1. category
  2. Transhuman News

Page 1,724«..1020..1,7231,7241,7251,726..1,7301,740..»

Category Archives: Transhuman News

Stephen Hawking: I Am Convinced That Humans Need to Leave Earth – Futurism

Posted: June 21, 2017 at 3:41 am

In BriefStephen Hawking wants humankind to land on the Moon by the2020s. Speaking at the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway hespoke about the importance of a lunar mission as a stepping stonefor getting us to Mars and beyond. Another Giant Leap

Back in May, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking made yet another doomsday prediction. He said that humanity has 100 years left on Earth, which knocked 900 years off the prediction he madein November 2016, which had given humanity1,000 years left. With his new estimate, Hawking suggestedthe only way to prolong humanitys existence is for us to find a new home, on another planet.

Speaking at the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway on Tuesday, Hawking reiterated his point: If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before, he explained, according to the BBC. Specifically, Hawking said that we should aim for another Moon landingby 2020, and work to build a lunar base in the next 30 yearsprojects that could help prepare us to send human beings to Mars by 2025.

We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth, Hawking added.

Hawkings plea comesalmost 45 years since NASAs last lunar mission, and hes not the only one thinking about revisiting the Earths cosmic satellite. Even U.S. president Donald Trump wants toput ahuman onthe Moon by 2020. Various plans, both from government space agencies as well as private ones, are already in the works. NASAs mission to Mars, for example, notes that setting up an orbital lunar stationwould be a key step for a future mission to the Red Planet.

Other nations are also working towards the same goal:China and Europealsohope to reach the Moon by the 2020s, and other countriesare scrambling to set up their own lunar bases, too. Its an echo of the Cold War era space race except now, there aremore nations in play.

For private space agencies, the Moon seems to be more of a special tourist attraction than a permanent domicile:SpaceX is already preparing for its first privately-funded round trip to the Moon, while Jeff Bezos envisions an opportunity for a special delivery service to facilitate the construction of any permanent off world settlement. For Hawking, though, aiming for the Moon (again) isnot only about survival, but strengthening humanity while were still on Earth for however many years we have left here.

I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all, he said. A new and ambitious space program would excite (young people), and stimulate interest in other areas, such as astrophysics and cosmology.

Visit link:
Stephen Hawking: I Am Convinced That Humans Need to Leave Earth - Futurism

Posted in Futurism | Comments Off on Stephen Hawking: I Am Convinced That Humans Need to Leave Earth – Futurism

Trump is Asking Tech Leaders to Help Modernize US Government – Futurism

Posted: at 3:41 am

In Brief On Monday tech leaders met with administration officials as the American Tech Council to discuss modernizing the government. As technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomous cars quickly advance, the government has the opportunity to utilize these powerful tools as well as the challenge of regulating them. Technology Council

OnMonday the Trump administrations American Technology Council (ATC) met in order to discuss goals. The purpose of the council is to allow federal agency leaders to seek out the advice of leaders in the tech industry on a range of issues.

While the Trump administration differs from previous administrations in many ways, its focus on updating outmoded technologies and speeding up the governments transition to digital is something thats been shared by past administrations. The ATC itself, however, is new, as is the goal ofupdating technology in order to eliminate programs and services.

Chris Liddell, formerly of Microsoft and GM, heads up the ATC. Present for the meeting were representatives from Alphabet, Microsoft, Mastercard, IBM, Intel, Qualcomm, VMware, Oracle, and Adobe. Notably absent were Facebook and Tesla according to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg had a conflict and could not attend. However, Elon Musk has pulled Tesla from the council in the wake of President Trumps decision to leavethe Paris Accord a decision that has been almost universally condemned in the tech community.

The other techleaders have remained on the council because they agree its important to create a more tech-savvy government. The White House says it will prioritize digitizing government services, improving cyber security, and transforming the way government buys technology. The White House is also interested in using new technologies like big data and machine learning to tackle issues like illegal immigration and federal resource fraud. How willing tech leaders will be to help the administration achieve these goals remains to be seen.

Technology not only has the potential to make the government more efficient and lower costs, but it also possess many challenges from an infrastructure and regulation standpoint. For example, an invention that transmits power wirelessly could allow electric cars to charge while on the road. Would building new highways incorporating this tech be a good investment? Autonomous cars and flying cars are become more widely available, but the government has not yet set up rules and regulations for their use. Not to mention the current lack of policy around automation and artificial intelligence both of which are rapidly becoming integrated into society.

Technology is quickly advancing, and every government would be wise to consider how best to utilize and regulate it. The ideas generated by theATC have the potential to shape policies that could impact national debt, cyber security, and the development of new inventions. Lets hope theminds that have revolutionized our tech can also improve our government.

Read the original here:
Trump is Asking Tech Leaders to Help Modernize US Government - Futurism

Posted in Futurism | Comments Off on Trump is Asking Tech Leaders to Help Modernize US Government – Futurism

Electric Space Tug Could Make Moon Flights More Economical Than Ever – Futurism

Posted: at 3:41 am

In Brief Plans for an electric-powered space tug are now under review by scientists. The space tug would transport cargo between the moon and Earth without expensive fuels, helping to lower the cost of space travel and make it more accessible. Cutting Cargo Costs

NASA seeks todelvedeeper into the mysteries of oursolar system with the help of astronauts, but cost remains a significantbarrier for any plans. Launching anything from Earth is costly, especially bulky loads of cargo the driving force behind theinflated the price of the Apollo moon program to $109 billion (in 2010 dollars). For spaceflight to ever be accessible to everyone, prices will need to drop substantially.

Fortunately, scientists are thinking of new ways to make space travel cheaper every day. Research describing one of these ideas was just published: an electric-powered lunar space tug. The reusable tug would fly between Earth and the moon, transportingcargo and possibly even technicians and other astronauts.It would be refueled at a low Earth orbit fuel depot and maintained by astronauts on the moon and the International Space Station (ISS) for as long as its in service.

A team from aerospace company Thales Alenia (which built several modules for the ISS) and the Polytechnic University of Turin are now studying the conceptual design for the tug. The greatest advantage the tug has is that it would run on Hall Effect Thrusters, which use electric propulsion. In this sense, the tug would be powered much like NASAs Dawn spacecraft and Japans Hayabusa 2.

This project is just one of many possibilities, asthe competition to find ways to explore space for less money is still heating up. This month SpaceX became the first privately owned company to use the same spacecraft to perform multiple orbital flights. Still, even SpaceX has competition: Bigelow Airspace, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing are all competing for space travel contracts. This healthy competition is quickly changing the costs associated with space travel, and ultimately will open the opportunityup to commercial passengers, much in the same way competition between airlines helped makeflying commonplace in the last century.

Read the rest here:
Electric Space Tug Could Make Moon Flights More Economical Than Ever - Futurism

Posted in Futurism | Comments Off on Electric Space Tug Could Make Moon Flights More Economical Than Ever – Futurism

China is Building Carbon Capturing Plants to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Futurism

Posted: at 3:41 am

In Brief China has started construction on the first of eight large-scale carbon capture and storage plants, as part of the country's efforts to decrease the country's carbon footprint. China is also leading the world in terms of the use of renewable energy. A Sense of Responsibility

As one of the worlds largest countries, China is also one of the worldslargest producers of greenhouse or planet-warming emissions. The countryisnt getting behind on efforts to change that status, though,as its now leading the fight against climate change. The most recent is aplan to open eight large-scale, carbon-capture storage facilities, construction on the first of whichis already underway.

The Yanchang Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Project,located in the Shaanxi Province,will be Chinas first investment in a facility that turns carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal into gas fuel plants. Once fully operational, it would capture about 400,00 to 800,000 tons of CO2 every year, according to AFR Weekend. Thats about the same reduction that could be expected by taking 80,000 cars off the streets for a year.

Its one of eight large-scale CCS projects in varying stages of evaluation and subject to approval that China is considering, Tony Zhang, a senior adviser in Australia-based Global CCS Institute,told the Digital Journal. The non-profit institute provided China with technical and advisory support on the project.

Carbon-capture and storage (CCS) technology has recently been in the headlines, with the opening of the worlds first commercial carbon capture plant in Switzerland earlier this month. A similar facilityis expected to go live later this year in Houston, Texas. This approach to solvingthe climate problem attempts to make fossil fuel-based plants cleaner.

Its not the only proposed solution out there, though: recently, there has been a surge in renewable energy sources, as evidence by the growing reliance on solar and wind in a number of countries. These are also becoming a more economic solution in many parts of the world, as well as providing a wealth of job opportunities. CCS plants, on the other hand, may prove to be too costly for some countries.

For China, every effort counts. Aside from its investment in CCS, the country is also working on increasing its renewable energy sources its alreadythe worlds largest producer of solar energyas well as using more electric vehicles in a number of its cities. China is looking to decrease its CO2 emissions from 2016 to about one percent this year, according to a forecast by its National Energy Administration.

Original post:
China is Building Carbon Capturing Plants to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Futurism

Posted in Futurism | Comments Off on China is Building Carbon Capturing Plants to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Futurism

International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking

Posted: June 19, 2017 at 6:49 pm

The International Space Station, as photographed by crewmembers aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2010.

The International Space Station (ISS) is the most complex international scientific and engineering project in history and the largest structure humans have ever put into space. This high-flying satellite is a laboratory for new technologies and an observation platform for astronomical, environmental and geological research. As a permanently occupied outpost in outer space, it serves as a stepping-stone for further space exploration. This includes Mars, which NASA is now stating is its goal for human space exploration.

The space station flies at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph). In one day, the station travels about the distance it would take to go from Earth to the moon and back. The space station can rival the brilliant planet Venus in brightness and appears as a bright moving light across the night sky. It can be seen from Earth without the use of a telescope by night sky observers who know when and where to look. You canuse our Satellite Tracker pagepowered byN2YO.comto find out when to see the space station.

Five different space agencies representing 15 countries built the $100-billion International Space Station and continue to operate it today.NASA, Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos), theEuropean Space Agency, theCanadian Space Agencyand theJapan Aerospace Exploration Agencyare the primary space agency partners on the project.

The International Space Station was taken into space piece-by-piece and graduallybuilt in orbit. It consists of modules and connecting nodes that contain living quarters andlaboratories, as well as exterior trusses that provide structural support, and solar panels that provide power. The first module, Russia's Zarya module, launched in 1998.The station has been continuously occupied since Nov. 2, 2000.

[Infographic: The International Space Station: Inside and Out]

Starting in 2015, changes to the ISS were performed to prepare the complex for crewed commercial spacecraft, which will begin arriving as early as 2017.Two international docking adapterswill be added to the station. Additionally, an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace isscheduled to arrive in 2016.

Current plans call for the space station to be operated through at least 2020. NASA has requested an extension until 2024. Discussions to extend the space station's lifetime are ongoing among all international partners; several countries, such as Canada, Russia and Japan, have expressed their support for extending the station's operations.

During the space station's major construction phase, some Russian modules and docking ports were launched directly to the orbiting lab, while other NASA and international components (including Russian hardware) were delivered on U.S. space shuttles. [Rare Photos: Space Shuttle at Space Station]

The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs 861,804 lbs. (391,000 kilograms), not including visiting vehicles. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional five-bedroom house, and has two bathrooms, gym facilities and a 360-degree bay window. Astronauts have also compared the space station's living space to the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

A six-person expedition crew typically stays four to six months aboard the ISS. The first space station crews were three-person teams, though after the tragicColumbia shuttle disasterthe crew size temporarily dropped to two-person teams. The space station reached its full six-person crew size in 2009 as new modules, laboratories and facilities were brought online.

Also in 2009, the record for the largest gathering in space was set during NASA's STS-127 shuttle mission aboard Endeavour. When Endeavour docked with the International Space Station, the shuttle's seven-person crew went aboard the orbiting lab, joining the six spaceflyers already there. The 13-person party was the largest-ever gathering of people in space at the same time. While subsequent NASA shuttle and station crews matched the 13-person record, it has never been topped. [Related: The Most Extreme Human Spaceflight Records]

With a full complement of six crewmembers, the station operates as a full research facility. In recent years, technology such as 3-D printing, autonomous Earth imaging, laser communications and mini-satellite launchers have been added to the station; some are controlled by crewmembers, and some controlled by the ground. Additionally, there are dozens of ongoing investigations looking at the health of astronauts staying on the station for several months. [Related: Weightlessness and Its Effect on Astronauts]

Crews are not only responsible for science, but also for maintaining the station. Sometimes, this requires that they venture on spacewalks to perform repairs. From time to time, these repairs can be urgent such as when a part of the ammonia system fails, which has happened a couple of times.

Spacewalk safety procedures were changed after apotentially deadly 2013 incidentwhen astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet filled with water while he was working outside the station. NASA now responds quickly to water incursion incidents. It also has added pads to the spacesuits to soak up the liquid, and a tube to provide an alternate breathing location should the helmet fill with water. NASA is also testing technology that could supplement or replace astronaut spacewalks. One example is Robonaut. A prototype currently on board the station is able to flip switches and do other routine tasks under supervision, and may be modified at some point to work outside as well. [Infographic: Meet Robonaut 2, NASA's Space Droid]

If the crew needs to evacuate the station, they can return to Earth aboard two Russian Soyuz vehicles docked to the ISS. Additional crewmembers are transported to the ISS by Soyuz. Prior to the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, new space station crewmembers were also ferried to and from the station during shuttle missions. In 2017 or so, NASA expects to replace most Soyuz flights with SpaceX's crewedDragon spacecraftandBoeing's CST-100.

Crews aboard the ISS are assisted by mission control centers in Houston and Moscow and a payload control center in Huntsville, Ala. Other international mission control centers support the space station from Japan, Canada and Europe. The ISS can also be controlled from mission control centers in Houston or Moscow. [Photos:Space Station's Expedition 32 Mission]

The ISS hosted its first one-year crew in 2015-16, with NASA's Scott Kelly and Roscosmos' Mikhail Kornienko, which drew international attention and acclaim. The agencies have expressed interest in running more one-year missions in the future, but have not made a commitment to date.

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let's see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

0 of 10 questions complete

Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St...

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let's see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor.

Read the original post:
International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking

Posted in Space Station | Comments Off on International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking

International Space Station hosts Alta Loma middle school students … – Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Posted: at 6:49 pm

ALTA LOMA >> Forget putting a class project on the refrigerator: A group of Alta Loma Christian middle school students have their work orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station.

Aboard the ISS is a cube designed and programmed by the Alta Loma SpaceEagles space science and engineering team. The cube has a light that turns on and off based on input from a pair of heat sensors. Alta Loma Christian was one of 11 middle schools nationwide taking part in the Quest for Space Beta ISS Project, organized by the San Jose-based Quest Institute for Quality Education.

It was a bag of parts, made for prototyping, said Boeing engineer Jim DellaNeve, who was an adviser for the students.

Students used software from Lego Mindstorms and Microsoft to develop their project, which was then copied onto hardware that was launched into space June 3 aboard SpaceX mission CRS-11 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I knew going into it, that if it was going to be a stretch, we had the perfect kids coming to handle it, said science teacher and STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) coordinator Michelle Martinez. And they did amazing.

The SpaceEagles got a more authentic engineering experience than the project developers envisioned.

It also didnt help that Quest didnt have the right diagrams at first, said Jeffrey Kotz, 14, who served as project manager and head electrical engineer as a then-eighth grader. I tried to build my own, but it didnt work any better.

Things going wrong, of course, was an education all its own.

More of my role than anything was peacemaker when things got stressful, said math teacher Jasmine Royse. There was absolutely just as much learning in the teamwork process and in the team building process as in the engineering process.

And those skills were needed:

I can be challenging working with a team, laughed Samuel Bement, 14, who was an eighth grader during the projects construction and who served as one of two coders on the project. But it was a great experience, learning how to work with people.

And ultimately, thats the most valuable skill learned on an ambitious project like the Quest for Space.

When the pressures on, do you behave yourself, do you finger point? Those are real-world things that are invaluable, DellaNeve said.

Advertisement

This likely wont be the last time Alta Lomas SpaceEagles fly:

When its time to re-up, we wont wait, said Vance Nichols, Alta Loma Christians Head of School, whose father was an aerospace design engineer. Were in as soon as its available.

View post:
International Space Station hosts Alta Loma middle school students ... - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Posted in Space Station | Comments Off on International Space Station hosts Alta Loma middle school students … – Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Aspiring Space-Based Nation to Start with Baby Steps – NBCNews.com

Posted: at 6:49 pm

Jun.19.2017 / 10:35 AM ET

While it plans to someday host a moon colony and space station, the proposed space-based nation Asgardia is starting small: The project will launch its first satellite this fall to store data for the nation's newly selected citizens. Some 200,000 were chosen from the more than 500,000 applicants.

During a press conference in Hong Kong on June 13, Asgardia's founder, Igor Ashurbeyli, revealed concrete details about the satellite: Asgardia-1 will be deployed from Orbital ATK's Cygnus OA-8 resupply spacecraft launching in September.

Related: Private Space Stations of the Future Imagined

The satellite is 10 x 20 x 20 centimeters (3.9 x 7.9 x 7.9 inches) and has eight batteries and four deployable solar arrays. It will orbit at up to 500 kilometers (310 miles) above Earth. Texas-based space-services firm NanoRacks acts as the satellite's prime contractor and operator.

Someday, Ashurbeyli said, he hopes to create a planetary-defense constellation that will help protect against asteroids, solar flares and human-made space debris; this satellite is just the first step.

During the conference, Ashurbeyli also described plans for a space station and moon colony. "We plan to have this station in space and on the moon," he said. "It will be a four-level orbital station. I think the technical details will be defined by the Ministry of Science, which I hope we will have in the autumn of this year."

Ashurbeyli didn't provide additional details, but Asgardia has released imagery of the potential off-Earth locations. One image shows a rotating-wheel space station alongside an interplanetary rocket, and another shows, presumably, the interior of that space station with a wall of windows, a canal and greenery. The rocket has a habitation module and a lunar lander that looks like a cross between the NASA Orion spacecraft and the 1960s Apollo program lunar lander.

The approved applicants for Asgardian citizenship will be invited to vote on a constitution for the space-based nation on June 18. At that time, Ashurbeyli said, the organs of the proposed state the ministries, parliament and executive branch should be created. Ashurbeyli is calling June 18 Asgardian National Unity Day, and the date will be a public holiday if the state is realized.

Related: Incredible Technology: How to Build a Space Station Colony

More than 500,000 people applied for Asgardian citizenship online within 20 days when the project was announced in October last year. The organizers removed ineligible people, such as children, and were left with almost 200,000 people from about 200 countries. (Now, the website lists more than 210,000.) The approved applicants have each received personal certificates of Asgardia and can vote to approve the lawyer-designed constitution on June 18. The constitution was published on June 13.

Of the citizenship applicants, 80 percent are men, and the largest demographic comprises 18- to 35-year-olds. While there are applicants from almost every country on Earth, China has the most applicants, followed by Turkey, then the United States and then Italy. People can register as prospective Asgardians on the website.

Asgardia is being funded by Ashurbeyli's nonprofit Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC), based in Vienna. He said he expects that once Asgardia's constitution is approved, the state will be built by its citizen volunteers and Asgardia will become self-funding. Ashurbeyli said he expects to file for United Nations recognition by April 2018, if Asgardia's parliament and government have been set up and the satellite launched before then, he said during the conference.

In the meantime, AIRC owns Asgardian intellectual property. The company will collect, analyze and fund ideas and startups in space technology for the benefit of Asgardia. Ashurbeyli is also offering 300KB of free data storage on board Asgardia-1 for Asgardian citizens. Family members, up to a maximum of 400,000 people, will get 200KB. Another 1 million people will get 100KB.

"Sixty years after the launch of the first-ever artificial satellite, Sputnik, our own space satellite, Asgardia-1, will mark the beginning of a new space era, taking our citizens into space in virtual form, at first," Ashurbeyli said.

Ram Jakhu, the director of McGill University's Institute of Air and Space Law in Montreal, is the Asgardia project team legal expert. During the conference, he told the press that the Asgardian data stored on Asgardia-1 would be subject to U.S. privacy laws. The Asgardians' data will also be stored on future Asgardian satellites.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

FOLLOW NBC MACH ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND INSTAGRAM.

Continue reading here:
Aspiring Space-Based Nation to Start with Baby Steps - NBCNews.com

Posted in Space Station | Comments Off on Aspiring Space-Based Nation to Start with Baby Steps – NBCNews.com

Elon Musk claims Mars colony dreams critical to avoid ‘Doomsday’ event – ZDNet

Posted: at 6:49 pm

Elon Musk

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed that building a self-sustaining colony on Mars is necessary to our future survival as a species.

Musk's blueprint, titled "Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species," outlines the executive's vision for making the human race a multi-planetary, space-faring society.

The paper, a summary of Musk's presentation at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara last year, suggests that a future Doomsday event will force us to look at other planets to stave off extinction.

Out of all the options currently open to us, Venus is a cooking pot of pressure and acid, Mercury is too close to the sun and the planet's moons are difficult to reach, and our own moon is small and has no atmosphere.

Musk argues that Mars, despite the distance, is the best option -- especially if we are able to warm the planet up to thicken the atmosphere and access the planet's frozen oceans.

With a day and night cycle similar to our own planet, we may also be able to cultivate plants as the atmosphere is primarily CO2, nitrogen, argon, and a few trace elements.

"It would be quite fun to be on Mars because you would have gravity that is about 37 percent of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around, furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth," Musk says. "We just need to change the populations because currently, we have seven billion people on Earth and none on Mars."

The cost of such travel, however, must come into the equation. It is estimated that sending a single person to Mars could cost up to $10 billion at the moment. To create a self-sustaining community, the cost must be significantly reduced, as very few people could afford to join the project.

Therefore, Musk wants to eventually reduce the cost to the average price of a house in the US -- roughly $200,000 -- but in order to reach this goal and slash the expense by five million percent, a number of steps will need to be taken.

Musk says that the so-called "interplanetary spaceship" used to get to Mars would need to launch with fuel tanks that are basically empty in order to refuel while in space to keep costs down.

It will also be necessary to make the tankers and rockets reusable at least for a few return trips and to create propellant on Mars rather than make constant trips back and from Earth for fuel.

The executive says that due to Mars' atmosphere and elements already available, it is possible to produce the methane and oxygen required. Kerosene will not work without oil reserves on the planet and methane is cheap enough.

"It would be pretty absurd to try to build a city on Mars if your spaceships just stayed on Mars and did not go back to Earth," Musk writes. "You would have a massive graveyard of ships; you have to do something with them."

The Raptor engine and rocket booster, used in the spaceship, are some of the most challenging elements of the Mars vision.

Not only will the Raptor engine be the "highest chamber pressure engine of any kind ever built," but the full-flow combustion engine will need to condense oxygen and methane for fuel, have capacity for 100 passengers, and multiple ships will need to leave Earth during each launch window to Mars to shuttle one million people to the Red planet in a matter of decades, rather than centuries, to make colonization a success.

The ship's characteristics are described below:

The rocket will also need to be extremely powerful and far beyond what we have produced so far.

"We are talking about a lift-off thrust of 13,000 tons, so it will be quite tectonic when it takes off," Musk writes. "This is really intended to carry huge numbers of people, ultimately millions of tons of cargo to Mars."

SpaceX hopes that with engineering and research over the coming years, the cost to reach Mars could eventually be reduced further to $100,000.

See also: Musk storms out of Trump advisory council over climate change decision

The executive is intentionally vague when it comes to timing in the paper, but Musk hopes to complete the first development spaceship in roughly four years. At that point SpaceX will begin testing the ship in suborbital flights.

"If things go super-well, it might be in the 10-year timeframe, but I do not want to say that is when it will occur," Musk says. "There is a huge amount of risk. It is going to cost a lot. There is a good chance we will not succeed, but we are going to do our best and try to make as much progress as possible."

Go here to read the rest:
Elon Musk claims Mars colony dreams critical to avoid 'Doomsday' event - ZDNet

Posted in Mars Colonization | Comments Off on Elon Musk claims Mars colony dreams critical to avoid ‘Doomsday’ event – ZDNet

Why Interstellar Travel Will Be Possible Sooner Than You Think – Singularity Hub

Posted: at 6:48 pm

The term moonshot is sometimes invoked to denote a project so outrageously ambitious that it can only be described by comparing it to the Apollo 11 mission to land the first human on the Moon. The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative transcends the moonshot descriptor because its purpose goes far beyond the Moon. The aptly-named project seeks to travel to the nearest stars.

The brainchild of Russian-born tech entrepreneur billionaire Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Starshot was announced in April 2016 at a press conference joined by renowned physicists including Stephen Hawking and Freeman Dyson. While still early, the current vision is that thousands of wafer-sized chips attached to large, silver lightsails will be placed into Earth orbit and accelerated by the pressure of an intense Earth-based laser hitting the lightsail.

After just two minutes of being driven by the laser, the spacecraft will be traveling at one-fifth the speed of lighta thousand times faster than any macroscopic object has ever achieved.

Each craft will coast for 20 years and collect scientific data about interstellar space. Uponreachingthe planets near the Alpha Centauri star system, anthe onboard digital camera will take high-resolution pictures and send these back to Earth, providing the first glimpse of our closest planetary neighbors. In addition to scientific knowledge, we may learn whether these planets are suitable for human colonization.

The team behind Breakthrough Starshot is as impressive as the technology. The board of directors includes Milner, Hawking, and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The executive director is S. Pete Worden, former director of NASA Ames Research Center. A number of prominent scientists, including Nobel and Breakthrough Laureates, are serving as advisors to the project, and Milner has promised $100 million of his own funds to begin work. He will encourage his colleagues to contribute $10 billion over the next several years for its completion.

While this endeavor may sound like science fiction, there are no known scientific obstacles to implementing it. This doesnt mean it will happen tomorrow: for Starshot to be successful, a number of advances in technologies are necessary. The organizers and advising scientists are relying upon the exponential rate of advancement to make Starshot happen within 20 years.

Here are 11 key Starshot technologies and how they are expected to advance exponentially over the next two decades.

An exoplanet is a planet outside our Solar System. While the first scientific detection of an exoplanet was only in 1988, as of May, 1 2017 there have been 3,608 confirmed detections of exoplanets in 2,702 planetary systems. While some resemble those in our Solar System, many have fascinating and bizarre features, such as rings 200 times wider than Saturns.

The reason for this deluge of discoveries? A vast improvement in telescope technology.

Just 100 years ago the worlds largest telescope was the Hooker Telescope at 2.54 meters. Today, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope consists of four large 8.2-meter diameter telescopes and is now the most productive ground-based facility in astronomy, with an average of over one peer-reviewed, published scientific paper per day.

Researchers use the VLT and a special instrument to look for rocky extrasolar planets in the habitable zone (allowing liquid water) of their host stars. In May 2016, researchers using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile found not just one but seven Earth-sized exoplanets in the habitable zone.

Meanwhile, in space, NASAs Kepler spacecraft is designed specifically for this purpose and has already identified over 2,000 exoplanets. The James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in October, 2018, will offer unprecedented insight into whether exoplanets can support life. If these planets have atmospheres, [JWST] will be the key to unlocking their secrets, according to Doug Hudgins, Exoplanet Program Scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

The Starshot mothership will be launched aboard a rocket and release a thousand starships. The cost of transporting a payload using one-time-only rockets is immense, but private launch providers such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have recently demonstrated success in reusable rockets which are expected to substantially reduce the price. SpaceX has already reduced costs to around $60 million per Falcon 9 launch, and as the private space industry expands and reusable rockets become more common, this price is expected to drop even further.

Each 15-millimeter-wide Starchip must contain a vast array of sophisticated electronic devices, such as a navigation system, camera, communication laser, radioisotope battery, camera multiplexer, and camera interface. The expectation well be able to compress an entire spaceship onto a small wafer is due to exponentially decreasing sensor and chip sizes.

The first computer chips in the 1960s contained a handful of transistors. Thanks to Moores Law, we can now squeeze billions of transistors onto each chip. The first digital camera weighed 8 pounds and took 0.01 megapixel images. Now, a digital camera sensor yields high-quality 12+ megapixel color images and fits in a smartphonealong with other sensors like GPS, accelerometer, and gyroscope. And were seeing this improvement bleed into space exploration with the advent of smaller satellites providing better data.

For Starshot to succeed, we will need the chips mass to be about 0.22 grams by 2030, but if the rate of improvement continues, projections suggest this is entirely possible.

The sail must be made of a material which is highly reflective (to gain maximum momentum from the laser), minimally absorbing (so that it is not incinerated from the heat), and also very light weight (allowing quick acceleration). These three criteria areextremely constrictive and there is at present no satisfactory material.

Therequired advances may come from artificial intelligence automating and accelerating materials discovery. Such automation has advanced to the point wheremachine learning techniques can generate libraries of candidate materials by the tens of thousands, allowing engineers to identify which ones are worth pursuing and testing for specific applications.

While the Starchip will use a tiny nuclear-powered radioisotope battery for its 24-year-plus journey, we will still need conventional chemical batteries for the lasers. The lasers will need to employ tremendous energy in a short span of time, meaning that the power must be stored in nearby batteries.

Battery storage has improved at 5-8% per year, though we often dont notice this benefit because appliance power consumption has increased at a comparable rate resulting in a steady operating lifetime. If batteries continue to improve at this rate, in 20 years they should have 3 to 5 times their present capacity. Continued innovation is expected to be driven from Tesla-Solar Citys big investment in battery technology. The companies have already installed close to 55,000 batteries in Kauai to power a large portion of their infrastructure.

Thousands of high-powered lasers will be used to push the lightsail to extraordinary speeds.

Lasers have obeyed Moores Law at a nearly identical rate to integrated circuits, the cost-per-power ratio halving every 18 months. In particular, the last decade has seen a dramatic acceleration in power scaling of diode and fiber lasers, the former breaking through 10 kilowatts from a single mode fiber in 2010 and the 100-kilowatt barrier a few months later. In addition to the raw power, we will also need to make advances in combining phased array lasers.

Our ability to move quickly has...moved quickly. In 1804 the train was invented and soon thereafter produced the hitherto unheard of speed of 70 mph. The Helios 2 spacecraft eclipsed this record in 1976: at its fastest, Helios 2 was moving away from Earth at a speed of 356,040 km/h. Just 40 years later the New Horizons spacecraft achieved a heliocentric speed of almost 45 km/s or 100,000 miles per hour. Yet even at these speeds it would take a long, long time to reach Alpha Centauri at slightly more than four light years away.

While accelerating subatomic particles to nearly light speed is routine in particle accelerators, never before has this been achieved for macroscopic objects. Achieving 20% speed of light for Starshot would represent a 1000x speed increase for any human-built object.

Fundamental to computing is the ability to store information. Starshot depends on the continued decreasing cost and size of digital memory to include sufficient storage for its programs and the images taken of Alpha Centauri star system and its planets.

The cost of memory has decreased exponentially for decades: in 1970, a megabyte cost about one million dollars; its now about one-tenth of a cent. The size required for the storage has similarly decreased, from a 5-megabyte hard drive being loaded via forklift in 1956 to the current availability of 512-gigabyte USB sticks weighing a few grams.

Once the images are taken the Starchip will send the images back to Earth for processing.

Telecommunications has advanced rapidly since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. The average internet speed in the US is currently about 11 megabits per second. The bandwidth and speed required for Starshot to send digital images over 4 light yearsor 20 trillion mileswill require taking advantage in the latest telecommunications technology.

One promising technology is Li-Fi, a wireless approach which is 100 times faster than Wi-Fi. A second is via optical fibers which now boast 1.125 terabits per second. There are even efforts in quantum telecommunications which are not just ultrafast but completely secure.

The final step in the Starshot project is to analyze the data returning from the spacecraft. To do so we must take advantage of the exponential increase in computing power, benefiting from the trillion-fold increase in computing over the 60 years.

This dramatically decreasing cost of computing has now continued due largely to the presence of cloud computing. Extrapolating into the future and taking advantage of new types of processing, such as quantum computing, we should see another thousand-fold increase in power by the time data from Starshot returns. Such extreme processing power will allow us to perform sophisticated scientific modeling and analysis of our nearest neighboring star system.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Pete Worden and Gregg Maryniak for suggestions and comments.

Image Credit:NASA/ESA/ESO

Read the original post:
Why Interstellar Travel Will Be Possible Sooner Than You Think - Singularity Hub

Posted in Moon Colonization | Comments Off on Why Interstellar Travel Will Be Possible Sooner Than You Think – Singularity Hub

Liquid Biopsy Guides New Prostate Cancer Drug Trial – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Posted: at 6:48 pm

Its been no secret that screening methods to detect prostate cancer have been woefully lacking and largely inconsistent with respect to the results they provide. Yet, with the rise in validated biomarkers and advanced diagnostics coupled with next-generation sequencing methods, new liquid biopsy assays are guiding physician treatment options. Now, a group of investigators at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have developed a three-in-one blood test that could transform the treatment of advanced prostate cancer through the use of precision drugs designed to target mutations in the BRCA genes.

"Blood tests for cancer promise to be truly revolutionary, noted Paul Workman, Ph.D., chief executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London. They are cheap and simple to use, but most importantly, because they aren't invasive, they can be employed or applied to routinely monitor patients to spot early if treatment is failingoffering patients the best chance of surviving their disease.

The research team was able to isolate cancer DNA in a patients bloodstream and determine which men with advanced prostate cancer were likely to benefit from treatment with a new class of drugs called poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitorsspecifically the drug olaparib. Moreover, the scientists were able to use the test to analyze DNA in the blood after treatment had started, so people who were not responding could be identified and switched to an alternative therapy in as little as four to eight weeks. The third aspect of the new test came when the research team was able to monitor a patient's blood throughout treatment, quickly picking up signs that the cancer was evolving genetically and might be becoming resistant to the drugs.

Findings from the new study were published recently in Cancer Discovery in an article entitled Circulating Free DNA to Guide Prostate Cancer Treatment with PARP Inhibition.

"Our study identifies, for the first time, genetic changes that allow prostate cancer cells to become resistant to the precision medicine olaparib, explained senior study investigator Johann de Bono, M.D., professor of cancer research at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. "From these findings, we were able to develop a powerful, three-in-one test that could in future be used to help doctors select treatment, check whether it is working, and monitor the cancer in the longer term. We think it could be used to make clinical decisions about whether a PARP inhibitor is working within as little as four to eight weeks of starting therapy.

The investigators are optimistic that the new test could help to extend or save lives by targeting treatment more effectively, while also reducing the side effects of treatment and ensuring patients don't receive drugs that are unlikely to do them any good. Additionally, the new study is also the first to identify which genetic mutations prostate cancers use to resist treatment with olaparib. The test could potentially be adapted to monitor treatment with PARP inhibitors for other cancers.

"Not only could the test have a major impact on the treatment of prostate cancer, but it could also be adapted to open up the possibility of precision medicine to patients with other types of cancer as well," Dr. de Bono remarked.

In the study, researchers at the ICR and The Royal Marsden collected blood samples from 49 men at The Royal Marsden with advanced prostate cancer enrolled in the TOPARP-A Phase II clinical trial of olaparib. Olaparib is good at killing cancer cells that have errors in genes that have a role in repairing damaged DNA such as BRCA1 or BRCA2. Some patients respond to the drug for years, but in other patients, the treatment either fails early, or the cancer evolves resistance. Evaluating the levels of cancer DNA circulating in the blood, the researchers found that patients who responded to the drug had a median drop in the levels of circulating DNA of 49.6% after only eight weeks of treatment, whereas cancer DNA levels rose by a median of 2.1% in patients who did not respond.

Men whose blood levels of DNA had decreased at eight weeks after treatment survived an average of 17 months, compared with only 10.1 months for men whose cancer DNA levels remained high.

"This is another important example where liquid biopsiesa simple blood test as opposed to an invasive tissue biopsycan be used to direct and improve the treatment of patients with cancer," commented David Cunningham, Ph.D., director of clinical research at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

The researchers also performed a detailed examination of the genetic changes that occurred in cancer DNA from patients who had stopped responding to olaparib. They found that cancer cells had acquired new genetic changes that canceled out the original errors in DNA repairparticularly in the genes BRCA2 and PALB2that had made the cancer susceptible to olaparib in the first place.

"To greatly improve the survival chances of the 47,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, it's clear that we need to move away from the current one-size-fits-all approach to much more targeted treatment methods, concluded Matthew Hobbs, Ph.D., deputy director of research at Prostate Cancer UK. The results from this study and others like it are crucial as they give an important understanding of the factors that drive certain prostate cancers, or make them vulnerable to specific treatments.

The rest is here:
Liquid Biopsy Guides New Prostate Cancer Drug Trial - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Posted in Genetic Engineering | Comments Off on Liquid Biopsy Guides New Prostate Cancer Drug Trial – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Page 1,724«..1020..1,7231,7241,7251,726..1,7301,740..»

  1. category
  2. Transhuman News