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NASA is building robots to 3D-print infrastructure on Mars
From 2024, the Mars One mission plans to launch a crew of four settlers every two years to establish a permanent human colony on Mars. NASA engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis from the University of Southern California in the US has spent the past two years inventing robots that can be sent to Mars ahead of the colonists to set up all the basic infrastructure they'll need when they get there.
According to Sydney Brownstone at FastCompany, Khoshnevis has been working with a new method of construction called ‘contour crafting’, which allows robots to 3D-print huge concrete objects such as buildings. Last year he predicted that his 3D-printed concrete technology would be available by 2015, and was able to print the concrete shell of a 600-square-metre house in less than 20 hours.
The technology is ready, says Khoshnevis, but adapting it to Mars has posed some unusual problems, like where would the concrete come from?
"One of Khoshnevis’s breakthroughs came by way of sulphur concrete,” says Brownstone at FastCompany. "There’s about four times as much sulphur in Martian soil as there is on Earth, and Khoshnevis discovered that it could help bind jagged bits of space rock together. But even once he began using sulphur concrete, extruding the material still proved difficult. Compared to Earth beach sand, Martian and lunar sand is pretty abrasive.”
“Beach sand [particles] have been rubbed against each other by the waves for billions of years, so it’s not as sharp as particles of lunar material,” Khoshnevis told Brownstone. "For billions of years these dust particles have not moved; there is no wind. So it’s like 10 times harder to move them than sand on Earth.”
Despite the challenges posed by Martian concrete, there are some positives to setting up a robotic construction site on the Red Planet. The gravity on Mars is 62% lower than it is on Earth, which means things are lighter and will need to withstand much less pressure. This means anything built here would last a whole lot longer than if they were built on Earth.
Here's NASA's simulation of what the robots might look like on Mars:
Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140207-25803.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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