Things To Do In SW Florida

Evidence of debris stemming from return trips of SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has prompted the company to shift future landing operations from Florida to California.

The move was announced Friday during NASA’s press conference previewing the upcoming Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station, and it won’t take effect until 2025 after Crew-9 has returned.

“After five years of splashing down off the coast of Florida, we’ve decided to ship Dragon recovery operations back to the West Coast,” said Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management.

This includes both cargo and crew versions of its spacecraft.

At issue is the trunk portion of the Dragon capsule that is discarded before reentry and splashdown. Initially, the cargo version of Dragon made returns in the Pacific 21 times from 2011-2020, but when crew capability came online, SpaceX made the shift to allow for capsule landings off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico.

Feeding that decision were models that predicted how the trunk portion would break up in Earth’s atmosphere. read more

While Osceola County’s NeoCity district is raking in millions in public funds to grow production of much-needed semiconductors, the long-promised city center has been stalled while the county decides how to move ahead with plans for a performing arts complex now estimated to cost nearly $150 million.

The joint venture led by New York-based Sciame Construction and Edward J. Minskoff Equities was supposed to file its first set of development plans in July, but County Manager Don Fisher granted a 90-day extension until Sept. 22, according to a report in GrowthSpotter. This is the developers’ fifth contract extension since taking over the project in early 2022. Sciame is working with New York-based SHoP Architects to implement the vision in the NeoCity master plan, which revolves around a new performing arts center as the anchor of the city center.

“As indicated before, the County has been working on the Performing Arts Center,” Fisher told GrowthSpotter. “This facility will be integral to Sciame’s plans for the City Center. Regarding the Performing Arts Center (OPAC), the County has been visiting other venues for best designs and operations. We have also been trying to right-size the cost of the facility.” read more

By Eliza Haverstock | NerdWallet

This fall, high school seniors may find college acceptance letters in their mailboxes before they complete a single application. It’s not a scam — it’s a nascent college admissions program called “direct admissions,” offered by a growing number of states and third-party organizations.

Students eligible for direct admissions receive college acceptance letters before they apply, usually during the fall of their senior year of high school. Direct admissions decisions typically hinge on GPA only. Students may have to submit supplementary application materials to finalize and accept their offers, but the process doesn’t require application fees, teacher recommendations, standardized test scores or endless essays. It’s a streamlined route to college, which students can leverage in addition to (or instead of) the regular and early decision processes.

“The goal is really just to break down barriers for students, because students are worried. College is scary and foreign, and so the idea is to try and alleviate some of those anxieties and fears that students may have about, ‘am I going to be admitted to a school?’,” says Jessica Eby, Apply Idaho program manager at the Idaho State Board of Education. read more

TALLAHASSEE — As the Atlantic Ocean shows signs of heating up, potentially fueling damaging hurricanes, a former state and national disaster chief warned Tuesday of working-class Floridians being priced out of communities in post-storm rebuilding.

Craig Fugate, a disaster-planning consultant who previously served as director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said financing and the availability of insurance will continue to be issues for some people trying to rebuild.

“I don’t think it’s going to slow down rebuilding, because it’s not really slowing things down in Fort Myers,” Fugate said, referring to rebuilding after Hurricane Ian slammed into the Fort Myers area in 2022. “What it’s doing is causing an affordable housing crisis … people like police officers, school teachers, administrators, they’re being priced out of your communities because they can’t either afford the cost of rebuilding, and if they can, they can’t afford the cost of insuring if they have to get a mortgage.” read more

By Anna Helhoski | NerdWallet

Climate change is frightening, inconvenient, expensive and, increasingly, deadly. And there’s really no escape.

In this year alone, the U.S. has had a myriad of natural hazards worsened by climate change: the earliest recorded Category 5 hurricane to make landfall; floods throughout the country; record-breaking heat everywhere; tornadoes in the Midwest; and wildfires in the West. The La Nina weather pattern is expected to arrive soon, which is likely to fuel storms in the Atlantic during this year’s hurricane season.

Climate change amplifies the frequency, duration and intensity of extreme weather events. It can cause all kinds of disruptions and health hazards while driving up expenses like heating, cooling and homeowners insurance.

Get hammered enough by amplified weather events and you might wonder if there’s somewhere a little less hazard-prone to live. While there is no place on Earth that is immune to the impact of climate change, some places are less exposed to risk than others. read more