I’m the “Man Who Wants to Mine the Moon”
I had a great interview with foxnews.com earlier this week. Here’s an excerpt and link to the full article.
Credit: Moon Express
From the Moon to Energy and Education?
Jain — a billionaire who made his fortunes first with Microsoft, then with dotcom-era yellow page site InfoSpace Inc. — believes in the power of creative thinking. In addition to MoonEx, he’s the CEO of information-services company Intelius and co-chair of education and global development at the X Prize Foundation.
”To have the biggest impact, you have to solve the problem as an entrepreneur,” Jain told FoxNews.com, summarizing a speech he gave Monday in New York at Pivotcon 2011, a conference on the rise of social media.
“We want to solve the problem of energy on Earth by using the moon as the eighth continent,” he told FoxNews.com.
And its not as hard as you might think. The highest expense lies in getting to the moon, he explained. Going from the surface of the moon into orbit is easy. And a solar sail can drive a capsule containing mined resources back to earth orbit and down to the surface.
“It’s rocket science but it’s well understood rocket science,” he said.
First “Printed Aircraft” Flown
Engineers from University of Southhampton made and flew the first “printed aircraft ever.” The plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV). The entire structure of the plane was printed including the control surfaces, access, hatches, and even the wings. During the build of it, no fasteners were used and all the equipment was “snapped in” so it could be put together within minutes. The plane is electric, has a top speed of almost 100 mph, and has a 2 meter wing-span. The plane was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine. These amchines create plastics or metals, by building the object layer by layer. Read more here
Engineers Attempt to Give Robots the Ability to Love
You can’t buy love, but can you engineer it? A project at the National University of Singapore with all kinds of somewhat unsettling implications is trying to create the means for human-robot love by giving robots all the emotional and biological tools that human have. Read more here
Researchers Can Predict Future Actions From Brain Activity
Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers at The University of Western Ontario from The Centre for Brain and Mind can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed. Read more here
Genome Wowser is the iPad App That Lets You Browse the Human Genome
You still can’t use Flash on it, but at least the iPad now allows you to swipe, pinch, and scroll through the entire human genome. A new app from the Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMi) at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia lets users travel through the entire human genome–all 3 billion base pairs of it.
Scientists Boast First Successful Use of Genome Editing in Living Animals by Curing Hemophilia in Mice
A targeted snip through DNA’s double helix cantake out a mutated gene that causes hemophilia, curing mice of the disease, a new study found. It’s the first study to use this form of genome editing in a living animal, and it could have implications for genetic treatment of other diseases, notably AIDS.
Scientists say the research is a major step forward for gene therapy, which has long promised to cure disease by editing genetic sequences. Read more here