Lifeboat Foundation

The burgeoning space-transportation company owned by Amazon.com chairman Jeff Bezos this week is expected to announce some customers and new initiatives, the latest step toward its long-term goal of building rockets powerful enough to penetrate deep into the solar system, according to industry officials.

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The moves by the typically secretive Mr. Bezos, these officials said, are anticipated to disclose further details about Blue Origin LLC’s strategy to create a family of reusable rockets initially intended to take tourists on suborbital voyages, and then propel spacecraft into Earth’s orbit and eventually blast both manned and robotic missions to the Moon and various planets.

Continue reading “Amazon Chief Bezos Expected to Unveil Further Private Space Exploration Plans” »

Virginia Tech’s Visual Arts Department and Engineering Department have been joining forces to design ESCHER, a firefighting robot.

ESCHER was originally created at the beginning of 2015 in the Terrestrial Robotics Engineering and Controls Laboratory. ESCHER is short for Electronic Series Compliant Humanoid for Emergency Response.

“The special application for this project is the idea that ESCHER could go on naval ships and fight fires and go places that would normally be hazardous to humans,” said Meaghan Dee, assistant professor and chair of Visual Communications. “If you think of something like the Fukushima Disaster, you could have just sent in a robot, and that’s what these emergency robots are designed to do.”

Continue reading “In the face of danger: ESCHER, Virginia Tech’s firefighting robot primed for extreme heat conditions” »

Are we ready for cyborgs? More specifically, people with implants that enhance beyond the superficially cosmetic and into the realms of evolved beings?

Jorge Pelegrín-Borondo (Universidad de La Rioja), Eva Reinares-Lara (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) and Cristina Olarte-Pascual (Universidad de La Rioja), in cooperation with Professor Kiyoshi Murata, from Meiji University in Tokyo, believe society is ready for this melding of (hu)man and machine.

The Spanish academics’ report “Assessing the acceptance of technological implants (the cyborg): Evidences and challenges” has just been released in the scientific journal Computers in Human Behavior. The report shows a significant proportion of those surveyed are comfortable with the coming cyborg modifications. The group are also collaborating with other academics across the world, including Professor Kiyoshi Murata, for a comparative cross-cultural study roundtable at the 2017 ETHICOMP conference this summer in Turin, Italy.

Continue reading “Are We Ready for Cyborgs? The Tech Is on Its Way” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T5GXK1onZWc

Carla Rivas Schab

Gordon is a robotic arm that serves coffee in a San Francisco shopping complex. It’s the first robotic barista in the U.S., and it could serve about 120 coffees in an hour. “A lot of us spend a lot of time in line waiting for coffee,” Henry Hu, CEO of Cafe X Technologies, the local start-up that created the robot, tells USA Today. “And we decided to do something about it.”

Continue reading “This Robot Barista Is Faster Than a Human, and It Just Started Work in San Fran” »

Various transhumanism stories newly out or reshared:

https://mysteriousearth.net/2017/02/23/two-americans-aim-to-…-implants/ &

http://3dpromote.com/zoltan-istvan-nick-bostrom-and-the-anti…-atlantic/ &

Continue reading “Two Americans Aim to Plug Into the ‘Matrix’ through Black Market Brain Implants” »

This machine copies your handwriting perfectly.

I hope to in the next few weeks put out some of my first articles about my libertarian policies—including the all important need for far lower taxes. I believe technology can help us get to a day with zero taxes. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5w08pf/this_calif…ate_wants/

A laser phased array directed energy system has been designed and simulated. Lubin and Hughes calculated the requirements and possibilities for DE-STAR systems of several sizes, ranging from a desktop device to one measuring 10 kilometers, or six miles, in diameter. Larger systems were also considered. The larger the system, the greater its capabilities.

For instance, DE-STAR 2 – at 100 meters in diameter, about the size of the International Space Station – “could start nudging comets or asteroids out of their orbits,” Hughes said. But DE-STAR 4 – at 10 kilometers in diameter, about 100 times the size of the ISS – could deliver 1.4 megatons of energy per day to its target, said Lubin, obliterating an asteroid 500 meters across in one year.

Continue reading “DESTAR phased array laser systems for defending against asteroids and for space exploration” »

Controlled nuclear fusion has been a holy grail for physicists who seek an endless supply of clean energy. Scientists at Rice University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chile offered a glimpse into a possible new path toward that goal.

Their report on quantum-controlled fusion puts forth the notion that rather than heating atoms to temperatures found inside the sun or smashing them in a collider, it might be possible to nudge them close enough to fuse by using shaped laser pulses: ultrashort, tuned bursts of coherent light.

Authors Peter Wolynes of Rice, Martin Gruebele of Illinois and Illinois alumnus Eduardo Berrios of Chile simulated reactions in two dimensions that, if extrapolated to three, might just produce energy efficiently from deuterium and tritium or other elements.