Elon Musk is often referred to as the real-life Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, and in the new quest to engineer an electric vehicle battery that lasts up to 1 million miles, iron may play the role of hero.
There’s quite a bit of buzz these days about how humanity could become a “multiplanetary” species. This is understandable, considering that space agencies and aerospace companies from around the world are planning on conducting missions to low earth orbit (LEO), the moon, and Mars in the coming years, not to mention establishing a permanent human presence there and beyond.
To do this, humanity needs to develop the necessary strategies for sustainable living in hostile environments and enclosed spaces. To prepare humans for this kind of experience, groups like Habitat Marte (Mars Habitat) and others are dedicated to conducting simulated missions in analog environments. The lessons learned will not only prepare people to live and work in space but foster ideas for sustainable living here on Earth.
Habitat Marte was founded in 2017 by Julio Francisco Dantas de Rezende, the professor of sustainability in the Department of Product Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and the director of innovation with the Research Support Foundation (FAPERN). He is also the coordinator of Habitat Marte and Mars Society Brazil.
Tesla’s Autonomy Day in April 2019 gave supporters of the company a look into Elon Musk’s vision of a fully-autonomous future. While the event featured the company’s strategies for the future as it prepares to “free investors from the tyranny of having to drive their own cars,” the $100 billion agriculture sector is also looking into sustainable, self-driving technologies that would revolutionize the industry.
Santa Monica, California-based lawn and landscaping startup Graze is developing a solar-powered, fully-autonomous lawn mower that requires no human interaction. The battery-operated, fully-autonomous mower is being developed by Graze CEO John Vay who has an extensive background in landscaping, and CTO Roman Flores whose past employers include NASA and the Caltech Curiosity Mars Rover Team. The two minds are developing the product in an attempt to revolutionize commercial agriculture as we know it.
Kate Aronoff wrote about a great idea recently: turn Rikers Island into a solar farm. Transforming a prison that was built on heaps of trash into a solar farm does have many benefits.
Her article dives into the past as well as the present of Rikers Island and she points out that both share the story of the United States itself. The island’s ownership has roots traced to slaveowners since the 1660s and played a huge role in the kidnapping ring that sold black people in the North back to slavery in the South under the Fugitive Slave Act. The island was sold in 1884 and it became a penal colony. The island was redesigned into a massive jail complex.
Today, 80% of the island’s landmass is landfill. Aronoff, with her words, painted a picture of an island that is filled with decomposing garbage and prisoners — with 90% of them being people of color. “Heat in the summer can be unbearable, which has lent to its ominous nickname: The Oven,” she wrote. She referenced another account from Raven Rakia who spoke about the island’s “environmental justice horror show.” Rakia noted that 6 of the island’s 10 facilities don’t have any air conditioning.
A team of astronomers from Harvard and other institutions are collaborating on a new project to scan the skies for technological signatures from alien civilizations.
It’s a noteworthy new project, as it’s the first to receive a NASA grant for SETI-specific research in more than 30 years, according to a statement.
“Technosignatures relate to signatures of advanced alien technologies similar to, or perhaps more sophisticated than, what we possess,” said Avi Loeb, the chair of the Harvard astronomy department Harvard, in a statement. “Such signatures might include industrial pollution of atmospheres, city lights, photovoltaic cells (solar panels), megastructures, or swarms of satellites.”
Farmers have enough worries—between bad weather, rising costs, and shifting market demands—without having to stress about the carbon footprint of their operations. But now a new set of projects by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), including scientists at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), could make agriculture both more sustainable and more profitable.
The three projects, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), leverage Berkeley Lab’s strengths in artificial intelligence, sensors, and ecological biology. They aim to quantify and reduce the carbon intensity of agriculture, including the farming of biofuel feedstocks such as corn, soy, and sorghum, while also increasing yield.
Crop-based biofuels have the potential to supply up to about 5% of U.S. energy demand, according to the DOE. Two of the new projects are part of the SMARTFARM program of DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). This initiative aspires to make the biofuel supply chain carbon negative—meaning it removes or sequesters more carbon than it emits—which would greatly improve biofuel’s benefits to the broader economy and environment. Scientists also hope that the increased productivity will have the effect of lowering costs and increasing farmers’ income.
Hydrogen’s impressive energy density offers some compelling advantages that could see it make a huge difference in the electric aviation and eVTOL sectors, as well as in renewable energy, where it’s a lightweight and transportable, if not particularly efficient, way to store clean energy that’s not necessarily generated where or when you need it. It’s also being pushed as a means of exporting green energy, and Japan and Korea in particular are investing heavily in the idea of a hydrogen energy economy powering everything from vehicles to homes and industry.
For this to come about in a globally positive way, it’s imperative that clean, green hydrogen production becomes cheaper, because right now, the easiest and cheapest ways to get yourself a tank full of hydrogen are things like steam reforming, which produces up to 12 times as much carbon dioxide as it does hydrogen by weight.
Green, renewable production methods are thus hot topics for researchers and industry, and a new breakthrough from scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) could make a significant contribution.
The nascent autonomous-vehicle industry is being reshaped by consolidation. Amazon, which committed to buying 100,000 Rivian electric vehicles, announced today that it is buying Zoox, the self-driving car tech start-up, for $1 billion. Ford and Volkswagen made multi-billion dollar investments in Argo. General Motors purchased Cruise Automation in 2016, while Hyundai is working with tier-one supplier Aptiv to deploy a robotaxi service in multiple global markets.
The tie-up between Waymo and Volvo (with its three brands all aggressive pursuing electric vehicles) could reshape the competitive landscape, although it’s too early to tell.
Google started its self-driving program more than a decade ago but paused the development of its own vehicle in 2016. A tight partnership between Waymo and Volvo to develop ground-up cars, if that’s what materializes, could put those plans back on track – this time with an established auto manufacturer known for high-quality production and safety.
