From the Article

>“In order to explore other worlds, we need innovative new technologies adapted to those environments and our exploration needs,” Niki Werkheiser, a director at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
>
>The grant is a continuation of an existing partnership to develop construction methods that allow infrastructure to be built from lunar or Martian soil, according to NASA.
>
>NASA is trying to scale up its base construction technology to “prove it would be feasible to develop a large-scale 3D printer that could build infrastructure on the Moon or Mars,” said Corky Clinton of NASA’s Marshall Space flight center in Huntsville, Ala., when ICON received its first 2020 grant.

From the Article

>Enter Greg Hodgin, Ph.D., a chemical engineer and political scientist who has started his own company, ZC Inc., with the primary goal of building a warp-capable spaceship within his lifetime.
>
>Dr. Hodgin recently sat down with The Debrief to discuss his lofty goals and the evolving roadmap he has laid out to achieve them. And unlike the handful of theorists who have preceded him in this nascent field, Hodgin believes he has the right people and the right plan to make warp drive spacecraft a physical reality.

Also from the Article

>After talking with the various warp field theorists and engineers, Hodgin says his extremely tiny warp craft will also feature some significant advantages over previous theoretical designs. For example, his warp field will not be constant but pulsed on and off. This allows for more control and also allows for ongoing communication between the ship and the engineers.
>
>“One of the problems with Alcubierre is once you turn it on, you can’t turn it off,” he explained. “Ours mitigates that problem.”

From the Article

>"We are applying 3D printing technologies on aircraft on a large scale at an engineering level, and we are in a world-leading position," Doctor Li Xiaodan, a member of the Luo Yang Youth Commando at Shenyang Aircraft Company's craft research institute, told China Central Television (CCTV) on Saturday.
>
>This is partially due to a growing demand for planes that has seen traditional manufacturing reach a ceiling in 2013. These new and advanced 3D printing techniques are now enabling the production of new planes with high structural strength, long service life, low cost of production and fast manufacturing.

From the Article

>The potential for innovative space applications is immense, especially if established aerospace companies form partnerships with businesses that traditionally haven’t ventured into orbit. Pharmaceutical companies might establish a lab on a space station to study cell growth, for instance, or semiconductor companies might manufacture chips in extraterrestrial factories to determine whether any aspects of the space environment, such as the lack of gravity, improve the process. Such possibilities, which might have seemed like the stuff of science fiction a few years ago, could become an essential part of a business across multiple industries in the near future.

Which leads to an important question, once the space economy is up and running what would be the implications for us as a species?

Will we eventually have industrial belts in Space?

From the Article

>In 2018 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had something to say: “AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire.” Pichai’s comment was met with a healthy dose of skepticism. But nearly five years later, it’s looking more and more prescient.
>
>AI translation is now so advanced that it’s on the brink of obviating language barriers on the internet among the most widely spoken languages. College professors are tearing their hair out because AI text generators can now write essays as well as your typical undergraduate — making it easy to cheat in a way no plagiarism detector can catch. AI-generated artwork is even winning state fairs. A new tool called Copilot uses machine learning to predict and complete lines of computer code, bringing the possibility of an AI system that could write itself one step closer. DeepMind’s AlphaFold system, which uses AI to predict the 3D structure of just about every protein in existence, was so impressive that the journal Science named it 2021’s Breakthrough of the Year.
>
>You can even see it in the first paragraph of this story, which was largely generated for me by the OpenAI language model GPT-3.

From the Article

>It would no longer be “life as we know it” if a space war destroyed the satellites that the world now relies on, space commanders have warned, and China and Russia have demonstrated that they’re capable of doing just that.
>
>Top brass from the US and Canada are in Sydney for an Australian Strategic Policy Institute conference on space as the new frontier in “commerce, industry, competition and war”. They have discussed the importance of working with allies, including Australia, to counter the threats posed by space war.

From the Article

>It’s important to remember that when the fertility rate declines below replacement—currently 2.1 births per woman in so-called developed countries—populations shrink. This may not be a bad thing at first since overpopulation and overconsumption are huge barriers to building sustainable societies. But there comes a point when if fertility rates don’t level off and then rise to replacement, extinction become a possibility.
>
>That is apparently where we are heading as a global society. A phenomenon as complex as fertility cannot be explained by one or even a few factors. There is, for example, what is called the “demographic transition,” a theory which posits that the size of households declines as societies industrialize. This could result from many factors such as the empowerment of women (to control their own fertility); improvements in public health and nutrition that reduce mortality among infants and children (making parents less likely to have many children because some are likely to die); the rising cost of raising and educating children; and cultural factors that lead parents to want to have more time for themselves.

From the Article

>A team of researchers working at the National Ignition Facility, part of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has found that covering a cylinder containing a small amount of hydrogen fuel with a magnetic coil and firing lasers at it triples its energy output—another step toward the development of nuclear fusion as a power source.
>
>In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team, which has members from several facilities in the U.S., one in the U.K. and one in Japan, describes upgrading their setup to allow for the introduction of the magnetic coil.

From the Article

>Nuclear fusion reactors around the world are being built to find the best way to control and capture the energy of such reactions.
>
>Pioneering inventors, including TAE Technologies in Southern California, are racing to bring this natural process that fuels the sun down to Earth, with terrestrial fusion power plants. It’s an idea that’s been around since the late 1950s, but that has moved forward dramatically in recent years. Commercial fusion power generation is expected by some to roll out in the 2030s — which could give the world a seismic final push to meet the UN’s 2050 climate goals, if implemented broadly and quickly.
>
>At COP27 this November, there will be plenty of talk about cutting emissions in half by 2030 to meet targets we’ve set in the Paris Agreement, and the responsibility of more developed nations to assist poorer countries that are already being battered by climate change. Nuclear fusion, however, is unlikely to be a major part of the conversation — but as the drought and heat waves in Europe, the flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria and every other climate catastrophe shows, we need large-scale changes. The transition to nuclear fusion in the coming decade could provide just that.

From the Article

>France, Germany and Italy, the three biggest contributors to the European Space Agency, said Tuesday they have agreed to guarantee the future of the next-generation Ariane 6 and Vega-C rocket launcher systems.

From the Article

>A renewable source of fresh food is essential to future long-term space missions, to avoid astronauts experiencing “food fatigue”, malnutrition and weight loss.
>
>Space plants are currently grown in closed boxes with low energy LED lights, porous clay “soil” with water, nutrients and oxygen supplied to roots; high-tech sensors and cameras monitor plant health. Plants did not evolve to grow in a box and use energy and resources in readiness for changes in light, temperature and disease, limiting full growth potential.
>
>So there is great opportunity to adapt plant genetics to produce faster-growing “pick and eat” food crops such as tomato, carrot, spinach and strawberry designed to reach their maximum potential in closed, controlled environments.