>>basically a rocket that propels to hypersonic speeds, nothing new

I'm not an expert on any of this, but many US military figures have commented the Chinese craft exceeds US capabilities.

Also, it can stay in orbit in space with nuclear weapons for prolonged periods of time, before re-entering Earth at hypersonic speeds - so this isn't something that anyone has been able to do before.

Submission Statement

Stratolaunch has been around for a while. Way back in 2011, they were a contender with SpaceX to launch the earliest iterations of the Falcon rockets. While this aircraft was initially developed to launch rockets into space. Presumably, that hasn't worked out, but they see another opportunity - hypersonic research. China seems to have taken a lead in that, which must be funneling US DoD money in that direction.

I wonder will anyone ever crack the nut that is a successful horizontal space launch from aircraft? Virgin Galactic tried in recent weeks and failed. Using this approach for small payloads of 500 kg or so seems most likely to succeed. Among the many problems this approach has, is that building rockets (that are mainly fuel containers for their small payloads) that can take both horizontal and vertical stresses is hard.

Submission Statements

The potential losses of existing freshwater supplies are one of the most terrifying aspects of climate change. The River Po in Italy has severely shrunk, as the snow in the Alps that feeds it, is becoming less and less due to climate change.

If that were to happen to the rivers the Himalayas feed, in India, China & SE Asia, it would be a far worse disaster.

It's hopeful to see credible tech solutions like this. As the technology works best in the sub-tropics, it could be powered by solar or wind.

>>They do not care.

That doesn't seem a correct way to characterize the situation.

China gets almost 45% of electricity from renewables, which is double what the EU or US does.

Furthermore, not only are they building all their own solar capacity, they are building most of the rest of the world's too, and account for 80% of global production.

Looked at that way, it might be fairer to say its Europe and America that "doesn't care".

Submission Statement

Some of the facts and figures in this report are truly staggering - "In the 2022-2025 period, we expect China’s renewable power generation to increase by almost 1,000 TWh, equivalent to the total power generation of Japan today." - yet as China is growing so fast, that is only going to put a small dent in its coal use.

If there is any silver lining its that the IEA has previously said that relatively small tweaks in government policies on financial backing and planning could accelerate renewables adoption by a further 25%.

Airbus's plans for their hydrogen powered A380 jumbo jet seem more like the future of aviation.

My 2023 Predictions.

Open AI's GPT-4, and other LLM-based AI developments will seem like major advances. They will add fuel to the long-running debate about AI/Robots eventually being able to perform most human jobs.

New waves of Covid will occur, but few places will return to lockdown conditions. China may be the country with the worst problems in this regard.

In politics, around the world, the issue of a generational divide in terms of cultural outlook and access to economic opportunities becomes much more prominent.

Self-driving robo-taxis, without safety drivers, will spread to more cities around the world. Inevitably there will be some accidents, and these will be seized on by people opposed to robo-taxis.

A gene-editing breakthrough gives major hope as a cancer treatment.

The EU's role as global tech/AI regulator will grow stronger. New laws on disinformation, hate speech, transparency, and consumer protection will start to come into legal force in 2023, and we'll be hearing much more about what they deal with.

A general purpose easily trainable robot that becomes commercially available will seem a major step forward in robotics adoption.

An internal coup against Vladimir Putin seems a strong possibility, as Russia continues to fail and weaken. Ukraine attempting to split the Russian forces in two, and isolate the Kherson/Crimea region from supply lines, prior to retaking it, may its biggest military move in 2023.

Workers striking become more common across the western world, as inflation and stagnating wages continue a trend of declining living standards.

Several uncrewed moon landings by different nations publicize the topic of the US & China's plans for crewed moon bases in the 2030s.

A breakthrough in battery technology points to a future for batteries beyond the current lithium-ion model.

Global renewables deployment continues to outpace predictions. The conversation around this will feature more talk of grid upgrading and grid storage, rather than just solar and wind power generation.

>>How much cheaper is cheaper?

If they were trying to do this in 3 days like the Apollo missions, then doing it this way is a fraction of the cost. The issue is that a traditional Hohmann transfer orbit you need to use fuel to both accelerate the craft and deaccelerate it at the other end. This requires you to carry several times the payload weight in propellant.

By comparison Hakuto-R M1 needs only a tiny amount of propellant from ion thrusters, as the Sun's gravity is doing almost all the work.

Submission Statement

I expect we're going to hear a lot more about ballistic lunar transfer trajectories in years to come. They are a much cheaper way for materials to reach lunar and cislunar orbits. Their disadvantage is slowness, but three days versus three months doesn't really matter so much for uncrewed missions. Their big, big advantage is the Sun's gravity does most of the work for you in getting to the Moon. This way you don't need lots of fuel, and get a much cheaper launch from Earth. They are the preferred method for getting cargo to the Lunar Gateway space station.

Hakuto-R M1 is packing a lot into 340 kg (about the weight of 4 domestic washing machines) - including a lunar rover vehicle.

Submission Statement

Ultrasound energy transfer is already the basis of one of ultrasound's most well-known applications, ultrasound medical scanning.

We often tend to think of robots as large and humanoid, if their design wasn't burdened by the need for a power source, it's not hard to imagine useful robots on the same scale as insects, and perhaps just weighing a few grams.

Submission Statement

At the pace that the AI behind this is developing, I wonder where the next order of magnitude increase in capabilities will take us? Then what will the robot an order of magnitude more capable of it be like? It seems conceivable that robots capable of doing most unskilled work will exist by the end of the decade.

>>I wonder if it just mimics human touch and belonging.

Apparently this works at some specific wavelengths and not others.

That would suggest to me, the mechanism is some transfer of energy from the laser to specific molecules in brain cells. The article mentions this, and suggests those molecules may be in astrocytes, a type of cell that seem to have a role in supplying energy to other cells.

Submission Statement

The downside to this is that no one is sure what the mechanism is, and they also don't know how long the effect lasts. Clearly, if this is to become a useful therapy then answers will be needed there.

Low-level laser therapy is a field of medicine with some controversy. It's currently being used in many applications where some people feel there is inadequate evidence for its uses. Still, this research seems to suggest there may be future useful applications for it.

>>from Ireland to England & the Continent

Minor correction. Ireland is connected to the British Grid via Scotland & Wales, not England, and its connection to the EuroGrid will be via France.

But you're correct with your overall point. Though I'd suggest connecting the east of Europe to the western countries off-shore Atlantic wind power might be the most important thing. Maybe the most important north-south connection, might be solar in Spain to the north of Europe.

Submission Statement

Here's a link to the song.

What's interesting is that it's surprisingly good, as the AI nails using the human voice clone expressively. The song needs a suitable emotional register of heartbreak, and the AI gives it that.

I wonder what this means for the future of the music business? Will the biggest-selling artists still be able to make as much money when their voice has been endlessly cloned for thousands of cover versions? Presumably, we will have a future where every popular song has been covered by thousands, if not millions, of deep-faked voices. When will we reach a point AI deep-faked songs outnumber the human ones?

Submission Statement

Meta has had a rough few weeks with AI. Their new Galactica science summarizer got a bad reception and was shelved. However, with Cicero, it looks like they are much more successful.

This is a very interesting advance in AI as it incorporates a form of reasoning. Most of that reasoning comes from applying game theory. This is fascinating as game theory models many types of group human behavior. As ever this has black and white hat applications. I won't be surprised if the world's intelligence agencies are looking at this and wondering how to use it in psy-ops and influencing other countries.

Submission Statement

Nvidia isn't the first to do this, DreamFusion got there first, but Nvidia's AI is a significant step up in quality. Professional grade 3D modeling software, like Blender, has a steep learning curve, so this will democratize 3D content creation. Apple is rumored to have VR glasses in the works for next year. If so, there is likely to be a big increase in 3D content creation.

Submission Statement

Arming robots feels inevitable. They would allow the lives of police officers to be protected, if the robots could face armed assailants instead. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has seen drones move to the forefront of 21st armed conflict. I'm surprised quadruped robots, like Boston Dynamics Spot, haven't been used more yet. The Boston Dynamics robot is expensive, but there are several inexpensive clones of it produced in China. Though a Chinese manufacturer seems to be working on something like this.

>>45% of crops lost to pests, this robot isn’t related to that at all!

The opposite is the case.

Herbicides (that will weeds) account for 90% of pesticide use worldwide.

Submission Statement

Approximately half of global agricultural farming production is lost due to pests. This robot doesn't deal with them all, just weeds, but how long before robots can tackle insects, fungi and other diseases in crops?

Doubling global food production would be a staggering achievement. It's amazing to think the mass adoption of cheap plastic robots could contribute so much to that goal.

Submission Statement.

The European Space Agency formally committed to a feasibility study on space solar at their big annual meeting in Paris this week. ESA specifically referenced baseload electricity generation in their reasoning for supporting this idea.

Personally, I don't get it all. Research & deployment in many different types of grid storage batteries is racing ahead at the moment, and this will be space-based solar's main competitor. It seems hard to believe it will ultimately ever beat it on price.

Submission Statement

One of the ironies of the debate around AI/robots replacing human labor is that people used to think it was unskilled labor that would go first. Instead, western countries are awash with unskilled minimum wage positions that are going unfilled, and it's the skilled high paid jobs that look more under threat.

This is just another indication that Generative AI is on the cusp of rapidly eating up creative work. Digital artists and illustrators must feel especially under threat by the likes of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. There will of course be new jobs. AR/VR is around the corner and some people will make money off operating and selling services from Generative AI.

Submission Statement

The company is aiming to start full commercial services with its [Vikram 1 rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_(rocket)) in about 12 months time.

The global small-lift launch market is getting crowded with new private companies. It will be interesting to see these compete on price. India has a great track record on getting to space with relatively small budgets; it sent an orbiter to Mars for just $73 million.

Submission Statement

OpenAI has been hinting at a big leap forward for LLMs with its upcoming release of its GPT-4. We'll see. In the meantime, it's extraordinary watching some people defend Galactica. They are convinced it's the beginning of an emergent form of reasoning intelligence. Its severe limitation, as with all LLMs, is that they frequently produce utter nonsense, and have no way of telling the difference between nonsense and reality.

I'll be curious to see if GPT-4 has acquired even the rudiments of reasoning ability. I'm sure AI will acquire this ability at some point. But it seems strange to blindly believe one particular approach will make it happen, when there is no evidence of it at present.

Submission Statement

Someone is going to need to develop a search engine that only references trusted sources of information. An internet populated with useless AI generated text will be a waste of time. What is the point of searching for science information if all you can find is useless garbage like this?

AI generated content is so easy to create we will soon reach a point where it outnumbers human content. One day, perhaps not long after, it will vastly outnumber human content. All while being full of mistakes, errors and misinformation.