May 12, 2016 04:40 AM
(This post was last modified: May 14, 2016 05:28 AM by C C.)
We can begin an interstellar mission today – and we should
https://aeon.co/opinions/we-can-begin-an...-we-should
EXCERPT: [...] No longer are we limited by chemical rocket technology that has changed little since its invention centuries ago. With directed-energy photonic propulsion, we face no speed limits except that of light itself, and spacecraft can be radically miniaturised since their main propulsion system stays at home. [...] Inconceivable as it might seem, people alive today could some day see direct pictures of planets around nearby stars, perhaps glimpsing lands that will be colonised by later generations. There is a lot of work ahead....
To save Earth, go to Mars
https://aeon.co/essays/how-going-to-mars...-the-earth
EXCERPT: Al Gore often ends his presentations on climate change by showing a classic image of the Blue Marble – the full sunlit disk of the Earth, hanging vulnerably against the blackness of space – before adding some cautionary words: ‘Don’t let anyone tell you we can escape to Mars; we couldn’t even evacuate New Orleans. The Earth is the only planet habitable for human beings. We’re going to have to make our stand right here.’
This is a rational view of the challenge. We have to deal with famine and disease. An estimated one billion people live on less than $1.90 per day. Climate change is threatening a tenuous global economy. Why would we invest resources on colonising another planet when we need them so urgently on Earth? Such thinking extends up to the highest levels of government. Although it has announced plans to send astronauts to Mars orbit sometime in the 2030s, the Obama administration has with each annual budget request attempted to direct NASA funds away from human spaceflight and planetary science, and toward Earth observation.
But lately I’ve found myself wondering: what if our societal view of problem-solving is flat-out wrong? More specifically, what if addressing a crisis directly is not always the most effective route to success, and investing resources toward a different, seemingly unrelated challenge could lead to faster, more effective breakthroughs?
It sounds like a wild claim, but this indirect approach, known as lateral innovation, is responsible for many of the most remarkable innovations we encounter in our daily lives, generally with little awareness of where they came from. One of the most dramatic recent examples is the graphics processing unit (GPU). Fast, powerful GPUs were originally developed to meet the demand for increasingly realistic video games, especially ultraviolent first-person shooters. But machine learning, computer vision and neural networks pose very similar computational challenges, and the technology quickly migrated over. Specialised GPUs are now used for diagnostic medicine, facial recognition, self-driving cars and market forecasting. Built on innovations developed for games such as Doom and Grand Theft Auto, machine learning is powering one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world economy.
About a year ago, I joined a company called Planet Labs in San Francisco, and stumbled into a veritable nest of lateral innovation. As an ecologist, I’ve spent much of my career researching challenges such as deforestation, rising carbon emissions and the loss of biological diversity. In my search for solutions, I’ve walked the halls of academia and the US government, but at Planet Labs my work has taken me to a place I never expected to be: low Earth orbit. Through the eyes of dozens of microsatellites, each the size of toasters, I watch the world’s forests change every day. I collaborate closely with the people who build the satellites, write the control software, and convince skeptical agricultural firms to pay millions for the pixels of data they collect. All of this happens on budgets that are minuscule by NASA standards, using hardware and code that were mostly developed for other purposes.
Watching what my colleagues do, and understanding why they do it, has convinced me that brute force alone will not innovate the technologies that will enable human civilisation to become an effective arbiter of this planet and her resources. The solution requires tapping into the same impractical, impatient, passionate drive that spurred the video-game-fuelled GPU revolution. And although that kind of lateral innovation cannot be instituted forcibly, it can be recognised and fostered.
In short, Gore got it exactly wrong. To save the Earth, we have to go to Mars....
https://aeon.co/opinions/we-can-begin-an...-we-should
EXCERPT: [...] No longer are we limited by chemical rocket technology that has changed little since its invention centuries ago. With directed-energy photonic propulsion, we face no speed limits except that of light itself, and spacecraft can be radically miniaturised since their main propulsion system stays at home. [...] Inconceivable as it might seem, people alive today could some day see direct pictures of planets around nearby stars, perhaps glimpsing lands that will be colonised by later generations. There is a lot of work ahead....
To save Earth, go to Mars
https://aeon.co/essays/how-going-to-mars...-the-earth
EXCERPT: Al Gore often ends his presentations on climate change by showing a classic image of the Blue Marble – the full sunlit disk of the Earth, hanging vulnerably against the blackness of space – before adding some cautionary words: ‘Don’t let anyone tell you we can escape to Mars; we couldn’t even evacuate New Orleans. The Earth is the only planet habitable for human beings. We’re going to have to make our stand right here.’
This is a rational view of the challenge. We have to deal with famine and disease. An estimated one billion people live on less than $1.90 per day. Climate change is threatening a tenuous global economy. Why would we invest resources on colonising another planet when we need them so urgently on Earth? Such thinking extends up to the highest levels of government. Although it has announced plans to send astronauts to Mars orbit sometime in the 2030s, the Obama administration has with each annual budget request attempted to direct NASA funds away from human spaceflight and planetary science, and toward Earth observation.
But lately I’ve found myself wondering: what if our societal view of problem-solving is flat-out wrong? More specifically, what if addressing a crisis directly is not always the most effective route to success, and investing resources toward a different, seemingly unrelated challenge could lead to faster, more effective breakthroughs?
It sounds like a wild claim, but this indirect approach, known as lateral innovation, is responsible for many of the most remarkable innovations we encounter in our daily lives, generally with little awareness of where they came from. One of the most dramatic recent examples is the graphics processing unit (GPU). Fast, powerful GPUs were originally developed to meet the demand for increasingly realistic video games, especially ultraviolent first-person shooters. But machine learning, computer vision and neural networks pose very similar computational challenges, and the technology quickly migrated over. Specialised GPUs are now used for diagnostic medicine, facial recognition, self-driving cars and market forecasting. Built on innovations developed for games such as Doom and Grand Theft Auto, machine learning is powering one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world economy.
About a year ago, I joined a company called Planet Labs in San Francisco, and stumbled into a veritable nest of lateral innovation. As an ecologist, I’ve spent much of my career researching challenges such as deforestation, rising carbon emissions and the loss of biological diversity. In my search for solutions, I’ve walked the halls of academia and the US government, but at Planet Labs my work has taken me to a place I never expected to be: low Earth orbit. Through the eyes of dozens of microsatellites, each the size of toasters, I watch the world’s forests change every day. I collaborate closely with the people who build the satellites, write the control software, and convince skeptical agricultural firms to pay millions for the pixels of data they collect. All of this happens on budgets that are minuscule by NASA standards, using hardware and code that were mostly developed for other purposes.
Watching what my colleagues do, and understanding why they do it, has convinced me that brute force alone will not innovate the technologies that will enable human civilisation to become an effective arbiter of this planet and her resources. The solution requires tapping into the same impractical, impatient, passionate drive that spurred the video-game-fuelled GPU revolution. And although that kind of lateral innovation cannot be instituted forcibly, it can be recognised and fostered.
In short, Gore got it exactly wrong. To save the Earth, we have to go to Mars....
