On Thursday, the Maine Celtics named Tyler Lashbrook their tenth head coach in franchise history.

“It’s an exciting time to be in the G League for both players and coaches,” said Lashbrook via the Maine Celtics. “There’s truly no better development opportunity in the world. I’m beyond thrilled for this opportunity to coach the Maine Celtics. I want to thank Joe Mazzulla, Brad Stevens, and the Boston Celtics organization for trusting me and giving me my first head coaching opportunity. I’m honored and grateful to step into this role.”

Before joining the defending NBA champions prior to last season as a player development coach, Lashbrook worked in the same capacity with the Philadelphia 76ers from 2018-2023. He started his coaching career as a basketball operations intern and video coordinator with them from 2014-2018.

Lashbrook fills the void left by the departure of Blaine Mueller, who helped lead Maine to its first G League Finals appearance last season.

Mueller joined Charles Lee’s coaching staff with the Hornets. The latter was Joe Mazzulla’s lead assistant in Boston last season before getting his long-deserved opportunity to become an NBA bench boss for the first time.

The Maine Celtics also announced their entire coaching staff for the upcoming campaign.

Steve Tchiengang, now elevated to associate head coach, returns to Maine for a second season. Assistant coach Taaj Ridley is also back for a second season. External additions Landon Tatum, a former Washington Wizards player development lead who had been with the franchise since 2016, and Brendan Baker are joining them.

Further Reading

Jayson Tatum Discusses Balancing MVP and Title Chase and His Excitement to Start Over

Jayson Tatum Discusses Becoming an Author, Tatum 3s, 2K Cover, and More

Byproduct of New CBA Threatens Jordan Walsh’s Roster Spot with Celtics

Lonnie Walker IV Delivers Motivated Message about Joining Celtics

Evaluating Oshae Brissett’s Best Options in Free Agency

Top 5 Games on Celtics’ 2024-25 Schedule

Jayson Tatum Opens Up About ‘Challenging and Humbling’ Olympic Experience

Here’s What to Know about Jaylen Brown’s Boston XChange

Jayson Tatum Gets Candid about Relationship with Jaylen Brown

Al Horford, Raising Cane’s, and a Region that Loves Him

On Derrick White and the Fuel for Unprecedented Journey to NBA’s Best Role Player

An internet entrepreneur and a SpaceX engineer have become the first private astronauts to walk in space.

Jared Isaacman, who has amassed a fortune through his online payment company Shift4, paid for the mission, known as Polaris Dawn. Just before 7 a.m. ET, Isaacman pulled open the hatch and floated outside.

He spent about 10 minutes outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule looking down on Earth. A few minutes later, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis stepped outside for a similar amount of time.

The mission’s two other astronauts, Scott Poteet, a former Air Force pilot who works for Isaacman, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, remained inside the capsule to support the Isaacman and Gillis.

But because the capsule had no air inside, they too were technically spacewalking, making this the largest number of astronauts to ever spacewalk simultaneously, according to the company. The entire spacewalk was livestreamed by SpaceX.

Until now, walking in space was the sole purview of professional astronauts. Spacewalks are regularly conducted outside the International Space Station, for example, to perform essential maintenance and run experiments. Those spacewalks can last several hours and usually follow a grueling schedule that allows minimal time for enjoying the view.

In many ways, today’s spacewalk is a throwback to the earliest days of the space program. SpaceX’s new spacesuits look modern, but they don’t have self-contained life support. The astronauts receive oxygen through umbilicals, similar to the spacewalks of the Gemini missions in the 1960s.

Isaacman and Gillis didn’t go far. They got about three-quarters of the way out of the hatch and held onto a special set of rails that SpaceX has dubbed the Skywalker. While outside, they conducted several tests of the SpaceX spacesuits to determine their mobility. The suits seemed to rate a middling “3” in most regards (it was unclear whether the rating scale was 1 to 5 or 1 to 10).

Still, the mission is a huge success for SpaceX. Spacewalks are one of the riskiest parts of space travel. Spacesuits are essentially tiny spacecraft. They must provide life support and temperature control to the astronauts, who are exposed to huge temperature swings in the vacuum of space. Problems on spacewalks are not uncommon, and they can be serious — in 2013, ‌Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned in space, after water from his suit’s cooling system leaked into his helmet.

SpaceX hopes its new suits can be used one day by astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars.

Copyright 2024 NPR

Hannah Pingree, director of Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, explains the Maine Climate Council’s mission at a workshop Tuesday at the Lewiston Public Library. Frida Zeinali/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — The Maine Climate Council began its statewide tour Tuesday night at the Lewiston Public Library with a question in mind: “What does successful climate action in Maine mean to you?”

Attendees had a chance to answer that question and others as the council held the first of five workshops this month in an effort to hear Mainers’ concerns about the climate.

The first draft of Maine’s next climate action plan for the next four years, Maine Won’t Wait, was met with criticism for lacking resolve around certain targets, such as transportation emissions. The council is on the road to hear what efforts Mainers want to rally around to combat climate change.

“We have specific goals in law to reduce emissions 45% by 2030 and at least 80% by 2050 to help our state on the path to carbon neutrality,” Hannah Pingree, director of Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, said. “We need to think about how we prepare our communities, our people, and our economy for the impact of climate.”

“We’re out listening to Maine people. The Maine Climate Council will start deliberating at the end of September,” she said. “All of the feedback we’ve heard from Maine’s people is going to be what we bring to the Maine Climate Council.”

First, the attendees used sticky notes to describe what successful climate action meant for them.

Then, the attendees were asked to take a walk around the library’s Hallett Hall, where the council’s proposed strategies were lined up on boards. After that, they were split into groups with themes to critique the strategies, point out what was most relevant and what was missing.

The strategies were intended to help ease the impact of a variety of climate-related issues. The major themes across the strategies were diverse, from waste and land management, reducing fossil-fueled vehicle traffic to conservation efforts to protect marine habitat and increasing infrastructure for housing and more public transportation.

“I’d say the main reason I’m here tonight is just the severity of the recent storms over the past year. That made me want to be a little more involved,” Paul Josephson said. “Obviously, things have been getting warmer for a long time now.”

The attendees at the first of Maine Climate Council’s action plan workshops, held Tuesday at Lewiston Public Library, were asked to describe successful climate action in Maine. Frida Zeinali/Sun Journal

Once the discussions were over, each group got to report its notes.

“Really doing anything to just take the focus off of cars and put it on pedestrians will go a long way in making public transportation more efficient because less people will simply be taking cars,” said Jon Diotalevi, speaking for his group which had focused on transportation. “We (had) different ideas about how to not encourage cars, like heavier taxes on larger trucks and cars, wider road shoulders for bikers, and more sidewalk shoveling through cities. A lot of it is ‘build it and they’ll come.’”

Another group shared thoughts about energy. “(We didn’t see an item for) providing access to energy efficient programs for renters and ensuring that renters see their benefits as well,” Brian Allen said. “Another item we noted is that the home weatherization effort seems to be lagging. There’s really been no discussion of why that is, but it does seem like a pretty small number of many homes that have been weatherized, maybe 17,000.”

“And the last item wasn’t mentioned, but seems to be worthy of mention, is this idea of signing up for solar shares, which can save you 15% on your electricity bill,” Allen added. “That’s kind of a free, no-cost program that every household should be signed up for.”

The council has four more workshops scheduled this month in Portland, Bangor, Biddeford and Ellsworth. The workshops are open to the public. More information about registration is available at the council’s meeting calendar at maine.gov/future.

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