NASA’s inspector general is still gunning for Hanger One. Essentially, the IG and NASA HQ are upset with Ames Research Center’s leasing of property to private groups such as Singularity University, Airship Ventures, and the Google Triumvirate, and insist that future leases correspond to “current or future mission[s]”, and to sell any properties that can’t […]
Fourth in the series of indeterminate length, Recolonizing Detroit The root cause of the problems Paul Romer encountered in Madagascar was the local population. So how about founding these cities not just in unpopulated areas, but in areas people do not identify with as well? Could this be effective? From the European perspective, that’s what […]
Second in the series of indeterminate length, Recolonizing Detroit The second story that spawned this series, was about Paul Romer’s “charter cities” idea. (Or as Metafilter put it, “neocolonial OCP-like company towns.“) Romer’s plan is get poor countries to cede governmental control of some unpopulated land to a rich foreign country and its investors, and […]
MIT has published a paper entitled Programmable Matter by Folding (full article) that describes paper that can fold itself into a variety of shapes. The paper is covered by is divided into triangular sections that are joined by a network of thin nitinol actuators that contract under voltage. At the center of each section is […]