These Scientific Advances Could Improve Lives — Or Destroy Them

Source: New York Post, Larry Getlen
Photo: NY Post composite

Going up? Many of us have dreamed about blasting into space sometime in our lives. But if some scientists have their way, it won’t be in a spaceship or a rocket, but in an elevator.

According to Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, authors of the new book “Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything” (Penguin Press), out Tuesday, it’s possible that astronauts could arrive in a vessel traveling along a 62,000-mile cable made out of carbon nanotube.

In space, the cable would be attached to an asteroid or another geode that revolves along with the planet; while on Earth, it would be fixed to a “sea platform” that can move to avoid bad weather and space junk. As they ascend, travelers could stop off at space stations serving as “fuel and maintenance depots, as well as launch points for satellites and spacecraft.”

The space elevator is just one of many new scientific developments that could change everything — from how we live in our homes to whether we, as a species, live exclusively on Earth.

Many promise tremendous advantages for mankind but also frightening possible dangers.
Here are some of the incredible changes the book’s authors say we can look forward to — or dread — in the years to come.

Robotic construction
The building of homes, even in today’s advanced age, has taken a long time to automate because it combines so many skill sets. Even a single component, such as bricklaying, is complex, requiring many different types of movements.

But robotics are finally being worked into these processes. “One company called Construction Robotics has created a ‘semi-automated mason,’” write the authors. “Coupled with a human helper (to clean up the mortar), he can lay bricks at three times the speed of a human working alone.” A group at the UK’s Bartlett School of Graduate Studies is working on a droid that will eventually lay bricks without human help using a large robot arm.

Meanwhile, houses could soon be erected using machine or 3-D printing. A new technology called contour crafting uses a machine and a special type of concrete that can lay down the foundation, walls and electrical and plumbing fixtures for a two-story, 2,000-square-foot house in just 24 hours — at 60 percent of the traditional cost.

In China, a company called WinSun said it is already 3-D printing homes, creating “ten houses in 24 hours, for a cost of about $5,000 per house.” But while such an advance would lead to cheaper housing, the construction industry could take a serious hit. Even if human helpers are still required, jobs that were once highly skilled and well salaried could become unskilled and poorly paid. “The real danger of the ‘rise of the robots’ is not that they’ll take all our jobs, but that they’ll cause continually increasing inequality,” says economics expert Dr. Noah Smith in the book.

Augmented reality
If you’ve played Pokemon GO, then you’ve seen augmented reality (AR) — placing virtual elements over real ones. But this technology can do way more than just catch Pikachu.

A company called DAQRI is working on an AR helmet that can make complicated tasks a breeze. A group of builders who used the helmet to assemble an aircraft wing tip in more than 50 steps reduced “their job completion time by 30 percent and error rates by 94 percent on their first try,” according to a study quoted in the book. “On the second try, they got their error rate down to zero.”

In wartime, AR could potentially help soldiers and peacekeepers distinguish villagers from combatants. Surgeons reconstructing a person’s body after a disfiguring accident could project the patient’s former appearance onto her body, allowing for more accurate results. Landscape architects could use the technology to show final designs to clients overlaid on their property, and city workers or first responders to a tragedy could use it to “get X-ray vision of city infrastructure.”

For all its potential uses, AR has a huge potential downside. The tech works by taking 3-D scans of everything around it — and it remembers. The widespread use of AR could become a privacy nightmare. Also, it could be subject to hacking — creating bizarre and dangerous scenarios.

“What if you’re wearing your AR glasses while driving,” the authors write, “and some hacker sends a virtual pterodactyl careening toward your car, causing you to reflexively swerve?”

Space travel
There are two ways to drastically reduce the cost of space travel: Make rockets recoverable or figure out how to use far less fuel.

Elon Musk is assisting on the first point. While his company, SpaceX, has been working on reusable rockets for several years, the inventor just announced a new rocket he calls the B.F.R. or the “Big F—ing Rocket.”

According to The New York Times, the B.F.R. would be 30 feet in diameter and “more powerful than the Saturn V rocket that took NASA astronauts to the moon.” The ship could conceivably carry around 100 passengers to Mars, then return to Earth for its next mission. Musk said the rocket could make its first cargo mission in 2022, then carry human passengers two years later. Making a launch vehicle recoverable could “potentially eliminate 90 percent of the cost of space launch,” the authors write, adding that Musk’s advancements might be “the biggest development in space travel in a generation.”

Meanwhile, two different government projects — one American, the other a joint project between the US and Canada — tried to develop a space cannon, which would shoot a rocket into space with one enormous BOOM! and completely eliminate fuel cost. While the rate of acceleration would kill any human travelers, it could send cargo to space colonies. (Currently, more easily achievable ideas are on the front burner.)

Easier space travel sounds great, but it could also raise questions about who controls it and how that control is used. During the Cold War, fears grew over nations sending a “rod from God” into space. “Basically, you get a heavy hunk of metal and throw it from space at an enemy,” the authors write. “A simple metal rod could do as much damage as a nuclear bomb. If space becomes more generally populated, we could be putting ourselves in a dangerous position.”

Programmable matter
Ever read something on your phone and wish you had a larger screen? Scientists are working on technology that could make our physical objects shrink, grow or bend to our whims in an instant. You could increase that screen size with just a word, make a wall in your house retractable and maybe even give yourself an extra jeans size after one dessert too many.

Along these lines, professor Skylar Tibbits at MIT is working on pipes that “can pinch or expand in response to the amount of water flowing through them.” Dr. Daniela Rus at MIT created an origami robot — a flat material that can fold in many different ways in response to computer prompts. As small as a fingertip, it can fold itself into something resembling an electronic bug. She hopes robots like this can ultimately be placed in a pill that will deliver medicine to a specific area of the body or even perform a medical procedure.

Another project, called Kilobot, consists of 1,024 tiny robots that “look like watch batteries with three stiff little legs, and they move around by wobbling. You can assign them a task, and they can work out exactly how to complete it.” Project leaders programmed the Kilobot to assemble into the shape of a wrench. It took six hours, and while the wrench shape wasn’t operational, it showed that scientists are heading in the right direction.

The most fascinating possibility the authors highlight is a literal bucket of goo that can create any object. In this case, the “goo” is nanobots.

“Imagine you’ve got a bucket full of goo,” the authors write. “You strap it to your belt as you go to fix your sink. When you need an Allen wrench that’s 7/32 of an inch, you just tell the bucket. A wrench rises up out of the material, and you use it to make adjustments. When you realize you need pliers, pliers appear.”

The authors call this bucket of goo “the most ambitious form of programmable matter and probably the most distant.” And if you consider the potentially deadly consequences, that’s a good thing.

“If you have programmable matter in your house, hacking might be a bit of a concern,” the authors write. “Maybe you wake up one day and the dish has run away with the spoon . . . and now you’re wondering exactly where the knife went.”

http://nypost.com/2017/10/14/these-scientific-advances-could-improve-lives-or-destroy-them