Monday, September 24, 2012

Moon Lift

LiftPort, the space elevator company, has been resurrected with a Kickstarter that was funded over 1000%. The special materials required for an Earth elevator don't quite exist yet, so focus has been switched to the moon, where plain Kevlar will suffice. I contributed a small amount to this one; if you missed it, we are assured there will be other opportunities. We are not properly living in the Future if we don't have robots delivering our stuff down a ribbon to the surface of the moon!

Friday, September 21, 2012

New Robots

Robots have been helping in factories for some time now, but this one is different, and not just because he has a face. Baxter is a gentle robot; this means he doesn't have to be put in a cage like his predecessors. He is slow and careful enough to not hurt puny humans when they inevitably get in the way. To program him, you can take hold of his arm and show him what to do. In the future, robots will be our friends, only rarely going back in time to kill our ancestors.