Space turbulence 🚀

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Space turbulence 🚀

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The beauty of Nightcap is that we can turn a regular old three-day weekend into a four-day weekend just like that. Magic! We'll see you back here next Tuesday. Meantime, let's get into it.

by Allison Morrow

🚀 ROCKET MAN, REDUX

Nearly two months ago, Richard Branson strapped himself to a rocket and made history as the world's first billionaire space cowboy to jet himself to the edge of space on a vessel built by his own company, Virgin Galactic.

From our perspective here on Earth, it looked like a smooth flight. The whole thing, a bloated PR stunt, lasted about 15 minutes.

But a different reality appears to have been playing out onboard. Traveling at twice the speed of sound over New Mexican desert, red and yellow lights began to flash on the ship's console during its descent, according to the New Yorker — signaling that the vehicle was on a wayward trajectory. The flight path was too shallow. The ship, along with the six people on board, was in trouble.

Now, the Federal Aviation Administration is grounding all Virgin Galactic space missions while it conducts a "mishap investigation" into the flight, known as "Unity 22."

Virgin Galactic's stock dipped about 4% Thursday.

The company disputed what it termed "the misleading characterizations and conclusions" in the New Yorker article. But it also acknowledged the deviation. "Although the flight's ultimate trajectory deviated from our initial plan, it was a controlled and intentional flight path that allowed Unity 22 to successfully reach space and land safely at our Spaceport in New Mexico. At no time were passengers and crew put in any danger as a result of this change in trajectory," it added.

WHY IT MATTERS

Branson's space flight company has staked its future on space tourism. It's counting on a promise of safety to attract the uber-wealthy to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a brief joyride into zero gravity.

And unlike its rivals SpaceX and BlueOrigin, which use rockets automated by engineers on the ground, every Virgin Galactic mission involves a winged ship piloted by a human on board. That limits how much Virgin can test its space flights, and that may, reasonably, make space tourists a bit more wary of putting their lives at risk.

💼 NUMBER OF THE DAY

728,000

The US labor market recovery is about to get a reality check. It was a strong summer, with nearly 2.5 million jobs added back between May and July, but economists are now growing cautious that August may not have been as strong. Economists polled by Refinitiv still predict 728,000 jobs were added last month. But that forecast was revised down from 750,000 after a disappointing reading from ADP Employment Reports, which looks at private sector payrolls. The August jobs report comes out Friday morning.

🛢️ IDA'S IMPACT

A staggering two-thirds of gas stations in New Orleans and Baton Rouge out of gasoline in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

In response, the Biden administration is breaking the glass on its emergency oil stash.

The US will release 1.5 million barrels of crude oil from its emergency stockpile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, the Energy Department announced Thursday. The goal is to "alleviate any logistical issues of moving crude oil within areas affected by Hurricane Ida to ensure the region has access to fuel as quickly as possible."

KEY CONTEXT

The SPR is a complex of deep underground storage caverns in the Gulf Coast holding more than 600 million barrels of crude. It's there for emergencies only — Hurricane Ida appears to be one of those, my colleague Matt Egan writes. In August 2005, the Bush administration tapped the SPR after Hurricane Katrina. The Trump administration did the same after Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.
Nine Louisiana refineries are partially or fully shut.
More than 93% of the Gulf of Mexico's oil production remains offline.
Gas prices have climbed by nearly four cents a gallon in the past week to $3.18, according to AAA. That's just shy of the seven-year highs hit last month.

Not everyone agrees that tapping the SPR is a good move, especially given the power outages and port closures. "The shortfall in gasoline is not due to a lack of crude oil supply. It is due to refinery outages," Richard Joswick, global head of oil analytics at S&P Global Platts. "Releasing crude oil from the SPR will not help gasoline."

The key, Matt explains, will be to get power back up in the region.

RELATED: Remnants of Hurricane Ida pummeled cities in the eastern United States, causing widespread flooding and killing at least 45 people on Thursday. CNN has all the latest news on the storm here.

🏡 QUOTE OF THE DAY

It's hard to get into the market if you're not already in the market.

—Pamela Gray Payton, the San Diego Foundation

Before the pandemic, the Black homeownership rate in America was slowly but steadily rising — a small but significant economic bright spot against a backdrop of racial inequality. Then the pandemic slammed the brakes on that upward trend, even as homeownership among White Americans continued to climb. Simply put, Black households faced more obstacles to homeownership because they had less money to fall back on, according to researchers from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

🐶 Woof. Shares of online pet supply retailer Chewy fell nearly 10% after the company posted a bigger-than-expected loss for the second quarter.

💍 Millennials looking to get hitched are flocking to mall-based jewelry chains Kay and Jared for engagement rings, and that's great news for their parent company, Signet. Shares soared to a 52-week high after the company posted earnings that blew away forecasts.

🍿 A jury of seven men and five women has been selected for the long-awaited criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO and founder of Theranos.

🚘 The newly unveiled Audi Grandsphere is the German automaker's idea of what self-driving luxury car could be, with controls that fold away and lounge-style seats in the front.