By Rod Duren, Central Mississippi/Golden Triangle editor
Here’s an early wish that 2021 will be a welcoming 12 months, and a reboot to better things. But, in the meantime, there were several things we can review (and wonder about) from 2020.
Some business updates: In September, the Navy awarded six companies contracts (about $7M each) to begin determining what the service’s Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle will look like. Three of those businesses are located on the Gulf Coast: Austal USA at Mobile, Ala., Huntington Ingalls in Pascagoula, and Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana. The other three are Fincantieri Marinette, Lockheed Martin and Gibbs & Cox. G&C is HQ’d out of NYC, but has an operations office in New Orleans.
In June, Relativity, the first/only company to integrate 3D printing, robotics and software to design, build, test and launch orbital rockets in days expanded again at Mississippi’s Stennis Space Center, home of NASA’s largest rocket testing site. The $2.4M investment will support its rocket vehicle and engine testing capabilities. The company invested another $59M for expansion in 2019. Also at Stennis, NASA awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $1.79B contract for 18 more RS-25 engines for its Artemis moon-landing program. The engines will be assembled and tested in Hancock County.
In January, Northrop Grumman announced an expansion in Iuka, Miss., to increase production of large composite aerospace structures for NG’s Antares, Pegasus and Minotaur launch vehicles, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles.
Several Mississippi start-ups got some top ratings from The Tech Tribune this outgoing year. School Status, Edge Technology, Lobaki, and Kopis Mobile were at the forefront of start-up businesses in Mississippi.
School Status provides a student data analytics platform paired with communication tools to grow engagement between school and home with offices in Ridgeland and Hattiesburg.
Edge Technology is a Conversation Media Company defining content to empower organizations to control, amplify and unify their narrative to own a greater share of conversations important to them. HQ is located in Ridgeland.
Jackson-based Lobaki Inc., founded in 2016, is a provider of “Extended Reality” (XR) Experiences - virtual reality, augmented reality and 360 video - along with educational systems for corporations, universities and non-profit organizations. Kopis Mobile, located in Flowood, delivers systems to enhance the operational effectiveness of war-fighters. These applications are centered around increased information sharing and the operational efficiency of war-fighters and/or first
If 2020 ends on a positive note, then we have a 17-year-old Mississippi Eagle Scout’s “hugging booth” project to consider among the highlights of a somewhat dismal year.
Cooper Williams of Madison County developed the booth for families and residents to embrace one another safely from the coronavirus at a Yazoo City assisted living facility.
Since the pandemic, those with family members could only have behind-a-window visits. One family member hadn’t been able to hug her mother for eight months. The life enrichment director at senior facility told The AP that seeing residents use the booths was “moving" and “uplifting” during this difficult period. Kudos to Cooper.
Starlink to fall on Mississippi
Elon Musk recently tweeted about his satellite internet project called Starlink, part of the aerospace company SpaceX, saying Starlink would "most likely" spin out from SpaceX and go public "once the revenue growth is reasonably predictable."
Starlink is currently beaming internet, via about 900 satellites, down to parts of the U.S. and Canada. It’ll be coming to Mississippi in 2021.
In early December, SpaceX won $885M in federal subsidies to expand Starlink to locations throughout the U.S. SpaceX plans to fly as many as 42,000 Starlink satellites into orbit. The goal is to provide high-speed internet to nearly any location on Earth, and generate up to $50B in annual revenue.
Starlink will potentially bring satellite internet to tens of thousands of rural Mississippians. The FCC awarded SpaceX a $44M contract to bring its new internet capabilities to 38,956 locations in the state. (Source: Gold Triangle blog Central Mississippi and Golden Triangle: SpaceX internet coming to Miss. (goldentriangleregion.blogspot.com)
The coronavirus is still bad news for our neighbors to the East. Alabama ranked sixth on the list of states with the most new cases per capita over this past week, according to Johns Hopkins University’s database.
Alabama, somewhat like Mississippi, is one of the unhealthiest and most impoverished states in the U.S. It has emerged as one of the nation's coronavirus hot spots. The state’s latest average positivity rate is nearly 40 percent, and is seeing an average of 46 deaths per day, up from 30 on Dec. 14.
Mississippi’s cases are at 210,032. There have been 4,719 deaths as of Dec. 30. In Louisiana: 304,485 case, and 7,397 deaths. Alabama: 351,804 cases and 4,737 deaths. U.S. cases have reached 19,551,197 and 339,360 deaths. Is there no end to this pandemic? Come on 2021, and eventually wipe out this scourge.
2020 new discoveries
*Herculean efforts of researchers and scientists in the discovery and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in record time.
*Asteroid 16 Psyche could be made entirely of metal, which may make it worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion - more than the entire economy of Earth.
*Research indicates Earth is 13.8B years old.
*There could be dozens of intelligent civilizations throughout the Milky Way; and we ...
*Heard the voice of a 3,000-year-old mummy.
Last, but certainly not least, was the discovery of four new species of walking sharks near Australia and New Guinea. Yikes, is this a Saturday Night Live sketch of the “Land Shark” knocking at your front door?: “Candy Gram.”
These bottom-dwellers actually 'walk' using their pectoral and pelvic fins. The walking sharks evolved about 9M years ago, making them the youngest sharks on the planet.
Lead study author Christine Dudgeon, a scientist at the University of Queensland, believes there are more walking shark species still waiting to be discovered.
No need to stress, researchers say only small fish and invertebrates need worry. (COVID vaccine wasn't only amazing discovery 2020: A year in science (nwfdailynews.com)
(Editor’s Note: This post is a new entity for the Central Mississippi/Golden Triangle blog. In deference to the Ole Miss, this new ‘Miz Sippi’ blog will be a periodic post throughout the month(s) ahead. Invitations are open to businesses and individuals on how to improve and grow this product. Business ads are also available upon request via gcmilbiz@gmail.com.)
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