Within 4–5 years Made In Space believes their Archinaut space manufacturing robot and manufacturing mini factory will be making large structures like trusses and reflectors in space.
The Archinaut has an industrial-sized 3D printer, cartridges full of plastics and alloys, and robotic arms programmed to assemble the big items extruded by the printer without any human supervision. All Archinaut parts are able to survive in microgravity and harsh conditions like lunar dust storms and extreme temperatures.
The famous psychologist Timothy Leary once referred to himself as a “surfer,” envisioning a future where, “[t]o study biology, you can press a button and make yourself part of the human body. You can become a white blood cell and learn about the circulatory system by traveling through an artery. You can call up the Prado Museum in Madrid and study Goya’s paintings.”
When I think about the future, I envision mass technological disruptions across the entire landscape. Artificial intelligence (AI) being embedded into the very fabric of our architecture and institutions, 3D printing transforming our socio-economic system from scarcity to abundance, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) unleashing infinite potential in shaping our perceptions of reality.
One could argue that we’ve already been experimenting with VR/AR via the use of psychedelic drugs, like psilopsybin, DMT, etc. But for many, the perception of these drugs tend to carry an unfortnate negative connotation. When people think of someone doing shrooms, a lot of them think of a person going mad in the middle of the woods. When people think of someone doing LSD, a lot of them think of a person believing they’re Peter Pan as they hoist themselves off the top of a skyscraper.
The devil may be in the details, but for those who actually experiment with psychedelics, the devil isn’t this terrible thing which results in their immediate death or psychological disruption; the devil is the infinite potential of their mind overcoming the many obstacles of reality.
A revolutionary new DNA tool could help take humanity a step closer to eternal life. The device (pictured) pioneers a new technique that makes it cheaper and easier to synthesise genes ‘overnight’, say scientists — a process that normally takes several days.
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley said it could lead to ‘DNA printers’ in research labs that work like the 3D printers in many modern workshops.
‘If you’re a mechanical engineer, it’s really nice to have a 3D printer in your shop that can print out a part overnight so you can test it the next morning,’ said UC Berkeley graduate student Dan Arlow.
A spacecraft, spinning in Earth’s orbit, reaches inside itself. One of its four arms pulls out a length of polymer pipe that has been 3D-printed inside the body of the machines. All four of the spacecraft’s arms are securing pieces together as it builds a new space station right there in orbit.
This surreal project, called Archinaut, is the future vision of space manufacturing company Made In Space. The company promises a future of large imaging arrays, kilometer-scale communications tools, and big space stations all built off-planet by smart robots.
A Dutch construction company is about to 3D print five actually habitable homes near the city of Eindhoven. But can the technique replace brick and mortar?
In biology news, a team of engineers led by Sinisa Vukelic invented a noninvasive technique to correct vision. Like LASIK, it uses lasers but is non-surgical and has few side-effects. And an international team of researchers found what they describe as the mother of all lizards in the Italian Alps, the oldest known lizard fossil, from approximately 240 million years ago. Also, a team at the University of Sydney found that walking faster could make you live longer. People do not even need to walk more, the team reported, they just need to pick up the pace of their normal stride to see an improvement in several health factors. And a team from Cal Poly Pomona discovered how microbes survive clean rooms and contaminate spacecraft—and it involved the cleaning agents themselves.
That’s how long it will take to produce and launch a rocket if the parts are 3D printed, according to the CEO of Relativity Space, a startup that seeks to do just that.
Flying something made completely of 3D-printed parts into space sounds, frankly, pretty bonkers. But investors are on board. The Los Angeles-based startup recently secured $35 million to go ahead with its plan to produce a fleet of spacecraft using one of the largest 3D printers known to man, known as Stargate.
The Dutch city of Eindhoven is to host the world’s first commercial housing project based on 3D-concrete printing, with the first of five planned houses due to start construction this year. The units were developed by a collaborative team including the Eindhoven University of Technology and will be purchased and let out by a real estate company upon completion.
The first house will be a single-floor, three-room house measuring 1000 square feet (95 square meters), to be followed by four multi-story units. The irregular shape of the buildings is based on “erratic blocks in the green landscape,” made possible due to the flexibility of form permitted by 3D-printing.
