If you also spent your childhood thinking lost balloons could float all the way to outer space, we have an interesting update.

Sierra Space is building an inflatable space station 250 miles from Earth to replace the International Space Station when it’s retired at the end of 2030, per Robb Report.

And while it might look a little like a bounce house, the “Large Integrated Flexible Environment” packs a punch:

• LIFE launches to space inside of a rocket and inflates to its full size once in orbit.
• It’s the height of a three-story building with a 27-foot diameter, and can fit four to six people. The space station would one day allow people to live and work for weeks at a time in low-Earth orbit.
• LIFE is encased in nine layers of textile, including Vectran — a chemically woven material that’s 5x stronger than steel — to protect astronauts from space radiation, internal pressure, and micrometeoroids.
• The station will house research labs, exercise equipment, and a vegetable garden.

But they won’t just be eating salads up there: Microgravity lets scientists develop tech that they couldn’t on Earth, like groundbreaking immunotherapy drugs and 3D-printed food.

Taking off

Before the LIFE space station can open its doors, Sierra must get people to space.

That’s where Dream Chaser — the first-ever winged commercial space plane — comes in: Through Sierra’s $3B contract with NASA, the space plane will make its first unpiloted cargo delivery to the ISS in September, after which it will start transporting people to the LIFE station.

And Sierra’s plans for the future are even wilder: Its LIFE 5000 prototype inflates to 5k cubic meters in orbit (that’s bigger than the whole ISS).

Plus, the company is working with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build Orbital Reef, the world’s first commercial space station and a “mixed use business park.”

Return-to-office mandates are about to get extreme.

11: How many days the average American takes off per year, even though the average number of available days is 12, per Expedia’s 2024 Vacation Deprivation Report. One missed day doesn’t seem like a lot, but American workers already receive far fewer vacation days than employees in many other countries. Those averages include: 29 days in France, 27 in Germany, 25 in the UK, 19 in Singapore, 18 in Canada, and 14 in Mexico. So, go ahead — take a “you” day.

$68m: Estimated value of all the coins Americans throw away annually, per Reworld, a sustainable waste processing company in Pennsylvania that’s collected $10m worth since 2017. As inflation and digital payment options have increased, coins have been left sitting in people’s homes or getting tossed out with other refuse. Reworld uses a variety of machines to sort and clean coins before giving them to a third party to count and take to local banks.

169: Hippos left behind in Colombia’s Magdalena Basin, thanks to cartel leader Pablo Escobar, who decided he wanted his own zoo, including elephants, giraffes, and kangaroos. Following his death in 1993, most of his animals were rehoused in zoos, but the hippos were too dangerous to transport. Though 169 was the last official count in 2023, there may be as many as 200 now. That number is predicted to swell to 1.4k by 2040 if nothing is done, posing an invasive threat to the area’s ecosystem and inhabitants.

73 cents: Price of the USPS’s new stamp honoring late “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek. Made to look like a “Jeopardy!” clue, the stamp reads, “This naturalized US citizen hosted the quiz show ‘Jeopardy!’ for 37 seasons,” before providing the answer in upside-down text. Trebek was born in Canada and became an American citizen in 1998.