🔮 Roundups #43
Discover more from The Glimpse
🔮 Roundups #43
🪐⛽️ Galactic gas stations, 🧪 genetic design, 🦐💥 shrimp-inspired nuclear fusion, infrastructure for 🔗💬 web3 communities, and an interview with 🛰️ Varda Space
Every Friday I round up 5 technological advancements that give us a Glimpse into the future 🔮 After all, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
This week on The Glimpse
If you missed it on Tuesday, I wrote about the rise of humanoid robots - our very own C-3POs. Why are humanoid robots so important to our economic future? What are the challenges to overcome? And which companies are best positioned to bring this future to life? I think you’ll enjoy this deep dive into the world of humanoid robots!
Humanoid Robots | The Quasi-Infinite Economy
🔮 Glimpse #1 — The Galactic Gas Station
“It could look something like this: in partnership with the US government, a private company — let’s call it Regolift MegaCorp — sends fuel-cell powered, tele-operated robots to the lunar poles to mine their icy regolith. There, they separate the ice from the soil, and electrolyze the ice to make hydrogen and oxygen, which when condensed into liquid form (LOX, LH2 respectively), can be used as propellent. It’s potentially most valuable (useful) in orbit, so Regolift MegaCorp launches the propellant off the moon to an orbital outpost where clients can access it.”
—White Pill, referencing this paper by Philip T. Metzger
🔮 Glimpse #2 — A history of genetic design
Our ability to design biological systems is improving rapidly. In 40 years, the field went from modeling three genes in phage to building synthetic gene circuits with 76,000 bases of DNA. A brief history of genetic design, told in 7 experiments.
🔮 Glimpse #3 — How a pistol shrimp inspired developments in nuclear fusion
“The shrimp has one outsized claw that it can snap really fast to make a shockwave strong enough to stun its prey. This also produces bubbles,” Hawker explains. “As the shockwave passes over the bubbles, it makes them collapse, which releases energy in the form of bright flashes of light. A big part of my PhD was studying that process of cavity collapse with fusion in mind. I wondered whether it could be applied to generate power. The answer was ‘probably not’, but it did help us to set up simulations to see how the principle could be adapted for use in fusion.”
—Dr. Nicholas Hawker, Raconteur
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🔮 Glimpse #4 — Infrastructure for Web3 Communities
“The future of decentralised collaboration and governance is here. The Jur Society dApp Beta is now live and we are whitelisting the very first founders.”
🔮 Glimpse #5 — Interview with Varda Space founders
Varda is building the flywheel of space manufacturing. Listen in!
Hope that gave you a little inspiration and wonder as you head into the weekend :)
—Jacob ✌️
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