NextBigFuture.com

Canada’s realtime population estimate is 39.4 million. Canada will reach 40 million in 2023. The Century Initiative is a Canadian charity that aims to increase Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100. The USA is on track to having population increase from 330 million today to 434 million in 2100. If Canada’s plan is followed ... Read more

Statistics Canada reports total population growth increased by 776,217 people in the first nine months of 2022. Between October 1, 2021 and October 1, 2022, Canada added 865,882 people – increasing the total population from 38.43 million to 39.29 million people. If the same or higher growth rate is also seen in 2023, Canada could ... Read more

Jeff Greason describes how to go from 2% of lightspeed using dynamic solar wind soaring and then using pellets propelled from the sun to go from 2-6% of lightspeed using existing near term technology. At 6% of lightspeed the particles in the interstellar medium interact with the spacecraft like beyond nuclear fusion level energy. The ... Read more

How do we extract energy from space around a spacecraft? If there are differences in the speed of the solar wind or differences in flows of particles around a spacecraft or where a spacecraft is passing then highly efficient extraction of power can enable great capabilities. On earth, we had sailing ships millennia before turbines ... Read more

There has been very little mass media coverage of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft failing while at the International Space Station. The Soyuz had a severe coolant leak. It had already delivered to Russian and an American astronaut. Imagine if this was a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the Space Station. There would be a lot ... Read more

General Fusion of Canada is developing magnetized target fusion and is one of the top five fusion energy startups in terms of overall funding. They have raised about $322 million from Jeff Bezos, the Canadian and Malaysian governments. I track over 30 nuclear fusion projects and think this one, Helion Energy and HB11 Energy are ... Read more

The biggest developments in AI were the Openao Dall-e 2 and ChatGPT. OpenAI said Dall-E 2 was generating over 2 million images a day. People are using ChatGPT to write stories and articles and then having Dall-E 2 create the pictures for the ChatGPT article or story. Space SpaceX had 61 launches in 2022 up ... Read more

SpaceX successfully launched is targeting Thursday December 29 for launch of the the ISI EROS C-3 mission to a low-earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The 56-minute launch window opens at 11:17 p.m. PT (07:17 UTC on December 30). A backup launch opportunity is available ... Read more

Having the price of diesel above $3 per gallon guarantees a $30,000 per year incentive to switch from diesel to electric for heavily used Semi and large trucks. Currently, prices at the $4.5 to $5 per gallon level provide a $60,000 per year incentive to switch from diesel to electric. There will be a shift ... Read more

Here is an analysis of the available information for the electric Semi trucks that are currently available. I could not find detailed pricing for many of the electric semi-trucks because they have variable pricing based upon the location and situation. I believe they adjust prices based upon the available incentives. There are huge $185k incentives ... Read more

There have been about 250 million cars in the US in most years from 2010 to 2022. The level has slowly increased to 280 million. The insurance site Auto Insurance EZ compiled sales and accident data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Transportation Safety Board. The site found that hybrid vehicles had ... Read more

The highest power that can be used to charge existing Tesla Model 3 and Model Y is about 300 kilowatts. Tesla will likely be able to make minor modifications to enable existig 250 kilowatt chargers to increase power to 300 kilowatts. The higher power charging revealed at the Tesla Semi delivery day will enable new ... Read more

SpaceX Falcon 9 launched 54 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. They were new Gen 2 technology but in the same Gen 1 form factor. It was SpaceX’s 60th mission of 2022. SpaceX had 31 missions in 2021, 60 in 2022 and plans over 100 in 2023. It is unclear what capabilities are in the smaller ... Read more

I was at a Q2B conference presentation by PsiQuantum on their work to develop fault-tolerant over one million qubit quantum computers. They are developing new optical and photonic components to achieve truly breakthrough capabilities. They have a staff of over 250 people and have dedicated fabs to create their systems. This seems like a viable ... Read more

The Japanese government will extend the operation of existing nuclear power reactors and replace aging facilities with new advanced ones. a roadmap for the next ten years was compiled as a “basic policy for the realisation of GX (Green Transformation). Before March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s 54 reactors provided around 30% ... Read more

In 2019, Tesla was talking about the Tesla Cybertruck being a Class 2b-3 medium duty pickup but in 2022 Tesla has said Semi technology will be used in Cybertrucks. This could boost Tesla Cybertrucks to Class 4. Gross vehicle weight ratings are the weight of the vehicle plus the cargo that can carried on the ... Read more

There are huge subsidies for electric semi trucks and several major places like California are requiring 30% of all new tractor-trailer sales by 2030 be electric trucks. I have a detailed shopping guide comparing the price and main capabilities of all class 8 electric trucks on the market in the USA. I also cover some ... Read more

A few people in the comments have been strongly requesting some anti Musk and Tesla article. Here is a summary of the problems that Musk, Tesla, Space X and Twitter have had in 2022 and problems they can have in 2023. Full disclosure, I own shares in Tesla and SpaceX. So this will be a ... Read more

Neuromorphic AI is developing spiking Neural Networks. Spiking neural networks can run different algorithms than neural networks. They have temporal properties and features. It requires less data and less energy than regular neural networks. Energy can drop 100 to 1000 times. Spiking neural networks thrives where it responds to real-world inputs in real time settings. ... Read more

Elon Musk was at the All-in-Podcast. The highlights: Elon says Twitter’s cost structure has been improved by 3 or 4 times. This would seem to mean that the annual burn rate has gone from $3.5 billion per year to less than $1 billion per year. He previously had said on a Twitter space that Twitter ... Read more

Tesla has two Semi models. One has 500 miles of range and the other has 300 miles of range. Elon tweeted that they have energy efficiency of 1.7 kWh per mile. The 500 mile range actually had about 540 miles of range so the battery pack is likely 900 kWh. The 300 mile range version ... Read more

Tesla is targeting 50,000 Semi produced and sold in 2024. They will have maybe 100 in the last month of 2022 and about 10,000 to 20,000 in 2023. The overall US market is 4 million Semi trucks with about 550,000 new sales expected in the next two years. Tesla making 80,000 sales would be 2% ... Read more

Elon-haters and doubters look at his challenges in isolation. They say Twitter will fail because it will not get enough new advertisers and will continue to lose money. They ignore the fact that Elon, like Obi Wan Kenobi, has the high ground. Elon does not have to fight on an even playing field. He does ... Read more

SpaceX launched AST Space Mobile Blue Walker 3 satellite. AST Space Mobile is working with many communication partners like Vodaphone to deploy this technology. NOTE: I realize that Lynk did the first proof of concept. In 2022, Lynk received the first-ever license from the FCC to provide the world’s first commercial satellite direct-to-mobile-phone service, enabling ... Read more

There was a Quantum Computing Innovation Panel at the Q2B conference a couple of weeks ago. The Q2B conference had over 800 attendees and 140+ speakers. The Panelists were: Celia Mertzbacker – Quantum economic development consortium (setup by NIST) QEDC Jake Taylor – Chief science officer – Riverlane. Error correction quantum computing, Cambridge UK High ... Read more

Elon stands by his prediction that long term, Tesla $TSLA will be the most valuable company in the world. I’m actually fairly confident that will be the case.” – @elonmusk Elon declared he would not sell any more Tesla stock in 2023 and likely not until 2025. Elon expects 2023 could be as bad as ... Read more

Tesla revealed the Tesla Semi. There has been a lot of debate about how much the Tesla Semi Tractor (the part that pulls the trailer and cargo) weighs. I calculate that the Tesla Semi tractor 500 mile range weighs about 26,000 lbs versus a typical diesel big rig at 18,000 lbs. A commenter claims they ... Read more

FreightWaves claims to be the most trusted provider of global supply chain market intelligence. They provide data on Semi truck load capacity. Big rigs are limited by federal regulation to a maximum loaded weight of 80,000 pounds including cargo. The type and weight of the truck when empty changes how much can be carried. Generally ... Read more

Bloomberg journalist, David Fickling, said the Tesla Semi would fail in 2017 but in 2022 David Fickling admits that the Tesla Semi will succeed. David Fickling has covered energy and commodities for Bloomberg News, Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Here are the key points from David Fickling: * The Volvo Semi has 3 ... Read more

Sandy Munro is selling Sandy Wants You Stickers for $15 each to offset the $210k purchase price of a Tesla Semi and the $1-2 million in work to perform a teardown and analysis of the Tesla Semi. Munro and Associates is a 34 year old company formed in 1988. Kona Equity estimates that Munro has ... Read more

I had twitter space. I discussed Tesla share price crash and debate my theories on Master Plan 3 where the Tesla will dominate Semi and pickup trucks and use that to massively scale battery storage. Here is the recording. Recording of twitter space https://t.co/AqJiTo8080 — nextbigfuture (@nextbigfuture) December 21, 2022

The Dec 16, 2022 SpaceX launch of O3b mPOWER internet satellites was the 200th launch of SpaceX Falcon rockets. SpaceX has had a record 59 launches in 2022 and still has two more launches scheduled for Dec 28, 2022. SpaceX has bookings and plans to launch over 100 times in 2023. There have been 191 ... Read more

Being a small business owner is difficult. Many believe money, resources, and knowledge will be their biggest obstacle, but usually it’s simply that we do not have enough time. The number one way to become more productive and free up more time is through automation. With that in mind, below are 5 of the top ... Read more

Reaction Engines in the UK have been developing a space plane for two decades and they made progress on the core technology. The Foreign Comparative Testing campaign was a success. Reaction Engine’s joint U.S. and UK team achieved over 10 megawatts of transferred thermal energy using the same style of precooler tested under the HTX ... Read more

Decarbonizing energy and other industries globally using hydrogen will require investment of almost $15 trillion between now and 2050 according to European Transitions Commission. More than $2 trillion of investment would be required in equipment and infrastructure to sustain the accelerating global momentum towards establishing hydrogen as a competitive element of a net-zero carbon emissions ... Read more

The Global Large and Semi truck market is 4 million trucks per year. From 2016 to 2020, China’s heavy truck sales surged from 728,000 units to 1,617,000 units, hitting new records for the consecutive four years. In 2021, a combination of factors such as sluggish freight market and demand overdraft led to an annualized 14.1% ... Read more

There have been various controversies over the length and weight of the concrete barriers carried by the Tesla Semi for its 500-mile demonstration. There are various certain dimensions. The standard height of a shipping container on a regular trailer is 13.5 feet. The Tesla Semi passes a regular Semi truck with a shipping container. The ... Read more

There are many common materials in batteries like iron, those materials are sourced locally from where the batteries are made. Most of the world’s batteries are made in China. Therefore, most of the materials would be sourced in China. China also has quite a bit of lithium which is one of the primary more scarce ... Read more

SpaceX had 1 million Starlink dishes manufactured in September, 2022 but has just announced 1 million active Starlink customers about 2.5 months later. The primary drivers of SpaceX revenue is the rate that they can produce Starlink dishes and then sell the dishes and services to customers. They are at 150k per month now in ... Read more

As of November 22 at 23:59 UTC, Binance users collectively held 575742.4228 BTC — that’s around $9.5 billion at today’s exchange rate. The Binance proof of reserves site is still showing that BTC figure despite reports of billions of dollars in withdrawals from Binance. This dashboard is quickly becoming the most popular on @nansen_ai Recommend ... Read more

Many commenters who have issues with the Tesla Semi complain that it is not suitable for Long Haul trucking. How big a market is short haul trucking? What are the problems and issues to address long haul trucking. The following are currently Tesla Semi problems: * current 500 mile range is less than the 800+ ... Read more

Elon Musk is stepping down as CEO of Twitter. He is running a poll on Twitter for this topic and it is about 57% in favor of stepping down. Elon Musk will still own Twitter and retain ultimate control of the company. However, he will get some head of operations much like he has Gwynn ... Read more

PepsiCo is deploying 36 electric Semi trucks from Tesla, with 15 in Modesto and 21 in Sacramento, so far and will deploy 100 Semi Trucks in 2023. PepsiCo is purchasing the big trucks “outright” and is upgrading its plants, including installing four 750-kilowatt Tesla charging stalls at both its Modesto and Sacramento locations, PepsiCo Vice ... Read more

I had previously said that China’s purchasing power parity GDP was likely 30% higher than official numbers. However, purchasing power parity strength does not mean the country would or should do better with a stronger currency. The country has to import 10 million barrels per day in oil. The previous article notes the exchange rate ... Read more

I include youtube videos with various feedback and reviews of the Tesla Semi from Truck drivers (direct and indirect). The first review is that Tesla has over 500 orders for Semi Trucks. The US has 4 million Semis and there are about 270,000 sales each year in the US. There are 4 million global large ... Read more

There has been great concern for Tesla shareholders that there are problems with Tesla’s future growth. There has also been a large drop in share price from the peak share value early this year. The whole stock market is down. Technology and growth stocks have been sold off more than other stocks. In a global ... Read more

I had a talk on a Tesla Twitter Space with a few hundred people including battery expert Jordan of the Limiting Factor. Jordan agreed my conclusion that the Tesla Semi is a stealth way to sell many megapacks. It could be even a three Semi trucks to one Megapack ratio. Jordan spoke with people who ... Read more

This animation shows a close up of the projectile/target interaction inside the reaction vessel for First Light Fusion. They electromagnetically launch a projectile to create inertial fusion. They do not use a laser. the target implodes faster than the projectile. They were getting velocity multipliers by 10X back in 2019. They think the onward path ... Read more

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