Toggle light / dark theme

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has famously said he’d like to die on Mars — “just not on impact.” But where will humans live in space? That was the focus of a good-natured debate that took place at this week’s “New Space Age” conference at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Chris Lewicki, president and CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Planetary Resources, took up the case for going to asteroids and Mars. Seattle-area entrepreneur Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Florida-based Moon Express, spoke for the moon.

Read more

For now, at least, we have better things to worry about.

Sources:
https://economics.mit.edu/files/11563
https://www.aeaweb.org/full_issue.php?doi=10.1257/jep.29.3#page=33
http://voxeu.org/article/how-computer-automation-affects-occupations
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/f…150428.pdf
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/fi…conomy.PDF
https://www.vox.com/2015/7/27/9038829/automation-myth



https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Fut…oyment.pdf

Clips:






Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics have commentators worrying about the coming obsolescence of the human worker. Some in Silicon Valley are even calling for a basic minimum income provided by the government for everyone, under the assumption that work will become scarce. But many economists are skeptical of these claims, because the notion that the economy offers a fixed amount of work has been debunked time and time again over the centuries and current economic data show no signs of a productivity boom. Fortunately, we don’t need to divine the future of the labor market in order to prepare for it.

He looked at the science and economics of a lunar colony.

Eighty-five percent of the rocks on the surface of the lunar highlands are anorthite, which contains aluminum as well as a massive supply of oxygen. Smelting aluminum in the quantities necessary to construct and maintain Artemis would produce so much excess oxygen—eight atoms for every two of aluminum—that they would be constantly venting it.

For every kilogram of payload, you need an additional 3.73 kilos of fuel. So a one-way ticket to the moon is calculated to eventually cost about $33,000.

Read more

The plague death toll shows no sign of slowing as official figures reveal 165 have now lost their lives in Madagascar’s ‘worst outbreak in 50 years’.

Data shows a 15 per cent jump in fatalities over three days, with scientists concerned it has reached ‘crisis’ point and 10 countries now placed on high alert.

At least 2,034 people have been struck down by a more lethal form of the ‘medieval disease’ so far in the country off the coast of Africa, according to WHO statistics.

Read more

A group of security researchers has remotely hacked a Boeing 757 aircraft without the knowledge of the pilots, a US government official has claimed.

Robert Hickey, a Homeland Security cyber investigator, managed to take over the passenger jet on the runway at Atlantic City airport, New Jersey.

A Boeing official has said the test is unlikely to indicate a major threat to airliners, adding: ‘I’m not afraid to fly’.

Read more

The structures were uncovered in the Harrat Khaybar region in Saudi Arabia in the 1920s and were referred to as the ‘Works of the Old Men’ by the region’s Bedouin population.

Most of them were discovered through satellite surveys and no archaeological fieldwork has yet been carried out.

Previous research has found thousands of stone structures that form geometric patterns in the Middle East.

Read more

American troops would find themselves badly outnumbered and at risk of defeat if war suddenly broke out with North Korea.

That is the stark warning issued by Lieutenant General Jan-Marc Jouas, the former deputy commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, in a letter to Democrats this month.

Jouas cautioned that it would take days or months for reinforcements to reach the region, leaving 28,000 American troops and 490,000 South Korean soldiers to fend off 1.2million North Korean fighters.

Read more

New Boston Dynamics robot, pretty awesome. I hope they roll out an upgraded ATLASoftBank is supposedly doing a big robotics event later this month.


For more information… stay tuned.

Read more