, after many hours of work using the proper tools, could turn into a firearm, that bucket does not need to come with a background check. Up until very recently, this question of “at what point does a gun become sufficiently complete to trigger certain federal laws?” would have been resolved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). In Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), the Supreme Court held that, when an agency is given the power to issue regulations interpreting a federal law (and ATF has that power over the gun laws at issue in VanDerStok), courts should typically defer to how the agency decides to resolve any ambiguities in that law. Thus, in a less imperious Supreme Court, VanDerStok would be an easy case. ATF issued a regulation in 2022 that clarifies that the background check and serial number laws do apply to ghost guns. Under Chevron, that should be enough to resolve this case. Last June, however, the six Republican justices voted to overrule Chevron. Their decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) establishes that henceforth, whoever controls a majority of the Supreme Court will have the final word on thousands of policy questions that, under Chevron, used to be resolved by federal agencies. So VanDerStok will give us an early window into how these justices intend to use their new, self-given policymaking authority. If these justices concern themselves with the text of federal gun law, however, it’s still difficult to see how they could affirm the Fifth Circuit’s decision to exempt ghost guns from the background check and serial number requirements. The reason why is that federal gun law does not simply announce a vague standard — that incomplete guns that “may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” are still subject to federal regulation. It also provides an example of a particular kind of not-yet-ready-to-fire gun that is subject to the background check and serial number laws.  The relevant federal law explicitly states that a “starter gun” — that is, a gun with a plugged barrel that is designed to fire blanks, and that is typically used to begin track or swim races — does count as a gun that is subject to federal regulation. So if someone buys a starter gun, they must submit to a background check, even though starter guns cannot be used to shoot anyone without significant alterations. In its brief, the Justice Department suggests that this reference to starter guns was inserted into the statute because of a “do-it-yourself gunsmith” who “distributed firearms to gang members by buying starter pistols in bulk.” He would then disassemble these starter guns and “using an electric hand drill mounted in a drill press stand, bore[d] out the plugged barrel and enlarge[d] the cylinder chambers to accommodate .22-caliber cartridges.” That’s significantly more work than is required to assemble many ghost guns. The fact that Congress intended to regulate devices that need to be disassembled and “bored out” using reasonably specialized equipment before they could be used as weapons suggests that Congress also intended for an already-disassembled gun that is missing a single hole in its frame or receiver to be subject to regulation. A ghost gun is much closer to being a fully operational firearm than a starter gun. Still, while VanDerStok should not be a difficult case, the fact that four justices previously voted to exempt ghost guns from background checks and serial numbers suggests that this Court will make this case more difficult than it needs to be.  In overruling Chevron, the Court declared that it should have far more control over US policy than it has had in recent decades. Now we’re going to get a taste of how this GOP-dominated Court intends to use that power. 

Serve Robotics has announced a pilot partnership with Wing Aviation to expand the range of its autonomous food delivery without requiring restaurants to install new equipment to accommodate drone pickups. Serve, which was spun out of the app-based delivery company Postmates in 2021, has been making Uber Eats food deliveries in Los Angeles for a few years now, using robots that look like autonomous shopping carts. Serve says its delivery robots can be a safer alternative to cars and help reduce traffic congestion as they operate primarily on sidewalks. Since they have a top speed of around six miles per hour, there should be little to no risk to pedestrians. But that approach also limits the robot’s ability to deliver food in a timely...

Miami has long had a reputation as a balmy party destination, a place where spring breakers, Lamborghini-driving showoffs, Cuban culture, and clubs coalesce.But the South Florida city has undergone a major transformation over the past 15 years. It became an international hub for art with Art Basel. Its high-end food scene blossomed, becoming one of the best in the nation. And, somehow, it quietly became “Wall Street South.”J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs both now have major footprints in the city, and several hedge funds have sprung up there as well. A slew of Silicon Valley companies set up shop in Miami after the pandemic, too, in search of lower taxes and fewer Covid restrictions.  Maybe it’s not so surprising, then, that Miami, newly flush with major corporations, has seen a bigger office comeback post-Covid than almost any other American city, according to data from Placer.ai, a startup that measures foot traffic to offices.  Yesterday, Today Explained kicked off a miniseries on work after the pandemic by looking at how American workers were leaving the country in search of work-life balance and finding it in Portugal, where the country’s unique digital nomad visa programs have led to a flourishing expat remote-worker community.   For today’s installment, the Today, Explained podcast team returned stateside, venturing to Miami to find out more about why companies there are calling knowledge workers into the office once again, and what it can show us about the delicate dance that employers all over the nation face as they try to rebuild their corporate cultures. Four years after the pandemic, only about 35 percent of Americans with jobs that can be worked remotely still work entirely from home, according to a 2023 report from Pew. They tend to be knowledge workers – people whose jobs demand that they’re sitting at a computer the bulk of the time.   So why are Miami’s knowledge workers going into offices instead of staying home?   The very same industries that are pouring into the South Florida city — financial services and tech — are the ones telling workers that it’s time to invest in “culture.” “I think people are actually opting in to work in this culture,” Alex DiLeonardo, chief people officer for Citadel Securities, told us when we visited the financial firm’s sleek headquarters in the Brickell neighborhood of Miami in September.  DiLeonardo used a lot of HR speak, but what he described to us was a vibes-y idea among employers that collaboration and values are forged from human interaction. The best way they think they can foster that creative “culture”? To make workers come into the office. At Citadel Securities, that means in-office, five days a week.  The idea of a workplace “culture” almost always shows up when a CEO calls people back to the office. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy informed employees that they would be required to return to the office five days a week. In a statement titled “Strengthening our culture and teams,” Jassy made this case for in-office work: “[C]ollaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another.” That’s what Hasan Altaf was looking for when he recently graduated from college. “I think in the office, it’s just creativity, collaboration, everything,” he told us. Altaf, 22, is now a software engineer at Citadel Securities in Miami. During the pandemic, he spent eight months working an internship fully remote and said the whole thing felt kind of empty. “I felt disconnected with my team. [T]hey were just, like, faces on a screen. I never met them in person.” Now, he’s got an easy commute by metro, there are killer views of the ocean and city from the building, and he gets to absorb lessons from his colleagues in real time. “The juices are flowing here.” To be clear, not everyone is fully opting into office life: One expert we talked with told us only about 20 percent of the 100,000 workers he’s surveyed want to be in an office five days a week. Another 30 percent wanted to work from home 100 percent of the time.  While people are back in the office at greater rates in Miami, in general, workers across the country want more flexibility. Many workers have gotten a taste of a different kind of life over the past four years, and for the vast majority, working from home has afforded an unprecedented sense of work-life balance, according to Pew.  Many of them resent giving up the flexibility of hybrid or fully at-home work in favor of ideating in an open-concept office in hard pants. A recent survey of remote workers found that nearly 60 percent said they would quit if asked to return to the office.    And there’s evidence that flexible models might be good not just for workers but for companies,  too.  According to a recent USA Today Blueprint survey, 58 percent of white-collar workers prefer a hybrid model (working from home at least three days a week). A McKinsey survey this summer found that 87 percent of workers would say yes to flexible work if it’s offered.  This means a company that adopts a fully in-office policy team could see the plan backfire, according to Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University who studies workplace trends.  “[O]ne way this plays out is they have a ton of quits. They find it harder to hire,” Bloom said. “I know from talking to my own undergrads and MBAs, they don’t want to go in five days a week. So it’s going to be harder to hire them,” he said.  A lot of firms get hung up on the idea of productivity, Bloom said. Companies, he argues, should measure their office policies against profitability. Not paying for an office is a huge cost saver. “It also turns out, if you’re hiring folks remotely, you can hire a lot better employee for your money because you’re not looking locally, you’re looking nationally or even globally.” The talent pool is the entire world.Bloom recently published a study looking closely at this question of productivity. Working with a giant Chinese travel company, Bloom and his team compared two cohorts: The first worked in the office five days a week and the second was offered a hybrid schedule. They found that the hybrid workers were happier with their jobs and that fewer quit. They also found that performance reviews were not affected. People got their work done and they were happier.  Chatting up workers in Miami, we heard some complaints: “Give me a good reason to come in every day.” “I don’t need my boss babysitting my work.” “Commuting sucks.”  A lot of people, though, were willing to meet the CEO culture warriors halfway and acknowledged that some time in the office was great for getting to know the people they worked with. They were also able to build trust with colleagues and learn by watching others do their jobs. For companies in the tech and financial spaces that are so vital to Miami’s rebirth, having workers meet them in the middle helps them navigate a number of issues beyond “culture,” too, including data privacy.   Workers will be the ultimate judge of whether Citadel Securities and other companies with the strictest office policies are right for them. If they disagree, they might just choose to develop their careers elsewhere. For DiLeonardo, these complicated choices are just part of the new world order of work — and maybe even a sign of how far work culture has come.“As somebody who spent my entire career in the people space, I think it’s great that all of these different forms of working are causing organizations and societies to ask questions about how best to enable individuals to succeed in their different roles and their different careers,” he said.  “But I also think that leaves a ton of room for organizations to choose the kind of environment that they provide and be very clear in the social contract about what it means to work at this  company.”