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Aug 10, 2016

First commercial asteroid mining mission set to begin before 2020

Posted by in categories: economics, space travel

It’s a scouting mission. I wonder how much this will cost since this is not a sample return.


Asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries (DSI) has announced the first commercial mission to a near-Earth asteroid, with launch planned by the end of the decade.

deep space industries

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Aug 9, 2016

Seagate’s new 60TB SSD dwarfs the others on the market

Posted by in categories: business, computing

Seagate has just announced a whopping 60 TB solid-state-drive, the largest SSD yet with that sort of capacity. Unfortunately, the SSD is only meant for businesses, released as an addition to Seagate’s data center portfolio. With four times the capacity of the next leading SSD, this massive hard drive could hold up to 12,000 DVD movies or even a whopping 400 million photos. Just sit back and think about how ridiculous an amount of data that really is.

The drive was created with quick accessibility in mind, and its flexibile artchitecture means it’ll be simple for data centers to grow from 60TB to accommodate 100TB or more of data in the future, all using the same form factor.

The 60TB SAS SSD is only available right now for demonstration, though it will officially make its debut some time in 2017. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know exactly what the drive itself will look like, though given the fact that it’s just a SSD, I can’t imagine it’ll look especially wild.

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Aug 9, 2016

SpaceX has shipped its Mars engine to Texas for tests

Posted by in category: space travel

Flying raptor! —

SpaceX has shipped its Mars engine to Texas for tests.

If a full-scale Raptor engine is undergoing tests, the company is progressing to Mars.

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Aug 9, 2016

China’s tech giants spread their wings abroad but keep share safe at home

Posted by in categories: computing, space

Gone are the days for US Tech on quick and easy money — China is making the US Tech face the realities of being relevant or being replaced. My suggestion for folks like Apple, Microsoft, FB take a chapter from Alphabet’s playbook and focus on those technologies that truly revolutionize the technology landscape, multiple industries, etc. Stop throwing money at gadgets and easy replicated apps and services. Let China own it because eventually they will. Focus on things like biocomputing, QC, space, etc. Because anything copied multiple times and quickly means it is easily replaced by the next cheaper and better gadget.


The recent Uber acquisition drama in China has given a new twist to the country’s technology sector.

Domestic tech companies are straining at the leash to go global while also defending their home markets from foreign competitors.

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Aug 9, 2016

The First Footage From Arrival is Here, and It Looks Incredible

Posted by in category: entertainment

Finally a trailer for this!

And it looks like it’s been worth the wait!

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Aug 9, 2016

Strange structures orbiting distant star could still be proof of aliens

Posted by in category: space

And honestly, even if this isn’t an Alien Structure of some kind, it won’t be long before we DO spot some form of alien mega-structure somewhere in this galaxy of ours. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that we ALREADY have, but mistook it for a natural structure of some kind.


The leading natural explanation for the ‘alien megastructure’ star has been discredited, leaving ET as a viable possibility.

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Aug 9, 2016

Bebionic Photo

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, transhumanism

Did you know…individual motors in each finger are positioned to optimise weight distribution – making the hand feel lighter and more comfortable.

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Aug 9, 2016

China’s Hybrid Spaceplane Could Reset The 21st Century Space Race

Posted by in category: space travel

It takes off from a runway, flies at hypersonic speeds, then rockets into orbit.

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Aug 9, 2016

Prospector-1™

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space travel

1™, the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission, will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid to determine its value as a source of space resources. The destination asteroid will be chosen from a group of top candidates selected by the world renowned team of asteroid experts at Deep Space Industries.

Once the spacecraft arrives at the asteroid, the autonomous spacecraft will map the surface and subsurface, taking visual and infrared imagery and mapping overall water content. With the initial science campaign complete, Prospector-1 will use its water thrusters to gently touch down on the asteroid, measuring the target’s geophysical characteristics.

Prospector-1 is a small spacecraft that strikes the ideal balance between cost and performance. In addition to radiation-tolerant payloads and avionics, all DSI spacecraft notably use the Comet line of water propulsion systems, which expel superheated water vapor to generate thrust. Water will be the first asteroid mining product, so using water as propellant will provide future DSI spacecraft with the ability to refuel in space.

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Aug 9, 2016

VR VCs examine the gap between expectations and reality — By Dean Takahashi | VentureBeat

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, finance, virtual reality

vr-panel-2-784x600

“Waves of virtual reality and augmented reality startups have their funding. Venture capitalists invested $1.7 billion in the AR/VR sector in the 12 months ended March 2016, and $1.2 billion of that was invested in the first quarter of this year alone, according to Digi-Capital.”

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