Category Archives: Transhuman News

Everything is silent. The surface is cold and dusty and over the horizon Earth and beyond.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were able to feel what its actually like to traverse the moons surface, but a group of ISU students is now trying to do the next best thing send their new creation to the moon in their stead.

The ISU Lunabotics Club, led by Garret Schieber, senior in mechanical engineering and president of the Lunabotics Club, is working on a completely automated machine that has the potential of opening a path to a trillion dollar industry via space mining and colonization.

Schiebers team is one of 19 teams slated to compete at NASAs 2015 Robotic Mining Competition.

The clubs results have been on the rise in recent years.

Its been a great ride these last four years, Schieber said. Getting to watch the club grow from a group that had no awards to a group with many, on top of being one of the best in the competition.

When the time comes for these robots to be deployed into space, they will ride the new state of the art Orion spacecraft.

Once in space, they can be taken to the moon or even farther.

On the moon, the robots can begin paving the way for mankind.

Through the use of 3D printing, they will be able to start building shelters that will eventually be covered by lunar soil, which is called regolith.

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Club 'shoots for the moon' by making robot in NASA competition

Neil Mohindra and Anna Lalani had 30 minutes to celebrate Valentine's Day.

The couple, in their early 20s, donned their nicest clothes and perched across from each other in a booth at a local sushi restaurant. After two years of dating, both Mohindra and Lalani knew something bigger was in store for the night: the Cricket World Cup.

At 9 p.m., Mohindra unbuttoned his dress shirt to reveal the blue India jersey he had worn underneath. Lalani pulled on a green Pakistan jersey with a half moon and star emblazoned on the front and a pair of green socks. They were a couple divided, cheering for rival teams during one of the biggest athletic competitions in the world.

"This isn't just a sports game," said Mohindra, a Rush University student from Naperville. "It's political pride. Whoever walks out of that stadium a winner gets to stand a little taller. I was born in India, a country filled with passion for cricket. It gets in your blood."

The Cricket World Cup is one of the most widely watched international sports tournaments in the world. According to the International Cricket Council, more than a billion people were expected to tune in to watch India play Pakistan. In comparison, about 114.4 million people watched Super Bowl XLIX.

"The world loves cricket," said Faizan Seedat, 25, of Glendale Heights. Seedat is a Pakistan fan. "Both countries have a strong pride for their cricket teams. The fact that the game happened on Valentine's Day added more ambience to the love-hate relationship between Pakistanis and Indians."

Cricket is more than a sport for Chicagoans of Pakistani and Indian descent. It's a vital part of identity and a link to home countries and cultures. Mohindra, who grew up in New Delhi, said both countries are paralyzed during big cricket games. Offices and schools shut down, and people cluster around TVs to cheer on their respective teams.

The game in Adelaide, Australia, on Saturday night was the sixth time that India, the defending World Cup champion, defeated Pakistan.

"There's not a soul that doesn't watch an India versus Pakistan game in either country," said Fatir Khan, 22, of Orland Park. Khan grew up in Kirachi, Pakistan, and cheers for that country's team. "We try to imitate that here. I'm doing the exact same things my cousins are doing right now in Pakistan. Even if you don't watch cricket, you know what this game means."

Originally a British game, cricket gained popularity in the Caribbean, Asia, New Zealand and Australia following colonization. The bat-and-ball sport is similar to baseball in that each team of 11 players takes turns batting to score runs while the other team fields. The game is played on a giant oval field with a rectangular pitch in the middle.

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Cricket World Cup links fans to home

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Dutch interplanetary exploration startup Mars One has further narrowed down the list of potential colonists from over 202,000 to just 100.

"I got one step closer to launching the dawn of a new era, human life on mars," declared Ryan MacDonald as he learned he was still a candidate.

MacDonald was one of three applicants for the Mars one mission thrust into the spotlight by a Guardian profile on three of the second round finalists. Of the three candidates spotlighted before the latest round of cuts, only MacDonald is still a candidate.

"I think the most important thing to do in life is to leave a legacy," the Oxford physics student said at the time.

Other potential colonists include a wide variety of scientists, project managers and even a man who claims to be a a martian.

"If you compare the Mars One mission to the moon landing, I think scientific progress, on a similar scale to what we experienced following that endeavor, is a reasonable expectation, " says 34-year-old Christian Knudsen of Denmark.

"Furthermore, personally, and without any scientific backing, I believe that the increase in living standard these advances allow, will leave more space for individuals to expand the sphere of people they care for and will sacrifice for, beyond themselves, beyond their family and beyond their nationality."

Australian Dianne McGrath, 45, wants to bring her "expertise in sustainable food" to Mars One's colonization attempt as she feels her skill set will be "critical in a completely new environment for human habitation."

And one candidate, 38-year-old Mikolaj Zielinski of Poland, says he is a millennia-old Martian eager to return to his home plane and help the Earthlings traverse Mars' dangerous lands.

"I am one of the first four Martians to arrive on your planet," claims Zielinski, who says his real name is M1-K0.

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Mars One cuts list of potential colonists to 100