Back in the 1960 there was a race to land people on the Moon between the US and the Soviet Union. This was very much a part of the cold war, with each country interested in showing off its technical prowess to the world with a technology closely related to that needed to deliver nuclear warheads. All the while everyone insisted this was all peaceful exploration for all mankind. But as a result we advanced our space technology with a lot of downstream effects. And of course there are many legitimate commercial uses of space, which has kept the space industries going for decades.

Now we are poised for a return to the Moon, with essentially the same tensions playing out. As of now there are five nations in the Moon club – those who have achieved soft landings on the Moon (crashing something into the Moon apparently doesn’t count) – the US, the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan. We have yet to have a private company land something on the Moon, but we are getting close (this year Intuitive Machines launched a mission but did not make it to the lunar surface because of a fuel leak). What are the geopolitical, economic, commercial, technological, scientific and exploration factors pushing us back to the Moon? It’s complicated, but here are some factors that are commonly discussed by experts.

First, we are clearly in the midst of a new geopolitical space race, this time mainly between the US and China. And again, prestige and influence on the international stage is at stake. Strategists also talk of controlling cislunar space – essentially the space between the Earth and the Moon. This means having an infrastructure of rockets, capsules, and stations that can get to the Moon and back, either crewed or uncrewed. This includes positioning monitoring satellites to keep track of what’s happening in cislunar space, including near Earth orbit.

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Industry is responsible for 23% of carbon emissions, close to the amount of electricity production (25%) and transportation (28%). We talk a lot about transportation and energy, but industrial carbon is a harder nut to crack. Also, the 23% is direct carbon release from industrial processes, if you include the energy used by industry the contribution is 30%. Industry and manufacturing is increasing at a steady rate worldwide, and by some estimates we could be seeing a 90% increase in CO2 release from industry by 2050. This could wipe out any gains we make in the energy and transportation sectors.

The two largest contributors to direct industrial carbon release are steel and cement. Cement production is responsible for about 8% of CO2 emissions, about a third of industrial release. Another third is from steel. So these two industries are a ripe target for reducing carbon emissions. To put the carbon footprint into perspective, if cement production were a country, it would be the third largest emitter after the USA and China.

The world produces 4.4 billion tons of concrete each year (cement is a main ingredient in concrete). This is excepted to increase to 5.5 billion tons by 2050. Some type of cement has been used by people for about 12,000 years, with the first concrete dating to about 800 BC. The Romans perfected concrete, and built an empire out of it. Today cement and concrete are essential building materials for our modern world.

About half of the CO2 from cement production comes from the following chemical reaction – CaCO3 + heat → CaO + CO2. CaCO3 is limestone, and the CaO is what is known as clinker, a main ingredient in cement. The other half of CO2 emissions comes from the energy necessary to heat the limestone to drive the reaction. Some of that CO2 is then absorbed back by concrete, but that takes decades. There are lots of proposals for how to reduce the carbon footprint of cement and concrete, or even eliminate it. The main barrier is that any such process needs to be done on a massive scale – able to make 4.4 billion tons per year and growing.

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It is increasingly obvious that battery technology is one of the keys to transitioning our civilization away from burning fossil fuels. Batteries facilitate the use of cheap, green, but intermittent energy sources. They also allow for the electrification of technology sectors that are currently dominated by fossil fuel, such as transportation. There is nothing easy, however, about making fundamental changes to core technologies on an accelerated timescale. The task is pushing the limits of our resources and ingenuity, and there is predictable pushback from those most affected by the change.

But there is some potentially good news – the relevant technologies are improving rapidly. In my opinion, the battery electric vehicle (BEV) is simply a superior technology to the internal combustion engine (ICE). Beyond the romantic cultural attachment to hum and roar of an engine, BEVs are more efficient, cheaper to operate, and virtually maintenance free. The fact that they are also better for the environment is almost incidental. The main challenge right now is infrastructure – installing all those charging stations.

It’s also pretty clear that the technology curve for BEVs is much steeper than for ICE vehicles (an already mature technology), so the technology advantage is likely to only increase. Core to BEV technology is the “B” part – batteries. The important stats of any BEV are largely driven by the battery – cost, range, recharge time, life expectancy. Right now the lithium-ion battery is the cutting edge technology, but there are lots of potential improvements on the horizon. There are essentially two types of possible battery technology advances – incremental advances in Li-Ion batteries themselves, or entirely new battery technology (like flow batteries). There are lots of potential new battery types being developed, but it seems that Li-Ion batteries likely have 1-2 decades of dominance left. There is also a lot of headroom in terms of perfecting the Li-Ion battery.

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In the awesome show, Black Mirror, one episode features a young woman who lost her husband. In her grief she turns to a company that promises to give her at least a partial experience of her husband. They sift through every picture, video, comment, and other online trace of the person and construct from that a virtual avatar. At first the avatar just texts with the wife, which then progresses to phone calls, and then finally to a full robotic avatar indistinguishable from the lost husband. Except – it is not really indistinguishable. It’s a compliant AI that isn’t quite human.

So-called grief tech is possible now and is getting more popular. This is another instance of technology creating a new ethical situation that we have to confront, and it is too early to really tell what the impact will be. There are companies, mostly in Asia, that will create the virtual avatar of a dead loved-one for you (one company charges $50,000 for the service). They don’t just scrub the internet, they will make hours of high definition video and interviews to create the raw material to train the AI. The result is a high fidelity visual avatar speaking in the voice of the deceased with a chat-bot mimicking their style with access to lots of information about their life.

The important question is not, how good is it. It’s already very good, and clearly it will get incrementally better. It will also likely get much cheaper. Eventually it will be an app on your phone. The question is – is all this a net positive and healthy experience or is it mostly creepy and unhealthy? I suspect the answer will likely be yes – both. It will depend on the individual and the situation, and even for the individual there are likely to be positive and negative aspects. Either way – we are about to find out.

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If all goes well, Boeing’s Starliner capsule will launch on Monday May 6th with two crew members aboard, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will be spending a week aboard the ISS. This is the last (hopefully) test of the new capsule, and if successful it will become officially in service. This will give NASA two commercial capsules, including the SpaceX Dragon capsule, on which it can purchase seats for its astronauts.

If successful this will fulfill NASAs Commercial Crew Program (CCP) – it decided, rather than building its own next generation space capsule, it would contract with commercial companies. After an initial evaluation phase it chose two companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to get the contracts. Initially the two projects were neck and neck, but to its credit SpaceX was able to complete development first, with its Dragon 2 capsule going into service in 2020. Boeing now hopes to be the second commercial company to have a NASA approved crewed capsule.

There is obviously a lot riding on this final test flight on Monday, given the recent difficulties that Boeing has had. Its hard-earned reputation for aerospace excellence has been significantly tarnished by recent failures of its jetliners which seem to have been due to systemic problems with quality control within Boeing, and a corporate culture that no longer seems dedicated to quality and safety first. Let’s hope the space capsule division does not have the same issues.

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Digital life is getting more dangerous.  Literally every day I have to fend off attempts at scamming me in one way or another. I get texts trying to lure me into responding. I get e-mails hoping I will click a malicious link on a reflex. I get phone calls from people warning me that I am being scammed, when in fact they are just trying to scam me. I even get snail mail trying to con me into sending in sensitive information. My social media feeds are also full of fake news and ads. Some of this is just the evolution of online scamming, but there has also been an uptick due artificial intelligence (AI). It’s now easier for scammers to create lots of fake content, and flood our digital space with traps and lures.

Here is just one example – have you heard yet of “cloaking”. Facebook uses algorithms to filter out fake or malicious ads on their site. But scammers have quickly figured out how to bypass the filters. They use AI generated fake news articles with links to more information. Those links go to malicious pages that will try to get money from you. Facebook will block ads that direct to malicious webpages. So the scammers “cloak” their behavior by linking to a benign page first. Once they get approval from Facebook, they then add a redirect from the benign page to their malicious scamming page.

Facebook says it will remove such pages when they are brought to their attention, but this is not adequate. The scammers only need to be up and running for a short time. Once Facebook catches up to them, they just create new fake ads directing to their malicious page. AI makes it easy to create lots of fake content for this purpose. Facebook also says that now that they are aware of this phenomenon they will try to account for it, to filter out such cloaking pages from the start. That is much better, but again we are just in a digital arms race. The scammers will find some other workaround and exploit that as long as they can.

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Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These robot videos always look impressive, but at the very least we know that we are seeing the best take. We don’t know how many times the robot failed to get the one great video. There are also concerns about companies presenting what the full working prototype might look like, rather than what it actually currently does. The state of CGI is such that it’s possible to fake robot videos that are indistinguishable to the viewer from real ones.

So it’s understandable that these robot reveal videos are always looked at with a bit of skepticism. But it does seem that pushback does have an effect, and there is pressure on robotics companies to be more transparent. The video of the new Atlas robot does seem to be real, at least. Also, these are products for the real world. At some point the latest version of Atlas will be operating on factory floors, and if it didn’t work Boston Dynamics would not be sustainable as a company.

What we are now seeing, not just with Atlas but also Tesla’s Optimus Gen 2, and others, is conversion to all electric robots. This makes them smaller, lighter, and quieter than the previous hydraulic versions. They are also not tethered to cables as previous versions.

My first question was – what is the battery life? Boston Dynamics says they are “targeting” a four hour battery life for the commercial version of the Atlas. I love that corporate speak. I could not find a more direct answer in the time I had to research this piece. But four hours seems reasonable – the prior version from 2015 had about a 90 minute battery life depending on use. Apparently the new Atlas can swap out its own battery.

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Generative AI applications seem to be on the steep part of the development curve – not only is the technology getting better, but people are finding more and more uses for it. It’s a new powerful tool with broad applicability, and so there are countless startups and researchers exploring its potential. The last time, I think, a new technology had this type of explosion was the smartphone and the rapid introduction of millions of apps.

Generative AI applications have been created to generate text, pictures, video, songs, and imitate specific voices. I have been using most of these apps extensively, and they are continually improving. Now we can add another application to the list – generating virtual environments. This is not a public use app, but was developed by engineers for a specific purpose – to train robots.

The application is called holodeck, after the Star Trek holodeck. You can use natural language to direct the application to build a specific type of virtual 3D space, such as “build me a three bedroom single floor apartment” or “build me a music studio”. The application uses generative AI technology to then build the space, with walls, floor, and ceiling, and then pull from a database of objects to fill the space with appropriate things. It also has a set of rules for where things go, so it doesn’t put a couch on the ceiling.

The purpose of the app is to be able to generate lots of realistic and complex environments in which to train robot navigation AI. Such robotic AIs need to be trained on virtual spaces so they can learn how to navigate out there is the real world. Like any AI training, the more data the better. This means the trainers need millions of virtual environments, and they just don’t exist. In an initial test, Holodeck was compared to an earlier application called ProcTHOR and performed significantly better. For example, when asked to find a piano in a music studio a ProcTHOR trained robot succeeded 6% of the time while a Holodeck trained robot succeeded 30% of the time.

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Over the weekend when I was in Dallas for the eclipse, I ran into a local businessman who works in the energy sector, mainly involved in new solar projects. This is not surprising as Texas is second only to California in solar installation. I asked him if he is experiencing a backlog in connections to the grid and his reaction was immediate – a huge backlog. This aligns with official reports – there is a huge backlog and its growing.

In fact, the various electrical grids may be the primary limiting factor in transitioning to greener energy sources. As I wrote recently, energy demand is increasing, faster than previously projected. Our grid infrastructure is aging, and mainly uses 100 year old technology. There are also a number of regulatory hurdles to expanding and upgrading the grid. There is good news in this story, however. We have at our disposal the technology to virtually double the capacity of our existing grid, while reducing the risk of sparking fires and weather-induced power outages. This can be done cheaper and faster than building new power lines.

The process is called reconductoring, which just means replacing existing power lines with more advanced power lines. I have to say, I falsely assumed that all this talk about upgrading the electrical grid included replacing existing power lines and other infrastructure with more advanced technology, but it really doesn’t. It is mainly about building new grid extensions to accommodate new energy sources and demand. Every resource I have read, including this Forbes article, give the same primary reason why this is the case. Utility companies make more money from expensive expansion projects, for which they can charge their customers. Cheaper reconductoring projects make them less money.

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On a recent SGU live streaming discussion someone in the chat asked – aren’t frivolous AI applications just toys without any useful output? The question was meant to downplay recent advances in generative AI. I pointed out that the question is a bit circular – aren’t frivolous applications frivolous? But what about the non-frivolous applications?

Recent generative AI applications are a powerful tool. They leverage the power and scale of current data centers with the massive training data provided by the internet, using large language model AI tools that are able to find patterns and generate new (although highly derivative) content. Most people are likely familiar with this tech through applications like ChatGPT, which uses this AI process to generate natural-language responses to open ended “prompts”. The result is a really good chat bot, but also a useful interface for searching the web for information.

This same technology can generate output other than text. It can generate images, video, and music. The results are technically impressive (if far from perfect), but in my experience not genuinely creative. I think these are the fun applications the questioner was referring to.

But there are many serious applications of this technology in development as well. An app like ChatGPT can make an excellent expert system, searching through tons of data to produce useful information. This can have many practical applications, from generating lists of potential diagnoses for doctors to consider, to writing first-draft legal contracts. There are still kinks to be worked out, but the potential is clearly amazing.

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