NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) is in the process of being renovated, and not a moment too soon. One of the network’s ageing radio dishes stopped in its tracks last month, resulting in the loss of important data from the Cassini spacecraft.

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Meanwhile, the dishes’ electronics are being upgraded to enable them to receive higher frequencies, which allow spacecraft to transmit data at increased rates. DSN programme manager Michael Rodrigues of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says he is confident that the network will be ready for the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to transmit data at up to 125 megabits per second when it begins operation in 2014.

in the long run, suggests Romer and as potentially demonstrated by “Star Trek,” the benefit of expanding knowledge and technological change will be widely distributed prosperity: an end to scarcity, a future where the fundamental challenge of providing for our basic needs has been solved

The future is a moving target. It’s not predictable like the weather – and even weather forecasting misses the odd devastating hurricane. Science fiction’s never going to tell you what you’ll be doing next year. What it really does is use speculation to examine the present-day condition – but it can, however, warn you about possible futures.

J. Peter Pham at James Madison University says piracy financiers are usually ethnic Somali businessmen who live outside the country and who typically call a relative in Somalia and suggest they launch a piracy business. The investor will offer $250,000 or more in seed money, while the relative goes shopping.

“You’ll need some speedboats; you’ll need some weapons; you also need some intelligence because you can’t troll the Indian Ocean, a million square miles, looking for merchant vessels,” says Pham, adding that the pirates also need food for the voyage — “a caterer.”