Category Archives: Futurist

The country might be launching its own space station soon.Moving On

Russia may soon be abandoning the aging International Space Station to focus on launching and populating its own space station instead, according to new reporting.

Senior Russian officials havent verified the reports, but deputy prime minister Yury Borisov did announce that Russia may soon decided if sending cosmonauts to the space outpost may no longer be worth it, The Moscow Times reports.

We need a technical inspection at the station to avoid any risks in the event of an emergency, Borisov told TASS, as translated by The Moscow Times. We will make a decision based on the results and honestly notify our partners.

The ISS has been continuously occupied for more than 20 years now and its starting to show its age, with occasional leaks requiring patching and cracked windows.

In December, the United States Congress passed a NASA authorization bill that would extend the stations life from 2024 all the way to 2030, despite its deteriorating condition.

The news comes as Russia is reportedly drafting plans to launch its own space station, as independent Russian news agency Interfax reported over the weekend but details are still sparse, except for reports that claim the station could cost as much as $6 billion.

We have a 2024 deadline agreed with our ISS partners, a press release by Russian space agency Roscosmos read, as quoted by Interfax. After this period, the decision will be made based on the technical condition of the station modules, which have basically worked out their lifespan, as well as our plans to deploy a new generation of national orbital service station.

Russia has also previously turned down offers to join NASAs plans to develop the Gateway, a small space station orbiting the Moon. Instead, Russia chose to partner with China, signing an agreement to build an International Scientific Lunar Station in lunar orbit back in March.

READ MORE: Russia to Quit Intl Space Station in 2025 Reports [The Moscow Times]

More on Russias space efforts: Russia Is Planning a Moon Landing Later This Year

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Russia Is Reportedly Abandoning the International Space Station - Futurism

"We need to pay attention to the impact of demographics on future consumption."The Decline

In just four years, the South China Morning Post reports, Chinas population is set to peak a demographic shift that could have far-reaching economic consequences.

When the total population enters negative growth [after 2025], there will be a shortage of demand, monetary policy committee of the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) Cai Fang said last Friday, according to SCMP.

We need to pay attention to the impact of demographics on future consumption, he said.

While China eased its one-child policy in 2013, allowing parents to have two children instead of just one, the countrys birth rate has continued to stagnate. In other words, Chinas efforts to fight overpopulation appear to have worked way too well.

According to Cai, the number of people working in China had been on a steady decline for a decade now as a result.

Recently published research also showed that Chinas falling birth rate could have immediate consequences, including increased financial stress of the healthy looking after an increasingly elderly percentage of the population.

The proportion of elderly people in China has risen to almost 12.3percent in 2019, from just seven percent in 2000.

China must recognize that the demographic situation has changed, PBOC researchers wrote in the paper. The country must realize education and technological advancement will not be able to make up for the decline in population.

The cost of childbearing, parenting and education are the biggest constraints on young couples, Cai said. For the elderly, we need to increase their labor participation and social security benefits so that they can contribute to and share in the economic growth, while also maintaining consumer demand.

As a result, officials at the PBOC are calling upon Beijing to abandon Chinas two-child policy and encourage women to have more children.

READ MORE: China facing economic crisis as population peak nears, PBOC adviser says [South China Morning Sea]

More on Chinas population: China Is Facing A Precipitous Population Decline

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China's Population Is About to Start Declining, and Its Leaders Are Worried - Futurism

Uncrewed first, crewed second.Contract Killer

On Friday, SpaceX signed a historic contract with NASA to develop a lunar lander variant of its Starship rocket to once again land American astronauts on the Moons surface.

The massive $2.9 billion contract, a key part of the agencys Artemis program, saw SpaceX winning out over Amazon founder Jeff Bezos space venture Blue Origin.

But when Starship goes to the Moon for the first time, it wont be carrying passengers because NASA wants SpaceX to prove the vehicle is safe first in a dry run Moon landing.

While the contract SpaceX signed with NASA does requireit to eventually deliver astronauts to the Moon, the Elon Musk-led company first has to prove that its capable of sending a Starship to the Moon at all, via an uncrewed landing.

NASA is requiring a test flight to fully check out all systems with a landing on the lunar surface prior to our formal demonstration mission, Lisa Watson-Morgan, Human Landing Systems (HLS) program manager at NASA, said during a Friday conference call.

While Starship may now be NASAs first choice, other companies that had previously been vying for the coveted spot may still be able to bid on future moon landing contracts with the agency.

Amid budget constraints, its still unclear if NASA and SpaceX will be able to deliver the first astronauts to the Moon by 2024, as originally promised.

SpaceX has made great strides in developing its Starship spacecraft platform. While all four of its full-scale prototypes ended up exploding in massive fireballs, the space company has some ambitious plans, promising to have Starship go orbital before the end of the year.

READ MORE: SpaceX Wins NASA $2.9 Billion Contract to Build Moon Lander [The New York Times]

More on Starship: NASA Reportedly Chooses SpaceX to Develop Moon Lander

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NASA Will Require SpaceX to Land Empty Starship on Moon Before Sending Astronauts - Futurism

Walmart's John Furner also points out that going with Cruise fit in with a vision of the direction that the retail industry, as a whole, was heading towards. "Over the years we've been doing a lot to learn more about the role autonomous vehicles can play in retail, and we've seen enough to know it's no longer a question of if they'll be scaled, but when," he says (via Walmart's corporate blog).

Walmart says it is impressed with Cruise because of the brand's business model, technology, and what it called "unmatched driverless testing." Cruise offers an all-electric fleet powered by 100 percent renewable energy, which helps Walmart reach its goal of being fully dependent on renewable energy by 2035 throughout its supply chain, and hitting zero emissions by 2040.

CNBC says Walmart's investment is part of a fresh round of funding for the self-driving vehicle division, which comes to a total of $2.75 billion. Furner also said that the investment put Walmart in the company of Cruise's other investors, like Honda and Microsoft.

Read more:
The Futuristic Way You Could Soon Get Groceries Delivered From Walmart - Mashed

Ingenuity is in a "perfect state" to "explore aerial mobility on Mars."First Flight

Early this morning, NASAs Mars helicopter Ingenuity achieved the first-ever controlled flight on the surface of another planet, a feat met with applause and cheers at the agencys Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the data started coming in.

Ingenuity perfectly executed its planned 30 second hover at ten feet above the Martian surface, caught on camera by NASAs Perseverance rover several hundred feet away and now, officials say, its in even better shape than it was before the flight.

According to Bob Balaram, Ingenuitys chief engineer at JPL, the extremely healthy helicopter managed to shake off some dust that had accumulated on its solar panels prior to the flight. That means its now capable of producing even more solar energy than before.

Charging its batteries is crucial,because Ingenuity relies on its batteries not only to take flight but also to keep its internals from freezing during Mars frigid nights.

The helicopter is otherwise in sound mechanical shape, NASA staff said. Landing gear and all other mechanisms are also doing great, with computers and avionics behaving flawlessly, according to Balaram.

So all in all, its in a perfect state and Im just really excited to see what all she can teach us over the next few weeks as we explore aerial mobility on Mars, Balaram added.

More on Ingenuity: New Video Shows Mars Helicopter Flight in Even Greater Detail

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NASA Says Mars Helicopter Is Now Healthier Than It Was Before Flight - Futurism

The planet is doing way worse than we thought.Global Domination

New research shows that humanitys influence has already altered about 97 percent of the land on the planet.

Very little of the land surface on the Earth just 2.8 percent can still be considered functionally intact, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Therefore, the studys authors, who hail from a long list of universities and institutes in North America and Europe, recommend that conservationists immediately focus on protecting the few remaining areas of the world that represent outstanding examples of ecological integrity before its too late.

The new research could be a rude awakening to ecologists and conservationists, Earther reports, because scientists had previously assumed that between 20 and 40 percent of the land on Earth was still ecologically intact. But prior studies relied heavily on satellite images, whereas the new one involved boots-on-the-ground field work to investigate the health of various ecosystems.

Field work by many people clearly shows there are species that have been lost from these areas of intact habitat large and medium carnivores and large and medium herbivores in particular, study coauthor and University of Cambridge zoologist Andrew Plumptre told Earther. Some have been lost or reduced in number because of hunting by people, some lost because of the introduction of invasive species, such as cats and dogs, and some due to disease.

Plumptres work, like those previous studies, measured habitat intactness as a proxy for human destruction. But the new research also measured the impact humanity has had on wildlife, such as whether native species populations were dangerously low or eradicated altogether and whether invasive species had taken hold. All of those measurements hovered at just under three percent presenting a dismal outlook for the planets future.

That means some 97% of land has been screwed up by industry, hunting, the introduction of invasive species, or other anthropogenic impacts, Plumptre told Earther.

READ MORE: Humans Have Destroyed 97% Of Earths Ecosystems [Earther]

More on ecology: Scientists: Mass Extinction Is Coming as Organisms Flee the Equator

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Study: Humanity Has Ravaged All But 3 Percent of The Land on Earth - Futurism

It would be difficult to describe this NBA season as anything other than a slog. Between the constant COVID-19-related postponements at the very start of the season, to the constant churn of games during the condensed schedule leading to an uptick of load management for many of the best players. Its hard to not notice that NBA product has taken a hit in quality this year.

Which had to be expected as soon as the league and the players association decided on a shortened offseason to get the NBA calendar back in order starting with the season after this one. This season has always felt like a bit of a sacrificial lamb. Quality needed to be compromised in order for the books to put back in order. That being said, the long season, even during the best of NBA times, always serves as the cocktail hour to the main event of the NBA playoffs.

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Kyle Kuzma eclectic and futuristic style leads this week's edition of NBA Style Power Rankings - The Athletic

The University of Texas at Austin set a record this semester with five student teams accepted into the Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars Spring Fellowship program. This is the highest number of Longhorn teams accepted in one semester since the global program began. Startups by founders Abhishek Dasgupta, Apoorva Chintala, Becky Xu, Paige Cabianca and Rajya Atluri were among a competitive group of 50 student ventures chosen out of a pool of applications from 30 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Ireland.

The LaunchPad Fellowship program began in June 2020 to support student entrepreneurs during the global pandemic. With over 30 schools in the network, UT Austin is proud to have sent at least two teams each semester since the fellowship began. Throughout the eight-week virtual program, the five UT founders will benefit from coaching, workshops, mentorship conversations and $5,000 in nondilutive grant funding from Future Founders to support their time working on advancing their companies.

This springs cohort focuses on technology ventures. This focus includes both developing new technology to solve existing problems and applying current technology to solve problems in a new way. While some student teams have solutions leveraging emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cloud and blockchain, others are utilizing existing technologies to solve problems related to remote communication, sustainability and security.

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Five Longhorn Startups Launch Futuristic Solutions for the Challenges of Today - UT News - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

A fascinating clip of what appeared to be triangular or pyramid shaped UFOs flying over a US Navy warship circulated online earlier this month.

The footage, obtained by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, shows the mysterious objects caught on a night vision camera aimed at the skies over the warship.

I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough told Futurism last week.

The incident left plenty of questions unanswered. What were these stranger pyramid-shaped objects, or were they some type of optical illusion? If they were real, where did they come from?

To The Warzone creator Tyler Rogoway, the answer is obvious: the mysterious craft, and other military UFO sightings like them, are likely swarms of drones that belong to foreign adversaries, as detailed in a recent report for the site.

Yes, I realize that the idea that an adversary is penetrating US military training areas unmolested, and has been for years, using lowly drone technology and balloons, is a big pill to swallow, Rogoway wrote, but as one of the people who have repeatedly warned about the threat posed by lower-end drones for a decade it isnt really surprising at all.

Rogoway decried the Pentagons utter lack of vision and early robust interest in regards to this emerging threat and called out the Defense Department for still playing catch-up when it comes to the realities surrounding the drone threat, and not just to its forces abroad, but also to the homeland overall.

In fact, he argues, the stigma surrounding UFOs only helped adversaries get away with hiding in plain sight inside American air space.

In his piece, Rogoway points to a number of compelling moments in history when not only foreign adversaries but the US itself invested in developing unmanned aircraft, including radar-reflecting balloons designed to confuse enemy radar systems.

In fact, a 1945 radar reflector patent of such a balloon looks strikingly like the pyramid-shaped objects that showed up in the UFO sighting earlier this month.

Rather than looking like the consumer-facing drones we are used to, Rogoway argues there are far more configurations, some of which look downright alien and perform unlike a traditional fixed-wing aircraft or quadcopter.

Drone swarm technologies have also come a long way, allowing them to stay in the sky for significant periods of time, cover long distances, and pull off complex maneuvers in groups.

Thanks to Americas obsession with UFOs, these reports often end up being discredited. Many pilots may even stop short of even reporting sightings due to fear of professional embarrassment.

The fact that pilots have historically refrained from reporting unexplained craft in the skies due to fear of their careers being impacted is all you really need to know when quantifying how relevant and effective such a tactic can be, Rogoway argues.

So why are we starting to see more and more reports on UFOs? That may be in part to new technologies that can actually detect these drones. More data, in other words, means more sightings.

Its a compelling argument that could certainly explain some of the strange sightings made by Air Force pilots and Navy personnel over the last decades.

Rogozin claims that at least one of our adversaries has made a mockery of us and compromised key capabilities using remarkably low-end technology.

By first admitting the US has a drone problem, he says, the Department of Defense can start piecing the pieces back together and get behind these UFO mysteries.

READ MORE: Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like Theyre UFOs [The Warzone]

More on the sightings: Pentagon Confirms That Leaked Video Is Part of UFO Investigation

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This Theory Could Explain Many Military UFO Sightings - Futurism

Look at this cute lil Dustbuster!

In case you haven't been paying attention lately, minivans are cool again, and Hyundai has been hard at work on a new minivan (or MPV, as they call it) for a while now. It's called the Staria, Hyundai debuted it on Monday, and it's arguably one of the coolest vans we've seen in a while -- but there's a catch: It's not coming to the US.

*sad trombone*

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So, if it's destined to forever be forbidden fruit, why do we care? Well, we care because Hyundai claims that this will establish a model for its future "Purpose Built Vehicles" -- aka, this could be a hint of the shape of things to come, even for us in North America.

But apart from what it could mean, what the Staria is is plenty cool all on its own. On the exterior, it looks a little like the Oldsmobile "Dustbuster" vans from the '90s, only run through some kind of cyberpunk filter. It's odd but charming.

Inside the Staria is where the magic happens. The minivan is configurable to have anywhere from two to 11 seats, depending on your needs. There is even a premium version that offers gorgeous, almost private-planelike reclining leather captain's chairs. Hyundai's press release claims that the interior was inspired by cruise ships, though thankfully, they only took that vibe so far.

The interior is also packed with many little storage cubbies and even a glovebox that can move and give the front passenger more legroom. There are also plenty of cupholders and USB ports -- because minivan. Overall storage capacity in its most cargo-oriented form is a not-inconsiderable 176.6 cubic feet. For comparison, the Toyota Sienna only offers a maximum of 101 cubic feet, while the Chrysler Pacifica -- one of our favorite vans -- has room for 140 cubic feet.

The Staria will be powered by either a 2.2-liter diesel engine or a 3.5-liter gasoline engine from Hyundai's SmartStream family. The diesel can be had with either a six-speed manual transmission or a six-speed automatic, while the gasoline version only gets an eight-speed automatic.

Like I said earlier, the Staria won't be coming to the US, but it's slated to hit the streets of select markets (we know that South Korea and Australia are getting it, for sure) in the second half of 2021.

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Hyundai's Staria is the coolest futuristic minivan that we'll never get - CNET