The Resurrection Of Public Interest In Space

     A few weeks ago I was toying with the idea of writing an article about the decline of good sci-fi and and the loss of public optimism it represented. The catalyst for the article was the launch of J.J Abrams Revolution. I, like many others, found the show very disappointing and it stirred me to think that Revolution and the latest crop of post-apocalyptic sci-fi today represented an overall pessimism in peoples' vision of the future. It seemed the idealized adventures of a better time and place were gone. Shows like Star Trek and and Firefly had been replaced by a plethora of gritty, depressing shows set in the ruins of the twenty-first century. Maybe those shows that made us look forward to the future really are gone but lately I've been convinced that while TV looks more and more grim, (both in it's subject matter and it's overall prospects as a medium) public opinion appears buoyed by the anticipation of a new space age.

     I'm not entirely sure where this new-found interest has come from. Certainly Nasa's budget cuts amidst a crippling recession and the economy's wider stagnation can't be very inspiring. Many plans to visit the Moon and Mars, while interesting, come with the depressing reality of a thirty-fifty-year time-frame. On the other hand, the success of the Mars Science Laboratory (made visible thanks to twitter) might be doing something to tug peoples attention back to space. Similarly, the YouTube exploits of former ISS commander Chris Hadfield has put a human face on the space program. Before Hadfield many people felt disconnected from the space program. As the Simpsons aptly put it in '94, in the public mind at least, crews were made up of  "a mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician".
Arguably the 90's were the lowest point of public engagement in space exploration. The shuttle was old enough for people to be bored with low earth orbit missions, there were few exciting new missions on the horizon and Apollo was a distant memory. Also, there wasn't today's internet-borne association between "science" and "cool". Today, many people like to think of themselves as a 'geek' in some form or another. While true geeks would decry them as phonies jumping on the geek chic bandwagon, pretend enthusiasm for space and science is still positive. It creates a wider acceptance in the public consciousness and will hopefully, for many people, translate in to genuine interest. "I Fucking Love Science" on Facebook is a perfect example of this effect. It currently has over 5 million likes and posts a mix of genuine science stories and upsettingly messianic photos of Neil deGrasse Tyson accompanied by "inspirational" quotes. The huge gap in likes between the links to physics lectures and...well... this  illustrates my point quite well. For whatever reason, the general public appears to be becoming gradually more excited about science, and, particularly, space travel.
     The rekindling of hopes for a new space age isn't just limited to wistful imaginings. Lately, there's been quite a few developments in real space travel that all seem to hint at the sci-fi future we were promised by the likes of Star Trek. I've already written about the commercialization of space travel and the possibilities being created by the likes of Space X, Virgin Galactic and Planetary Resources but some people are already making plans for much more adventurous and inspiring undertakings. Mars One is currently looking for applicants for a one way trip to Mars only ten years from now. Misgivings about the technology needed aside, it's a hugely ambitious project, and, apparently, they're having no trouble finding candidates, despite the chances of it being a no return trip. As Stuart Clark points out in the Guardian the biggest challenges for such a mission are the relentless radiation we currently don't know how to shield against and the problem of landing an estimated 40 tonne capsule when we only have the capability to land one tonne. It is, however, possible that those issues will be solved or at least mitigated before the launch window in 2023. Another plan, somewhat less audacious, but not without it's own dangers, is Inspiration Mars' plan to fly two Americans within one hundred miles of the planet. The crew, one man and one woman, will spend 500 days inside a capsule to orbit Mars just once. Essentially they will fly out from Earth, arrive at Mars, slingshot around the planet and return to Earth. It will take over a year and a half. It seems like a big investment of time and money, but may end up being well worth it. Having human beings out of earth orbit for the first time. orbiting another world and sharing those experiences with the rest of us could have a profound effect on how we all see space travel. It will become a source of optimism and adventure that everyone can get excited about.

The Sci-Fi Tech Of The Human Brain

 
     A few years ago, okay it was about fifteen years ago, I played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The game was stunning. It was far too detailed and complex for my young self to fully comprehend and appreciate but I had fun building towns and units, terraforming land and progressing along the tech tree. I was reminded of the tech tree and one particular technology recently when I read an article about Henry Markram. He is a South African Neuroscientist who has embarked on a project closely akin to the fictional "Secrets of the human brain" tech from that old game. The audacious plan is to build a supercomputer to map and simulate the workings of every synapse and neuron in a human brain. The exact implications are debatable but their importance is not. Whether the computer provides an exact, infinitely tune-able model of the human mind to aid in the research of physiological and psychological disorders or it becomes a functioning self-aware consciousness is open for discussion. Either way something big is going to happen. And it is happening. Markram has secured 1.3 Billion Euro in funding for the E.U.
     The reason this project caught my eye, apart from it's scope and promise, was the way it reminded me of the kind of science which seemed fitting to put in a science fiction game only a few(okay fifteen) years ago. I am a young man and I've already seen several technologies cross from science fiction to science fact. Mobile phones and the International Space Station are two off the top of my head. It seems we're approaching the point where futurism is impossible beyond ten years simply because there is no way to know where we'll be. It is hard enough to keep up with the present. It would be very embarrassing for a science fiction writer to dream up some fantastical device or technology only to be told by some fourteen year old that it's been on the app store for the last six months!
     Another thought on this topic is my view that as the level and ubiquity of tech in our lives increases the scientific horizon for futurists is pushed further back. Although whatever our guess is we're likely to be wrong. In William Gibson's Neuromancer we visit a black market in software where cyber punks with USB slots in their heads sell bootleg floppy disks under the counter. Gibson couldn't have foreseen the Pirate Bay or the open-source community making such dealings obsolete. Likewise in Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land we see the Man From Mars getting so much fan mail he insulates the onion cellar with the unopened letters. Again there was no way for Heinlein to expect Email in his world of flying cars and lunar colonies. When I first saw Ghost in the Shell I couldn't get my head around it. The world was too alien to anything I had seen before for me to even consider the world Masamune Shirow was suggesting. The Sci-fi of Ghost in the shell showed a world of extreme physical augmentation and brain hacking. To read or steal someones thoughts electronically seemed absurd at the time. Today looking at Markram's work it seems far more believable. Although we haven't reached it yet, there's a day coming when reality will be beyond the imagination of early science fiction writers. Living on the moon and flying cars were easy. We had cars and we had the moon. Today we're just checking off the list of things they imagined. People in space, check. underwater ships, check. monkey butlers...Ahem. Anyway "Secrets of the human Brain" is next on the check list and after we've exhausted their list all bets are off.

Asteroid mining and the commercialization of space.

Earlier this year a company called Deep Space Industries unveiled their plans to launch a fleet of asteroid prospecting robots by 2015. The plan is to send out satellites to a few likely looking asteroids and see what they're made of. Down the road they plan to return samples to earth and from there the space gold rush will begin. The prospect of prospecting (heh!) the bounty of outer space raises a couple of interesting thoughts on the nature of the space industry as it stands now and the future it's trying to create.
     The current crop of companies that have set their eyes on possibilities in space are still making their tentative early steps. Space X founded by Elon Musk of PayPal and Tesla Motors fame is ahead of the curve simply by being able to get into space although orbital science's recent successful test launch shouldn't be ignored. Many others whether they're working on sub-orbital tourism, lunar exploration or asteroid mining still have a long way to go before they are established businesses making a profit. However the high start up cost, risk and technical challenges which previously made space ventures the preserve of wealthy governments are no longer scaring people away. The rewards to be had are immense as Peter Diamandis of the X Prize foundation put it "The first trillionaires will make their fortunes in space". This isn't to say the start-ups aren't without their problems. The technology needed is  expensive and the science of space travel is in some ways a jealously guarded secret. Also launching rockets is a risky business. When something goes wrong with a launch it often goes spectacularly wrong and several million dollars of hardware blowing up is a very public warning to investors. The core of all space pioneer woes is money. With the cost of launching a kilogram of hardware in the region of $20,000 it goes without saying that mistakes aren't welcome. The enormous cost of orbital flight brings me back to asteroid mining. At face value a space miner would have to bring back an awful lot of very valuable material to make the trip worth while but the interesting thing about space mining is the vast majority of material mined in space will never make it back to earth.
     The idea of putting refineries and such in space sounds ludicrous when one compares the cost of a tonne of space iron and a tonne of iron mined here on earth but the great thing about space iron is that its already in space. The material will have a ready and waiting market in the form of companies and governments that want to build things in space without the cost of launching them from earth. The obvious ones are space stations for both science and tourism not to mention (shudder) military applications. Another interesting use for tonnes of raw materials in space will be the construction of orbital refueling stations. Currently satellites reach the end of their usable life not because they break or they become out-dated but because they run out of fuel and die. The idea of an industry built around refueling satellites brings me to my final point on space commerce. Critics will be quick to disparage the  thought of going to space to make money because the cost of getting there removes the chance for ordinary folk to engage and thus benefit from the new frontier but I would argue that the space industry isn't a closed system and for every hi-tech giant building moonbases where will be a hundred small companies piggybacking on their success. While not everyone can own a space station there's no reason there won't be a small corner shop or launderette on board the virgin galactic station.

Whatever Happened To Airships?

Airships are great! Anyone who's even seen a picture of one will agree...unless it’s that picture. You know the one, the "Oh the humanity!" one. Anyway since that unfortunate moment airships have slowly dwindled from our collective consciousness, except in the form of wistful steam punk imaginings and a few ambitious companies trying to bring them back. The logic of the comeback is sound. With fuel costs rising along with concern over emissions conventional heavier than air travel is becoming problematic. Planes need a lot of juice not to mention huge runways to land. Also a lot of people worry that they’re going to fall out of the air. I don’t know if they’d be happier in an airship but it’s a thought. Airships, being lighter than air don’t so much crash as slowly sink to the ground. They expend far less fuel to fly. With modern materials like carbon fibre it would be relatively easy to design an airship that’s much lighter and therefore more efficient. Their propellers could be powered by electric motors and solar panels across their huge surface. They could lift huge volumes of cargo into remote places without the need for any infrastructure. They also look great.

                So why the conspicuous absence of airships? The obvious culprit is the Hindenburg Disaster. Television wasn’t long out at the time and nothing sticks in a person’s memory like a huge ball of flame on their screens. It’s a shame really. It’s very difficult to explain to people after the fact that it was a very unlikely event. Airships are inherently safe and it was a combination of bad engineering, bad luck and bad politics that led to its destruction. The Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen but it had (sensibly) been designed to use helium. Unfortunately for the Zeppelin people, helium was very hard to come by in 1937. The Americans who pretty much had a monopoly on the stuff wouldn’t sell it because of something called the helium control act of 1927*. The only other option was hydrogen which, when combined with an outer skin which may have been effectively thermite, was a recipe for disaster. So we wound up with a horrible accident and airships were left with horrible reputation.

                Their exile from the world of mainstream aviation may be coming to an end. A few projects are underway to design and build an airship for the 21^st century. The Aeroscraft is an airship that can vary its buoyancy allowing it to load and unload freight without worrying about floating away when it’s emptied. This setup allows it to take off and land vertically with little or no ground crew and to land on rough unprepared surfaces, literally anywhere there’s room to land its enormous bulk. The Aeroscraft will be built in 20, 60 and 500 tonne capacities. The prodigious size of an airship which can lift 500 tonnes would be something to see! Another design is the Boeing/SkyHook JHL-40. It’s a hybrid craft which will be part helicopter, part airship. It will be capable of lifting 40 tonnes of cargo while the weight of the craft itself will be negated by the helium. I think it’s a pretty neat idea but the lack of real photos the skyhook makes me worry about the project. There’s been a lot of talk about the resurgence of airships but more often than not promising designs flounder at a certain phase of development. A recent example it the cancellation of the U.S military’sLEMV airship project earlier this month. It was claimed that the project was cancelled because the LEMV was designed for use in Afghanistan, a war quickly drawing to a close. Other reasons cited included the LEMV’s failure to live up to expectations. A big feature of the LEMV’s design was its purported ability to stay aloft for 21 days straight. When it came to testing however it only lasted six days. The LEMV joins a line of military airship designs which have been shelved in recent years to say nothing of the numerous civilian designs that have failed to deliver. I’m still hopeful however. The fact that there’s so much interest and so many attempts being made to create a modern airship means the idea holds promise and maybe someday soon we’ll no longer be stuck with boring old aeroplanes.

* The U.S had been very stingy with helium until 1996. The National Helium Reserve used to contain over a billion cubic meters of helium. Now they’re selling it off. Artificially lowering the cost of helium and when it runs out the price will skyrocket. Buy into helium now! Or don’t, what do I know? 

Telepresence, Social Media And A World Without Borders

The Internet’s a funny old thing. It connects people all over the world without them even noticing. In my online life I often come across this phenomenon. People on Imgur or those posting comments on a news article who seem to be oblivious to the global nature of the net. A perfect example is the running joke on Imgur where a particularly odd, creepy or vulgar picture is met with “It’s very early in the night for that!” It usually seems to come from an American. Understandable since it’s an American site and beyond that the English speaking world is very U.S centric because of population alone. But I’m not American. And neither are huge portions of the people who use the site. Very early in the night? No, maybe on your side of the planet but here in Ireland its 2 am. I don’t think it’s an effect of the American mind set. Although I have heard the term ‘Americans’ used instead of ‘people’ often enough to make me worry about the place. I digress. Presumably the effect comes from peoples’ tendency to assume that the username they’re corresponding with is like them, from the same country, background and culture as them. I like to think it’ll do wonders for cultural globalisation and racism. I’d imagine it’s very hard to remain racist after you've met a few really nice, funny people from the culture you supposedly despise. Back in the day when the only way to communicate in real time with someone in another country was with an expensive international call people curtailed most of that casual interaction to people in their own neck of woods. In spite of air travel and telecommunications there were still very real barriers between people in different countries. Even since the internet it’s taken until relatively recently for truly global social networks to come into their own. Now of course there’s very little separating people all over the world, but the last few barriers need to be removed. That’s where telepresence comes in.

The internet has long had the whole world talking to each other. But the streams of messages can only do so much. They do make the world smaller but not small enough. An obvious boon to the world of communication comes in the form of VOIP programmes like the old favourite Skype, Facebook video and many more. A great example of the usefulness of these programmes came to me a few months ago. I was at a my grandmother’s funeral where of her thirteen children only twelve could make it, the thirteenth being in Australia. But thanks to Skype she was there. There was a smart phone being passed around the graveyard with her face on the screen. She saw what it saw and was able to accept condolences from many confused and bemused seventy somethings standing in the drizzle in a graveyard in rural Ireland while she sat at a laptop in New South Wales in the middle of the night. It’s a comforting image.

Sharing kind words isn’t the only use for telepresence technology of course. DaVinci System is a robot arm which can perform delicate surgery when controlled by a surgeon either in the same room or across the Atlantic. The fact that the surgeon is five time zones away is no longer an issue. Equally impressive is the use of human controlled robots to explore dangerous or uninhabitable places. Virginia Tech’s Thor robot is being developed to navigate and explore disaster zones such as earthquakes. Such a machine would be especially useful in disasters similar to Fukushima. NASA’s Robonaut is a robot for operating on the outside of the International Space Station. The idea being that it will be able to cut down the number of dangerous space walks needed to repair and upgrade the station and other satellites. Telepresence technology is changing the world in many subtle yet powerful ways. Its gets people to where they need or want to be without ever moving them. It makes the world a smaller place and it breaks down the barriers and differences between people. Hopefully to the point where there will be none.

Cyber Fear!

Our kids are being turned into hyper-violent, socially crippled introverts. Also they’re fat. And lots of them are pregnant, but that’s for another rant. It’s all the internet’s fault apparently. I feel bombarded by a certain scaremongering brand of journalim. Big scary buzz words abound, cyber-bullying being my particular favourite. It implies some sort of dystopian future (or present) shot with a pale blue filter where malevolent teens, presumably on drugs, in some basement full of mismatched LED screens are using their arcane knowledge to torment your poor child in ways you can’t prevent and to much greater effect than anything that came before. Its true kids are bullying each other on Facebook and by text but that said they bully each other on the bus, in school, at football practice, and pretty much everywhere else there’s more than one child. The ‘cyber’ realm may be the one exception where kids actually find it possible to avoid the onslaught. Facebook, for all the criticism it’s received on the subject, does in fact have many features to make your profile as private, secure and discriminating about who can contact you as you like (if you’ll excuse the turn of phrase). If you’re receiving threatening messages block the user who’s sending them. Kids using social media to torment their peers is obviously an issue but to label it “cyber-bullying” lends it far too much sinister gravitas. To invoke the ‘cyber’ element of the bullying as though it makes the act somehow different is purely a ploy by newspapers with middle aged readers to frighten and outrage said readers.

Texts are much trickier however. Kids are rarely inclined to call the police to track a number sending offensive messages. Kids not talking about being bullied is a big part of the problem. The core of the issue is of course the anonymity that these media provide the tormentors. They can say things in a text that they would never dare say in person. Even the bullies themselves may be unaware of the extent of the trauma their words create. It’s an easy effect to see. Anyone who’s ever scrolled through the comments of a vaguely controversial Youtube video can see how easily people become disconnected from the words they type. It’s caused by not having a face to speak to and in a way having none to speak from. Their words don’t have the power of a personality or name to give what they say any weight, so they unconsciously ramp up the extreme language, vulgar turns of phrase and as we’re all too aware, the caps lock. They are literally screaming to be heard and noticed in a world of a billion equally ignorable voices. One would be forgiven for assuming that kids raised in this environment would be somewhat desensitized to anonymous usernames screaming caps locked swearwords at them but of course it’s the personal nature of the messages that gets to the victims.

A perfect example of the disconnection between ones words and their effect can be seen on Xbox Live. I’m not a regular visitor to the digital killing fields of Call of Duty but in the few forays I have made it’s been the voices in the headset that upset me far more than the gunshots screams and blood splatters. Trying to wander around an abandoned airport and shoot people would have been much more enjoyable if it weren’t for the team of rabid fourteen year olds roaring the kind of language that would turn heads in a Scorsese film. Again it’s because the kids doing the shouting cannot see their words hit the mark. Not that I was reduced to tears or anything. I can handle having my sexuality questioned every time I shoot or fail to shoot an opponent. But it’s an interesting incubator for vulgarity. It’s a war zone in there and healthy attitude or not a lot of players are heavily invested in their kill/death ratio. For the parents passing the bedroom door, it’s understandable why they believe the game is driving their son into some kind of murderous frenzy. Maybe it is but when you understand the game a little better it’s not dissimilar to the crowd at some strange football match where every shout falls on deaf ears, every player is against every other and the referee is a faceless unreasonable machine. This doesn't prevent the scaremongers from constantly questioning if violent games make violent kids. It seems very odd to me to hear shooting games scapegoated as the catalyst for real world shootings. The Grand Theft Auto series is a prime example. Particularly in the U.S! To claim it’s the games kids play that makes them obsessed with war, guns and murdering in one of the most militarised countries in the world is madness. It’s a country recently involved in two wars where anyone who shoots people for a living is hailed as a hero and automatic weapons seem to be so common people must be tripping over them in the streets. The games are affected by society not vice versa.

Much of the media makes use of peoples fear and ignorance of modern digital trends. The fear of the unknown draws people to these articles. They want to know more but maybe subconsciously they want to be offended by what they learn. It’s the media’s responsibility to inform these people, allay their fears and reassure them that we’re not sinking into some kind of William Gibson style dystopia and that at the end of the day people are just people. They use new ways to communicate and interact but apart from that not much has changed.

3D Printers: An Economic Game-Changer Pt 2

Previously I spoke about the current state of 3D printing and rapid prototyping. It’s a fascinating field; right on the cusp of a revolution which I believe will profoundly change the world we live in. Conventional Economics is in for a shake up and for better or worse thing will be very different in ten, twenty or fifty years time. In my more optimistic moments I envision a utopian world not dissimilar to Star Trek where universal replicators can create anything we want and people are freed from labour to engage in only the most worthwhile pursuits. The cynic in me on the other hand sees endless litigation and licensing laws put in place by a dwindling manufacturing sector to try to throttle the progress of desktop prototypers. I could draw endless analogies with big media’s attempts to fight online piracy and indeed the manufacturing sector having seen what’s becoming of Hollywood’s fight for its intellectual property will be watching the growth of hobbiest 3d printers with suspicion. If I were to make a copy of a gadget which was molecularly identical to one designed by apple or Samsung (to name two apparently litigious companies) I would be stealing right? That said who’s going to know or stop me for that matter? If the rise of the internet has thought us anything it’s that for every attempt to protect IP by a big company there’s a thousand new ways to circumvent it. 3D printing will be the same. There will be endless attempts to curtail it but in the end anyone who wants to pirate a design can and will be it a beanie baby or a gun.

So where does that leave us. In a world where information is free and material goods are becoming freer every day what place will be left for large manufacturing firms? Not much. They’ll be pushed into the margins becoming more specialized making niche items of high value, exotic materials or things that are too big to fit in your desktop printer. The 3^rd or is it 4^th industrial revolution is coming and there simply won’t be a place for many of these obsolete firms just like there isn’t much of a place for cottage industry nowadays. I won’t quote Marx here but he was pretty keen on people owning the means of production, maybe he was just a century or two out.

Innovation is likely to skyrocket in the fields of product design and engineering when everyone has access to the machines. Anyone with an idea will be an inventor or an artist. Crowdsourcing of designs will be the norm of the day. I can see a system where after downloading an object from an online repository such as thingiverse today people will simply post their feedback and subtle changes will be made to the design. The next person to download it won’t get the wonky power button for example.

Finally one of the most intriguing aspects of 3D printers will be their ability to reproduce themselves. Because of this conventional economics won’t apply. There will be a tipping point where they achieve the ability to reproduce and at that point their numbers will explode. Everyone who wants one will have one. As great as that sounds I like to think a bit beyond households full of gadgets. I can imagine a shipping container with a generator and 3D printer being dropped into disaster zones to rebuild them. Dropped into remote villages to develop them and hopefully someday dropped onto other planets to build on them and maybe even terraform them. That’s only possible with machines that can reproduce otherwise the initial investment of time and energy would be too high. The possibilities are fascinating and the best part is we’re only a few years from seeing the first real impacts of these machines.