Spasimir Radev

Mars, here we come! Those are Elon Musk's words from a tweet in December when he launched the first (almost successful) Starship flight. Humanity's most powerful rocket ever, the start of a new stage in the space race, triggered by innovation in the private sector. Now that the countries and companies have gradually started adapting to the Covid realities, 2021 is about to become a tipping point in space flight beyond Earth's atmosphere.

The next 12 months will probably be a hectic time in space, as we're likely to witness the privatization of near-Earth orbit. Near space will be saturated with spacecraft from new companies who'll build small rockets solely through private investment. The big players in the sector and the national space agencies will in turn redirect their efforts to larger and bolder undertakings, directed at Moon and deeper space, like Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt. But we'll be needing new, more powerful rockets for that. 2021 is expected to give us at least 4 or 5 of those: Starship of SpaceX, SLS of NASA, Vulcan of ULA, the Russian Angara 5A, and probably also New Glenn of Blue Origin, Bezos' space company.

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A very fast transformation is happening in marine transportation around the world. It is quickly shifting towards natural gas.

https://www.cnbc.com/advertorial/2020/01/10/lng-a-groundbreaking-choice-for-the-shipping-industry.html

While natural gas won't decarbonise shipping, evidently it is a viable alternative to more carbon-heavy sources of energy. Investments in LNG-powered ships have been steadily growing despite ongoing debate over the impact gas will have on the environment.

Thus, about 10% of the orders for new tankers for 2020 (a total of 55) have been LNG-powered. These could also work with conventional fuels such as mazut, the low-quality fuel oil that has dominated the sector for decades.

Details here.

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The discovery of water in the regions of the Moon that are directly lit by the Sun is great news. It could make the precious resource much more accessible than previously thought. The location of the water pockets is of key significance in choosing a place for potential future Moon bases.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/10/water-on-moon-surface-may-be-more-abundant-than-once-thought/

Previous explorations have shown that there's frozen water in the permanently shaded areas of the Moon, in craters in the polar zones. And now it has been confirmed that the sunlit areas also have water. The discovery was made with the infrared telescope of the flying Sofia observatory, attached to a Boeing 747.

Finding the exact location of the Moon's water resources is among the main goals of the Artemis program (whose goal is to send the first woman to the moon in 2024). But not only that. The expedition should be the first step toward establishing a permanent human presence there, ie building a research station on the Moon surface, the so called Artemis Base Camp. It's supposed to be the starting point of both Moon surface exploration and rocket testing, the development of life-supporting infrastructure, with a plan to eventually upgrade all that to serve manned flights to Mars and beyond. The idea is that due to the 6 times weaker gravity on the Moon, launching spacecraft from there would be easier and more energy-efficient than on Earth.

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Human embryos edited to stop disease

I think there is far too much hysteria about this. We already operate on newborns to correct a thousand or more conditions. The only reason not to operate on a foetus is the risk of miscarriage.
So if we can avoid the utter misery of genetic defects which not only cause pain, and endless misery for the suffering, but blight siblings and the whole family - do it.

There are two main problems.

1) Abuse to select gender as there is still far too much cultural bias towards males. China now has such an imbalance due to selective abortion that huge numbers of males can't marry. For the majority, who are hetero this is a bad fate, and promotes rogue males.
But we already have systems to monitor this kind of abuse via foetus test & abortion, and such systems could be made stronger.

2) Long term implications as wiping out certain types of humanity* would be permanent, unlike blocking via abortion.
Serious defects are by definition undesirable and are highly unlikely to be helpful in terms of genetic diversity.
Less serious defects - harelip? for example, could be regulated so it stays as a post-birth op.
It really comes down to how we regulate, and how strictly - but whatever moral issue we consider, not just about this, will throw up borderline cases that push the boundaries. It's part of a human society to deal with this.

* Evolution depends up to a point on mutations which may have also some deleterious effects. The type of genetic engineering which is being considered may therefore prevent long term beneficial evolution. That doesn't mean that genetic engineering should be avoided at all cost, but the fact is that we are still too ignorant to fully understand the consequences of everything we try in the field of genetics. It's like life extending efforts. The longer we live the slower we evolve. Living very long and having few children may be a disaster rather than a blessing, as far as our long term evolution is concerned. We should be very careful about all these exciting possibilities.