Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Svetla Ben-Itzhak, Assistant Professor of Space and International Relations, Johns Hopkins University

Private companies are no longer peripheral participants in U.S. space activities. They provide key services, including launching and deploying satellites, transporting cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station, and even sending landers to the Moon.

Commercial integration is now embedded in U.S. space policy and shapes national space strategy. As someone who studies space and international security, I have watched the extraordinary rise of commercial space with awe – and with growing concerns about the structural vulnerabilities it creates.

Access to space, particularly for crewed missions, remains heavily concentrated in one company, SpaceX. While the United States has begun developing alternatives, in operational reality that concentration gives the company disproportionate leverage. If private power and public strategy were to diverge, would Washington have a credible Plan B?

Commercial integration is now official policy

On Feb. 4, the House Science Committee approved the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, directing the agency to partner with American commercial providers for operations in low-Earth orbit, lunar landings and the transition beyond the International Space Station. In critical areas such as lunar landers, the bill requires NASA to work with at least two commercial providers – a deliberate effort to avoid dependence on a single company.

President Donald Trump’s December 2025 executive order expressed similar preference for prioritizing commercial solutions in federal space activities and set a goal of attracting at least US$50 billion in additional private investment in space by 2028. The U.S. Space Force’s 2024 Commercial Space Strategy also emphasizes speed and innovation through private partnerships.

Congress, the White House and the military are aligned: The government sets objectives, then private industry builds – and increasingly operates – the space systems. This shift has been bipartisan and explicit, and it has delivered results.

From cost savings to structural dominance

Its origins trace back to a moment of vulnerability.

After the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, the United States temporarily lost independent human spaceflight capability. For nearly a decade, NASA relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, paying up to $80 million per astronaut seat, roughly $4 billion in total.

NASA responded by turning deliberately to commercial providers through the commercial crew and commercial resupply programs. The goal was pragmatic: to reduce costs, restore domestic launch capability and accelerate innovation. Under these programs, NASA provided funding and oversight while companies built and operated their own systems.

It worked.

Launch costs fell by almost 70% in some cases. The pace of launches increased.

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, became central to this new architecture. Its Falcon 9 rocket now carries the majority – five of every six – of U.S. launches to orbit. Since 2020, its Crew Dragon spacecraft has also routinely transported NASA astronauts, restoring the U.S.’s ability to launch people to orbit after a 10-year gap.

In high-risk and capital-intensive space sectors such as launch and crewed transport, the development costs are enormous. Few companies can afford to compete. The company that makes reliable rockets first, and at a large scale, like SpaceX, wins contracts and consolidates its market share.

Efficiency and consolidation have given SpaceX dominance. This dominance, in turn, creates leverage – not because the company acts in bad faith but because alternatives are limited.

Market concentration is not inherently problematic. But strategic infrastructure – such as the access to space that underpins military operations, communications and critical national systems – is not a normal consumer market. When a single company controls most launches or operates the only crewed spacecraft, its financial troubles, technical setbacks or leadership disputes can disrupt the entire country’s strategic capabilities.

The Musk episode as a warning

In 2025, during a public dispute over government contracts and regulatory matters, Elon Musk briefly threatened to decommission the Dragon spacecraft – the vehicle NASA relies on to transport astronauts to orbit.

Musk quickly backed off his threat, and missions continued. No astronauts were stranded, but the moment was revealing.

At the time, Boeing’s Starliner capsule still faced technical delays. There was no fully operational alternative ready to assume the mission immediately. Even a short-lived threat exposed how tightly U.S. access to space had become linked to the stability of a single firm – and arguably a single individual.

So, is there a Plan B?

A credible Plan B for space does not mean abandoning commercial partnerships. It means ensuring that alternatives exist.

Historically, assured access to space has meant having more than one way to reach orbit. Today, that principle extends to crew transport, lunar logistics, satellite services and data infrastructure.

Congress appears aware of this. The current NASA reauthorization bill requires the agency to diversify providers in key programs, particularly lunar landers. The intent is to build redundancy deliberately into the system, making it more resilient to potential shocks.

But redundancy is expensive. Maintaining parallel systems, supporting multiple providers and preserving internal government expertise require long-term funding and political commitment. Markets alone likely will not guarantee diversification in these expensive sectors.

In February 2026, Congress moved to legislate greater diversification into U.S. space strategy. The intent is clear, but the timeline is not. It remains uncertain when, or if, the bill will become law.

For now, U.S. access to space, particularly for crewed missions, remains heavily reliant on SpaceX. Plan B exists on paper, but in reality it is still under construction.

Strategic permanence in space requires options

The stakes will only grow.

As the United States expands into cislunar space – the region between Earth and the Moon – and looks to establish a sustained presence on the Moon, its reliance on commercial providers will deepen.

Commercial dynamism has revitalized American leadership in space, but it has also revealed structural vulnerabilities. Durable systems rarely depend on a single center of power. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison, the fourth U.S. President, argued that stable political orders require competing forces so that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” His insight was political, but the logic can apply. Economic resilience emerges from balance, not concentration.

The United States has chosen a commercial path in space, and that choice has delivered extraordinary gains. But permanence beyond Earth will require a deliberate balance: multiple providers for critical services, overlapping capabilities, and alternatives robust enough to absorb shocks.

Commercial space can underpin American leadership in the new space age, but only if access to orbit, and beyond, never rests on a single, indispensable company.

Svetla Ben-Itzhak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A Plan B for space? On the risks of concentrating national space power in private hands – https://theconversation.com/a-plan-b-for-space-on-the-risks-of-concentrating-national-space-power-in-private-hands-275618

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Catherine A. Sanderson, Poler Family Professor of Psychology, Amherst College

Three young Americans – Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone – successfully tackled a gunman on a train in France, saving passengers.

The journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna reported on Ukrainian citizens held unlawfully by Russia; she was captured and died in detention in Russia.

Welles Crowther, often known as the “man in the red bandana,” was a 24-year-old equities trader who guided numerous people in the South Tower on 9/11 to safety before ultimately dying when the tower collapsed.

All of these people are clearly heroes. They engaged in courageous behavior – and risked physical peril – to benefit others or in service of a broader moral cause.

Psychologists like me describe heroes as people who take some type of intentional action to help other people, even when they may experience a personal cost for doing so. As Stanford psychology professor Phil Zimbardo put it, heroism involves taking a personal risk for the common good.

In some cases, people who take these risks experience potentially negative social consequences such as disapproval, ostracism and career setbacks. I describe people who show moral courage, meaning they are willing to speak up even when they may incur such costs, as moral rebels. Moral rebels are willing to take actions like tell a bully to cut it out, call out a friend who uses a racist slur, or report a colleague who engages in corporate fraud.

But when people think about heroism, they often focus on physical courage, such as jumping into a frozen pond to rescue a drowning child, leaping onto subway tracks to help someone who has fallen, or grabbing a gun from a shooter. What enables someone to engage in this type of physically risky – even life-threatening – behavior?

The characteristics of a hero

People tend to think of heroes as having particular traits: fearlessness, bravery, strength and altruism, along with selflessness, wisdom and resilience. Does the empirical research match up with that common conception?

Researchers in one study compared personality traits among three different groups of non-Jewish adults who lived during the time of the Holocaust: those who had rescued at least one Jewish person, those who had provided no help, and those who left Europe before the start of World War II. Their findings provide clear evidence that heroes stand out in important ways.

People who risked their own lives to help Jewish people scored higher on risk-taking, meaning they felt more comfortable with danger. They also scored higher on independence and perceived control; they felt comfortable making a decision and then taking action. They also rated higher in traits expressing concern about others, including altruism, empathy and social responsibility.

Although the Holocaust is obviously a unique situation, other research on heroic behavior reveals a similar constellation of traits. For example, one study compared the traits of people who had received the Canadian Medal of Bravery – a national award given to people who have risked their own lives to save another person – to a control group of people who were similar in demographic characteristics. The researchers found that people who engaged in heroism shared particular traits, including greater confidence in their ability to act, a stronger ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, and more positive feelings toward other people.

These findings reveal that heroism is at least in part determined by who you are, and that it’s not just a single trait that matters. People who engage in various types of bravery tend to show a particular combination of traits. They feel comfortable taking action even when it involves danger and they feel compassion for other people.

The power of modeling

Although some people may have a greater predisposition to heroism based on their personality, situational factors also play a key role in inspiring heroic behavior.

One study by sociologists examined what motivated members of the majority Hutu population to risk their own lives to help members of the Tutsi population during the 1984 genocide in Rwanda. This analysis of in-depth interviews with people who reported saving at least one person from this violence – often by hiding someone in their own home – identified several key factors predicting their behavior.

First, one of the strongest predictors of whether people helped refugees was having parents or grandparents who had done so during previous episodes of violence in their country. As one man noted, he chose to act because of “what my parents had done in previous years.” People who have seen physical courage modeled by others are more likely to act in heroic ways.

This is strikingly similar to what motivated heroism in Nazi Germany. Historian Mark Klempner’s study of Dutch people who rescued Jewish children revealed that nearly all reported having a parent or relative who had consistently gone out of their way to help other people in different contexts.

Perhaps not surprisingly, religious beliefs also played a role in motivating heroic behavior during the Rwandan genocide. More than half of those in the study who rescued people mentioned the role that their faith played in this decision.

The third factor motivating this type of heroic behavior was social ties. People were far more likely to help friends or neighbors. These personal connections likely fostered greater empathy for people in need, which in turn motivated action, even when doing so created considerable risk.

The role of training

Although people with particular personality traits may have an easier time being brave, as do those whose relatives who modeled such behavior, heroism can also be acquired through training, which is good news for us all. People who take CPR classes, for example, know they have the skills necessary to step up during health emergencies and are therefore more likely to do so.

Two of those three American men who stopped a man with an assault rifle on a train had some type of military training; one served in the Air Force, and another served in the National Guard. Military training is designed precisely to help people become brave – so they can take action, even at great personal risk.

Realizing that heroes can be built through training led psychology researcher Phil Zimbardo to create the Heroic Imagination Project, which focuses on helping people develop the skills needed to step up and act heroically – whether defending what’s right in a work meeting or intervening with a bully at school. For example, children who participate in heroism training become more courageous, suggesting that anyone can learn to be braver.

Most importantly, this approach is based in the belief that heroism does not require a unique set of personality traits; instead, heroism occurs when ordinary people choose to step up in dangerous situations, even when doing so involves considerable risk.

As Matt Langdon, the executive director of the Heroic Imagination Project, notes, “the opposite of a hero is not a villain, but a bystander.”

Catherine A. Sanderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Are heroes born or made? Role models and training can prepare ordinary people to take heroic action – https://theconversation.com/are-heroes-born-or-made-role-models-and-training-can-prepare-ordinary-people-to-take-heroic-action-274505

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alessandro Meregaglia, Associate Professor and Archivist, Boise State University

For the sharpest minds in show business, there’s always another hustle.

Take Joe Exotic, whose 2020 conviction for a murder-for-hire plot and violations of the Endangered Species Act hasn’t kept the eccentric tiger trainer out of the headlines.

Since beginning his 21-year sentence, the “Tiger King” star has started a cannabis brand, hawked digital art and begun work on an album tentatively titled “Jungle Rhapsody: A Tiger King Experience.” His most recent gambit involves selling personal phone calls from his cell – “What better Valentines gift could you ever get your loved one,” he posted on Instagram in January 2026.

But before Joe Exotic, there was Mabel Stark. Often described as America’s most famous female tiger trainer, the Tiger Queen was renowned for her pluck and charisma.

While researching Caxton Printers, the publisher of Stark’s autobiography, I came across unpublished archival material about Stark’s long career training animals. Like Joe Exotic, Stark had a knack for the spotlight. But even more impressively, she did it under the scrutiny of being a woman in a male-dominated world, while caring for her animals with love rather than fear.

From nurse to tiger trainer

Born Mary Ann Haynie in 1888 or 1889 – the exact year has always been a mystery – Stark grew up in Princeton, Kentucky. When she was 8 years old, she attended her first circus, where she was awed by the performances of trained animals.

Two decades would pass before she got a chance to try her hand at animal training.

Taking a vacation in California from her job as a nurse, Stark met Al Sands, manager of the Al G. Barnes Circus. After learning of her interest in training animals, he hired her on the spot.

Stark started by riding horses and training goats. It would take several years before she started working with tigers. But once she did, her career took off.

Crowds gathered to watch the “Tiger Girl” wrestle with big cats and wow audiences by commanding a dozen tigers at a time to follow her lead. Her wrestling act with her favorite tiger, Rajah – in which the duo would roll three or four times on the ground – became one of the best-known cat acts in the U.S.

She leveraged that success to join the Ringling Circus – the largest circus in the U.S. – for twice the pay.

As her popularity grew, Stark collaborated with screenwriter Gertrude Orr to write her life’s story.

“Hold That Tiger” hit bookstores in 1938. Caxton Printers, a small publishing company in rural Idaho, issued the book and marketed it primarily to young readers. It proved popular, selling well enough to warrant multiple reprintings.

Known for giving a voice to first-time writers and authors from underrepresented groups, Caxton Printers found a niche market for circus-related titles. It also published books about Stark’s first employer, Al Barnes, as well as the Ringling Brothers and renowned lion trainer Louis Roth, who also happened to be one of Stark’s ex-husbands.

Female power in the ring

Stark was acutely aware of the path she was paving.

“I deliberately chose a field in which no other woman had specialized,” she wrote in her autobiography.

The conventional wisdom at the time, she added, was that “tigers were considered too dangerous for a woman to handle.”

Stark’s willingness to defy convention mattered. As circus historian Janet M. Davis noted, “circus women’s performances celebrated female power” and represented “a startling alternative to contemporary social norms.”

In early-20th-century American life, women might not have been able to vote or to serve on juries in most states, but in the ring, they commanded the audience’s attention riding bareback on horses, displaying strength and stamina, and performing gravity-defying acrobatic feats.

Stark’s schedule was relentless. She performed almost daily with traveling circuses, and she continually refined her act. In 1938, she worked with both tigers and lions at the same time, a first for a female trainer. She made history again working with 12 tigers in one cage.

Whether it was due to the demands of her schedule or her preference for her cats, Stark’s relationships with men rarely worked out.

Over the course of her life, Stark married four times, three of which ended in divorce.

“I love these big cats as a mother loves her children,” she admitted to a friend. But “with husbands I was never happy.”

‘An animal trainer can’t have nerves’

Stark, aware of other trainers’ abusive behavior toward their tigers, took a different route.

“Kindness and patience are the biggest factors in training. … Trainers who try to beat animals into submission always get into trouble,” she said.

Yet her trade was not without danger.

“An animal trainer can’t have nerves. I haven’t had any since I gave up nursing,” she said in a 1922 New York Times interview. “They may be planting violets on me tomorrow, but while I have my health and strength, I’d rather take care of 10 tigers than a sick person.”

Stark had several serious accidents. Perhaps the worst was in 1928: After a circus train arrived late, Stark started her act without realizing her tigers hadn’t been fed for 24 hours. Two famished tigers attacked Stark after she fell in mud.

“As I lay there, helpless,” she wrote, “I wondered into how many pieces I would be torn, and how long it would take for the other tigers, growling and snarling restlessly on their seats, to finish me.” She suffered multiple broken bones, nearly lost her leg and required 300 stitches.

Another incident took place in 1950, when a tiger mauled her as she reached for its cub. Doctors initially thought they would have to amputate her arm but managed to save it.

Despite these close calls with her tigers, Stark maintained that “I am not afraid. I like the challenge of their roaring defiance.”

The stark reality

Stark toured with circuses until the late 1940s, when she was hired by Jungleland, a zoo located outside of Los Angeles.

Save for the three-and-a-half years she lived in Japan touring with her wild cat act, she spent the last 20 years of her career at Jungleland.

Stark never stopped drawing crowds to her show, nor did she shy away from the spotlight. She even appeared on the game show “What’s My Line?” in 1961 as a contestant whose profession the panel had to guess.

“Each year has left scars on my body, but it has also brought a full measure of happiness,” she recalled.
Stark worked at Jungleland until she was fired in 1967 after the park’s insurance company stopped covering her. Being away from her tigers devastated her, and she died by suicide just months later on April 20, 1968, at her home in Thousand Oaks.

The concluding paragraph of Stark’s autobiography anticipates the end of her life:

“The chute door opens as I crack my whip and shout, ‘Let them come!’ Out slink the striped cats, snarling and roaring, leaping at each other or at me. It’s a matchless thrill, and life without it is not worth while to me.”

Alessandro Meregaglia has received funding from the Idaho Humanities Council, the Bibliographical Society of America, and Boise State’s Institute for Advancing American Values for his research on Caxton Printers.

– ref. The inspiring and tragic story of Mabel Stark, America’s most famous female tiger trainer – https://theconversation.com/the-inspiring-and-tragic-story-of-mabel-stark-americas-most-famous-female-tiger-trainer-276570

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Helena Addison, Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University

“People can assess me, interview me, incarcerate me, observe me, and they can think they know what I need,” said Shawn, a man in his early 50s who spent 15 years in and out of prison. “And that can be an educated assessment, but at the end of the day, I live inside of this body, inside of this head. I know what I need.”

Shawn is one of 29 formerly incarcerated Black men living in Philadelphia I interviewed as part of my research on coping with the mental health effects of imprisonment. His name and the names of other people quoted in this article are pseudonyms chosen to protect their privacy.

I study incarceration, mental health and access to health care. I’ve previously written about how confinement in jails and prisons leaves a lasting impact on mental health. But I also wanted to understand how the men I interviewed recognized and addressed their own mental health needs — through coping strategies, conversations with friends and family, and seeking mental health treatment.

Depressed but ‘doing OK’

Both research and clinical practice often fail to accurately capture how formerly incarcerated Black men identify their own mental health needs. That’s in part because implicit bias and anti-Black racism shape how mental health is assessed and treated in both correctional and community facilities.

Most of the men I spoke with said the mental health evaluations they received while incarcerated were designed only to “check the boxes” and conveyed a sense that no one really cared.

“They’d listen. They’d ask the pertinent questions,” Malcolm, 62, explained. “Then they’d talk down to you. And then they forget all about you.”

A few of the men received diagnoses they didn’t understand or believe. John, 29, described how a judge ordered him to have a mental health evaluation and that he was diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I didn’t take it serious,” he said. “I didn’t start understanding mental health and believing it until I was locked up for a long period of time. I started reading up on it and studying it. …That’s how I started understanding therapy was important.”

Comparing the way participants described their mental health in their own words during the interviews with standardized screening tools revealed an important pattern. Most described themselves as “good,” “blessed,” “at peace” or “doing OK.” Yet nearly all reported symptoms of depression, anxiety or PTSD.

More than half reported three or more PTSD symptoms, such as trauma-related nightmares or feeling constantly on guard and easily startled.

These findings underscore that what appears to be resilience or well-being on the surface may mask underlying mental health needs, and the way those needs are expressed is shaped by culture and life experiences.

Coping mechanisms

Participants described self-reliance as essential to coping with incarceration and life after release. Physical separation from family and community, along with strained relationships and limited resources after release, left many feeling like they had to manage mental distress on their own.

“When you’re in prison, you learn to depend on yourself,” Ken, 56, said.

Some said incarceration reinforced existing coping strategies they’d had, such as exercising, praying, journaling, reading and meditation.

“I was always into being active,” said Tay, 31, who took part in a military-style bootcamp while incarcerated. “I learned how to use [exercise] to cope with my emotions.”

Others were introduced to new coping skills through educational, vocational and recreational programs inside their correctional facilities. Men spoke about how earning GEDs, taking college courses, learning trades and participating in other structured programs helped them manage stress and connect with others.

Unfortunately, the availability of such programs is limited.

Bottled-up feelings

Many of my study’s participants described wanting to “do things differently” after incarceration by expressing their emotions rather than suppressing them.

Some directly connected bottling up feelings to behaviors that had led to their incarceration.

“[You’ve] let a lot of stuff build up and then [you’ll] go outside and lash out on the first person you see,” David, 30, explained. “I’m getting more comfortable with expressing myself, whether it’s to my mom or if it’s to a friend.”

But finding the right people to confide in could be difficult.

“I try to express myself every day. People laugh and make a joke out of it,” Shakur, 21, said. “If I had somebody sitting one-on-one, talking to me about my problems, I’d feel better.”

Navigating romantic relationships was also difficult.

“We come back to them broken. And they trying to fix us, but they don’t know how to fix us. They’re broken too,” said Thomas, 44.

Mass incarceration doesn’t just fracture individuals – it erodes romantic relationships, as those left behind often navigate their own economic strain, limited resources and emotional distress.

Participants emphasized that speaking with people who shared similar experiences made it easier to express themselves and helped them navigate moments of distress.

Deep distrust of institutions

Many participants expressed deep distrust of mental health treatment within correctional facilities.

“Being a Black man living to 62 years old, I don’t trust the government from the Tuskegee experiment to the thing they had going on in Holmesburg prison,” said Carl. “How can you put your trust in that?”

The Tuskegee study was a research study conducted by the U.S. federal government from 1932 to 1972. It followed Black men with syphilis but withheld effective treatment, even after the cure was made widely available in the 1940s. This caused preventable suffering and deaths.

During the Holmesburg Prison experiments, conducted at a Philadelphia prison from the 1950s through the 1970s, University of Pennsylvania researchers tested pharmaceuticals and chemicals on incarcerated men, many of them Black, without adequate informed consent.

Some of the men I interviewed also reported experiencing or witnessing mistreatment after reporting mental health concerns, and they expressed fears that seeking help while incarcerated would lead to punishment rather than support.

Stigma and seeking help

After release, participants shared concerns that they would be seen as “weak” by their peers for talking about their problems. This mental health stigma served as a barrier to seeking treatment.

“It’s not normal for guys like us, as far as being Black, African American, to reach out to a therapist,” said David.

Some men, like Antonio, who described feeling “like walls was closing in on me,” were motivated to seek treatment due to significant mental distress. Others were driven by a desire to improve their relationships with their wives or children.

Nearly 70% of participants had used formal mental health services at some point. Some were mandated to receive treatment, while others sought help voluntarily – sometimes at local walk-in clinics and behavioral health centers such as Wedge Recovery Centers, a Philadelphia staple that was mentioned by several participants but closed in May 2025 due to financial losses.

Communities can work together to reduce stigma around seeking mental health support and formal treatment, take expressions of mental distress from formerly incarcerated men seriously, and create spaces where they feel safe being vulnerable.

Participants named visible, neighborhood clinics with walk-in behavioral health services as places they felt able to go in moments of need. Increasing the visibility of these services, conducting outreach and integrating formerly incarcerated men as peer navigators can help build trust.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Helena Addison received funding from National Institute of Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F31NR020434, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration and American Nurses Association Minority Fellowship Program, the University of Pennsylvania’s Presidential PhD Fellowship, and Jonas Philanthropies to support this study and/or her PhD training.

– ref. Formerly incarcerated Black men say they’re ‘doing OK’ while trying to cope with depression and PTSD – https://theconversation.com/formerly-incarcerated-black-men-say-theyre-doing-ok-while-trying-to-cope-with-depression-and-ptsd-275071