Lifeboat Foundation

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.

Continue reading “SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Launch Was a Smashing Success—What’s Next for Space Travel?” »

#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.

Continue reading “It’s transhuman life, but not as we know it” »

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.

Continue reading “His 2020 Campaign Message: The Robots Are Coming” »

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.

Continue reading “Movie Of February 2018: Annihilation” »

The fusion of quantum computing and machine learning has become a booming research area. Can it possibly live up to its high expectations?

The universe is highly magnetic, with everything from stars to planets to galaxies producing their own magnetic fields. Astrophysicists have long puzzled over these surprisingly strong and long-lived fields, with theories and simulations seeking a mechanism that explains their generation.

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.

Continue reading “TAE Technologies Gen 5 reactor targets tripling confinement with 10 times the power by 2020” »

No-waste e-skin.

TAE Technologies, the California-based fusion company backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, said its latest and greatest plasma generator has exceeded the headline-grabbing performance of its previous machine.

“This announcement is an important milestone on our quest to deliver world-changing, clean fusion energy to help combat climate change and improve the quality of life for people globally,” Michl Binderbauer, the company’s president and chief technology officer, said in a news release. “This achievement further validates the robustness of TAE’s underlying science and unique pathway.”

Continue reading “TAE Technologies pushes plasma machine to a new high on the nuclear fusion frontier” »