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Category: Elon Musk – Page 184

Richard Branson, the thrill-seeking British billionaire, founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 on the promise that a privately developed spacecraft would make it possible for hundreds of people to become astronauts, no NASA training required. And if a 2,500-mile-per-hour ride to the edge of space sounded off-putting, Branson also pledged to take the journey himself before letting paying customers on board.

Branson is the only one among the group of the so-called space barons, the group of space-loving billionaires that includes Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who has publicly pledged to take a ride in the near future aboard a spacecraft he has bankrolled.

Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, is working on a competing suborbital space tourism rocket. Musk’s SpaceX, however, is focused on transporting astronauts and perhaps one day tourists on days-long missions to Earth’s orbit.

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SpaceX is preparing to conduct a national security mission for the United States Space Force. The aerospace company is tasked to deploy the military’s fourth new-generation series Global Positioning System satellite, known as GPS-III Space Vehicle 04. On October 2nd, SpaceX attempted to launch the satellite to orbit but at around two seconds before the 9:43 p.m. EDT liftoff time, launch controllers aborted the launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 40.

During the Live broadcast of the launch attempt the Principal Integration Engineer at SpaceX John Insprucker said the next launch opportunity for this mission is on Saturday, October 3rd at 9:39 p.m. EDT. but the rocket did not attempt a second launch because SpaceX found issues on one of the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin 1D engines. According to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the GPS-III satellite experienced an “unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator,” he wrote. “… We’re doing a broad review of launch site, propulsion, structures, avionics, range & regulatory constraints this weekend. I will also be at the Cape next week to review hardware in person,” he said early October.

SpaceX’s Vice President of build and flight reliability, Hans Koenigsmann, said during a news conference on October 28th that SpaceX engineers worked alongside the U.S. Space Force and NASA to perform a deep investigation into the issue. They came to the conclusion that the Falcon 9 engine issue was due to a residue of a “masking lacquer” designed to protect sensitive parts during anti-corrosion anodizing treatment. Koenigsmann told reporters the SpaceX vendor that performed the lacquer coating treatment failed to remove all of the lacquer afterward, causing a blockage of small vent holes for Merlin engine valves. “It’s not necessarily bad,” he said, “In most cases, it rattles the engine, and it may cause a little bit of damage to the engine. In extreme cases, it may cause more damage to the engine.” SpaceX officials announced they would fix the issue by replacing the engine. Now, SpaceX targets to deploy GPS-III Space Vehicle 04 satellite atop the Falcon 9 no earlier than Thursday, November 5th at 6:24 p.m. EDT [date is subject to change]. This mission is important for the United States because the GPS-III satellite is designed to upgrade the satellite constellation that actively provides navigation services to over 4 billion users.

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Elon Musk is on the record stating that artificial superintelligence or ASI could bring the end of the human race. Elon has publicly expressed concern about AI many times now. He thinks the advent of a digital superintelligence is the most pressing issue for humanity to get right.

What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence would have undergone an event called the intelligence explosion, likely to occur in the 21st century. It is unknown what, or who this machine-network would become; The issue of superintelligence remains peripheral to mainstream AI research and is mostly discussed by a small group of academics.

Besides Elon Musk, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom is also among well known public thinkers who is worried about AI. He lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life : Now imagine a machine, structurally similar to a brain but with immense hardness and flexibility, designed from the bottom scratch to function as an intelligent agent. Given sufficiently long time, a machine like this could acquire enormous knowledge and skills, surpassing human intellectual capacity in virtually every field. At that point the machine would have become superintelligent. With other words the machine’s intellectual capacities would exceed those of all of humanity put together by a very large margin. This would represent the most radical change in the history of life on earth.

In order to develop a superintelligence that would benefit humanity, the process has to be done in a series of steps with each step being determined before we move to the next one. In fact, it might just be possible to program the AI to help us achieve the things we humans may not be able to do on our own. It is not simply being able to create them and learning how they’ve been commanded, but it is interacting with them and evolving ourselves at the same time. It is learning how to be human after the first ASI.

#ElonMusk #AI #ASI

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This is interesting. So Mars won’t be under earth-based laws?

Interesting… 😃

SpaceX’s Elon Musk has revealed that they will not abide by international law on Mars.

Instead, the company plans to define its own set of ‘self-governing principles’ for the first Martian settlement.

The company made the low-key announcement by slipping it into the terms and conditions of their new Starlink satellite broadband service.

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“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonisation spacecraft, the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the governing law section states.

“Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

Space systems engineer Erwan Beauvois said SpaceX’s position was reminiscent of a declaration put forward by the Earthlight Foundation, a non-profit organisation committed to preparing for the expansion of humanity beyond Earth.

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SpaceX staff and members of the media have been inundated this morning with emails ostensibly from concerned Armenians around the world, asking the company to cancel a launch contract with the Turkish government. The concerns are valid — and the mass-email method surprisingly effective.

In the form email, received by TechCrunch staff hundreds of times in duplicate and with minor variations, the senders explain that they represent or stand in solidarity with Armenians worldwide, an ethnic and national group that has suffered under the authoritarian rule and regional influence of Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan.

SpaceX is slated to launch the Turkish satellite Turksat-5A in the next month or two, a geostationary communications satellite built by Airbus that will serve a large area of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The deal has been on the books for a long time, and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk even traveled to Turkey to meet with Erdogan regarding the satellite in 2017.

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Elon Musk has extended his thanks to Tesla owners who received the company’s limited Full Self-Driving beta last week. The information Tesla is gathering from early access FSD beta testers will be invaluable as the company’s AI team continues to enhance and refine the EV automaker’s autonomous driving software.

The founder of Tesla Owners Club Vancouver Islands James Locke asked Elon Musk about his view on the content early access FSD testers were sharing. “Yes, very helpful,” said the Tesla CEO. “Thanks to all beta testers.”

Last week, Musk announced that Tesla plans to roll out the FSD beta to the general public later this year. Tesla will need all the information it can get to make sure that the full release of the Full Self-Driving beta goes smoothly.

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“In a breakthrough study published on February 19th in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers connected neural dust implants reduced to 1.7 cubic millimeters to rat sciatic nerves. The implanted device, called the StimDust system, consisted of very few components, which will be scaled down for future applications. A piezoceramic ultrasonic transducer generated power allowing for wireless communication and stimulation. A capacitor stored any excess energy generated from ultrasonic beams. Bipolar stimulating electrodes directly interfaced with the nerve while a cuff attached to a small circuit-board allowed the device to adhere physically to the nerve. These components were sufficient to generate or record nerve-impulses. In anesthetized rodents, they elicited muscular contractions with the StimDust system.”

While Neuralink, Elon Musk’s startup-venture focused on creating a brain-computer interface, garners lots of coverage in the biotechnology space, other bioelectronics ventures continue innovating in this space.

iota Biosciences, a spin-off company from UC Berkley formed in 2017, made news two years ago by securing $15 million in Series A funding and again last year announcing a partnership with Astellas Pharma Inc. Bolstered by studies in rodents, iota Biosciences advances towards their vision. In a press release on their partnership, founders Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz commented:

We envision a future in which our ultra-small implantable devices will be used in combination with, or as an alternative to, conventional diagnostics and therapies. Through our collaboration with Astellas, we expect to make our innovative technologies available to patients around the world.

Carmena and Maharbiz are right on track, winning the prestigious 2017 McKnight Technological Innovation in Neuroscience Award. While electric stimulation devices for the heart, cochlea and brain already exist, Carmenas and Maharbiz recognized the key limitations of existing technologies.

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