Covering rocket blastoffs with an iPhone
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Kenneth Chang, who covers space for The New York Times, discussed the tech hes using.
What has stood out about how tech in the space race has changed in recent years?
The fundamentals of rocket science have not changed in the last 50 years. We dont have “Star Trek” transporter beams. We dont have antigravity. We dont have electromagnetic rail guns. We dont have space elevators. To escape the planet, its still the explosive churning of fuel and oxygen, igniting the mixture and blowing the exhaust out of the engine nozzle.
Tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are now involved in the space industry. Do you give the edge to Bezos or Musk and why?
The innovation in the space business has occurred in the business side. Take Musks SpaceX. His companys Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule offer, more or less, the same capabilities as the decades-old Russian Soyuz. What Musk did was figure out how to build and launch the rockets at a lower cost. I like to joke that SpaceX is the Southwest …read more
