Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Through various methods including iP blocking, VPN blocking, DNS spoofing, URL filtering, packet filtering, and TCP connection resets, China has erected what some call the ‘Great Firewall of China’.  China also blocks about 10,000 foreign websites including major sites used by the rest of the world such as Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, and YouTube. Although China's control of the internet is not complete and there are ways to get around it, VPNs being the most popular, the threat of punitive retaliation acts as the major control of the internet in China. 

Ostensibly, the main reason for the firewall has been to protect domestic companies providing similar websites to what Google, Facebook and other major internet players have developed for the rest of the world. The ancillary, and more chilling reason, is the amount of control and power it gives the central government. 

In acoustics, an echo chamber is a hollow enclosure wherein sound reverberates. In our information environment, an echo chamber describes a situation where beliefs are modified by information, false or otherwise, and repetition. This psychological echo chamber that China has built is the envy of some other nations leaning toward autocratic leadership. Russia has signed a pact with China for help from its internet engineers in setting up a similar system. Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cuba have also expressed interest in something similar to China’s control of the internet. 

These nations and their cultures, should they follow up with this desire, may become insular and sterile. Who knows? This insulation from the rest of the world may create islands of diverse cultures, spur innovation, and allow natural talent to flourish without the world telling it what can and cannot be done. However, this makes it much easier for these governments to manipulate the hearts and minds of their population. Even if you aren’t an evil, power-hungry, sadistic bastard of a leader, what the hell would you want with that much power unless you were hungry for power. 

This is exactly what is going on in China right now. There are the stories of a million Chinese muslims being “re-educated”  and rumors of foreigners in general getting the cold shoulder, arrested, even “disappeared” - especially if they espouse human rights or freedom of speech. Falun Gong members are being hunted down, jailed, and persecuted using the internet. 

I can write about this stuff with impunity because one, the U.S. is a free country; and two, it will not get back to Xi Jinping. All kidding aside, this is a worrying trend. A dictator or tyrant can hide behind his firewall and foment strife between segments of his society, increasing chances of civil war or war with other nations. Hopefully, other countries will back off the idea of internet firewalls simply because it represents such a large possibility of misuse. If not, it could be a serious impediment to the progress of humanity in general and to those countries in particular. 



Other articles you may enjoy:

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Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

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Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

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Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

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What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

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How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

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Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

Courtesy Kordite at flickr

The mining of asteroids will begin in earnest within the next 10 to 100 years. The asteroids chosen for retrieval and processing will almost certainly contain water because water will be one of the most valuable commodities in space, if not the most valuable. Not only does water contain hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel, humans need it for survival; and it is very efficient at stopping many types of radiation. 

If a current or future corporation is going to make a decision on which asteroid to go after, the metal content of the asteroid may not be the deciding factor. Asteroids with little or no water will be passed up for mining at least in the early phase of the industry. If our civilization remains technically and economically viable into the 22nd century, the asteroid mining industry should be hitting its stride and keeping economic growth positive for several hundred years. Even after this maturation, the industry will favor those space rocks containing water simply out of habit and tradition unless some special material is needed that can’t be found in combination with water. Another outlier would be a leap in engine technology, such as a compact fusion drive, that would mediate the reliance on water as stored rocket fuel.

Use those plastic grocery bags again. Save money. Save the world. Here’s how. 

Let’s say some future company is evaluating two different asteroids for mining. One, 1999 JM8, is a nickel, cobalt, and iron asteroid worth $45 trillion dollars. It is fairly large at 4.35 miles in diameter, but only .024 Astronomical Units away at its closest approach to Earth, approximately 2.2 million miles or about ten times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

Another asteroid, 1950 KA, is worth only $33.4 trillion dollars and is .097 AU at its closest pass to Earth, nearly four times that of 1999 JM8. It has a couple of things going for it, though. It is only 2.17 miles in diameter and has a composition of nickel, iron, cobalt, water, nitrogen, hydrogen, and ammonia. 

This company will pick 1950 KA because of the water, hands down. Once the robotic retrieval craft gets to 1950 KA, it can mine water; and, with the abundant solar energy available in space, split it into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel to move that mass back to Earth.

Courtesy NASA

After 1950 KA is parked in orbit near Earth in one of the Lagrange points L4 or L5, the real fun begins. Using many specially designed, semi-autonomous robots, the asteroid is scraped, tunneled, bored, melted, smelted, hammered, drilled and crushed to extract its treasures. In the early going of asteroid mining, however, it will not be done without humans. We will be there to direct the overall strategy and change tactics when necessary, not to mention repairs and hands-on inspections. This is only because artificial intelligence will not yet be up to the autonomous decision making required of mining asteroids. 

Plastic grocery bags prefer this as their second career. 

Human workers need a safe, even comfortable place to stay while performing these chores. Safe by logical necessity and comfortable to attract the type of person needed for this work given how long they will have to be in space. Money can only go so far as an incentive. Intelligent, athletic, engineering and scientific types only need apply, similar to astronauts in education and ability. 

Here is where the water comes in. These people will be shielded from radiation by a wall of water, actually ice. As I mentioned above, water is very efficient at shielding many types of radiation, including that from solar flares, gamma radiation, and cosmic radiation. Although NASA has been working on a lightweight polyethylene plastic called RFX1, it has some serious problems in competing with water. One, you can’t drink it. Two, it has to be hauled up the gravity well of Earth. 

Exactly how will water be used as a radiation shield? Three feet of water or ice will intercept and diffuse almost any radiation, including gamma rays and cosmic rays. Since there is plenty of water available from the asteroid, it makes sense to protect the entire facility instead of providing a vault or other safe area that people have to go to. At some point, an unexpected sleet of radiation is bound to sweep through the area. This way everyone will be protected all the time unless they are doing something outside of the habitat and not working inside the asteroid.

The geometry of the habitat will resemble a thick hockey puck. This will rotate to provide simulated gravity to the inhabitants. On the unit shown in the drawings, eight rotations per minuted will provide nearly one g at the outer wall or "lower" level. The second level will provide three quarter g, and the "upper" level one half g. The center on one side will have a docking facility. The center of the other side will sprout a boom about as long as twice the diameter of the pancake. At the end of this boom will be thrusters that can point in almost any direction. These thrusters will be powered by, you guessed it, electrolysed water in the form of hydrogen and oxygen burning to form, once again, water.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Not only is it a habitat, but it can move around as required to view different parts of the asteroid or move equipment that is not self-motile. It will pick up and drop off people at the orbital end of the Lunar Space Elevator. It will be a habitat, taxi, and tug. Some may call it the "Ice Palace", but it’s a given the majority will nickname it the "Igloo."

CLICK TO ENLARGE

This three foot barrier of water will remain frozen because space is cold. Solar energy hitting the outside envelope of the vessel may have some effect, but as that surface rotates into shadow, it will become frozen again. The inside surface of the ice barrier will be in a constant state of melting. The human habitation will necessarily give off heat. No matter how thick the insulation, it will eventually melt this inner surface. This water, through centripetal forces will be routed to the outer surface where it will be refrozen. This ice barrier is a good buffer between the 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit in the habitat and the minus 450 degrees F. of outer space and will probably vary in temperature, getting colder from the inner to outer surfaces.

The lure of infinite wealth and energy will be too strong for capital to resist. A lot of money will be spent on this endeavor. Hopefully, it will be spent wisely, and progress will be swift and beneficial not only for those companies involved but for the rest of us as well. The bottleneck is the gravity well barrier that is currently so expensive to vault. Space is kind of like Vegas; what happens there stays there. However, companies like Obayashi Corporation are working on building an elevator to space. This would drastically reduce the cost of sending stuff into orbit and bringing it back. Their plan is to have it built by 2050, waiting only for the successful mass production of carbon nanotube fibers long enough to use. Hopefully, their prediction will not become similar to the refrain of nuclear fusion developers of having a practical fusion generator within thirty years … every year. While the industry can have some success with rockets, it will grow by leaps and bounds with a working space elevator.

Other articles you may enjoy:

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

We Will Live on the Moon: the How and Why

The Zombification of Innovation?

by Glen Hendrix

We are clever. I'll grant us that. If you don't' think so, look at this coverage of technical exploits from 2012.

Yet some people complain about the pace of innovation, saying we've reached a plateau and there's not much new under the sun. They are wrong, but it's not their fault. They just can't help themselves. Don't blame lead in the water or genetically modified food or too much television. 

True, it's not a target-rich environment for innovation anymore. The days of Marconi, Edison and Tesla are gone. We know about the electromagnetic spectrum and we've seen the light on nuclear forces. We get telephony morphed into cellular communications. We're nano knowledgeable now. We can turn explosions into torque, grow babies from scratch and see the far reaches of the universe.

One could argue that now it is simply a matter of finesse. Cell phones were a done deal. It took someone like Steve Jobs to do it with such verve and panache that it transformed society. Rockets? Hahahaha! So old school. So why did it take Elon Musk to teach NASA how to get into space for less than $500 per pound.

Electric cars were the future until Ford came along. Once again, kudos to Mr. Musk for taking a mundane form of transportation that's been around over a century and turning it into Motor Trend's 2013 Car of the Year. He's just biding his time with steam cars.

We've mastered the production and distribution of electricity. We posses the miracle of antibiotics, have indoor plumbing, enjoy the magic carpets of airplanes and cars, can talk to anyone on the planet or instantly access the knowledge of the world: What is there left to do? Our productivity per person over the past 200 years has climbed from nearly zero to peak at 3% in the middle of the last century. It has now fallen to 1.33% despite now having a car that drives itself and computers that we can have conversations with. Why can't we invent something to get things going again instead of just tweaking what we've got? It's an illusion.

Kroger has agreed to give you free trash bags for life if you buy this.

The reason it seems innovation has stagnated is because the torrid pace of innovation for the last 150 years has set a standard that will never be seen again. It is simply by comparison that we think innovation has flatlined. Mankind has come from animal-fat torches to electric lights in the blink of an eye, historically speaking. We are immersed in it. We can't step outside and look back in objectively at the timeline and say, "My that WAS quick." We have been inoculated against perceiving innovation. That's why when I tell you there is a now a company that can do 3D printing of solid stainless steel, you go "meh." 

We are only being less innovative compared to a blistering pace that can never be matched again unless there occurs some sort of singularity moment. Yes, there are exciting advances being made in 3D printing, driverless vehicles, and gesture-based computing; but we are losing sight of what is really important. Despite the fact that innovation is alive and well, there is a void that has left us lacking. There are three critical technology goals that need to be addressed to get past this period of "stagnation" and provide mankind a comfortable, safe, productive future: vast amounts of cheap energy, inexpensive access to space, and lengthening the human lifespan. One of these three turns out to be yet another reason we think our collective cogency has been compromised.

ENERGY:

It's energy. Energy is the choke point, the stricture, the bottle ne...you get the idea. Except for steampunk, energy technology and its implementation has been woefully inadequate to keep up with current and future demands. Quoting from the bigthink article Bits Versus Stuff: Peter Thiel Asks Why Has Innovation Stalled "'we're no longer moving faster,' literally. And part of the reason we don't have things like supersonic commercial jet planes, he says, 'is due to the failure of energy innovation.'" He made this remark at a festival of ideas, The Nantucket Project held in October of 2012, after stating that pessimism has "started to seep into our system." Peter hasn't snapped to the "pessimism"  actually being a society-wide perceptual problem but, hopefully, people will listen to him because energy is a problem that needs to be addressed. Remember the Concorde!

Courtesy: Udvar-Hazy Center National Air & Space Museum

All of our technologies depend on energy. Transportation, data processing, manufacturing, heating and cooling; you would be hard-pressed to come up with something that doesn't use energy. Even pressing the button on that remote takes energy. Our lifestyles are a reflection of that energy availability and cost. We can look at the gas pump and see that things aren't like they used to be. Three dollar gas in the U.S. is a symptom of the beginning of, dare I say it, peak oil. Calm down. It's here. Gotta deal with it. Even with less driving and more efficient cars, we will soon max out on what can be economically extracted. This will become a serious buzzkill for the global economy. 

Convenience and low cost of fossil fuels have driven our economy up to now. They are so part and parcel that talk of cutting back or replacing them is an invitation for rabid and irrational response. This is despite the increasing awareness that they are intrinsically connected to climate change. We don't just need research here. We need the fossil fuel industry to get on board with going renewable.

The first solar cell was made in 1883. There's enough U-238 for breeder reactors to last 5 billion years. Solar energy hitting the Earth is 20,000 times what humanity currently uses. But we are still building coal plants and still don't have nuclear fusion! The largest solar energy projects in the world are being built in Saudi Arabia. What does that tell you, Exxon? We need cheap, pollution-free energy and lots of it. I hear thinking caps being drug out of cardboard boxes in the attic and dusted off…aaaahchooo. It's a good thing. I'll take some Benadryl. Another recent miracle? 1943.

SPACE: 

Yes, there may be 20,000 times the energy currently needed hitting the Earth in the form of sunshine but, believe it or not, we'll outgrow that, as well we should. Are you going to put some limit on our future growth? I thought not. It's all out there. A whole star's worth of sunshine for energy, hydrocarbons for plastic, and water for…well, it's pretty handy. Space = future.

But there is a darker reason we need to get into space. 

The first human broadcasts that  made it into space were Hitler's broadcast of the 1936 Olympics 77 years ago. We are at the center of a 144 light year diameter bubble filled with our electromagnetic babble. There are less than 500 "G" type stars, those similar to our sun, within this sphere. Chances are slim for E.T. to be on one of them. But as time goes on, that boundary expands. The reason we should be concerned about "others" is what we are capable of doing ourselves, and most of us have never thought of it.

If this had been around 15 years ago, the “paper or plastic” question would be pretty moot.  

We now have the capability, with off-the-shelf technology, to destroy a planet in another planetary system light years away with relativistic missiles. No, I am not writing this from a padded cell. Combine several NASA HiPEP ion thrusters with a TOPAZ style nuclear reactor, a computer, and a few tons of xenon (all properly armored against cosmic radiation); and you have a weapon that travels for light years and arrives at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. The Death Star would be envious of this weapon's kinetic punch. What it doesn't destroy, it buries in meters of ash. I've done the math. Hint: force = acceleration x mass; velocity = acceleration x time.

Image of Defense Department employee's id.

Image courtesy of DannoGerbil @ deviantArt.com

What does that have to do with humans in space? Well, let me ask another question. How paranoid do you think our defense department really is? Yeah, me too. Maybe I'm projecting, but it wouldn't be a stretch to think some Romulan/Borg type race might come up with this type of weapon as well. The question of whether or not we push into space permanently is like the climate change question. Maybe it is a coincidence that carbon dioxide levels started to spike with the advent of the industrial age and maybe not. If we ignore it and it was a coincidence, we continue our merry existence. If we ignore it and it wasn't a coincidence, we've made a grave error - perhaps fatal. Hopefully, you won't have to make excuses to your grandchildren about your F-650 pickup truck.

Use those plastic grocery bags again. Save money. Save the world. Here’s how. 

The human race, as we physically look now, has been around about 100,000 years. In another 100,000 years "I Love Lucy" will be galaxy-wide. The cat's out of the bag. The can of worm's has been opened. There's cat fur covered worms crawling everywhere and we cannot clean that mess up. If we are going to last another 100,000 years, I suggest we get into space. We will develop new technologies and will not have all our eggs in one basket. Am I preaching to the choir? Sheesh, I'm all out of cliches. Alien kinetic bomb sound far-fetched? Then substitute your favorite disaster: asteroid strike, super volcano, antibiotic-resistant plague, resource wars, kudzu, irradiation by cosmic rays, or settling philosophical differences with nuclear weapons.

Obviously, I'm not talking about a trip to Mars and back. I'm talking about permanent digs. That means an even cheaper means of space travel than what Elon has in mind. Something on the order of a space elevator. Not only would that make space inexpensive, it would provide a stable focus point (the counterbalance in geostationary orbit) and conduit to move power from collectors in orbit down to Earth. Mass goes up, power comes down. More how-to about living in space in a later post.

HUMAN LIFESPAN: 

Come on, admit it. If you thought you'd be around for another few hundred years, you'd pay a little more focused attention to what's happening to the environment and your 401k, wouldn't you? Not to mention take a little better care of yourself. That is exactly why research into extending human life is so important. This quarter by quarter planning has to change. Three months does not a future make. If it's not abstract, if we have a physical stake in the future, we will make sure the future is a better place. If you live to 300, who are you shortchanging if you harm the environment or waste precious resources? Uh huh.

 Paper or plastic? … If you said “paper”, read this.   

Average life expectancy in the U.S. has gone from 47 in 1900 to 78 today. Dramatic, but it is not enough. Science needs to find out why Methuselah could live 969 years and most of us now barely make it to 80. Of course it could be just a Biblical accounting error, but it is still a worthy goal. Long-term planning would become a necessity, a living art form. Profligation would be an aberration rather than a norm. People could have true multiple careers, becoming masters of many areas of expertise - Da Vincis by design rather than accident. Our descendants will ignore prescribed boundaries of erudition, cross-pollinating knowledge bases and multiplying our wisdom in ways we've never dreamed of.

They will do it after they are retired from their 9th career at 637 while jetting around the Solar System planning an "intervention" of the aliens that tried to exterminate us in the year 2432 A.D. with a relativistic kinetic missile.

Other articles you may enjoy:

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

We Will Live on the Moon: the How and Why

Replicator - Fact or Fiction?

Stargate replicator? No, NASA robot.

Spider Robot NASA JSC Tweetup Sarah Worthy - Licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike.

The “replicator” from Star Trek was mostly shown rustling up grub, but we all know they were rearranging subatomic particles to make air, water, condoms, iPads...just about anything that struck their fancy. They could probably even make a replicator. That’s where Stargate took up the baton, having replicators do just that with reckless, and evilly calculated, abandon.

Paper or plastic? There are a lot of unexpected turns and twists to the correct answer. 

What a wonderful sci-fi indulgence of the imagination, right? It is no longer imaginary. You can not only buy the Replicator, but the Replicator 2 and the Replicator 2X from MakerBot. Right now. $2800. Check out what the MakerBot 3D printer looked like in August 2011 when I first did a post on 3D printing...

...and what it looks like now.

Okay, it doesn't make filet mignon or tomato soup like on Star Trek, but it could make a cover for your iPhone. Makerbot's Replicator 2 is far from being the last word in 3D printing. Here's one that can print out a candy bar. 3D printing not only prints out the fabric but the dress or pants of your choice while it's at it. If you want something more durable just have it printed in stainless steel. It is not, however, solid stainless. Most 3D printing of metal involves sintering, a process that involves lasers applying enough heat to a powder so that molecules of the substance migrate from one particle to the next, bonding them together. It's like mass spot welding. The end product can be porous and that can be a good thing or a bad thing. It's lighter but not as strong. You can fill those interstices with another substance, enhancing the original properties, or utilize the porous structure for filtering or for enhancing catalytic reactions.

If this had been around 15 years ago, the “paper or plastic” question would be pretty moot. 

Here is where we get into that light-headed area where it feels as though we're living in a science fiction movie. That's because we are, so get used to it. You can have honest-to-goodness solid stainless steel parts printed. How about titanium? High temp alloys? Yeah, it's all here. Things are moving faster than you can imagine. You may think Stratasys or 3D Systems has a leg up in this field, and they are big and know a lot, but they can't print in solid stainless or titanium. They may have high-powered lasers that glue these powders together, but they don't do what this company does. Arcam AB, a Swedish company now owned by GE, actually welds metals together layer after layer with an electron beam. They build parts for NASA and Boeing.

So what other things can you print with in 3D?

glass

human cells

sugar

ice

turkey

gold

concrete

So, it's all been done with 3D printing. It's a maxed-out technology. Not hardly.

In the future, you'll be able to donate a few stem cells that will be cultured to whatever quantity required to print you an organ. This may happen before we figure out the complexities of curing cancer, so if any type or amount of cancer is detected on any organ, out it comes. You get a new one.
UPDATE: Bam! It's already happening. Check out this article from Scientific American that describes using human skin stem cells to print organs.

It costs $4000 to recycle ton of plastic bags worth $500 on open market. Here's why.

Whole buildings will be printed out. What looks like an ATV with an umbilical will actually be a wheeled, motorized printhead that prints concrete, wiring and plumbing as it traces the path of the walls guided by GPS and the building's 3D file. There is nothing to prevent us from building a city-block-large printer attached to stanchions in the corners. As it prints, it will climb these columns to whatever the "blueprints" call for. It will allow incredibly complex structures to be economically fabricated in short periods of time - a new golden age of architecture.
UPDATE: Here it is! At least a model. It is being proposed to use it on the Moon to print the first colony there. Why not use it here on Earth?
UPDATE: And here it is being used right here on Earth.

Sky cranes will be a thing of the past.
Image courtesy of  FreeFoto.com

One of the more spectacular future applications will be out of this world. An array of printheads will orbit the globe like a satellite, printing out future habitats for mankind. Asteroids will be lassoed and brought into Earth's orbit. Chunks of them will be melted down and fed into an orbital printer kept hot by the concentrated rays of the Sun by orbital mirrors. Space habitats will become a reality.

But the truly amazing stuff is when the concept of 3D printing is combined with femtotechnology. Everyone has heard of nanotechnology. A sheet of paper is approximately 100,000 nanometers thick, give or take a few. The great physicist Richard Feynman introduced the concept in 1959. People winked and nudged each other and then it came to pass, just like Richard said. And it happened in a few decades. A femtometer is a million times smaller than the nanometer. Printer heads as small as atoms will combine subatomic particles into things we can only dream of. It will herald the beginning of a materials technology that will make nanotechnology look like curing hides around the campfire by comparison. This will probably take place within the next few decades.

The answer to the plastic bag problem is reuse. This new device makes it easy. 

We've come full circle. I started this with a discussion of the replicator from pop sci-fi and it's real world namesake that, while nifty, leaves us pining for the replicator of our televised fantasies. I've taken us on a tour of the current state of the art and a logical, if imaginative, extrapolation of 3D printing technology. And here we sit, finally, eating our filet mignon hot from the 3D printer that rearranged subatomic particles to make it. A printer that, to all intents and purposes, gives us what any self-respecting replicator should gives us: Whatever we want.

You're comments are always welcome.

Thanks,
Glen Hendrix, author Transmat World

For other blog posts on future technologies be sure to check out the following:

The Future of Wind Energy - An ocean of energy.

3D Printing Big Bang - It's gonna be big.

The Space Mirror Hack - Inexpensive, inflatable, orbital death ray.

Asteroid to Habitat: The Transformation Begins - The death ray combines with the asteroid to...

The Space Egg - Living, and thriving, in space.

Dramatic Changes Coming to the Airline Industry - Enjoy a hot tub on your $100 trip from LA to NY

When Nothing Means Something - Antigravity, but patentable.

A Symbol Passing

There will soon come a day when one of our progeny will come across a curious symbol in the course of their explorations. It is a symbol of something that happens to each individual at least several times a day. Your dear wee one will ask about it, and you will be amazed at their ignorance until it dawns on you that it doesn’t exist anymore--something they would have no knowledge of unless you told them about it.

The light bulb will soon become a thing of the past. An invention that revolutionized our society in the same seismic manner as the computer. Such a desired and needed product, it spawned a cartel (the Phoebus cartel) to wring maximum profit from its sale. It brightened our world and made it more interesting and will soon, by law, be replaced by different, more efficient types of lighting. It was fifty years after the light bulb was invented by Thomas Alva Edison that it became a symbol for having an idea.

One of the early cartoonists, Walt Disney or Pat Sullivan (Felix the Cat), introduced the visual trope in the late 1920’s through their cartoons. It immediately became a cliche we never seem to tire of. It will soon have no relevance. What we use to light our future may look nothing like the shiny bulb with the over-sized metal threads.

It has suffered from its association with the cornball idea and idiosyncratic personality. Perhaps we need a replacement, something more relevant. The recent passing of Steve Jobs is as significant an event as the passing of Thomas Alva Edison. It brings home the torrid pace of technological change, the uncertainty of the future, and the relentless pressure of time itself; a commodity so precious Steve Jobs admonished us not to waste it. Perhaps we could borrow something from his legacy to replace the lightbulb and immortalize Steve. Somehow, an iphone over someone’s head with radial dashes around it just doesn’t seem appropriate, and I think even Steve would have agreed.

Perhaps we’ll simply keep the light bulb symbol as a comforting tie to the past, to a time when things were slower and simpler. It will always mean what it means--somebody having an idea--but perhaps we can think of it differently. Let’s think of Steve Jobs whenever we see that old, cliched light bulb over someone’s head. We’ll think to ourselves, That person is having a Steve Jobs moment. We can begin thinking about innovation differently and, perhaps in some small way, emulate the person responsible for our wonderful toys and the ease with which we manipulate technology. We will invent a wonderful future for ourselves and our children.

The Space Mirror Hack

by Glen Hendrix

Call me soft-hearted or a weeny-butt; I never fried ants with a magnifying glass when I was a kid. I did set pieces of paper on fire and burn my initials into a chunk of wood. What heady times those were. Those deeds were accomplished with a 2 ½” diameter magnifying glass at the bottom of a light-sapping 100,000-feet atmospheric well. Now imagine a magnifying glass 140 feet in diameter and sunlight that is twice as strong. That is what you have with an Orbital Adjustable Mirror.

The Orbital Adjustable Mirror is described in my science fiction novel Transmat World but is doable science. In the book the mirrors were first deployed to reflect sunlight to prevent the world from heating up due to an increase in greenhouse gasses. This has been proposed before by Lowell Wood, a senior staff scientist at Lawrence LIvermore National Laboratory. He states that reflecting 1% of sunlight striking the Earth’s surface would be enough to stabilize our climate, requiring a reflector of 600,000 square miles. The OAM is nowhere near that size but many of them were used in the book, taking advantage of the Space Elevators to get them into orbit cheaply. The OAM shown in the drawing is actually sized for the cargo bay of a Space Shuttle, a technology we know we are capable of even if it is not currently employed. It is a load that could easily be handled by Falcon Heavy to be launched this year.

Space Elevator illustration provided by Bruce Irving (FlyingSinger) under the creative commons license.
 
The OAM consists of two disc-shaped membranes approximately 8 thousandths of an inch thick. They are 140 feet in diameter and keep their shape via an inner-tube-shaped inflated tube 6 feet in diameter. One of the membranes is transparent and and the other is mirrored on the inside surface. Gas is introduced between these membranes to expand them, deforming them into spherical surfaces capable of focusing the sun’s rays on a small surface. The focal length ranges from several hundred feet to thousands of miles. Small thrusters around the outer surface of the tubular frame adjust the mirrors direction and its orbit. A small unit containing gas cylinders, computers, and solar panels attached by a flexible umbilical provides the essentials for directing and focusing the mirror. Even smaller, semi-autonomous robots roam the cavities of the framing tube and in between the membranes looking for and repairing small punctures.

Unlike the mirror proposed by Mr. Wood, the OAM does a lot more than prevent global warming. Once they have performed their climate-saving act, the mirrors can then be employed in their second job - creating space habitats. In the book the mirrors are focused on a mass of lunar regolith in orbit around the Moon. I propose that the mirrors be used to transform the asteroids captured and herded into orbit around Earth by the smart film I mention in an earlier post. If you will remember, smart film wraps the rock in a membrane that can change its albedo selectively over its surface to herd the meteor or asteroid using reflected or absorbed sunlight. The mirrors can be adjusted to focus on these captured chunks of material, melting them to extract metals or minerals. There is another reason to melt this detritus we’ve collected from the Solar System. Once they are melted, they form a spherical mass of molten material that can then be blown like pieces of glass into habitats. In future posts I will discuss further the fabrication of space habitations using the Orbital Adjustable Mirror.