Japan’s ispace could become the world’s first private company to perform a successful lunar landing.

Japan’s Hakuto-R lander, developed by private space firm ispace, will soon attempt a Moon landing. Last month, ispace announced that Hakuto-R successfully performed a lunar insertion maneuver. That was a crucial step ahead of its historic lunar landing attempt.

Now, the time is near. A private space company could land a spacecraft on the Moon for the very first time.

ispace.

Last month, ispace announced that Hakuto-R successfully performed a lunar insertion maneuver. That was a crucial step ahead of its historic lunar landing attempt.

The Japanese company Ispace could be the first to safely touch down on the moon’s surface, with more spacecraft following later this year.

Last time, we talked about the concept of Speed Superintelligence as proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom at the University of Oxford. If you haven’t seen the previous videos on this topic, do check them out, the link is in the description below. Today, we will be looking at a different kind of superintelligence known as Collective Superintelligence and some of its defining characteristics!

A collective superintelligence according to Bostrom is a form of superintelligence that is a system achieving superior performance by aggregating large numbers of smaller intelligences. So, he formally defines collective superintelligence as “a system composed of a large number of smaller intellects such that the system’s overall performance across many very general domains vastly outstrips that of any current cognitive system.” Now, Collective superintelligence may be less conceptually clear-cut than speed superintelligence, however, it is more familiar empirically. For example, firms, work teams, academic communities, countries, and even humankind as a whole, can fall under collective superintelligence. Since these loosely defined “systems” are capable of solving classes of intellectual problems by breaking them into parts that can be pursued in parallel and verified independently. Tasks like building a space shuttle or operating a hamburger franchise offer many opportunities for division of labor: different engineers work on different components of the spacecraft, and different staff members operate different restaurants for the smooth operation of the whole franchise.

SpaceX launched a fully integrated Starship launch vehicle for the first time on Thursday morning, a long-awaited and highly anticipated milestone in the vehicle development program.

The orbital test flight surpassed many expectations. The vehicle cleared Max Q – the point at which the most aerodynamic pressure is exerted on the vehicle – and flew for nearly three minutes despite eight of its 33 rocket engines failing. The rocket reached an altitude of almost 40 kilometers, the point of stage separation, at which time the upper stage failed to separate from the booster, leading to uncontrolled tumbling and a spectacular midair explosion.

Despite its fiery fate, the test was a success: SpaceX got tons of valuable data that will inform future Starship and Super Heavy prototypes. But for all the wins, the test was a stark reminder that Starship mission timelines are in need of a reset.