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A French law has forced the fast-food giant to serve fries and sodas in washable containers; now it is fighting a wider rollout PARIS—A McDonald’s MCD -0.44%decrease; red down pointing triangle on a buzzy boulevard here offers a glimpse of what the future of serving fast food could look like. The burger giant doesn’t like what it sees. For those dining in, french fries are served in durable red containers, soda is dispensed into clear washable glasses and chicken nuggets come in hard plastic white bowls. When customers are finished eating, they are asked to drop the containers into a...

The company recovered the first stage of its two-stage Electron rocket for the first time on Thursday (Nov. 19), fishing the booster out of the Pacific Ocean a few hours after it had helped launch a 30-satellite mission aptly called "Return to Sender." The stage survived its trip back from space in great shape, helping to validate Rocket Lab's reusability vision, according to company founder and CEO Peter Beck. The 58-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to orbit, has been an expendable vehicle since its debut launch in 2017. Last year, however, Beck announced that the...

With some experts predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18 months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and outsourcing to China look now? Hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the coronavirus. What we do know, though, is that between last Sunday and this Sunday, things went from Zero to Crazy in one week: We shut down our economy,...

Department of Energy's scientists announced this week that they have designed a plastic that can be recycled over and over again. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wrote in Nature Chemistry that they had designed new plastic, called polydiketoenamine or PDK, that could be disassembled down to the molecular level and reassembled into different shapes, textures or colors multiple times. Modern-day plastics are reinforced with chemicals to make them more resilient and often end up making the material more difficult to fully recycle. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... Even the most recyclable plastic is only being...

The Falcon 9 booster that dramatically flew back to Earth last month following a commercial satellite launch ignited again Friday in a hold-down test at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral launch pad, days before the company is due to launch its next mission from California, officials said. SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk tweeted that the “data looks good overall” but one of the Merlin engines — Engine No. 9 — showed thrust fluctuations during the test firing. Officials did not say how long the nine-engine first stage fired at the Complex 40 launch pad at Cape Canaveral, where the Falcon 9 took...

The third attempt at a historic reusable-rocket milestone was the charm for SpaceX. The private spaceflight company brought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a soft touchdown tonight (Dec. 21), pulling off history's first-ever rocket landing during an orbital launch. (Blue Origin, the company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, landed its New Shepard booster successfully last month, but that occurred during a suborbital test.) The Falcon 9 blasted off at 8:29 p.m. EST today (0129 GMT on Dec. 22) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, tasked with delivering to orbit 11 spacecraft...

Original Title:Watch: Amazing Drone Footage of a Space X Reusable Rocket’s First Test Flight Make sure to watch this at full screen view. Direct Link:YouTube:F9R First Flight Test|250m This is awesome. The Falcon9 reusable rocket launches and then within minutes lands on its own four feet. Videoed by a drone high above the launch pad meeting up with it to close proximity as the rocket approaches the drone in mid-air. Published on Apr 18, 2014 Video of Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) taking its first test flight at our rocket development facility. F9R lifts off from a launch mount to a...

When the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a ban on plastic bags and required businesses to charge a nickel for paper bags, city leaders believed it would be better all around. "I think we've gotten to a place where it's really going to work for the environment, businesses and the community in general," Councilman Mike O'Brien said at the time. But the bag ban is contributing to thousands of dollars in losses for at least one Seattle grocery store, and questions have been raised about the risk of food-borne illness from reusable bags that shoppers don't often wash.

Abstract: Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently expanded its website to include a norovirus toolkit advising the ways in which one might contract the killer virus. Among the public health agency's prescribed practices to stop the spread of the virus: "Practice proper hand hygiene … Take care in the kitchen … Do not prepare food while infected … Clean and disinfect contaminated surfaces after throwing up or having diarrhea … Wash laundry thoroughly." But nowhere in that exhaustive battery of norovirus dodges was a recommendation to avoid reusable grocery bags. Curious, considering that reusable-but-not-recyclable alternative to single-use plastic bags...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Oregon investigators have traced an outbreak of norovirus to a reusable grocery bag that members of a Beaverton girls' soccer team passed around when they shared cookies. The soccer team of 13- and 14-year-olds traveled to Seattle for a weekend tournament in October 2010.

Marchetta could not find anyone who regularly cleaned their reusable bags. Marchetta brought the lab results to Dr. Michelle Barron, the infectious disease expert at the University of Colorado Hospital. "Wow. Wow. That is pretty impressive," said Barron. Barron examines lab results for a living. "Oh my goodness! This is definitely the highest count," Barron commented while looking at the bacteria count numbers. She admitted she was shocked at what was found at the bottom of the bags. "We're talking in the million range of bacteria," she said. Marchetta used swabs provided by a local lab to test several grocery...

Paper grocery bags are bad. Plastic grocery bags are evil. To "save" the planet and not be labeled as a delinquent, you must use reusable canvas or cloth grocery bags. It would appear that soon there will not be a choice of what you use. You will use the reusable grocery bag or not be shopping!

Monday, October 3, 2005 NASA Propulsion Strategy Reaches Back While Looking Ahead By Brian Berger Space News Staff Writer The initial propulsion work in support of NASA's bid to return to the Moon and go on to Mars will focus primarily on adapting space shuttle systems and developing methane-fueled engines, a technology with which the United States has little experience. The space shuttle main engine and solid rocket boosters are the basis for two new launchers NASA intends to develop, one for lofting an astronaut-carrying capsule known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), and a heavy lifter for Moon-bound cargo...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A California company received on Friday the second ever federal license to fly a manned rocket on suborbital flights. The Federal Aviation Administration granted XCor Aerospace Inc. the license for its Sphinx, a rocket-powered plane that is still on the drawing board. The license covers up to 35 flights of the yet-to-be-built plane, which should test operation and propulsion concepts for an even later craft that could ferry paying passengers on suborbital flights, according to the FAA. The license is good through 2006. Company chief executive officer Jeff Greason said the license would allow the company...

The Universal Reusable First Stage: The Next 'Stage' In Space Transport The realization following the Columbia tragedy that the country needs more than a single means to transport humans to Space, allows this new opportunity to appropriately fund and build the RFS demonstrator to accommodate multiple vehicle designs by the end of the decade.  by Kenneth Schweitzer  Washington - Mar 28, 2003 The Space Race of the 1960s did not allow the time needed to develop reusable Space transportation systems. The requirement to beat the Russians led to the development of expendable capsules: the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft. Reusable...

<p>A Russian Soyuz rocket launching a scientific satellite exploded half a minute after launch on Tuesday.</p> <p>It carried no crew, but it was of a similar type (though out of a different launch site) to the vehicle that delivers Russian cosmonauts (including paying space tourists, such as Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth) to the International Space Station. Had the finances worked out, teen-heartthrob Lance Bass would have been aboard one this month.</p>