NextBigFuture.com

USNC-Tech envisions adapting EmberCore for an electric propulsion system that could propel a spacecraft to extremely high speeds. The spacecraft architecture is capable of incredible delta-V on the order of 50-100 km/s," USNC-Tech's Christopher Morrison says in the company's proposal. That would translate to 110,000 to 220,000 mph. Cobalt-60 gives 17 watts per gram. A ... Read more

3 hours and 5 minutes into the second day of the NASA NIAC 2023 symposium there is a presentation on a lunar oxygen pipeline from the moon's South Pole. Don at Boston Metals has made a smaller reactor to make aluminum in a far smaller molten regolith electrolysis chamber than standard aluminum production. This would ... Read more

Early 2011, NASA NIAC study of fission fragment propulsion.

The Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE) project team, jointly led by NASA and Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, envisions a way to make huge circular self-healing mirrors in-orbit to further the field of astronomy. Larger telescopes collect more light, and they allow astronomers to peer farther into space and see distant objects in greater detail. The ... Read more

SpaceX had to destack and replace a grid fin actuator. The FAA license has been granted but SpaceX is now targeting a 20 minute window start at 7 AM Central time on Saturday. Starship stacked for flight. This is another chance to put Starship in a true flight environment, maximizing how much we learn. Rapid ... Read more

Chinese stocks were slumping early Thursday after a high-profile summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, and a warning from Alibaba. Alibab will not spin off its cloud division as planned because of expanded U.S. export controls on chips have created uncertainty for the business. Shares of e-commerce giant Alibaba (ticker: BABA) down 8.2%. ... Read more

There was a secret billion dollar US Air Force, DARPA and Navy X-plane program to explore future fighters that paved the way for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed at the POLITICO Defense Summit on Nov. 14. Kendall and other Air Force officials have previously said there were flying prototypes ... Read more

There are reports that Tesla is filing to become an Australian Energy Retailer (an Australian electrical utility). The Brattle group has a Virtual Power Plant study. Buying peaking capacity from a VPP is 40% cheaper than a utility-scale battery and 60% lower than from a gas peaker plant. A 60 GW VPP deployment could beat ... Read more

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are not providing videos and pictures of the army entering and defeating the infamous Hamas tunnels. There have been reports of the use of drones (flying and ground), sponge bombs, explosives, dogs and bulldozers being used to counter the lengthy Hamas tunnels. There have been videos of Israeli bulldozers digging ... Read more

A nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE) that is exponentially more propellent efficient than rocket engines currently used to power today's space vehicles and could eventually achieve very high specific impulse (>100,000 sec) at high power density (>kW/kg). A new NASA NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) project is creating a buildable near term design for ... Read more

Cern Basher lists all of Tesla's current and future revenue streams. Nextbigfuture has been describing the distributed computing revenue stream and how the FSD revenue stream will grow with increased adoption. Nextbigfuture was early on describing how the Tesla megapack and megacharging for Semi trucks will grow more quickly than most expect. A Closer ... Read more

Elon Musk said that the entire fleet of Tesla's that are on the road can be combined into the largest AI inference supercomputer. Most Tesla EVs have hardware 3 with 144 Trillion operations per second of compute. Tesla will end 2023 with 5.5 million Tesla's on the road. There will be about 8 million Tesla's ... Read more

A near term laser ablation of micropellets can be made to rapidly accelerate one ton space probes to reach Pluto in one year. The NASA New Horizons launched in 2006 took 9.5 years to reach Pluto and weighed a little less half of a ton. A ten megawatt laser system in geosynchronous could accelerate a ... Read more

Israel continues to secure the Hamas underground headquarters under the Al-Shifa hospital. Hospitals in the Strip risk losing their protected status under international law due to Hamas's use of the sites for military activities. November 14, Israeli Troops captured key Hamas facilities, including the Hamas parliament, government complex, police headquarters, and the so-called governor's house. ... Read more

Pulsar Fusion will make a linear nuclear fusion rocket propulsion system. They will heat hydrogen plasma with microwaves to create fusion propulsion. They will perform laboratory tests next year and in 2025 and then have an orbital test within three years. Pulsar recently partnered with aerospace R&D company Princeton Satellite Systems (PSS) for a study ... Read more

A nextbigfuture reader had a comment about which US cities had the most homelessness and whether the mayor is democrat or republican. I have used US Housing and Urban Development statistics and the wikipedia entries for each city for their mayor and party affiliation. Texas' homeless population shrunk by nearly a third over the past ... Read more

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been testing the chemical bombs which create rapid expansion of foam. The foam expands and hardens to block tunnels. Hamas has hundreds of miles of tunnels that are hundreds of feet deep. Israel has also been using bulldozers, explosives and air strikes to destroy and collapse tunnels.

The NT Times had a recent article discussing laser nuclear fusion. Nextbigfuture has spoken with all of the nuclear fusion companies listed in the NY Times article as they all attended the 2023 International Conference on Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications conference. Nextbigftuure covered detailed National Ignition Facility presentations six weeks ago at the 2023 ... Read more

Elon Musk was just informed that approval to launch should happen in time for a Friday launch. Was just informed that approval to launch should happen in time for a Friday launch https://t.co/NshoTHdqew - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2023 Starship preparing to launch as early as November 17, pending final regulatory approval https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK ... Read more

There is a $1.2 billion budget for a three year effort to clean up California. The first hundred million or so was spent and 8700 people employed to clean up San Francisco in advance of the APEC summit/ California has had several budget surpluses in recent years: 2021-2022: $47 billion in budget surplus 2022-2023: $55 ... Read more

Last Friday, November 10th the B-21 Raider took flight for the first time from its Palmdale California facility. Youtuber, Pilot Photog, provides analysis and new renderings based upon the video and photos from the first flight of the B-21. The backend of the B-21 Stealth bomber shows that it was not adjusted for low-altitude bombing ... Read more

80% of thing stolen from stores are 10% of the items in the store. New bullet-proof vending machines will be coming to secure those items. Retailers say they're struggling with a dramatic increase in theft in many parts of the USA. Not all shoplifting is reported. Statistics indicate a near doubling of theft from 2017 ... Read more

Dave Lee talks about the future of OpenAI, their new GPT-5 plans, Tesla's FSD v12 and more in this livestream. Financial Times - OpenAI chief, Sam Altman, is seeks=ing new Microsoft funds to build superintelligence. Sam Altman expects big tech group will back start-up's mission to create software as intelligent as humans. OpenAI was working ... Read more

After I, Brian Wang, took Rejuvant, time released AKG a second aging biomarker test and a spit test analysis showed my biological age decreased by about 4 years. I feel good and healthy now and during my time taking the supplement. However, I cannot directly correlate good energy levels and any feelings of well being ... Read more

Pulsar Fusion, a propulsion startup based in England, announced last week it is partnering with the University of Michigan to research electric Hall-effect thruster tech. The UK Space Agency is funding the collaboration. Pulsar recently began developing in-space electric propulsion systems to capitalize on the growing demand for the tech. The U of M partnership ... Read more

China has built the most powerful thermoacoustic Stirling generator. The prototype delivered a groundbreaking 102 kilowatts of power from a heat source of 530 degrees Celsius (986 Fahrenheit). This is the first time this type of breakthrough generator has gone over 100 kilowatts. Thermoacoustic engine achieves high thermal-to-electrical efficiencies with no moving parts. The new ... Read more

Since the morning of November 11th, seismic activity related to the magma intrusion remains fairly constant. Since midnight November 12th, around 1000 earthquakes have been recorded within the dyke, and all of them have been below M3.0 in magnitude. The most seismic activity has been located in the region north of Grindavik. Most of the ... Read more

Chamath foresees an AI World end-state with 1 to 500 million companies that are one to two person teams that can build stuff. He sees this as a logical end-state. This will be a hyperproductive world. This would be a large language model and humanoid robot abundant world. A lot of financial engineering goes away ... Read more

Shopify has coPilot massively boosting their coding productivity. ChatGPT-powered chatbot converts traffic & sells more stuff-the sales channel of the future is here Your sales chatbot recommends products, answers questions, and guides shoppers all the way from browser to buyer. Rep's chatbot uses Behavioral AI to convert more traffic into buyers & Generative AI (powered ... Read more

Nov 10, 2023 All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg talk about the history of the middle and how to fix the middle east. A view of the middle east is that there has been a conflict between bad leadership who want to use conflicts as an excuse for their bad leadership and those who ... Read more

Levent Kemal reports on X/Twitter : Clashes in Gaza's western flank intensify around hospitals, approximate latest situation: - According to the hospital director who spoke to Al Jazeera a few hours ago, Rantisi Hospital has been under siege for nearly three days. Clashes are still ongoing around the hospital. - According to reports, Al-Shifa Hospital ... Read more

Experts have warned Iceland that its volcano could erupt within hours or days. Around 3,000 residents have evacuated the southwestern town of Grindavik close to the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system in the Reykjanes region. Over the past 48 hours, Iceland has faced a seismic swarm as 1,485 earthquakes have hit the country. In addition, a magma ... Read more

I, Brian Wang, was interviewed by Herbert Ong (Brighter with Herbert) about how Tesla is creating revenue generation from all of its computer and energy products. I had an article about Tesla creating Virtual AI Cloud Computers (VCC) that operate like the Virtual Power Plant for Power walls. Elon Musk indicates that the FSD computers ... Read more

Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock says If we can just get humanoids to do work that humans are not wanting to do because there's a shortfall of humans, we can sell millions of humanoids, billions maybe." At the moment, however, Adcock's firm doesn't have a prototype that's ready for market. Figure AI raised a $70 ... Read more

Israeli tanks are just 20 metres (65 feet) away from al-Quds Hospital. [Al Jazeera] BREAKING: GAZA'S AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL HAS FALLEN! Israeli Military Presence Reported Within Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Gaza's largest hospital, located in Gaza City. Will we finally see the alleged tunnels and Hamas headquarters? Source: Al Jazeera https://t.co/ENEjftLc0V - Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November ... Read more

Humane has made the AI Pin. It seems to be trying to perform the functions of the Star Trek Next Generation comm badges and the Star Trek Discovery Tricomm badges. The humane AI Pin is trying to get to a Universal Translator function and various forms of voice and hand gesture activation. It is a ... Read more

The Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider is an American strategic bomber under development for the United States Air Force (USAF) by Northrop Grumman. As part of the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) program, it is to be a long-range, stealth intercontinental strategic bomber for the USAF, able to deliver conventional and thermonuclear weapons. The Air Force ... Read more

The new B-21 Stealth bomber has been photographed having its first test flights. The B-21 will have half of the payload of a B-2 bomber but it will have more range and will be much harder to detect. #BREAKINGB-21 RAIDER FIRST FLIGHT #RAIDER33 #B21Raider 11-10-23 pic.twitter.com/G8dr87bAa4 - Matt Hartman (@ShorealoneFilms) November 10, 2023 B-21 RAIDER ... Read more

Everyone knows about shrinkflation in the grocery store. Prices have risen about 20-80% over the last three years so product makers try to give you less for around the same price. This shrinkflation is even worse for nuclear power plants. It used to be $2 billion for a 1000 megawatts of nuclear power plant in ... Read more

A small modular nuclear reactor by NuScale is getting canceled because it would have produced 450 Megawatts and cost over $9 billion. The Vogtle Unit 3 and unit 4 are each 1,114 megawatt (MW) AP1000 nuclear reactors, and they will cost a combined $30 billion. The US was trying to shift to small modular nuclear ... Read more

Rotating detonation engine could be up to 25% more efficient than traditional jet engines. This could make airplanes and missile faster or with longer range. Smaller weapons could reach the same speeds and ranges as today's missiles. Rotating detonation rocket engines (RDREs) use detonation as the primary means of energy conversion, producing more useful available ... Read more

Prenuvo and other clinics are offering low-cost whole body MRI. This can be used to detect certain medical conditions at an early stage. Diagnostic MRI, while widely considered to be one of the most valuable imaging modalities, is often used quite late because it is slow and therefore expensive. Because of this slowness, screening using ... Read more

The US Department of Energy (DOE) and the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) have made a new strategic partnership to accelerate the demonstration and commercialization of fusion energy. The partnership marks the UK's first formal international fusion collaboration since the recent launch of the GBP650 million (USD799 million) Fusion Futures Programme. ... Read more

Lockheed Martin was awarded $33.7 million from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) High Power program to mature high-power nuclear electric power and propulsion technologies and spacecraft design. The JETSON effort is now in the preliminary design review stage, with the option to go to critical ... Read more

Elon Musk indicates that the FSD computers that are in all Tesla cars can be used to run AI models. This will enable Tesla car owners to share in the revenue of a Virtual Cloud Compute (VCC). VCC will be like a compute version of the Powerwall Virtual Power Plant. Through the Emergency Load Reduction ... Read more

Kratos has provided a rendering of its Thanatos stealth drone. This is there most advanced design and is better than the XQ-58A Valkyrie drone. It will like be for the US Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft program (fighter and bomber wingman drone) or other advanced drone projects. The company has about $2 billion per year ... Read more

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt confirmed reports that the self-driving robotaxi maker needs regular human intervention to help them make sense of the road, yet he is downplaying the severity. A New York Times story cited unnamed Cruise employees claimed the company's robotaxis required human help every 2.5 to five miles and had a support staff ... Read more

At minute 72 of the interview : Elon italks about the shortage of energy for AI compute in about 1 year. Elon wants the Teslabot to be able to pick up a needle and thread and then thread the needle by just looking and using its hands. He thinks this could be possible in about ... Read more

Elon Musk talked about launching every 2 days in 2024 instead of every three days now. Scott Walter and friends have looked at how VERY difficult it will be for SpaceX to achieve that launch rate. So how might they be able to do it? Here is the pace of turnarounds for 2023. The drones ... Read more