Futurisms

Deltasync Floating City
134 pp PDF Report for Seasteading Institute

The Seasteading Institute is moving ahead into the second phase of its project to build a working residential seastead:

A coastal nation may be interested in offering to host a floating community in their territorial waters and allow substantial political independence in exchange for economic, social, and environmental benefits. At the time of publication of this report, we are engaged in high level talks with a potential host nation, and entry level talks with others. We will provide more information about these processes when we are able to make the information public. _ http://www.seasteading.org/floating-city-project/

3D printing is having an ever-larger impact on the aerospace field, with more printed parts going into jet aircraft, and spacecraft.

UCSD engineering students used 3D printing to make a rocket engine which has been successfully test-fired.

The actual test-fire was conducted in the Mojave Desert on April 18, at a rocket test stand run by a group called the Friends of Amateur Rocketry. Supporting the UCSD students in the test were a group of engineers from XCOR Aerospace, builders of the Lynx suborbital space plane.

… Future plans include the use of the test engine design in a three-stage rocket that will fly, it is hoped, to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) this summer. Eventually, the team hopes to loft tiny satellites into orbit with their rockets. __ http://www.impactlab.net/2015/07/10/students-3d-printed-rocket-engine/#more-125503

UCSD students had printed and test-fired a miniature sized metal rocket engine 2 years ago, but the latest engine represents a significant increase in size and thrust.

3D printing of rocket components is becoming much more common. The hybrid SABRE rocket / air breather engine utilises a 3D printed injector system. The ESA has test-fired a rocket design that makes use of a 3D printed combustion chambre and nozzle.
More news about 3D printing and space . . . 3D printing and the quest for a stair-climbing robot

Meanwhile, nanotechnology is slowly coming into its own. Graphene-based nanotechnology is being utilised for water purification, for making electronic devices, infrasonic communications devices, and . . . light bulbs. The Second Annual Graphene World Summit will take place in Barcelona, Spain, in early November of 2015.

Clean Boron fusion using extreme laser pulses, from U. New South Wales. This approach to fusion avoids the production of neutrons, providing for a cleaner, longer-lived reactor.

Race for New Materials for Nuclear Fusion . . . overcoming the many materials-based problems of conventional, neutronic fusion.

On the anti-aging front, new research is uncovering some fascinating mechanisms of aging. Next month, the Sens Research Foundation is holding its rejuvenation biotechnology conference at the SFO Hyatt in Burlingame, CA.

Cognitive scientists are making new discoveries in how the human brain learns. This report details some of the findings that can be applied to learning.

A Rational Learning Strategy

http://www.davidrock.net/files/AGES.pdf

Another interesting approach to e-learning is “gamification.” This involves turning a learning exercise into a game, making use of the natural inborn “playful” instincts of both children and adults.

Competitive pressures will drive the development and utilisation of genetic engineering to increase the IQ of human children.

Allowing multiple animal and/or human brains to work together at a subconscious level can yield interesting results. Brian Wang reports on research involving the interconnection of multiple monkey brains, and multiple mouse brains.

Monkey Brainnet

Connecting human brains involves “collective neurofeedback” rather than direct wiring, as in the animal study above. A recent group human experiment in Toronto yielded some fascinating results:

Results from the experiment demonstrated the scientific viability of collective neurofeedback as a potential new avenue of neuroscience research that takes into account individuality, complexity and sociability of the human mind. They also yielded new evidence that neurofeedback learning can have an effect on the brain almost immediately the researchers say.

Studying brains in a social and multi-sensory environment is closer to real life and may help scientists to approach questions of complex real-life social cognition that otherwise are not accessible in traditional labs that study one person’s cognitive functions at a time. __http://www.kurzweilai.net/crowdsourcing-neurofeedback-data

Published Toronto study in PLOS

Biological brains are limited by the sizes of their containers and their support systems. They are also limited by their evolutionary history, and by their experiences.

Connecting multiple brains as parallel — massively parallel processors, may allow the creation of a biological “superbrain” of sorts.

More:

Lunar Elevator

via The Space Economy . blogspot . com

http://thespaceeconomy.blogspot.de/2015/07/lunar-space-elevator.html

http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-jet-engine-powered-by-lasers-and-nuclear-explosions

Space Economy: Modern Day Gold Rush
Planetary Resources

Technologies and resources derived from human expansion into space will expand the human economy by orders of magnitude. Just add safe, clean, abundant, affordable nuclear energy (fusion & fission) and the “limits to growth” suddenly become very weak guidelines, if that.

3D printing and in utero surgery on fetuses … curing spina bifida in the womb.

Supersonic business jets on the way Get your name on the waiting list.

LPP Fusion resumes testing with highly purified tungsten electrodes

How hard is it to move your consciousness into a new body?

Why risky research is funded by entrepreneurs and not government

Why natural gas is far superior to wind and solar

What happens if all the satellites fail?