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Category: government – Page 203

Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas and his latest suggestion might just save us from being irrelevant as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more prominent.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on Monday that humans need to merge with machines to become a sort of cyborg.

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also launched Tesla in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

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The leading projects for developing a hypersonic spaceplane are Reaction Engines of the UK and Hypermach.

Reaction Engines Skylon

Reaction Engines of the UK is a leader in developing a hypersonic vehicle and hypersonic components. The British government finalized a £60 million to the project: this investment will provide support at a “crucial stage” to allow a full-scale prototype of the SABRE engine to be built. If all goes to plan, the first ground-based engine tests could happen in 2019, and Skylon could be performing unmanned test flights by 2025. In November 2015, BAE Systems invested £20.6 million in Reaction Engines to acquire 20 per cent of its share capital and agreed to provide industrial, technology development and project management expertise to support Reaction Engines during its development phase. It could carry 15 tonnes of cargo to a 300 km equatorial orbit on each trip, and up to 11 tonnes to the International Space Station, almost 45% more than the capacity of the European Space Agency’s ATV vehicle.

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The French Polynesian government, earlier this year, officially signed an agreement with The Seasteading Institute to cooperate on creating legal framework to allow for the development of The Floating Island Project. The legislation will give the Floating Island Project it’s own “special governing framework” creating an “innovative special economic zone”.

French Polynesia signs agreement for Floating Island Project

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Highly sophisticated robotics and ‘bio-printing’ are rapidly changing the face of modern surgery, significantly eliminating the risk of human error and in some cases even allowing doctors to perform procedures remotely, according to experts at Arab Health.

Dr Peter C.W. Kim, vice-president and associate surgeon-in-chief of the Joseph E. Roberts Jr. Centre for Surgical Care at Washington DC’s Children’s National — which has received millions of dollars in donations from the UAE’s government — noted that doctors will soon be able to 3D-print using bio-tissue, such as for an eardrum.

“What our engineers and researchers have done is not only design the plastic with it, but also graft cells onto it,” he said. “This is where we are going. You will (in the future) be able to have organs on the shelf. Instead of harvesting it, you can print it.”

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China’s National Supercomputer Centre announced that the prototype for its exascale supercomputer will be completed later this year, ahead of its initial date in 2018. The successful performance and commercialization of the computer is presumed to drastically improve existing 3D printing or additive manufacturing methods.

Over the past few years, the Chinese government and companies in the private sector have been increasingly focused on the development of supercomputers. The Tianhe supercomputer series which feature Tianhe-1 and Tianhe-2, still remains as the most powerful supercomputer series, below the Sunway TaihuLight which was released in mid-2016.

Zhang Ting, a computer engineer based in the National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin located at the National Defense Science and Technology University, revealed earlier this month that in 2020, three years after the completion of the prototype, the exascale computer will be used to its full potential, running a wide range of applications, networks and platforms.

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Republican members of Congress are now ordering DARPA to end their work on Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites. Why are they ordering them to stop? Because, according to National Space Policy guidelines, DARPA might be conducting operations that are potentially discouraging similar research in the private sector. Hmmmm :-(.

Republican congressmen orders DARPA to stop their work for in-space satellite services; DARPA refuses. — B.J. Murphy for Serious Wonder.

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WASHINGTON: Three influential House lawmakers have asked DARPA in a Jan. 25 letter to review a robotic space repair program to see if it violates the National Space Policy by competing with private-sector efforts and to put the program on hold until the review is complete. The National Space Policy requires “that the government not build or buy systems that “preclude, discourage or compete” with commercial systems. Orbital ATK is building a system it believes competes directly with the DARPA initiative, known as Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites.

It’s an intriguing program. DARPA’s goal is to develop robotic systems that can fix damaged satellites 22,000 miles up. In the words of the program web page, it would be designed to “make house calls in space.”

But Rep. Jim Bridenstine, one of the most active lawmakers on space issues today (and possibly the next head of NASA); Rep. Barbara Comstock, chair of the House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee on research and technology; and Rep. Rob Bishop, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, signed a letter today asking Acting DARPA Director Steven Walker to review RSGS to ensure it complies with the National Space Policy’s requirement that the government not build or buy systems that “preclude, discourage or compete” with commercial systems.

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DARPA licenses embedded FPGA tech for U.S. government projects.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, just signed an agreement to work with Flex Logix, a semiconductor start-up, to develop the young company’s EFLX embedded FPGA technology for use by any company or government agency designing integrated circuits for the U.S. government.

FPGAs have been widely used in systems since the 1980s and, at the system level, provide flexibility and programmability different from what processors can do. Many years ago, ARM took the idea of a processor chip and offered a processor architecture, which could be embedded in chips. Although it took time, embedded processors are now nearly ubiquitous. Flex Logix is doing the same for embedded FPGAs.

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