NextBigFuture.com

This is the year when the US Air Force will choose who will build the airfrome for the NGAD (Next generation air dominance, 6th gen fighter). There will also be a selection of the engine maker. There are two competitors for the airfrome, Lockheed vs Boeing. There are two competitors for the engine, Pratt and ... Read more

Nextbigfuture has a weekly video review of the big stories in science and technology. The later part of the video discusses laser pushed sails for fast missions around the solar system and then interstellar missions. We have the laser technology that is sufficient to be used for laser pushed sail missions. They need to be ... Read more

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is saying that the LLAMA 3 large language model will be providing open source AGI. Zuckerberg feels that people will wear glasses to hold their connection to AGI. Glasses will provide the video and audio connection from people to AGI. Mark joins OpenAI Sam Altman as promising AGI will here very ... Read more

Using first-principle lattice simulations, researchers demonstrate that in the background of a strong magnetic field (around 10^20 Tesla - 100 million trillion Tesla aka 100 quintillion), the electroweak sector of the vacuum experiences two consecutive crossover transitions associated with dramatic changes in the zero-temperature dynamics of the vector bosons and the scalar Higgs particles, respectively. ... Read more

Mark Zuckerberg plans on acquiring 350,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to help Meta build a next-generation AI that possesses human-like intelligence. Zuckerberg mentioned the figure today as he announced his company's long-term effort to develop an artificial general intelligence (AGI), or an AI that can learn and be used to perform a variety of tasks. By ... Read more

Japan managed to soft land a spacecraft on the surface of the moon, this makes them the 5th nation to accomplish this feat. They did not land on the spacecraft's feet and instead rolled, probably ending up inverted with the solar panels in the wrong orientation. Two rovers have deployed and we hope to see ... Read more

Tesla's CEO @elonmusk agreed with a X post that having 1 billion humanoid robots doing tasks for us by the 2040s is possible. Farzad made some observations which Elon Musk tweeted agreement. The form factor of a humanoid robot will likely remain unchanged for a really long time. A human has a torso, two arms, ... Read more

We don't know the final fate of the Japan SLIM lander. There seemed to be a touchdown but then communication was lost. Scott Manley believes that it may have landed and rolled. There may have been too much lateral velocity. The lander could be partially functional even if it was on its side. So my ... Read more

PayloadSpace estimates the costs of SpaceX Starship now and in a few years. Their estimate is a $90 million build cost now and a future build cost of $20 million. SpaceX would likely charge customers twice those amounts. Those are estimates of internal costs. In a cost per kilogram of payload basis, a single use ... Read more

There is oppression all over the Middle East. The countries in the region are generally dominated by an ethnic or religious minority. There were 483 million people in the middle east in 2023 and there will be about 500 million in 2024. The largest socioethnic groups in the region are Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and ... Read more

In 1989, the NASA Voyager team showed false color images of Neptune so that we could see the clouds in the atmosphere. NASA did also show the unaltered images at the same time in 1989. The research paper showed black and white photos and again showed one false color image. The deep blue false color ... Read more

There have been full scale nuclear thermal rocket engines built and tested on the ground since the 1960s. The US had the NERVA project. The attraction is that the ISP would be up to triple the ISP of chemical rockets. Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems work by heating up a gas, usually hydrogen or ammonia, ... Read more

U.S. Air Force's B-21 Raider stealth bombers are now conducting test flights from Edwards Air Force Base in California. The first B-21 flew for the first time November, 2023. Six pre-production B-21 have been built and one flew a sortie from Edwards today. Edwards has also received significant physical upgrades in recent years to support ... Read more

BMW has chosen to use Figure AI humanoid robots in BMW car factories over the next 12-24 months.

Pakistan has launched missile strikes into Iran, killing nine people, after Iran carried out strikes in Pakistan late on Tuesday. Pakistan said its strikes had hit terrorist hideouts in Iran's south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. Iran condemned the attack, which it said killed three women, two men and four children who were not Iranian. Pakistan's foreign ministry ... Read more

China's overall population fell by 2.08 million in 2023, while births declined by 5.6 per cent to 9.02 million. The population collapse is global. Over 80% of the world population is in countries with declining populations or where births have dropped below replacement. Even India and Bangladesh have dropped below replacement. Once a country drops ... Read more

Sam Altman believes that AGI will be created soon. He talked about a vision of an AGI World of More. He predicts AGI will not replace as many jobs as people believe and the world will change less than people believe. It will be an incredible tool for productivity and is magnifying what people can ... Read more

A few months ago, Nextbigfuture reported that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observed a planet, K2-18, showing the presence of chemicals that indicate possible life. The carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb's discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess ... Read more

Elon Musk says @SpaceX will release Starlink Mini later in 2024. It will be small enough to fit in your backpack. The outdoor use case also requires the power requirements for Starlink to be muchless. You will be able to pull the terminal out of your backpack in the middle of nowhere and connect to ... Read more

SpaceX's Starlink has launched a new Community Gateways program to deliver gigabit-speed and even 10 gigabit speed for internet connectivity to remote and underserved areas. It is for internet service providers (ISPs) and cost a $1.25 million upfront cost and $75,000 per month per gigabit per second. Ten gigabits per second would costs $750,000 per ... Read more

Joe Tegtmeyer spoke with Ellie in space about the SpaceX factory ramp. Joe has been a professional large project manager who has managed detailed management of large projects. He has been closely monitoring the construction and expansion of the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin. Joe gives his projection of how he expects the SpaceX Starfactory to ... Read more

Impulse Space has x-SpaceX founders and has $45 million of funding to develop space tugs that would move payloads to higher orbits. Founded in 2021, Impulse Space is providing agile, economical space logistics services. With a near-term focus on Low Earth Orbit (LEO), services include in-space transportation to custom orbits, in-space payload hosting and space ... Read more

Shell Oil and Southern Electric utility company had a 2021 research paper that explored if nuclear batteries could be economical for generating power. (Above - (a) MIT's conceptualization of a nuclear battery (NB) with integrated gas turbine; (b) LANL's Megapower; (c) NASA and LANL's KRUSTY/Kilopower reactor using Stirling engine technology for space applications; (d) Westinghouse's ... Read more

The Council of Foreign Relations states the difficulties that China would have attacking Taiwan. Taiwan is a nearly perfect island to defend. China would need to shift military assets to its eastern coast and undertake other visible preparations for an invasion, which Taiwan and the United States would likely be able to detect. Even if ... Read more

SpaceX is expanding the Starship Factory to increase production to one Starship every 72 hours. This would mean production would increase to over 100 per year. Elon has discussed the need to increase Starship production to over one per day.

Nextbigfuture has covered Elon mentioning that a future SpaceX Starship could be 20% longer BUT now it is reported that SpaceX is designing a 150 meter longer Starship. Felix Schlang at What about It? describes the new version 3 Starship work. This would be up to 95 feet longer than the current 120 meters. The ... Read more

CATL has new rectangular LFP batteries. The LFP EV battery price will be less than $56 per kWh within six months. It is a bigger rectangular battery with each one being like six Tesla 4680 batteries. The LFP battery price in China is currently $70 per kWh. China's EV makers (CATL, BYD) are targeting two ... Read more

Jan 8, 2024, China Startup Betavolt New Energy Technology announced the successful development of a miniature atomic energy battery. It uses nickel-63 nuclear isotope decay and China's first diamond semiconductor (4th generation semiconductor) module to successfully realize the miniaturization of atomic energy batteries. It has modularization and low cost. The battery can provide power for ... Read more

Most people do not contextualize what is happening in the Ukraine War or the Gaza War with what they expect to happen in a war between China and Taiwan. Ukraine and Russia have been fighting their larger expanded war for nearly 2 years. Both sides still have weapons and are continuing to hit each other ... Read more

Satya Nadella, Chairman & CEO, Microsoft joins Bloomberg's Brad Stone for a conversation at Bloomberg House at Davos. Nadella talked about using AI to break the Google Search Monopoly and replace Apple iPhone and the entire app store. AI can be the Universal App. Currently, individual use dozens or even over a hundred apps. IF ... Read more

In an interview with Bill Gates, Sam Altman says he is super-excited for AI applied to robotics. Sam Altman - We have to go do this thing. This is now an UNSTOPPABLE technological course. The value is too great." Tens of billions of dollars are going into the effort to dominate technology and transform the ... Read more

Tesla Optimus cannot yet fold laundry autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment soon. Optimus folds a shirt pic.twitter.com/3F5o3jVLq1 - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2024 Important note: Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in ... Read more

Falcon 9 delivered 23 @Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida which completed their 300th successful launch! Falcon 9 delivers 23 @Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida - completing our 300th successful launch! pic.twitter.com/uXQR5us7VV - SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 15, 2024

One of the biggest draws of the early crypto days was the feeling that a new, modern gold rush had been discovered. In 1848, miners traveled from all parts of the world to San Francisco after having sold everything to make the trip. They bought a pickaxe, a handful of basic supplies, and set off ... Read more

There was the battle control OpenAI. It was a fight about control of OpenAI, its board, and its direction. Now Elon wants to get more voting control of Tesla. He wants to go from 15% to 25% in order to be comfortable making Tesla the leader in AI and Robotics. I believe this is more ... Read more

In an interview with Bill Gates, Sam Altman says he is super-excited for AI applied to robotics. Sam Altman - We have to go do this thing. This is now an unstoppable technological course. The value is too great." Tens of billions of dollars are going into the effort to dominate technology and transform the ... Read more

We can calculate the travel times for the SpaceX Starship to reach Mars. It is relatively easy to get 90 day trips each way with SpaceX Starship. This is faster than the usual 180-270 one-way travel times. This can be faster because we will have a lot more fuel to enable more direct routes to ... Read more

People believe that exotic new propulsion systems are needed to reduce the one way trip times from Earth to Mars from 180-270 days down to 45 days each way. The slower mission times are for chemical rockets where we barely get out of Earth orbit with a small rocket engine. SpaceX Starship can refuel after ... Read more

After a series of small earthquakes starting around 03:00 Sunday morning, an eruption began in the Reykjanes peninsula just before 08:00 just north of the town of Grindavik. By that point all the people residing in the town, numbering about 200 in about 80 homes, had been evacuated. The erupting fissure was soon estimated to ... Read more

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took over on February 4, 2014, when Microsoft's stock price closed at $36.35. It is now worth $388 per share. This is a 10X. Apple was worth about $24 in 2014 and is now about $186. This was a 7-8 times gain. Tim Cook became CEO of Apple in August 2011. ... Read more

Paraterraforming (or World House Design) is a subset of Terraforming where we build huge structures which may cover a large fraction of a world's surface. A key advantage is that it is usually much faster than terraforming but it can enable larger habitable areas than just making capsules or buildings. LAVA architects and others have ... Read more

XPeng showed off an updated eVTOL flying car which is multiple helicopter like propellers that fold out of the back. During a press event held live at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, XPeng AeroHT shared significant updates on the progress of its flying car" technology. First, the Land Aircraft Carrier in the featured image above ... Read more

Wedbush Analyst Dan Ives believes the new technology bull market has begun. He thinks that AI technology spend will go from 1% of IT budgets to 8-10% in 2024. Dan was surprised by the number of executives and CEOs at the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) who were looking to acquire technology and companies. Dan believes ... Read more

Eventually, all that will matter to Tesla and others is changing civilization with Teslabot. All that will matter is the race to improve and use AGI and humanoid bot. This will be the driving purpose and generator of value for civilization and human economy. In chess - A forced move is one that a player ... Read more

Brian Wang and Randy Kirk have another video weekly review of the big stories in science, this episode takes a deep dive into the AI compute and the ramifications of the huge increases in compute that will be required. There is also more news out on the LK99 room temperature super conductor, and that is ... Read more

SpaceX Starship is about 120 meters tall or 65 times taller than the average person. The upper stage is as tall as the statue portion of the Statue of Liberty. The Human scale of the Starship is pic.twitter.com/BJ82Aqs3MW - Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 10, 2024

The Team Project Solutions for Construction of a Lunar Base" was the product of 9 intense weeks of collaboration during the Space Studies Program 2021 - Strasbourg, at the International Space University. I had written about their concept to lay a SpaceX Starship flat on the moon to start a moonbase. I did not know ... Read more

NVIDIA Vice President of Robotics and Edge Computing Deepu Talla detailed how NVIDIA and its partners are bringing generative AI and robotics together. They have a growing roster of partners - including Boston Dynamics, Collaborative Robotics, Covariant, Sanctuary AI, Unitree Robotics and others - embracing GPU-accelerated large language models to bring unprecedented levels of intelligence ... Read more

Highlights of Elon Musk SpaceX Plans for 2024 and Beyond: They have already increased the communication bandwidth of Starlink v2 mini to 188 Gbps. There will be 150 launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in 2024 Increase the speed and cadence of Starship launches. Deploy Version 3 Starlink satellites via Starship in 2024. Start ... Read more

The USA intelligence agencies determined that China had uncovered major corruption in it military. Xi Jinping purged many Generals and top military leaders. It was found out that there was water instead of fuel in missiles and the lids of missile silos are not reliable. This could be just the tip of the iceberg of ... Read more