~nextbigfuture-com | Bookmarks (388)

Dr Charles Buhler has been the lead NASA scientist on Electrostatics. An experiment last month was sent to the moon and showed success against a decades long problem of lunar dust. Buhler believes his world class knowldge of electrostatics has found a way to create a propellantless drive. The lab tests on earth have shown ... Read more

Tesla Cybertruck Long Range now available for $69,990 before the $7500 tax credit. It has 362 miles of range. – $62,490 (incl. Federal Tax Credit) – 362 mi of range (est.) w/ Soft Tonneau – 6′ x 4′ bed – 7,500 lbs towing capacity This about the price of the F-150 Lightning. The Ford Lightning ... Read more

Astronomers discovered FFPs (free floating planets- rogue planets) more than 20 years ago, using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope in Hawaii. Since then, observers have spotted hundreds rogue astronomical bodies. In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope discovered dozens of seemingly physics-breaking rogue objects floating through space in pairs. James Webb Space Telescope near-infrared survey ... Read more

Anduril Industries achieved a significant milestone last month with two successful live-fire tests of its 21-inch hypersonic rocket motor for the U.S. Navy’s STANDARD Missile Program. This rapid and iterative design phase, which was completed in close collaboration with the Navy, positions Anduril to quickly transition to full scale production of this vital capability. The ... Read more

The Hypersonic Air Launched Offensive (HALO) missile in development for the U.S. Navy’s high priority Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 2 (OASuW Inc 2) program has been cancelled. This was announced on the Naval News by Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford, Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons. The U.S. Navy wanted HALO to be ... Read more

Elon Musk has said that a new xAI Grok 3.5 will be released soonish which I interpret as being a May release. I am extrapolating the chatbot arena and other metrics assuming that the increase in training compute gives a similar scaled improvement from Grok 2 to Grok 3 (15X more training compute). xAI has ... Read more

Elon announced that xAI Grok 3.5 will be released soonish. This likely means May. We know that at the February Grok 3 announcement xAI had already installed another 100,000 H100/H200s to go with the 100,000 H100s that trained Grok 3. I think xaI started training in February for Grok 3.5. They will likely use about ... Read more

Isaacman wants NASA to returns humans to the Moon as quickly as possible. This includes flying Artemis II around the Moon in 2026, and then landing the Artemis III mission later this decade. Isaacman has been a private astronaut who was with a crew that has gotten further from Earth than anyone except the Apollo ... Read more

There is a 90 day pause on tariffs for all countries except China. All other countries still have the 10% tariff which is likely permanent. Tesla is up 20%, Nasdaq is up 10%, Dow and S&P500 are up 6-8%. This was foreshadowed on Monday when markets were up 10% on the rumor that there would ... Read more

New Tesla Model Ys and Cybertrucks are now autonomously driving themselves about 2 miles from the end of the production line at Giga Texas to their designated lanes near the outbound lot with no humans in the cars. Tesla Fremont is making 1,603 cars per day and Austin 925 cars per day yield a total ... Read more

The dire wolf is no longer extinct. Meet the world’s first de-extinct animals. The science of de-extinction is to analyze the frozen DNA of extinct animals and then genetically engineer a similar animal to have the desired traits of the extinct version. They took Grey wolves and changed DNA so the child wolves would have ... Read more

SpaceX previously used Super Heavy Booster 14 and was able to catch it. They have now rolled Booster 14 back out to the launch tower and plan to reuse it for Starship flight 9. SpaceX has switched to a new generation of engine bell covers. There is orange and orange and white tape on the ... Read more

SpaceX’s Starship upper stages, capable of one-hour cargo flights between continents, could revolutionize global logistics by drastically reducing delivery times compared to the 12-24 hours typical of traditional air cargo. However, to fully capitalize on this speed, bureaucratic and procedural delays—such as customs clearance, security checks, and documentation—must be minimized. By implementing expedited pre-approval processes ... Read more

What is a full stack AI company? AI is making huge changes but we have not reached an intelligence explosion. We have not transformed all transportation, labor or computer coding. A company that can fully unlock the AI future would have control all aspects of what is needed for better and better AI. This would ... Read more

Tesla Optimus has shown improved walking and improved actuators. The actuators will continue to be improved. The walking was mastered using reinforcement learning in a digital simulation. This training approach is used by all of the leading humanoid bot companies. The reports and claims from the humanoid robot companies is that training of skills is ... Read more

SpaceX Starship could have significantly faster delivery options (12, 24 and 48 hours) compared to the current express standard of under five days. How much demand could there be for this service? People could be willing to pay 2X to 4X the price for ultrafast package delivery. Current express delivery is about 17% of total ... Read more

The Boeing Starliner faced a critical situation during its approach to the International Space Station (ISS), where multiple thruster failures brought it within minutes o losing full control and potentially endangering the crew. Ars Technica got the details from Astronaut Wilmore on the danger 9 months ago during the docking. The Starliner was likely 30-60 ... Read more

The decentralized artificial intelligence startup Sentient says it’s throwing down the gauntlet to industry giants like OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and The decentralized artificial intelligence startup Sentient says it’s throwing down the gauntlet to industry giants like OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and Anthropic with the imminent launch of Open Deep Search. Known as ODS, it’s a very ... Read more

Tesla’s unboxed process will transform car manufacturing and the cybercab will be revolunize transportation. They are so disruptive, they will need to have two major steps over two years. The first two steps will be done this year and next year. Tesla will no longer paint new cars starting with the new models introduced in ... Read more

One of the more main achievements with Intel’s 18A is the utilization of BSPDN (Backside Power Delivery), which is said to move the power delivery process to the backside of the wafer. Intel’s 18A “high-density” versions are now said to report a macro bit density of 38.1 Mb/mm², and overall, things are looking prett...

SpaceX and the Air Force Research Lab will start testing and developing the capability to fly anywhere in the world in under an hour. SpaceX’s Starship is poised to revolutionize global logistics and travel with breakthrough ultra-fast point-to-point flights on Earth. The US Air Force Research Lab and Space Force have awarded SpaceX contracts totaling ... Read more

The fully reusable SpaceX Starship includes huge combinations of new technologies. The innovations combine into a massive increase in capability. We will be able to launch 1000 times as much payload to orbit. A similar multi-year effort is being achieved with the Tesla Cybercab and its breakthrough manufacturing processes. A Starship uses the Mechazilla launch ... Read more