NextBigFuture.com

Tesla reported first-quarter profits despite the coronavirus and shutdowns of factories. $283M GAAP operating income; 4.7% operating margin in Q1 $16M GAAP net income; $227M non-GAAP net income...

Human use of materials has been used to define human history and technological progress. An article that I wrote on Linkedin, reviews human material usage from the stone age to diamond and beyond....

It seems that retail and restaurant will try to safely re-open by following procedures similar to the supermarkets and hardware stores that have not closed. Texas will have staged re-opening starting...

Sweden did not lockdown its economy or close its schools in response to the coronavirus. They did ban gatherings of over 50 people. Sweden has been able to keep most of its economy open....

A new device developed at Carnegie Mellon University lets you feel obstacles and objects when you are in a virtual reality experience. They use multiple strings attached to the hand and fingers to...

For the millions of Americans who are quarantining at home, self-care has been pushed to the back burner. But think twice before you decide to neglect your own physical and emotional well-being....

The SpaceX SN4 Starship has passed a lower pressure cryo fuel test. The next milestone will be the static fire test, where the Starship will be held in place during engine firing. SN4 will have one...

The US is passing 1 million confirmed Coronavirus cases, the world has over 3 million confirmed coronavirus cases and Europe has 1.3 million confirmed cases. We do not have good test and data based...

The Coronavirus Pandemic is reshaping our current world and it is reshaping the future. The pandemic and global lockdown is causing a global economic depression, shattering the energy markets and...

Direct comparisons were made between aerocapture and competing orbit insertion techniques based on state-of-the-art and advanced chemical propulsion, solar electric propulsion, and aerobraking....

DARPA’s new ADvanced Acclimation and Protection Tool for Environmental Readiness (ADAPTER) program aims to develop a travel adapter for the human body, an implantable or ingestible bioelectronic...

DARPA is funding breakthroughs in tunneling. The Underminer project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of rapidly constructing tactical tunnel networks to provide secure logistics infrastructure to...

SpaceX teams have assembled Starship SN4 in about 2 weeks and it is on the test stand. SpaceX is actively building the next Starship, SN5. There will be pressure tests that caused problems for the...

A new design could enable affordable exploration of Venus and other harsh environments. The Venus surface temperatures near 460°C and pressures of 93 bar have made long-duration surface missions...

Florida researchers propose a new method, called Aqua Factorem, to extract lunar water. It will drastically reduce energy and complexity of lunar mining operations helping to establish this industry....

The solar gravitational lens (SGL) is characterized by remarkable properties: it offers brightness amplification of up to a factor of ~1e11 (at 1 um) and extreme angular resolution (~1e-10 arcsec)....

Giant lunar landers like the SpaceX Starship pose a range of risks, from high-velocity ejecta abrasion damaging the lander to ejecta damaging other lunar landers or orbital assets, or even creating a...

Elon Musk says Starlink will offer a private beta for a global internet service in about three months and start offering a public beta service in 6 months. Private beta begins in ~3 months, public...

Psiquantum has raised $215 million to develop what they claim will be the first useful general purpose quantum computer. They plan to make a million qubit quantum computer with error correction....

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and is asking bankruptcy court for permission to borrow between $75 million and $300 million. SoftBank wants to give OneWeb the loan. SoftBank supplied $2 billion of the...

In March 2020, Positron Dynamics completed a new source installation at Berkeley. They continue to make progress on experiments and designs. Positron Dynamics designs avoid huge show-stopper problems...

Hbar Technologies looks at using Breakthrough Starshot laser acceleration to reach Proxima Centauri and then use antimatter propulsion to decelerate. This would not be a flyby mission where a mission...

COVID-19 antibody test studies are showing that about 14% have already had the disease in New York and about 5% in California. New York City and Long Island have about 20% infection rates. About 2.7...

NASA NIAC fund work to use bioorganisms to perform atmospheric in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Utilizing 100% ISRU for propellant production, they aim to reduce the Entry Descent Landing (EDL)...

The Swarm-Probe Enabling ATEG Reactor, or SPEAR, is a nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft that uses a new, lightweight reactor moderator and advanced thermoelectric generators (ATEGs) to greatly...

Davide Guzzetti, Auburn University, has NASA NIAC funding feasibility analysis of integrating an array of microchips with space satellite functions, or ChipSats, on a multifunctional shape memory...

The Lunar Polar Mining Outpost (LPMO) (see quad chart graphic) is a breakthrough mission architecture that promises to greatly reduce the cost of human exploration and industrialization of the Moon....

An ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes. Above – Notional view of LCRT on the...

Understanding the beginnings of the Universe and life itself is NASA’s long term vision and one of humanities’ grand challenges. Missions to the edge of our solar system and to space between stars in...

Jim Keller is a legendary microprocessor engineer, who has worked at AMD, Apple, Tesla, and now Intel. He’s known for his work on the AMD K7, K8, K12 and Zen microarchitectures, Apple A4, A5...

Covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes, attacks not only the lungs but the kidneys, heart, intestines, liver and brain. Doctors are reporting bizarre, unsettling cases. They describe...

It is well known that Tesla main electric car products spell SEXY. These are the Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y. The 3 looks like the E in certain fonts. Tesla also has three other products on...

Andrej Karpathy, Tesla Senior Director of AI gave a technical talk on Tesla’s self-driving AI at the Matroid Scaled Machine Learning Conference 2020. If Tesla is the first to succeed in the...

SpaceX has successfully reused a faring and they have another successful launch of 60 Starlink Satellites. If they are able to use the v0.9 satellites then they have enough satellites for minor...

SpaceX is targeting Wednesday, April 22 at 3:30 p.m. EDT, or 19:30 p.m. UTC, for its seventh launch of Starlink satellites. Falcon 9 will lift off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy...

Australia developing warmer, cheaper and more robust quantum computing with qubits that need thousands of dollars of refrigeration instead of millions of dollars. Most current quantum computers need...

A $483 billion coronavirus aid package flew through the Senate on Tuesday after Congress and the White House reached a deal to replenish a small-business payroll fund and provided new money for...

Based on the results of the first round of COVID-19 antibody testing, the USC research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the LA county’s adult population has an antibody to the virus....

On April 6, the US White House released an executive order that Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with...

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is the largest small business association. Small Employers are in crisis and half will have to shut down in less than 2 months without help....

West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, traded as low as -$40.32 a barrel today. The main delivery point for US oil, Cushing, Oklahoma has full storage. Storage tanks at Cushing will be full in...

The IMF has a baseline scenario of -3% world GDP. There is extreme uncertainty around the duration and intensity of the health crisis. They also explore alternative, more adverse scenarios. The...

The World is projected to have over $9 trillion in economic losses from the Great Lockdown. This assumes a relatively prompt and successful reopening of the world economy. The Second quarter could...

Robert Zubrin describes the multiplier of producing fuel on the moon or Mars. Producing oxygen on the moon and with hydrogen (that you brought) would be a 7X multiplier for what you brought. There is...

Researchers have architecturally designed plate-nanolattices – nanometer-sized carbon structures – that are stronger than diamonds as a ratio of strength to density. The team’s design has been shown...