Lifeboat Foundation

If you’re a Star Trek fan, the odds are that your dream game (outside of a Holodeck) involves helming a starship as if you were really on the bridge. Well, you’re about to get your wish: Ubisoft has teased Star Trek: Bridge Crew, the sci-fi series’ first-ever virtual reality game. The title is set in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek universe, and has you taking on the captain, engineer, helm or tactical stations of the remarkably Enterprise -like starship Aegis as it resettles what’s left of the Vulcan population. Think of it as a very sophisticated VR version of Spaceteam — you have to coordinate with the rest of your crew to explore the galaxy and fight off enemies.

Bridge Crew arrives this fall and will support both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift on PCs as well as PlayStation VR. More details will have to wait until Ubisoft’s E3 press event on Monday, but it’s already clear that the publisher is making good on its promise of a big VR gaming push this year. We wouldn’t be surprised if Ubi has more extra-immersive games to show when it takes to the stage.

In an exclusive interview, Musk said he hopes to land people on the Red Planet in 2025.

[Via Satellite 06–009-2016] NASA has awarded The Aerospace Corporation a grant to investigate the possibility of developing an extremely thin spacecraft that would wrap around debris and remove it from Earth’s orbit. The concept, called Brane Craft, is a 1-square meter spacecraft that is less than half the thickness of a human hair. The Brane Craft would only weigh about 50 grams, significantly less than even a standard CubeSat weight of about 1 kg. The 30-micron-thick spacecraft would have a very high thrust-to-weight ratio, and would be capable of travelling long distances, which opens up other possibilities beyond just the removal of space debris.

“The Brane Craft concept is based on the one-dimensional compression of a complete spacecraft and upper stage into an essentially two-dimensional object in order to maximize power-to-weight and aperture-to-weight ratios,” said Siegfried Janson, Aerospace Corporation’s senior scientist of the microsatellite systems department and the lead investigator on the project.

Definitely the making of a Wild Ride.

Made In Space has received NASA funding to detail plans for converting asteroids into spacecraft using 3D printing.

The DSAC is poised to make a change that will aid future deep space missions.

For a planetarium program intended to show possible future NASA exploration directions, Home Run Pictures was tasked with creating plausible human habitats on the various planets and moons in the Solar System. Engineering concepts required understanding of the environments and the structures or spacecraft necessary for longer term human survival. Avoiding being too science fiction was difficult at times. The surface of Venus is a rough environment with temperatures and pressures at the extreme. But the dense atmosphere seems to allow the possibility of “floating” a space station hanging below some sort of blimp-like structure. An attempt at using what would look like modular structures, similar to what has been used with the International Space Station was implemented. A circular structure was used to keep the station in balance in the turbulent Venusian upper atmosphere with a long strut hanging down from the center to help stabilize the craft and provide mounting points for various experimental packages and docking ports for shuttles or exploratory probes. Small shuttles would drop into the upper atmosphere delivering cargo and personnel. When the station’s scientists desire to dive deeper into the Venus atmosphere for exploration, shuttles that lean more towards the submersibles used for Earth ocean exploration are used. The Venusian atmosphere is very dense and the pressure would crush anything but craft that are constructed like submarines with reinforced portholes instead of windows. Instead of using rocket power for maneuvering, the shuttle/submersible vehicles use large turbo-fan like engines. Everything needs to be constructed of cororsive-resistent materials to survive the acidic Venusian atmosphere. Scientists theorize that massive lighting events would be the norm and electronic and digital hardware would need to be insulated from the extreme electrical environment.

Legendary master filmmaker Werner Herzog examines the past, present and constantly evolving future of the Internet in Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. Working with NETSCOUT, a world leader in-real time service assurance and cybersecurity, which came aboard as a producer and led him into a new world, Herzog conducted original interviews with cyberspace pioneers and prophets such as PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, Internet protocol inventor Bob Kahn, and famed hacker Kevin Mitnick. These provocative conversatons reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works, from business to education, space travel to healthcare, and the very heart of how we conduct our personal relationships.

Elon Musk is confident that SpaceX will be able to send people to Mars in 2024, with arrival in 2025. This is in line with his long-term vision of colonizing the Red Planet, as he strongly believes it is the next step in ensuring the survival of human civilization.

After saying that the chances of us not being a computer simulation is just one in billions, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, went on to say that SpaceX will be sending people to Mars by 2024, with arrival planned for 2025.

When asked about what he thinks the government on Mars will be, he playfully joked: “Well I think I was just declared king of Mars a moment ago.”

Continue reading “SpaceX Is Heading to Mars in 2018 and Sending Humans in 2025” »

Musk concerns over Singularity/ cyborgs technology.

We are said to be headed towards a wired future. But that could equally be a weird future, going by what some tech entrepreneurs and artificial intelligence visionaries are saying about it. It’s going to get a lot weirder than self-driving smart cars. Elon Musk, who co-founded Paypal and started the Tesla electric car company – and thus has a track record of delivering on ambitious projects – also set up the SpaceX company, whose ultimate goal is to colonise Mars. He’s just announced, at this year’s Code Conference in Los Angeles, plans to send the first manned mission to Mars as early as 2024. Moreover cargo flights to Mars are also planned every two years, keeping in mind that a habitation on Mars will require regular supplies from earth.

Musk says he’s doing this to preserve humanity, since possibilities of a calamitous event that destroys human civilisation on earth – thanks to runaway advances in technology – are high. Perhaps we have a foretaste of this already when the Louvre museum packs up its treasures of human art and locks its doors due to floods in Paris, an event that has been linked to the pumping of greenhouse gases into the air that disrupt the earth’s climate. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos comes at the same issue from the opposite end. He says heavy industry is too polluting and will need to be relocated to outer space to preserve the earth.

Continue reading “The weird future: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos offer up extraordinary visions of the impact of technology” »