Dava Newman, Apollo Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, warned that radiation is one of the biggest challenges to surviving and thriving in space. Once spacefarers pierce the atmosphere, they're subject to radiation from solar particles and cosmic rays, which increases the risk of cancer in the long term—and acute radiation sickness mid-mission.
Another is quick and reliable data transmission, given the lag time between, say, Mars and Earth. Not to mention computers that can cope with radiation.
And a lot more food for thought.
A major challenge in keeping elections safe from cyberattacks, said Homeland Security's Christopher Krebs, has less to do with technology than with the way in which elections are held in the United States. Elections, even those held for the office of the president and Congress, are run by state and local governments, not by the federal government. That means each state and, frequently, individual localities have their own way to hold elections, implementing different technologies—from paper ballots to multiple kinds of voting machines, including direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, some of which do not produce a paper trail and therefore are vulnerable to being hacked.
Krebs put the conundrum this way: “It is the responsibility of the states to administer elections. It is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security and the federal government to provide for the national security and national defense of this country. There is a discussion that needs to happen between those two things.”
A lot of people are taking money, almost literally, out of the pockets of musicians. These days, artists get a lot of their revenue from live performances, but middlemen are getting money that should go to them. And that's a major, major problem.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken