There’s no understating the importance of a kitchen backsplash. Not only is a backsplash practical—sparing your bare walls from spaghetti sauce splatters—but it sets the tone for your kitchen’s personality. Think of it as an opportunity to flex your design skills, whether that means including a jolt of color, choosing an unconventional material, or sticking to a classic-as-can-be style. There’s a caveat, though: if you veer too trendy or too conventional, a backsplash can quickly look outdated. To spare yourself from inevitable regret, we asked three interior designers for their honest take on backsplashes they’re sick of seeing. Warning: controversial opinions ahead. Read on to learn which popular backsplashes they think need to retire, so you can invest in a conversation piece (not a controversy) that you’ll love for years to come.
Tiangong: astronauts are working on China’s new space station – here’s what to expect
21.08.2023 - 11:51 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest
Header image: Chinese astronauts Tang Hongbo, Nie Haisheng, and Liu Boming during ceremony before heading to Tiangong. ROMAN PILIPEY/EPA
Gareth Dorrian, University of Birmingham and Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University
Three astronauts on China’s new space station have just performed the country’s first space walk and are busy configuring the module for future crews. Named Tiangong (“heavenly palace”), the station is the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA)‘s signature project to develop China’s ambitions for having humans in orbit around Earth for a long amount of time.
In planning since the late 1990s, the Tiangong station’s core module, Tianhe (“heavenly river” and the old Chinese name for the Milky Way), launched on April 29. But it isn’t yet complete. Yang Liwei, chief designer of China’s human spaceflight programme, has said the astronauts “have a lot of tasks to do after entering the core module. For screws alone, they have over 1,000 to remove”.
Much like the former Russian space station Mir and the International Space Station, the entire project is too large to be put into orbit in one launch. Tianhe, weighing 22.5 tonnes, was lofted to an orbit of 400km above Earth on a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch site on the island of Hainan, China. The Long March 5B is a heavy lift rocket with a thrust in between the SpaceX rockets Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
The core module contains everything needed to keep people alive in space. This includes life support systems, a kitchen, sleeping and sanitation areas, electrical power management and firefighting equipment. To help sustain the three astronauts on their six-day working week, the kitchen is currently well-stocked with over 120 different types of food.
Chinese Astronauts Celebrate a Good Lettuce Harvest
China Central Television has produced a short video showing the plant experiments growing on the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou-16 crew has been in orbit for almost three months, and says their space vegetable garden has given a good lettuce harvest.
Tile Countertops Are Coming Back—Here's What Designers Really Think
Tile countertops: love them or leave them in the past? While some designers like New York City-based Emma Beryl think they bring «the '70s and '80s back into the kitchen,» others believe they should stay in the time capsule.
Astronauts Are Growing Plants and Vegetables in a Space Garden
Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA
Astronauts Harvest Cabbage on the International Space Station
Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
How pandas helped me appreciate brassicas
Today’s guest post is from Carl Legge.
Kwesi the Space Botanist
Move over, Mark Watney, there’s a new space botanist heading for Mars! Ryan and I have just finished watching the new Netflix series Away, which follows (over 10 episodes) the quest of five international astronauts to be the first people to set foot on the red planet.
Of Fat White Grubs And Pale Jade Beads
Alison Tindale tells explains everything you need to know about Chinese artichokes!
Growing Drugs in Space: GotG17
Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.
Apes, robots and men: the life and death of the first space chimp
Header image: Chimpanzee Ham with Trainers. Image credit: NASA
Learning from Antstronauts on the International Space Station
Header image: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio uses a video camera to photograph the Ant Forage Habitat. Image credit: NASA
The best new books for space nerds
In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.