Category Archives: Futurism

The Age of Commercial Spaceflight

Rocket science isnt easy. Ask any engineer. Rocket science isnt cheap. Just ask NASA. Fortunately, in recent years, a number of commercial spaceflight companies have stepped up to the plate in order to help national space agencies extend their reach into the final frontier.

Innovative companies like Elon Musks SpaceX and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin have accelerated the development of reusable rockets exponentially. In so doing, they have dramatically reduced the cost of leaving our pale blue dot, improving both our ability to explore the cosmos and scientists capacity to conduct research beyondEarth.

To be more specific, in 2012, SpaceX became the first private space company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Previously, this monumental feat was something that had only been achieved by world governments.

At the present time, the company is working on the Crew Dragon, a next-generation spacecraft that is designed to ferry humans to the ISS. One day, SpaceX even plans to land on Mars, and if Musk has anything to say about it, humans will be on the Red Planetpossibly living there for goodin the next decade or so.

Ultimately, private spaceflight companies are leading our charge into the cosmos. This is because successfully reusing boosters is a critical part of bringing down the cost of launchesand its something that the worlds governments have failed to produce.

With this technology, we wont have to build a completely new rocket for every single mission. According to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell,reusability could lower the cost of rocket launches by a staggering 30 percent.

Likewise, Musk asserts that such rockets are the key to a truly economically viable space industry: A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space. If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred.

And Blue Origin echoes these sentiments, with Bezos calling such technologies the Holy Grail of rocketry. After the first landing of Blue Origins New Shepard resuablerocket, Bezos wrote, I believe this is a new Golden Age of space exploration. The first Golden Age was the 60s. We have been treading water for a long time. We are on the verge of a new Golden Age in rocketry. I believe one day all rockets will have landing gear.

This means that we can have more frequent and cheaper launches. This, in turn, means faster progress in both commercial spaceflight and our off-world research and exploration. In short, private spaceflight is ushering in a new age in our voyage into the cosmos.

Yesterday, Musk stated that SpaceX would have a breaking announcement today at 4pm EST (1pm GMT). And he just revealed thatSpaceX will be sending two private citizens around the Moon.

The space company said in a statement that the two individuals have already paid a significant deposit to do a Moon mission. Initial training, along with health and fitness tests, are set to occur later this year, SpaceX continued.

Ultimately, this is the first flight to the Moon with a crew in more than 45 years, and SpaceX went to lengths to point out the significance of this work: Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.

SpaceX also outlined the nature of the project and clarified the timeline:

SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission.We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results.

To break this down, to begin, SpaceX plans to launch the Crew Dragon (Dragon Version 2) spacecraft to the ISS without people on board this year, and then a subsequent mission with crew will fly in the second quarter of 2018. From there, the company will head to the Moon, an important milestone as they work towards the ultimate goaltransporting humans to Mars.

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BREAKING: Elon Musk And SpaceX Are Sending Humans to the Moon - Futurism

In Brief

AI has been quietly invading our lives. From ouroperating roomsto our roads, and even our homes. Still, we never expected AI to infringe on onething in particular, our Super Smash Brothers. If you havent heard of Super Smash Brothers, do yourself a favor.

Super Smash Brothers is a popular video game series spanning multiple generations of gaming consoles. Unlike what we have seen AI do before with professional players inchess,poker, and the ancient game ofGo Super Smash Brothers is a particularly tricky game for AI.

In order to win, players must take full advantage of their environment, their character, and their enemys weaknesses. Players must be quick to weaken their enemies without taking too much damage so that they can knock their opponent off the stage, a feat demanding a proper strategy and a certain sense of ruthlessness.

So how did the AI do it? Software named Phillip was created by a Ph.D. student at MIT with the help of his friend from NYU. The pair constructed an AI that at first wasnt too great at the game, but eventually, after a week of consistent practice, the AI was able to react 6 times quicker than a normal human. Clocking in reaction times at 33 milliseconds compared to 200 milliseconds human reaction time, Phillip was in his own alternate reality in the game.

Phillip faced off against a tenured, five-year champion, named Gravy. In a harrowing match, Phillip bested him 8 5.

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AI System Finds Another Game to Dominate Humans - Futurism - Futurism

58 Percent Cheaper

According to a recent report by Australian non-profitthe Climate Council, solar energy is now cheaper than retail power in most capital cities in Australia, with prices dropping 58 percent globally in the past five years. With costs expected to drop between 40 to 70 percent more by 2040, we can only expect a rise in adoption and usage in that country and others around the globe.

We are seeing more and more industrial-scale solar coming online across the country and the world. Hospitals, airports, farms and a variety of other businesses have embraced smarter and cleaner power, Greg Bourne, expert Councillor with the Climate Council, told SBS.

Nearly 7,000 solar batteries were installed in Australian homes last year, and that number is expected to triple in 2017. The Council adds in its report that industrial-scale solar plants are now providing cheaper power versus traditional coal plants. Twenty solar power plants are scheduled to be built around Australia, which will see an additional 3,700 megawatts of solar energy thats enough to power 600,000 homes. This will no doubt helpAustralia achieve its goal of reaching 20 gigawatts of solar generation in the next two decades.

Transitioning to renewable energy is not only necessary as we continue to see and feel the effects of climate change, it also makes economic sense.

For a country like Australia, where sunshine is abundant, supporting the growth of solar energy can create new jobs and new industries.More than 8,000 Australians already hold jobs in the solar industry, ranging from salespeople and manufacturers to electricians and installers. Projections expect that with renewable energy reaching 50 percent by 2030, Australia alonewill benefit from 28,000 new jobs.

Globally, 2.8 million people have jobs in the industry, which is more than those with coal jobs. In fact, in the United States, solar accounts for double the number of jobs as coal. The era of coal is over and global investment has moved firmly to renewable energy, added the Climate Council in a statement. Solar power is cheaper, has no fuel costs, is non-polluting and it is clear that it will be a key of Australias future.

Along with Australia, countries like China, the U.S., and Japan are at the forefront of renewable energy, with many other countries around the globe following suit. In 2015, a study showed that the U.S. could be completely powered by renewable energy by 2050. In 2016, almost all ofCosta Ricas electricity was generated using renewable sources. Germany, in an effort to phase out nuclear energy, is also well on its way to making other renewable energy sources more viable. As these individual efforts and global ones like the Paris Agreement take shape, we will hopefully see a tangible impact on our environment.

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The Price of Solar Has Dropped 58% in the Last 5 Years - Futurism

In Brief

With $30 million leaving the bank account over the next five years, NASA plans on setting up and supporting two institutes dedicated to extending humanitys reach in our solar system.

These Space Technology Research Institutes (STRIs) will each receive $15 million in NASA funding to develop technologies in biomaterials and biomanufacturing. Universities will lead multidisciplinary research programs in hopes of obtaining credible outcomes in the next five years. While the research is focused on expanding our species into space, the STRIs look to finding applications beyond just aerospace for the work.

Of the two STRIs, one is the Center for Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES)which will focus on incorporating microbes into food, fuel, materials, and pharmaceuticals. This research is intended to ease the journey of space travel, by providing biomanufacturing for astronauts who can be more self-sustained.

The other of the two STRIs is the Institute for Ultra-Strong Composites by Computational Design (US-COMP), which aims to develop lightweight and super strong aerospace material with carbon-nanotube technology.

CUBES will be led by Adam Arkin Ph.D., a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, while US-COMP will be led by GregoryOdegard Ph.D.of Michigan Technological University.

While many outspoken voices on humanitys survival state that we need to leave Earth, one of the most compelling reasons was given by Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk. He believes that an extinction event isinevitableand that we must spread our species out if we aim to survive.

Others like Stephen Hawking are even more specific.Hawking believes that we only have 1000 years left on the Earth, and our only chance at survival is by setting up colonies elsewhere in the universe. Unlike Elon Musk, Hawking is skeptical of our ability to land on Mars in the next 200 or so years and behooves us to make steps to more fully address climate change, threats of nuclear war, and antibiotic resistance.

All in all, projects created by the STRIs will bring us closer to one-day extending humanitys reach.

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Two New NASA Institutes Will Prepare Us to Live Away From Earth - Futurism

Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934.

Airships have often served as the symbol of a brighter tomorrow.

Even before the first zeppelin was invented, airships featured prominently in utopian visions of the future. This 1898 poster advertised a musical comedy on the New York stage:

Musical theater poster. 1898.

And these German and Frenchpostcardspredicted air travel in theyear 2000:

German postcard, circa 1900

French postcard. 1910.

Futurists of the early 20th Century often combined lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air technology, as in this urban skyscraper airport and solar-powered aerial landing field:

Popular Science magazine. November, 1939

Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934.

Sometimes futurist airship visions were promoted by companies which were actually involved in the lighter-than-air business.

For example, the Goodyear-Zeppelin company, which built the American airships Akron and Macon, and which had a financial interest in the promotion of the passenger dirigible, frequently offered alluring illustrations of future airship travel.

Goodyear president Paul Litchfield and publicist Hugh Allen included the following pictures in their 1945 book, WHY? Why has America no Rigid Airships?:

These drawingsfrom Hugh Allens The Story of the Airship(1931)imaginedan Art Deco dining salon, promenade, and even a lounge with a fireplace.

Airships could even advance medical technology, such as this airshiptuberculosis hospital.

Under the illusion that communism was the way of the future, Soviet propagandists loved images of modernity and enlisted the airship in their cause.

Soviet poster, 1931. (We Are Building a Fleet of Airships in the Name of Lenin. Azeri text)

Sometimes illustrators got so carried away depicting lavish interiors that they neglected to leave room for much lifting gas, as in this illustration from The American Magazine.

The article described future airships to be built by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Company, which would be fitted up as sumptuously as a Palm Beach winter hotel:

The American Magazine. May, 1930.

This illustration of an atomic dirigible from a Soviet magazine in the 1960s left no room for lifting gas at all:

Soviet Atomic Dirigible

Modern Mechanics. July, 1931.

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The Airship and Futurism: Utopian Visions of the Airship ...

Since1975, Roxanne Meadows has worked with renowned futurist Jacque Fresco to develop and promote The Venus Project. The function of this project is to find alternative solutions to the many problems that confront the world today. She participated in the exterior and interior design and construction of the buildings of The Venus Projects 21-acre research and planning center.

Daniel Araya: Roxanne, could you tell me about your background and your vision for The Venus Project? How was the idea originally conceived?

Roxanne Meadows: My background is in architectural and technical illustration, model making, and design. However, for the last 41 years, my most significant work has been with Jacque Fresco in developing models, books, blueprints, drawings, documentaries and lecturing worldwide. We are the co-founders of The Venus Project, based out of Venus, Florida where we have built a 21-acre experimental center. The Venus Project is the culmination of Jacque Frescos lifes work to present a sustainable redesign of our culture.

In our view, The Venus Project is unlike any political, economic or social system thats gone before it. It lays out a sustainable world civilization where technology and the methods of science are applied to redesigning our social system with the prime concern being to maximize quality of life rather than profit. All aspects of society are scrutinized from our values, education, and urban design to how we relate to nature and to one another.

The Venus Project concludes that our social and environmental problems will remain the same as long as the monetary system prevails and a few powerful nations and financial interests maintain control over and consume most of the worlds resources. In Jacque Frescos book The Best That Money Cant Buy, he explains If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems, we must ultimately declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all of the worlds people. Anything less will result in the same catalogue of problems we have today.

DA: One of the more interesting aspects of The Venus Project vision is its futuristic design. Have you been approached by companies or governments interested in using The Venus Project as a model? Do you foresee experiments in smart urban design that mirror Jacque Frescos thinking?

RM: No company or government, as yet, has approached The Venus Project to initiate a model of our city design, but we feel the greatest need is in using our designs to usher in a holistic socio-economic alternative, not just our architectural approach itself. As Jacque very often mentions, Technology is just so much junk, unless its used to elevate all people.

We would like to build the firstcircular city devoted to developing up-to-date global resource management, and a holistic method for social operation toward global unification. The city would showcase this optimistic vision, allowing people to see firsthand what kind of future could be built if we were to mobilize science and technology for social betterment.

I have not seen what is called smart urban design mirror Jacque Frescos thinking. I see smart cities as mainly applying technology to existing and new but chaotically designed, energy- and resource-intensive cities without offering a comprehensive social direction or identifying the root causes of our current problems. Our technology is racing forward but our social designs are hundreds of years old. We cant continue to design and maintain these resource- and energy-draining cities and ever consider being able to provide for the needs of all people to ensure that they have high-quality housing, food, medical care and education. Smart cities within a terribly dysfunctional social structure seem contradictory to me.

DA: My understanding is that technological automation forms the basis for The Venus Project. Given ongoing breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics, do you imagine that we are moving closer to this vision?

RM: Our technological capacity to initiate The Venus Project is available now, but how we use artificial intelligence today is very often for destructive purposes through weaponry, surveillance, and the competitive edge for industry, often resulting in technological unemployment. In the society we are proposing, nothing is to be gained from these behaviors because there is no vested interest. In our project, we advocate concentrating on solving problems that threaten all of us climate change, pollution, disease, hunger, war, territorial disputes, and the like. What The Venus Project offers is a method of updating the design of our society so that everyone can benefit from all the amenities that a highly advanced technologically-developed society can provide.

DA: I know The Venus Project is envisioned as a post-capitalist and post-scarcity economy. Could you explain what you mean by resource-based economics?

RM: Money is an interference factor between what we want and what we are able to acquire. It limits our dreams and capabilities and our individual and societal possibilities. Today we dont have enough money to house everyone on the planet, but we do still have enough resources to accomplish that and much more if we use our resources intelligently to conserve energy and reduce waste. This is why we advocate a Resource Based Economy. This socio-economic system provides an equitable distribution of resources in an efficient manner without the use of money, barter, credit or servitude of any kind. Goods and services are accessible to all, without charge. You could liken this to the public library where one might check out many books and then return them when they are finished. This can be done with anything that is not used on a daily basis. In a society where goods and services are made available to the entire population free of charge, ownership becomes a burden that is ultimately surpassed by a system of common property.

When we use our technology to produce abundance, goods become too cheap to monetize. There is only a price on things that are scarce. For instance, air is a necessity but we dont monitor or charge for the amount of breaths we can take. Air is abundant. If apple trees grew everywhere and were abundant you couldnt sell apples. If all the money disappeared, as long as we have the technical personnel, automated processes, topsoil, resources, factories and distribution we could still build and develop anything we need.

DA: I know that the scientific method forms the basis for decision making and resource management within your project. Could you explain how this approach is applied to social behavior? For example, what is the role of politics in The Venus Project?

RM: Today, for the most part, politicians serve the interest of those in positions of wealth and power; they are not there to change things, but instead to keep things as they are. With regard to the management of human affairs, what do they really know? Our problems are mostly technical. When you examine the vocations of politicians and ask what backgrounds they have to solve the pressing problems of today, they fall far short. For instance, are they trained in finding solutions to eliminating war, preventing climate change, developing clean sources of energy, maintaining higher yields of nutritious, non-contaminating food per acre or anything pertaining to the wellbeing of people and the protection of the environment? This is not their area of expertise. Then what are they doing in those positions?

The role for politics within the scientific and technologically organized society that The Venus Project proposes would be surpassed by engineered systems. It is not ethical people in government that we need but equal access to the necessities of life and those working toward the elimination of scarcity. We would use scientific scales of performance for measurement and allocation of resources so that human biases are left out of the equation. Within The Venus Projects safe, energy-efficient cities, there would be interdisciplinary teams of knowledgeable people in different fields accompanied by cybernated systems that use sensors to monitor all aspects of society in order to provide real-time information supporting decision-making for the wellbeing of all people and the protection of the environment.

DA: In your view, is abundance simply a function of technological innovation? I mean, assuming we get the technology right, do you believe that we could eventually eliminate poverty and crime altogether?

RM: Yes, if we apply our scientists and technical personnel to work towards those ends. We have never mobilized many scientific disciplines giving them the problem of creating a society to end war, produce safe, clean transportation, eliminate booms and busts, poverty, homelessness, hunger, crime and aberrant behavior. For instance, one does not need to make laws to try and eliminate stealing, when all goods and services are available without a price tag. But scientists have not been asked to design a total systems approach to city design, let alone to planetary planning. Scientist have not been given the problem to develop and apply a total holistic effort using the methods of science, technology and resource management to serve all people equitably in the development of a safe and sustainable global society. Unfortunately, only in times of war, do we see resources allocated and scientists mobilized in this way.

DA: I assume schooling and education are important to Jacques vision. How might schools and universities differ from the way they are designed today?

RM: The education and values we are given seem to always support the established system we are raised in. We are not born with bigotry, envy, or hatred we do pick them up from our schools and culture. In fact, even our facial expressions, the words we use, notions of good and bad, right and wrong, are all culture bound. A healthy brain can, in fact, simply become a Nazi faster in a Nazi society. It has no way of knowing what is significant or not, that is all learned by experience and background. The manipulation is so subtle that we feel our values come from within. Most often we dont know whom our values are really serving.

Yes, education will differ considerably from that of today. As Fresco explains in his book The Best That Money Cant Buy The subjects studied will be related to the direction and needs of this new evolving culture. Students will be made aware of the symbiotic relationship between people, technology, and the environment.

DA: I can only assume that critics routinely dismiss The Venus Project as a kind of hopeful utopia. How do you respond to that criticism?

RM: Critics very often reject or dismiss new ideas. What is utopian thinking is to believe that the system we are living under today will enable us to achieve sustainability, equality or a high standard of living for all when it is our system which generates these very problems in the first place. If we continue as we are, it seems to me that we are destined for calamity. The Venus Project is not offering a fixed notion as to how society should be. There are no final frontiers. It does offer a way out of our dilemmas to help initiate a next step in our social evolution.

Many are working at going to other planets to escape the problems on this one, but we would be taking our detrimental value systems with us. We are saying that we have to tackle the problems we face here on the most habitable planet we know of. We will have to apply methodologies to enable us to live together in accordance with the carrying capacity of Earths resources, eliminate artificial boundaries, share resources and learn to relate to one another and the environment.

What we have to ask is, what kind of world do we want to live in?

DA: My last question is about the challenges ahead. Rather than taking the necessary steps to reverse climate change, we seem to be accelerating our pollution of the Earth. Socially, we are witnessing a renewed focus on nativism and fear. How might the values of The Venus Project manage against these negative tendencies in human beings?

RM: The notion of negative tendencies in human beings or that we possess a certain human nature is a scapegoat to keep things as they are. Its implying that we are born with a fixed set of views regarding our action patterns. Human behavior is always changing, but there is no human nature, per se. Determining the conditions that generate certain behaviors is what needs to be understood.

As Jacque elaborates, We are just as lawful as anything else in nature. What appears to be overlooked is the influence of culture upon our values, behavior, and our outlook. It is like studying plants apart from the fact that they consume radiant energy, nutrients, require water, carbon dioxide, gravity, nitrogen, etc. Plants do not grow of their own accord, neither do humans values and behavior.

All social improvement, from the airplane to clean sources of energy undergoes change, but our social systems remain mostly static. The history of civilization is experimentation and modification. The Free Enterprise System was an important experiment and tremendous step along the way that generated innovation throughout our society. What we now advocate is to continue the process of social experimentation, as this system has long outlived its usefulness and simply cannot address the monumental problems it is facing today. We desperately need to update our social designs to correspond with our technological ability to create abundance for all. This could be the most exciting and fulfilling experiment we as a species could ever take on; working together cooperatively to deal with our most pressing problems which confront us all and finding solutions to them unencumbered with the artificial limitations we impose upon ourselves.

Daniel Araya is a researcher and advisor to government with a special interest in education, technological innovation and public policy. His newest books include:Augmented Intelligence(2016),Smart Cities as Democratic Ecologies(2015), and Rethinking US Education Policy (2014). He has a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is an alumnus of Singularity Universitys graduate program in Silicon Valley. He can be found here:www.danielaraya.com and here: @danielarayaXY.

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The Venus Project Plans to Bring Humanity to the Next Stage of Social Evolution. Here's How. - Futurism