And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love...
-- William Blake
In December, 2013 the human rights lawyer and activist Razan Zaitouneh and three others were taken from their offices at the Violations Documentation Center in Douma, north of Damascus. Although their fates aren't certain, it's likely they were imprisoned and later killed. Over eleven years later and
as many
as 620,000 Syrians dead, there is hope that Syria's new government will care for its citizens. Bashar al-Assad is finally gone, a man who loved
power more than life.
It's comforting to think that the deaths of Zaitouneh and her colleagues were not in vain. But was the naive onviolent resistance
that began, what the West termed the Arab Spring, worth it? Mrs. Zaitouneh must have understood that her opposition to the Syrian regime could end her life. She had been hiding and was documenting human rights violations when she was abducted.
But not everyone expected the sadistic crackdown on dissent. Mass murder, torture, hangings, gas attacks, starvation, and the intervention by Russia and Iranian militia are al-Assad's legacy.
In the early days of protests against their rule of India, the British killed thousands protesting in 1919. This is far fewer compared
to the Syrian civil war but it's how colonialists decided to punish their rebellious foreign subjects, and how many countries react to protests by their own citizens today. Therefore, to eventually bring about an enlightened government through nonviolent resistance, many people may have to die.
How many people have to die? If Russia succeeds in conquering Ukraine, Russia is probably willing to kill all Ukrainians. Putin wants Ukraine, not Ukrainians. The missiles and drones directed at civilian targets say what Putin wants. Within Russia, real resistance would requre spontaneous and sustained nonviolent protests across the country. Millions would have to die or be imprisoned before the country no longer functioned and the totalitarian government fell. A million Russians alone could die before the surveillance cameras were overthrown.
In the United States, surveillance cameras will be even more popular because of their role fighting crime. Within the past year, camera footage shown to the public led to the arrest of two assassins. In the future, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) will watch a camera's live feed and alert authorities if it notices something suspicious.
Do we need another application of AI? Historically, assassinations have had bad consequences: Julius Caesar, the end of the Roman Republic,
Abraham Lincoln, reconstruction followed by Jim Crow, Archduke Ferdinand,
the spark that ignited World War I, John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam war and assassination of his brother, Martin Luther King, hero of nonviolence and civil rights, John Lennon, I wonder what he'd say if he was alive today, and Yitzhak Rabin, peace between Israel and a Palestinian state replaced by war and terrorism.
There was the assassination of the Nazi Governor Reinhard Heydrich in May, 1942 by two Czech agents. Heydrich was an architect of the Holocaust and organizer of Kristallnacht.
The Nazis retaliated by destroying a Czech village, killing all the men and sending most of the women and children to concentration camps in Germany.
Nazi brutality is not what we are experiencing today. We need better words that more accurately describe our own time. My impression is that there is an aspiration on the right for a state
that believes freedom is buying and selling with no government regulation, a gun buyer automatically joins a militia, families should have children
and go to church on Sunday or synagogue on Saturday, the tragedy of the commons is a hoax,
education, medical insurance, and charities are private, discouraging words should seldom be heard, and there is only one legitimate political party
This amounts to a Libertarian dictatorship, an oxymoron and Bizarro World vision of China.
This could be nonsense or an over-simplification. To know the truth we must ask questions that will draw out the truth behind the rhetoric. We could have asked someone who practiced free speech by saying extreme things, yet would have a civil debate with anyone. We lost that someone. It was a tragedy of the commons, that we were unable to share the public communication space of podcasts, debate, television, youtube videos, and social media. The "we" that could share this space is purely aspirational.
Donatella Della Ratta Syria: The virtue of civil disobedience Aljazeera, April 6, 2012
"Civil disobedience is the only way to mobilise people in big cities that are deemed to be regime strongholds in Syria."
Lydia Denworth
Conservative and Liberal brains might have some real differences Scientific American, edited by Gary Stix, October 26, 2020
"The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala, which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is larger in conservatives."
Our need to communicate, eat and drink, clothe ourselves, and move about, and our desire for comfort and convenience,
has transformed the world with manufacturing, tools, and invention. Consequently, the natural world has shrunk.
Supply chains cover the earth transporting food and raw materials, land is cleared and leveled, used goods are sent to poorer countries
to be dumped, and more energy and materials must be extracted from the earth and refined.
Forests are cut down, oceans and rivers are polluted with toxic waste, the planet warms, and wild animals go extinct.
New ways to automate and conserve human energy has created a metaphysical hierarchy of tools, goods, and services, where tools are goods and services, and vice versa. This is our modern civilization, because civilization is technology. Technology evolves and life is changed radically from a year, decade, and century ago. Primitive sharpened stones were made by hand by an ancestor of home sapiens.
A few million years later, thousands of copies of cars, computers, ball bearings, cell phones, and many other things are made every day.
Machine Learning, Quantum Computing, Robot, and Spaceflight technologies have advanced to a stage where extracting minerals from relatively
nearby objects in our solar system, asteroids, moons, and Mars, is feasible within a few decades. Extraterrestrial
mining in theory could move at least one harmful, but crucial for twenty-first century civilization, activity off-world, reducing the rampant world-wide extraction and distribution of minerals.
The Apple iPhone, for example,
is composed of about seventy elements on the periodic table. Obtaining these raw materials today requires a supply chain that spans forty-three countries on six continents. Reducing the size and scope of this chain could help save the environment from its predictable collapse.
Rare earth elements (REEs) in the iPhone and electric car batteries have useful magnetic and conductive properties. They are mined mostly in China, but opening new mines is in progress in North America and elsewhere. While the market waits years for these mines to become productive prices rise. Certain critical REEs, like Neodymium, are currently prohibitively expensive to mine. Others, like Indium, are dependent on mining other metals. But there is evidence that critical and endangered metals are plentiful in outer space.
Ranking
Impact per kg
primary metals
Impact global production
primary metals
1
Palladium
Iron
2
Rhodium
Chromium
3
Platinum
Aluminium
4
Gold
Nickel
5
Mercury
Copper
6
Uranium
Palladium
7
Silver
Gold
8
Indium
Zinc
9
Gallium
Uranium
10
Nickel
Silicon
"Ranking of metals according to their impact per kg (left) and to their contribution to total environmental impact (right). Source: adapted from UNEP (2010). Diverse types of environmental impact are considered. For fair assessment when comparing the environmental performance of different raw materials, it should be taken into account that very different quantities of alternative materials may meet the same function."
Source: Table 5.1: Priority list of metals based on
environmental impacts
There are obvious hurdles to overcome before reaching the minerals in outer space, and extracting and returning them to Earth becomes a reality.
It is a daunting project, a huge and highly risky investment
that promises trillions of dollars in return. A mining infrastructure must be built in space at a scale that can deliver minerals to Earth in large quantities and at a reasonable cost. The infrastructure must itself be built primarily from materials found in outer space.
The first step is a survey of the size, composition, and location of candidate asteroids and moons, beginning with near-Earth asteroids and our Moon.
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) can pass inside Mar's orbit and are at a maximum distance of 1.3 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, or 1.3 X 93 = ~121 million miles. There are three types of NEOs. The Amors are the farthest away and don't cross Earth's path. The Apollo and Aten asteroids both cross Earth's path, with the Aten asteroids the closest on average. The composition of these AAAOs varies widely and identifying the best candidates has been unreliable, but has been getting better.
Spectroscopic analyses of NEOs will narrow down the list of candidates. The next step is to visit a candidate with a small spacecraft.
Lockheed Martin has its Curio spacecraft and NASA a Small Spacecraft Technology Plan. The craft should be resusable, not too expensive to launch, and capable of traveling to asteroids and returning to a station near Earth for repairs.
And there must be enough energy and computing power onboard for conducting complex tasks.
Price of launching one kilogram of payload mass to LEO as part of a dedicated launch (FY21$/kg denotes estimates using dollar values in fiscal year 2021). LEO is the region between 100 and 2,000 km above mean sea level.
Source: authors’ calculations (12).
Asteroid mining has many moving and stationary parts. How everything will work together is speculation and nost of the parts are either under development or
in the lab.
For now, let's imagine a spacecraft powered by a nuclear reactor landing in a small crater in the shadow of the sun, after stopping the asteroid's rotation.
The craft has crew of three or four robots, a hybrid quantum-classical digital computer, and quantum sensors.
The onboard computer is encased in titanium to shield it from cosmic and solar radiation, protected from vibration, and cooled
about 4° C degrees colder than outer space, -273.14 to -273.15° C.
Ideally, the onboard computer wouldn't be necessary. Each robot would have its own quantum computer brain enclosed within a titanium skull. Their computing power would combine to make decisions collectively and run their own simulations when an unexpected problem is encountered.
But I don't know if the quantum computer will be small enough or how much energy it will require. Miniaturization of its components is inevitable.
The story of the vacuum cleaner is one example of a technology that became smaller to be more convenient. But quantum computing has major issues that must first be resolved.
The robots have minimal human guidance in outer space. It takes minutes for a radio signal to reach a near-earth asteroid from earth, how many minutes depending on the relative orbital positions of the earth and asteroid. If something unexpected occurs in the middle of a operation, like a solar flare, there won't be enough time for humans to intervene. The robots and onboard computer decide what to do on their own.
A collective Large Behavior Model (LBM) tailored for industrial mining guides decision making. Both the onboard computer and the robots have radios for classical communication
and laser optical terminals capable of receiving and transmitting single photons. Each emitted photon is one of a quantum entangled pair created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Transmission and reception of entangled photons between the quantum computer and each robot exchanges a quantum key. This is quantum key distribution (QKD) entangling the computer and robots in a secure quantum communication network. The robots wear space suits to protect moving parts from abrasive dust. The robot's optical terminal aligns with the onboard computer's terminal when it finishes a task or there is a problem.
The onboard computer issues a command to deploy quantum LIDAR sensors to map the uneven terrain. The purpose of the mapping is to prepare the robots for
their collaborative work and refine the steps they will perform, and to locate ice. NVIDIA has what it calls a digital twin that creates a virtual simulation of the entire environment. The computer builds a its own simulation dynamically from the quantum LIDAR data.
The robots already had
reinforcement and supervised training to help them learn to adapt to various terrains, including training in a crater on the Moon.
Quantum magnetometer and gravimeter sensors are deployed and operated by the robots to measure minute variations in magnetism and gravity on the surface of the asteroid. The computer analyzes the data from the sensors to determine whether within the interior there are enough critical metals that will return
a orofit back on Earth.
If there is enough water but not critical metals, the water is gathered to make rocket fuel and the craft takes off for the next asteroid.
If enough critical metals are found within the asteroid, preparations are made to begin mining. A responsible, cost-effective way to extract the metals without gravity to assist is a hard problem. Smaller asteroids are mostly rubble on the outside which is relatively easy to remove by optical mining.
The stabilized small asteroid is enclosed in
a gigantic inflatable bag. A lens and mirror system directs concentrated sunlight to vaporize the ice and outer silicate material. What remains is the inner metallic core and water vapor. The collected water vapor and inner metallic core are returned to Earth. Optical mining of asteroids about the size of a football field or smaller doesn't need robots or a super-sophisticated computer. It must be sophisticated enough to
carry out its mining operation without human intervention.
Let's continue hand waving for larger asteroids. Surface ice is heated and the vapor is collected within an enclosed area. The asteroid is then
broken up into manageable pieces. Optical mining is employed to focus concentrated light on fault lines.
The extracted metal ore is put into a gigantic inflatable bag. A small rocket attached to the bag contains the fuel made from collected water vapor.
The bag is launched towards a refinement station circling the moon.
The non-metallic pieces and glassy surface dust could be disposed by putting into a second bag. This bag could be launched to fall into the sun or towards the Earth or Mars to merge with other bags of debris and become another moon. Or the bag could be left where it is, its last position marked on a map to share with prospectors. Or the dust grains and debris is left alone, where the asteroid used to be. Someday we might find intelligent life on a planet orbiting a remote star by the unusual amount of dust and debris enveloping the star.
Satellites orbiting the earth was described in fiction back in 1869. In 1945, science fiction author Arthur C. Clark proposed geostationary satellites for communication. In 1957, twelve years later, the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched into orbit. In 2011, after launching satellites into orbit for over fifty years, over 20,000 objects orbiting the Earth were being tracked. The number of small bits of debris,
ranging in size from a few millimeters to a few meters, orbiting at an altitude from about 435 miles/700 km to 800 miles/1,300 km, is probably
in the millions.
Something to think about before we begin to seriously attempt to extract minerals in outer space.
Dust Devil photographed by the Mars Curiosity Rover
Humans should not mine asteroids or banish themselves to an inhospitable lonely dead planet.
Humans are too fragile and won't survive. The health of our brains, eys, heart, bones and muscles depend on Earth's gravity. We depend on Earth's
magnetic field to shield us from solar and cosmic ray radiation, and on Earth's atmosphere to breath and its temperatures that don't instantly
freeze us to death. Thinking robots are the projection of human consciousness into outer space that may someday keep humanity alive.
The Planetary Resources Company, formed originally in 2009 as Akryd Astronautics, planned to mine asteroids with the help of robots. They began by building a
series of low-cost satellite telescopes which would conduct a survey of NEOs. After some failures and a little sucess, they ran of funding, were
bought by another company, and their work was abandoned.
Deep Space Industries (DSI), at one time a Planetary Resources competitor, was deveoping low-cost spacecraft to sell to private companies and NASA. These craft would be primarily used for asteroid prospecting. DSI was bought by Bradford Space but as of 2021 at least one of its projects, Comet electrothermal propulsion, has continued in Luxembourg.
Planetary Resources and DSI failed because of how difficult it is to build a low-cost extraterrestrial mining business. The industry needs long-term support that is able to look past initial failures. This may mean some form of government sponsorship.
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone."
-- President John F. Kennedy
Éléonore Lèbre, Martin Stringer, Kamila Svobodova, John R Owen, Deanna Kemp, Claire Côte, Andrea Arratia-Solar, Rick K Valenta, The social and environmental complexities of extracting energy transition metals Nature Communications. September 24. 2020;11(1):4823. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18661-9
"Our findings show that 84% of platinum resources and 70% of cobalt resources are located in high-risk contexts. Reflecting heightened demand, major metals like iron and copper are set to disturb more land."
Chemical Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network, Endangered Elements American Chemical Society
Helium
Atmospheric recovery of helium is nearly impossible.
Price shocks are frequent.
Indium
The world's supply of indium is dependent on zinc mining. Indium recovery from post-consumer LCD scrap is cost prohibitive.
Neodymium
Recovery is expensive and underdeveloped. REEs are lost during electronic waste recycling. Demand is growing. Geopolitical concerns.
The International Resource Panel Global Resources Outlook 2024 United Nations environment programme
"The world is in the midst of a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste. The global economy is consuming ever more natural resources, while the world is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. The scientific community has never before been more aligned or more resolute on the need for urgent global transformation towards the sustainable use of resources."
Hertwich, E., van der Voet, E., Suh, S., Tukker, A., Huijbregts M., Kazmierczyk, P., Lenzen, M., McNeely, J. and Moriguchi, Y., Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production UNEP (2010) "Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials, A Report of the Working Group on the Environmental Impacts of Products and Materials to the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management."
Chhoeun Prem, Justin Ciferno, Cody Cooper, iPhone Commodity Chain
The Making of the iPhone April 27, 2015 by Justin Ciferno
The Ohio State University, April 27, 2015
"Less than 1% of rare minerals are recycled; therefore, the rare earth minerals used in iPhones are thrown away after the phone’s life has expired."
John Walker, Solar System Live Fourmilab, February and March, 1995
"Welcome to Solar System Live, the interactive Orrery of the Web. You can view the entire Solar System, or just the inner planets (through the orbit of Mars)."
Renaud Merle, Valentin R. Troll, Mikael Höök, Magdalena Kuchler, Paul K. Byrne, George Donoso, Extra-terrestrial resources: A potential solution for securing the supply of rare metals for the coming decades? GeologyToday, Wiley Online Library, First published: 25 December 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1111/gto.12454
"The forthcoming energy transition driven by the need to reduce CO2 emissions requires large amounts of critical elements to construct renewable energy devices such as car batteries, wind turbines and solar panels. For many elements such as Li, Co, REEs and Ti, the production sources are located in countries with poor social and environmental standards, prone to political destabilization such as military conflicts, or vulnerable to strained relationships with consumer countries [...]"
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robots in Outer Space
Mackenzie Ferguson, AI Tools Researcher & Implementation Consultant, Humans vs. Robots: The Ultimate Showdown in Space Exploration Opentools.ai, Last updated: January 1, 2025
"Despite the rising capabilities of robotics, challenges in deploying AI in space remain, primarily due to technical and logistical constraints like processing power and energy requirements. Nonetheless, the continuous improvement in AI technology holds promise for expanding its applications, enabling more sophisticated autonomous decision-making and even supporting human teams in space missions."
John Sanford, New center harnesses AI to advance autonomous exploration of outer space Stanford Engineering, Stanford University, June 18, 2024
"Researchers at the Center for AEroSpace Autonomy Research, or CAESAR, say that AI could, among other things, optimize spacecraft navigation, enhance the performance of planetary rovers, and keep tabs on the space junk orbiting Earth."
IBM Quantum Learning, Quantum computing in practice IBM Quantum Platform
"This course focuses on today's quantum computers and how to use them to their full potential. It covers realistic potential use cases for quantum computing as well as best practices for running and experimenting with quantum processors having 100 or more qubits."
Katherine Wright, edited by Mark Fischetti,
What’s a Qubit? 3 Ways Scientists Build Quantum Computers Scientific American, "originally published with the title “What's a Qubit?” in SA Special Editions Vol. 34 No. 2s (June 2025), p. 102"
"A complete quantum computing system could be as large as a two-car garage when one factors in all the paraphernalia required for smooth operation. But the entire processing unit, made of qubits, would barely cover the tip of your finger."
Charlie Wood, Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing Quanta Magazine, February 22, 2023
"The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now
two independent experiments have shown that it works."
Javier Alejandro de la Osa Fernandez, Entangled Photon Sources For Quantum Communications Alter Technology, December 14, 2022
"Alter Technology is the prime contractor of a consortium for developing a compact, robust, and reliable Quantum Photonic Transceiver (QPT) capable of generating and detecting secure encrypted keys for its use in space communications under the frame of the ARTES program."
Marin Ivezic, Quantum LiDAR vs. Quantum Radar POSTQUANTUM, October 18, 2023
"And in the realm of communications, while not exactly LiDAR, the same quantum LiDAR hardware might double as a quantum communications device (since entangled photons can be used for ultra-secure communication when not used for sensing). This points toward hybrid systems in the future that do both sensing and communication with quantum states of light."
Aayushi Jain, Quantum Computing and Its Applications in Robotics Analytics Insight, August 19, 2024
"Many problems in robotics are reduced to the solving of formidable optimization problems, such as pathfinding, scheduling, and resource allocation. Examples include determining the most effective path for an autonomous robot to move in a changing environment and scheduling specific actions with other robots. Generally, quantum computing solves these types of problems much better than classical computing because quantum algorithms explore numerous solutions simultaneously."
Farbod Khoshnoud, Ibrahim I. Esat, Clarence W. de Silva, and Marco B. Quadrelli, Quantum Network of Cooperative Unmanned Autonomous Systems Unmanned Systems, Vol. 07, No. 02, pp. 137-145 (2019),
"This paper investigates collaborative robotic tasks of unmanned systems in a network where the agents are entangled. For instance, a leader robot sends two identical photons (e.g. with vertical polarization) to two follower robots/autonomous vehicles to communicate information about various tasks such as swarm, formation, trajectory tracking, path following and collaborative tasks. The potential advantages of quantum cooperation of robotic agents is the speed of the process, the ability to achieve security with immunity against cyberattacks, and fault tolerance, through entanglement. If a Quantum Network is implemented in a robotic application, it would present an effective solution; for example, for a group of unmanned systems working securely together."
Matt O'Dowd, host, Quantum Energy Teleportation is REAL! PBS Space Time, May 1, 2025
"The vacuum of space is a chaotic sea of quantum fluctuations. Some have said that this vacuum energy can be harvested to build our future starship engines, or manipulated to build warp drives. It can't. But it is technically possible to move real energy through the quantum vacuum without it passing through intervening space. Quantum energy teleportation may be as close as we get to transporter beams. But how close is that?"
Matt Swayne, What is Quantum Robotics? Researchers Report The Convergence of Quantum Computing And AI Could Lead to Qubots Quantum Insider, May 9, 2025
"Quantum robotics uses quantum computing principles — such as superposition, entanglement, and quantum algorithms — to tackle challenges that traditional robots face. These include processing vast sensory data, meeting real-time response needs and enabling cognitive and emotional functions that mimic human intelligence. Unlike classical systems, quantum robots — or “qubots” — leverage the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics to expand the scope and capability of robotics."
Beer, K., Bondarenko, D., Farrelly, T. et al., Training deep quantum neural networks nature communications 11, Article number: 808 (2020), Published February 10, 2020
Farbod Khoshnoud. Lucas Lamata, Clarence W. de Silva, Marco B. Quadrelli,
Quantum Teleportation for Control of Dynamical Systems
and Autonomy Instructions for Preparing LREC 2006 Proceedings
"A review of Quantum Multibody Dynamics, Controls,Robotics and Autonomy ([14]-[17]) is given. In this review, quantum entanglement (Section 2.1) and
quantum cryptography (Section 2.2) are used for hybrid classical-quantum control of classical multi-agent
autonomous systems. In Section 2.3, the concept of Quantum Teleportation in conjunction with application to dynamical systems for autonomy is introduced."
Humanoid Robots
Mike Kalil, Humanoid Robots in Space: Past, Present and Future of AI Robotics in Space Missions Kalil 4.0, September 27, 2024
"Humanoid robots are revolutionizing space exploration by performing tasks too dangerous or repetitive for astronauts. Join us as we explore the history and advancements of humanoid robots in space. From NASA's Robonaut to ISRO's Vyomitra, learn how these robots are shaping the future of space missions on the Moon, Mars, and beyond."
Boston Dynamics Just Dropped a NEW ATLAS That Actually Thinks AI Revolution, May 30, 2025
"Boston Dynamics just upgraded its Atlas robot with a powerful new perception system that allows it to think, adapt, and work in real time. Hugging Face revealed two new open-source humanoid robots, while China’s RobotEra stunned the world with STAR1, a robot that can cook dumplings with chopsticks. From Apple’s secret AI robot project to Saudi Arabia’s multilingual religious guide Manara and Elon Musk’s plan to send robots to Mars, this week marked a major leap forward in AI robotics."
Jay Ramey,
Auto Workers Could Look like This in the Future Autoweek, May 06, 2025
"Hyundai Motor Group boosts collaboration with its Boston Dynamics unit, with plans to deploy the Atlas robot in its factories."
Jonathan O’Callaghan, Future of space travel: Could robots really replace human astronauts? BBC News, December 30, 2024
"Andrew Coates, a physicist from University College London, agrees. "For serious space exploration, I much prefer robotics," he says. "[They] go much further and do more things.""
Nishta Varma Why can’t we send AI to space instead of humans? UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences, April 12, 2024
"Unlike our robotic counterparts, humans possess the ability to improvise and innovate in response to unforeseen challenges. We are equipped with the intuitive skills to troubleshoot issues on the fly and learn from our mistakes. Whether it's tinkering with equipment or brainstorming solutions, our ability to think creatively in the face of adversity is unparalleled.
Robots on the other hand lack intuitive and adaptive qualities. They can only perform tasks they are trained to do, and we cannot possibly train them for every probable circumstance. Hence, the value of having humans in space."
Sandra Erwin, SPACENEWS, April 8, 2025
"Space nuclear power and propulsion technologies are poised for a breakthrough after decades of development, but will need consistent government investment to transition to operational systems, according to L3Harris executives."
Extraterrestrial Mininng Companies and NASA
Theia TransAstra
"Our patented Theia algorithm enhances a telescope's ability to detect faint moving objects, outperforming conventional track-before-detect methods by 100 times or more."
Capture Bag TransAstra
"Honey Bee™ Asteroid Mining Vehicle
Capture Bag is a key component to our future asteroid mining plans. It will capture asteroids the size of houses, which can contain as much water as a swimming pool."
Joel Sercel TransAstra Corp., Optical Mining of Asteroids, Moons, and Planets to Enable Sustainable Human Exploration and Space Industrialization NASA, April 6, 2017
"PROBLEM, DEEP SPACE HUMAN EXPLORATION IS UNAFFORDABLE:
In 2014 the NASA Advisory Council issued a finding that “The mismatch between NASA’s aspirations for human spaceflight and its budget for human spaceflight is the most serious problem facing the Agency.” Since the time of that advisory, NASA has conducted many mission and systems analyses, but has yet to publish a sustained mission plan and cost analysis that fits within any budget that Congress will approve. NASA’s vision of human exploration remains unaffordable largely due to the high cost of launching large quantities of drinking water, oxygen, radiation shielding and especially rocket propellant from Earth.
SOLUTION: OPTICAL MINING OF ASTEROIDS PROVIDES AFFORDABLE MISSION CONSUMABLES AND RADIATION SHIELDING:"
The Extraterrestrial Mining Company
"We’re XMC. We finance, create and connect the infrastructure that will form a lasting link between the extraterrestrial and Earth. Our Helium-3 mining will find, gather and import this vital isotope needed for global fusion power and quantum computing. And our lunar power utilities will develop a reliable source of nuclear power for the space industry of the future. Through these and our other large-scale projects, we’ll establish a space-for-space economy. Crucially, we’ll connect our planet to our cosmos, securing our place within it for millennia to come."
NVIDIA
developer.nvidia.com, NVIDIA Isaac Lab NVIDIA
""NVIDIA Isaac™ Lab is an open-source, unified framework for robot learning designed to help train robot policies
Isaac Lab is developed on NVIDIA Isaac Sim™, providing high-fidelity physics simulation using NVIDIA PhysX® and physically based NVIDIA RTX™ rendering. It bridges the gap between high-fidelity simulation and perception-based robot training, helping developers and researchers build more robots, more efficiently."
You must expand in breadth,
If the world is to take shape for you;
You must descend into the depths,
If the essence is to be revealed to you.
Only perseverance leads to the goal,
Only abundance leads to clarity,
And in the abyss dwells the truth.
-- Friedrich Schiller
Here is a small survey of reactions to the recent US Election and the deaths of Jordan Neely and Brian Thompson, found on
the authors' blogs and in the New York Times Opinion section. Selected paragraphs were copied verbatim.
"At last, it appears that the Party of Chaos got its fondest wish: it aborted itself in
the 2024 election. “Joe Biden” was the coat-hanger it used: this miserable, grifting,
now-senile hack politician who will be remembered only for driving his country to the
verge of ruin. And for what? All in an effort to cover-up a long train of crimes and
abuses against the American people perpetrated by a permanent bureaucracy gone rogue that
was the party’s partner-in-crime. And now it’s over.
Though the statement omitted to say so directly, it’s very likely that a number of public
officials will find themselves before grand juries in the years ahead. If you haven’t
figured it out already, you’ll learn that the term “misinformation” was just the gas in
the gaslight used to confound the country about what has really been at stake — which is
your personal liberty in what is supposed to be a free country. The Democratic Party and
the Deep State blob really did try to steal that from you."
"Why did Harris lose? There were many tactical missteps: her choice of a progressive
running mate who would not help deliver a must-win state like Pennsylvania or Michigan;
her inability to separate herself from President Biden; her foolish designation of Trump
as a fascist, which, by implication, suggested his supporters were themselves
quasi-fascist; her overreliance on celebrity surrogates as she struggled to articulate a
compelling rationale for her candidacy; her failure to forthrightly repudiate some of the
more radical positions she took as a candidate in 2019, other than by relying on stock
expressions like “My values haven’t changed.”
...
But these mistakes of calculation lived within three larger mistakes of worldview. First,
the conviction among many liberals that things were pretty much fine, if not downright
great, in Biden’s America — and that anyone who didn’t think that way was either a
right-wing misinformer or a dupe. Second, the refusal to see how profoundly distasteful
so much of modern liberalism has become to so much of America. Third, the insistence that
the only appropriate form of politics when it comes to Trump is the politics of
Resistance — capital R."
"There have been a few reluctant admissions from some on the Left that perhaps pushing the
“Woke” envelope so hard wasn’t such a brilliant political strategy. No matter how many
vapid celebrities endorse it, you’re never going to get millions of Americans to accept
the LGBTQ+ agenda. They know men can’t have babies, and that biological women should have
babies. Propaganda otherwise is contrary to human nature. So the millions of unhappy
“Woke” fanatics, stricken with severe TDS, are bound to become even unhappier. More
committed to “reproductive rights,” which essentially means the right to abortion as
birth control. This is the most important issue to unknown numbers of women who are too
old to have another chance at abortion. This issue may finish off sexual relations
between young male and female cisgenders, if the response from Tik Tok is any indication.
At least for Whites."
"I don’t want this to turn into a bitter diatribe about my disappointment in the American
people who selected a rapist, racist, and cognitively challenged buffoon as their leader.
Who put all marginalized people’s lives and rights at risk. Who put the security of the
country at risk. Who put our children’s futures at risk.
The next four years will be challenging as we are led by a man in serious mental decline
who has surrounded himself with political dimwits and moralless thugs. Most of the
prominent people he hired last time turned against him during this election to warn us
of his ineptitude, pettiness, and greed. His closest advisors said he was incompetent.
But his supporters thought they knew him better. So, here we are."
"My disbelief and despair are shapeshifting to anger. A narcissist (President Biden) crowned an untested candidate and asked her, in 107 days,
to overcome the crises of immigration and inflation and the burden of an unpopular
incumbency. When two-thirds of the country says we’re on the wrong track, there’s no way
someone from the current administration can credibly claim to be a change agent, much
less the disruptor people are looking for in an age of rage."
"I doubt he will be present at Mr. Trump’s inauguration, so the US marshals will have to
root him out of Delaware (or wherever) and haul him into the federal lockup in DC at
exactly the moment Mr. Trump pardons the J-6 prisoners. Will they get to see “Joe Biden”
coming into the joint on their way out? There would be a certain poetic symmetry in that,
and hard to not admire the workings of Providence after all its foot-dragging. You might
well ask: how many days, or months, will “Joe Biden” have to endure in solitary detention
before the paperwork is in order for a proper arraignment?."
"These results were a surprise to everyone. Trump is a 78-year-old convicted felon who has
been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in a number of
jurisdictions. He refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe
Biden in 2020, instead launching an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the
counting of electoral votes, and said during his campaign that he would be a “dictator”
on his first day in office.
Pollsters thought the race would be very close but showed increasing momentum for Harris,
and Harris’s team expressed confidence during the day. By posting on social media—with no
evidence—that the voting in Pennsylvania was rigged, Trump himself suggested he expected
he would lose the popular vote, at least, as he did in 2016 and 2020."
"What do you get when you combine an unpopular Democratic candidate and a poor economy? A
bloodbath. A clean sweep of all swing states. A win of the popular vote.
We were optimistic on Monday - if you looked at the crosstabs closely, Trump was making
gains with independents, Black men, and Hispanics. He was making gains with 2020 Biden
voters. There was widespread disapproval of Biden’s economic policies and Trump was
trusted on the most two important issues this election: the economy and immigration.
Momentum favored the Republicans. Nobody was enthusiastic for Kamala."
I'm relieved the election is over. Weeks before I sensed that Trump was going to win. While I didn't want Trump to win particularly, I'm glad he won with
a majority of the vote. A majority voted for and therefore deserves whatever happens, good or bad, the next four years.
Here is all Trump should do to keep the people who aren't his core supporters happy. According to the polls and pundits, the main issues for most people were grocery, gas, and house prices and illegal immigration. Keeping the inflation rate low and the southern border effectively closed should be good enough for most people, as long as they are employed and
wages rise.
Trump can continue to blame Biden if prices don't fall, and he doesn't need a mass deportation of illegal immigrants. It was the spectacle of a torrent of people crossing the border, and the murders, that sparked anger.
He must avoid humiliating spectacles at home and on the international stage. A brokered deal that ends the war in Ukraine, and lets what's left of Ukraine remain intact and free, would, of course, be a big win. Putin can wait, regroup, and eat the rest of Ukraine after the Democrats regain the white house.
His administration doesn't need to go on a vendetta against the previous administration, the members of the congress committee who investigated him, the FBI, or the media.
Making the majority of people who voted for him in 2024 happy should be Trump's main goal. He shouldn't worry about his base, who love him, or his many cheerleaders, who both love him and hate the Democratic party unconditionally.
The US has produced more oil in recent years than any other time in history, Oil prices should be lower and we should be energy independent but we're not. The reason is US refineries can't refine the grade of oil produced by frakking. Oil produced by frakking must be shipped overseas to be refined.
This would explain why the oil business wants more drilling on public land. This oil could refined in the US.
"Were you thinking of Daniel Penny this weekend? A year and a half ago, the US marine veteran, age 26, subdued one Jordan Neely, 30, a homeless schizophrenic with a record of 42 arrests who was menacing riders on a New York City subway car. Neely was, at the time, a fugitive on an arrest warrant for felony assault on a sixty-seven-year-old woman. Penny applied a choke hold after Neely declared he was of a mind to kill somebody on the train. Neely was still alive when the cops came, but they declined to give him CPR because he was filthy and an apparent drug-user, and they feared getting AIDS or hepatitis from giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. . . so Neely died there in the subway.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg indicted Penny for manslaughter in the second degree and secondarily for criminally negligent homicide. His trial has been going on all month. On Friday, the jury reported its inability to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge. Instead of declaring a mistrial, Judge Maxwell T. Wiley dismissed the primary charge and directed the jury to continue deliberations this week on the secondary negligent homicide charge, a procedurally dubious action.
Everybody knows that the trial is an absurd injustice, but that has been the temper of our society for many years now in the age of the Woke Jacobins. Unlike the original Jacobins of 1794 in Paris, who were ultra-extreme idealists, our Woke Jacobins are extreme cynics, imagining only the worst about the project of civilization. Hence, their alt-project to
de-civilize the rest of us."
"Penny was the man who stepped up when Neely caused a commotion on the F train, shouting
at passengers, “I’m fed up. I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m
ready to die.” Penny put him in a chokehold and held him for about six minutes. Neely
died from compression to his neck, according to the medical examiner.
It should have been a story about the horror of a mentally ill person abandoned by the
city and left to fend for himself in subway tunnels or on street corners, or about how
scary it can be for those around him to navigate the wreckage, or about how one
24-year-old Marine veteran tried to protect a group of strangers, taking action that
ended in unintended tragedy.
But Penny is white and Neely, 30, was Black. So instead it became a story of race — and
all the more so after the jury’s verdict — a variation of Daniel Pantaleo going free
after choking Eric Garner in 2014. But that’s not what happened here, and I wish those
describing Penny or his acquittal as racist might consider things from another
vantage point."
When the boyfriend choked to death Jordan Neely's mom and put her body in a suitcase, he also murdered Jordan.
He developed schizophrenia, a disease that prevents becoming a person. The city knew he was ill and
couldn't take care of himself, but they let him wander homeless on the streets and in subway trains.
The city failed him, like other cities around the country that can't help the homeless and mentally ill.
Neely shouted, "I'm ready to die" and Daniel Penny stepped up, afraid Neely was about to attack another passenger.
He put Neely in a choke hold for five or six minutes, and later in the hospital Neely was declared dead.
Penny had him pinned but was afraid he'd be attacked if he let go. A photo of Penny holding Neely on the floor
of the train plainly showed Neely was unconscious, so Penny's fear of being attacked may have been his imagination.
Either Penny wasn't trained how to properly apply a choke hold or his Army training was crummy or intended only for combat. A correctly applied choke
hold is a technique, known in Judo as Shimewaza, that can subdue a larger and stronger person for an extended time, and the subdued person doesn't die.
There are people who can control their adrenaline and be calm, but Penny wasn't calm, assuming he didn't notice that Neely was motionless.
I haven't described a negligent homicide. Penny didn't have a black belt in Judo, as far as I know, and Neely didn't immediately get the first
aid he needed when he was finally let go. Penny was a human being, brave until he wasn't. The acquittal by his peers was fair. But the trial was necessary
if only because it gave national attention to homelessness and mental illness. But I don't see Penny as a hero, because his actions
should not set a precedent for a cheap, quick, and permanent way to get rid of the sick and homeless. The US would be a crueler
place if it decides to eliminate potentially dangerous insane people by choking them to death.
"Luigi Nicholas Mangione has struck a blow for the frustrated, the beaten down, and those driven into financial ruin by the cost of healthcare. Now, I am certainly not approving his actions. I don’t want to see anyone killed. Remember, I’m against capital punishment. I try not to step on insects. But there are a whole lot of people who do approve of Mangione’s act. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro may declare “he’s no hero,” but many disagree. #FreeLuigi is trending online. Social media has been flooded with supportive messages for Mangione. The obscure alleged killer has seen his Instagram account swell to over 21,000 followers. One bright young female tweeted, “he’s only guilty of being hot.” Another castigated the “class traitor” who snitched on him."
"What I have seen is lining up quite squarely with what we have found about the growing
normalization of political violence in America. Year after year, political violence is
becoming more common, and we’re seeing that support for political violence is growing
across a range of issues.
Think about the political violence we’ve experienced just in the last few years. In
2022 we saw the attack against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that missed her but almost
killed her husband. In 2023 there was an assailant who had weapons in his vehicle, and
he was surveilling President Barack Obama’s home in Washington, D.C. This year we saw
two assassination attempts against Donald Trump."
Luigi Mangioni reminded me of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. If he's lucky. Mangioni is a Raskolnikov.
Politicians pushing for privatizing the VA should perhaps think about it. When prisons are privatized the business model is
the more prisoners the better. With health care, it's the fewest paid claims and the least money paid out to claims.
Capitalism in the US should not have to be cruel. Here is what I've been thinking.
Flatten the company hierarchy, so that employees are equally responsible for outcomes. End centralization:
distribute employees to work in communities so they can listen to and serve customers directly. Put company money
including profits into local banks, investing in the communities they serve.
I plan to try to find a few economists willing to discuss what is possible. I'd like to think
localization could at least ameliorate bad outcomes due to our current capitalist corporate system.
Mußt ins Breite dich entfalten,
Soll sich dir die Welt gestalten;
In die Tiefe mußt du steigen,
Soll sich dir das Wesen zeigen.
Nur Beharrung führt zum Ziel,
Nur die Fülle führt zur Klarheit,
Und im Abgrund wohnt die Wahrheit.
In a book I read about Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg's quote of Schiller was translated as, "The mind is alone the clear. The truth dwells in the deep."
Police say Jordan Neely had more than 40 prior arrests, including felony assault for punching someone in the head on the subway. He also had more than a dozen mental health encounters with police, where he reported he suffered from schizophrenia and complained of "hearing voices.""
Choking - unconscious adult or child over 1 year Mount Sinai, Health Library
"Without oxygen, brain damage can occur in as little as 4 minutes. Rapid first aid for choking can save a person's life."
Daniel Bergner America’s Hidden Racial Divide: A Mysterious Gap in Psychosis Rates New York Times, updated Dec. 4, 2024
"Black Americans experience schizophrenia and related disorders at twice the rate of white Americans. It’s a disparity that has parallels in other cultures."
Elie A. Morrell, Shichidan The Challenges of Shimewaza: Judo Chokes Judo Info, Online Dojo
"Shimewaza is probably the most difficult branch of judo to master. Few judo practitioners will ever attain total mastery of shimewaza.
One shimewaza stands out from all the rest because of its unique method of application It is sankaku jime and is worthy of mention here. This technique relies on the power of the legs surrounding the neck area to attain the desired effect. When properly applied, escape is extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible. Because of the power of this technique, submission by the uke is often the outcome. The writer has never witnessed a case where this technique was applied wherein the uke was rendered unconscious. The result was always submission!"
E. K. Koiwai, M.D. How Safe is Choking in Judo? Judo Info, Online Dojo.
"Shime-waza or the “choke hold,” when properly applied, should not cause death; therefore, its primary purpose should be to subdue violent suspects. When properly applied, the choke hold causes unconsciousness in 10-20 seconds. No fatalities as a result of shime-waza have been reported in the sport of judo since its inception in 1882. Among the methods of “control holds” taught to law enforcement officers is the choke hold similar or identical to shime-waza used in judo. Using the choke hold, officers may afford themselves maximum safety while subjecting the suspect to a minimum possibility of injury. "
"This world is the will to power –– and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power –– and nothing besides!"
-- Nietzsche
When I was in my late twenties I imagined government as two opposing forces, liberal Democrat and conservative Republican, working together to forge compromises that became
new laws. A balance would be struck, like yin and yang, between opposing principles, e.g., between personal liberty and the tragedy of the commons.
The result would not be ideological. It would be something that would work as much as possible for everyone. How else should the state govern from the top down?
This idealistic philosophy put me politically somewhere in the middle, and for most issues this is where I stayed. I never registered as a Democrat or Republican, and
voted for both Republicans and Democrats. And I didn't vote to put one party or the other in control of the House of Representatives or the Senate.
This strategy worked well, or at least I thought it did, but over time it became obviously unrealistic.
I had forgotten about the will to power. As Nietzsche conceived it, the will to power is a basic animating force in all of us, that each of us will direct in a different direction.
"The philosopher and the scientist direct their will to power into a will to truth. Artists channel it into a will to create. Businessmen satisfy it by becoming rich." The
politician satisfies it by achieving political power.
Nor did I understand that, as the left has drifted further left, and the right further right, their competing visions no longer allowed for compromise. The rise of an uncompromising politcal power may have been inevitable.
Both businessman and politician, Trump is animated by his followers as much as his base of followers are animated by him. That is to say, there is a movement with Trump as
its nominal head. As a comment found on a right wing web site explained, if we didn't have Trump, we would find someone else.
During the Republican primary I wanted either Chris Christie or Nikki Haley to win the 2024 nomination. Either one I believed was capable of uniting the country, where unity in this country is over 50% approval. Leading up to the general election, I would listen to Republicans talk on TV and agree with them.
If the Republicans took control of both houses and the White House, the country would be nudged in a more conservative direction, but the Democrats could regain some control as early as the mid-term elections. Good ideas from either party would hopefully remain in place.
But Trump is the nominee, and he and his surrogates are saying that Harris is far left. She was far left and
will always be far left. It's too bad that Trump is far right. Trump may not be a fascist authoritarian, but he is a divisive politician who desires power.
Trump has proposed a broad tariff of 10% to 20% tariff on all goods imported into the US, a 30% tariff on all goods imported from China, and end to Obama's Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, rounding up and deporting up to 20 million illegal immigrants, ending liability if the police shoot an unarmed civilian, reinstating stop and frisk, and possibly imprisoning anyone who stood up to him after the 2020 election.
These are some of the proposals linked from Trump's web site known as Agenda 47. He has publically disavowed the Heritage Foundation's infamous Project 2025 plan, but he may not ignore all of its proposals. Less well-known is the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) which, according to the New York Times, is advising the Trump campaign. AFPI's proposals are
as draconian as Project 25's plan. They have prepared almost 300 executive orders waiting for Trump to sign.
Regarding the issue of gender identity, wouldn't it be more consistent to let it be handled by the states, similar to the issue of abortion? One of Trump's promises is to either
sign a law or an executive order that would ban access to certain medical interventions. I'm not for medicating kids who should first get help understanding who and what they are. But if Trump plans to leave abortion bans to the states, so should a law regarding transgender people. In some states parents, doctors and their patients may work together to hopefully make the right decision. I don't know.
Because Trump's proposals will be predominantly enacted by fiat, he will be a leader from the top down. He will be, therefore, no better than the left he hates. Of course,
no matter who wins the election on November 5, 2024, the next four years promises more division, law suits, and hyperbolic rhetoric. But of course I could be wrong.
These days I can't listen to either Republican or Democrat surrogates talk on TV. Apparently their minds are wired differently, and I'm not sure what this says about me.
This may be crux of the problem. With the way people are wired, on TV, blogs, substack, and social media, there is anger about being walled out and a
desire to be walled in. They can't handle discouraging words, e.g., for Democrats, regarding vaccines, for Republicans, climate change.
Notes
Emrys Westacott The Will to Power ThoughtCo., Updated on July 22, 2024
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/
"1. President Trump will sign a record investment in hiring, retention, and training for
police officers. The bill will increase vital liability protections for America’s law
enforcement officers.
2. President Trump will require local law enforcement agencies receiving DOJ grants to
return to proven policing measures such as stop-and-frisk, strictly enforcing existing
gun laws, cracking down on the open use of illegal drugs, and cooperating with ICE to
arrest and deport criminal aliens." Agenda 47
Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold, The Group at the Center of Trump’s Planning for a Second Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of
"But its vision is no less Trumpist: It calls for halting federal funding for Planned
Parenthood and for mandatory ultrasounds before abortions, including those carried out
with medication. It seeks to make concealed weapons permits reciprocal in all 50 states,
increase petroleum production, remove the United States from the Paris Agreement, impose
work requirements on Medicaid recipients and establish legally only two genders.
It also goes significantly further than Project 2025 in one key area, calling for the
elimination of nearly all civil service protections for federal workers by making them
at-will employees — a strategy supporters believe will allow Mr. Trump and his aides to
root out career staff members who they believe stood in his way in his first
administration." New York Times, October 24, 2024
