Moreover, the launch accomplished SpaceX’s overarching goal of making access to space travel affordable, with a price tag of $90 million per launch, compared to roughly $500 million for the second most powerful rocket, the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy. Now that the Falcon Heavy ’ s abilities have been demonstrated, it can be used to send satellites, payloads, and potentially tourists into space.
Days since the historic launch, this surreal image of a Tesla Roadster and Starman cruising away from Earth has become a symbol and foreshadowing of humanity’s exciting future as a space-faring species. After all, SpaceX’s massive transformative purpose is not simply to make space travel affordable, but rather to allows humans to become a multi-planetary species. Ultimately, Tuesday’s launch left many speechless because it brought us closer to accomplishing this aspirational goal.
Given the hefty cost of space exploration, it’s natural to wonder why we should explore space. Sure, space exploration and travel can also expand our technological abilities as a nation or even as a species. There have been many inventions that would not have occurred without space travel. But that’s not the real reason we explore space.
#Transhumanism in the Sunday Times of London. 750,000 copies out today. My pres campaign in it briefly, as well as other transhumanists.
The new Netflix series Altered Carbon is set in a dystopian future where the super-rich can avail of technology that allows them to upload their consciousness to a new body every time they die, in effect giving them immortality.
It’s science fiction, of the kind previously explored in the novels of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, movies such as RoboCop and The Terminator, manga comics like Ghost in the Shell and even the Man-Machine album by German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk — but only until it comes to pass.
Dublin writer Mark O’Connell spent three years travelling the globe, meeting people who believe that they can actually achieve this by digitising their brains and transcending human flesh to become de facto cyborgs, impervious to…
That candidate is Andrew Yang, a well-connected New York businessman who is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House. Mr. Yang, a former tech executive who started the nonprofit organization Venture for America, believes that automation and advanced artificial intelligence will soon make millions of jobs obsolete — yours, mine, those of our accountants and radiologists and grocery store cashiers.
He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.
Andrew Yang, a former tech executive, is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House by warning of economic calamity ahead.
Alex Garland continues to cultivate his reputation as one of the most exciting and challenging voices in modern science fiction cinema.
Annihilation is an upcoming science fantasy action horror film written for the screen and directed by Alex Garland based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. The film stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac.
Having previously written screenplays for cult classics like 28 Days Later and Dredd, Garland’s Ex Machina is arguably the definitive film about artificial intelligence (and killer robots) of the 21st century. And that was only his directorial debut.
TAE Technologies, Inc. (formerly Tri Alpha Energy), the world’s largest and most advanced private fusion company, has announced that its proprietary beam-driven field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma generator, “Norman,” surpassed a new technical milestone, bringing the company closer to the reality of commercial fusion power. This latest achievement marks a significant step in the company’s mission to create a global energy revolution with clean, safe, sustainable fusion energy.
Norman, the $100MM National Laboratory-scale device named for company founder Dr. Norman Rostoker, was unveiled in May 2017 and quickly reached first plasma in June 2017. After over 4,000 experiments to date, Norman has now exceeded the capabilities and performance of the company’s previous FRC plasma generator, C-2U, and sets a new company record for plasma temperature.
