Author Archives: Chlebny Dawid

Startup accelerators can into space!

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Every fan of space industry can open their bottle of champagne, because big players like NASA, U.S. Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Maxar Technologies, SAIC and the Israel Aerospace Industries company, Techstars and Starburst Aerospace have decided to to join their forces together to make a space industry accelerator!

 

Accelerator will be called Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator, with Matt Kozlov as a manager of the whole program, with Van Espahbodi (co-founder of Starburst Aerospace) as his main advisor. TSSA headquarters will be located in Los Angeles, city well known for strong and well established private space sector with companies like SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, and many more.

 

As space is getting more trendy, more investors show up, and estimates tell us that by 2045 this sector of economy will be worth 3 trillion USD.

 

 

Sources: Techcrunch

Smart tattoos that will help you stay healthy

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Following trend of integrating wellness and technology, researchers at Harvard and MIT have developed a new, compact product to replace fitness trackers – smart tattoos. From wearable fitbits to self powered smart patches, most vital trackers have so far all required some sort of upkeep, were clumsy and relied on a stable wireless connection. The smart tattoo is based on ink which chemically reacts to various fluids in the skin that act as markers of your vital signs, and changes colors accordingly. Furthermore, the tattoos will not neccesarily be permanent, and the ink can be set to degrade in a certain period of time. The technology promises big advancement in the fields of fitness and medicine.

In fitness, the smart tattoo could replace various vital tracking devices. Since nothing has to be worn, it allows for more freedom of movement, and since it is implanted in the skin it can track things such as blood glucose levels which are not so easy to track with wearable devices. Glucose levels can be especially important for athletes, as keeping them at a particular level can increase the efficiency of exercise and minimize exhaustion.

    In medicine the smart tattoo seems as a promising alternative for diabetics. So far, checking blood glucose levels has been a nuisance requiring blood, which many find painful and annoying. With the new ink patients could have a permanent tracker on. The technology can also track heart rate, and thus opens new management pathways for heart disease sufferers.

In conclusion, the smart tattoo is an innovative technology with wide application in fitness and medicine. It may allow athletes for higher performance due to more precise measurements and its compactness. The technology also promises higher living standards for those living with diabetes and heart disease, by removing certain uncomfortable measuring devices from their life.

Sources: https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/01/smart-tattoos/?guccounter=1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Removing space junk – how to prevent Earth from turning into jail for mankind

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In my last article I’ve wrote about how dangerous space debris is to our species, and now I would love to explain how we can fight with that, and why it’s great business for private space companies.

Before we hit point of no return, when possibility of going into space is too dangerous, governments and private companies already are planning on how to fight with this fact. Everyday tens or even hundreds of corrects are made in trajectory of satellites. Everyday we follow movements of thousands objects (US Strategic Command was tracking 17 852 objects as of 2016), but there is more than 170 MILLION objects than 1 centimeter! Every collision with satellite, space station or vehicle is dangerous and can cost us millions or even kill someone (for example it can damage plating of the spacecraft, making reentry into atmosphere suicidal mission). Thus countries and companies are developing means on how to fight this threat.

First example of measures taken by our race is RemoveDEBRIS satellite, object was co-funded by European Union, created in cooperation with many corporations, and launched using Falcon 9 rocket by SpaceX. Mission appears to be success because goals were reached, satellite has already proven that it can use net and harpoon to catch objects and force them to burn in Earths atmosphere.

Another proposition is e.Deorbit, satellite is to be launched in 2023 and it goal is to remove only big objects, mostly whole zombie-satellites. In comparison RemoveDEBRIS is focused on small objects. E.Deorbit will be the first satellite constructed to take down other satellites. It’s main “weapon” will be net or robotic arm (this matter is still under debate), and method of liquidation is simple, put objects into atmosphere so they can burn up.

It’s worth mentioning that both projects are European, and Europe is leading in terms of fighting for clean space. Each year consciousness about dangers linked with plastic grows, but we need to make the same effort in terms of space. Space is like oceans, if it gets polluted too much, effect will be catastrophic, and this is why it is so good business. Governments will have to pay huge sums of money for research and development of technologies that may speed up process of cleaning our orbit, so if you ask me what your start up should be about, better find someone with engineering skills and get to work, because it is business of the future!

Sources:

https://www.space.com/36602-space-junk-cleanup-concepts.html

https://www.space.com/40960-removedebris-space-junk-cleanup-test-flight.html

Our biggest enemy in space conquest is… humanity itself

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I bet that 90% of people reading this article wished to become astronaut back in their childhood. To be honest, that was my wish too! Sadly, this article won’t be about bright future of space conquest, but rather grim reality of work in space sector.

Since beginning of space race, humanity has launched around 8100 satellites of which some 5000 remains in orbit. As you can imagine, Earth’s orbit has plenty of space and 5000 satellites should be as “big” concern as 5000 cars for a small town, so basically none. But… there are several circumstances that makes it a little bit more complex! Every artificial satellite needs to be delivered to space, which demands a big rocket that can get it into our orbit, then some parts must detach, and so on. Every step in orbit will leave new parts, and these parts will fly at speed of several thousand kilometers per second, and guess what. If you would get hit by screw at speed that high, it would be like you were hit by bolt of plasma, and same goes for every object in space.

As you may see in the picture above, this is what happens when spacecraft is hit by small debris. You might think that “come on there can’t be enough debris made by launching some satellites” and to be honest you are kind of right. Problem is that more than 95% of current object in orbit are so called zombies, serving no purpose, floating in space, waiting for impact with other body. When this happens, hundreds of small pieces burst into all directions, posing enormous threat to everything else. Sometimes government come up with “brilliant” ideas, for example Chinese government decided to test if their rockets can shoot down their own satellites – Turns out they can, however test also created enormous amount of space garbage. We could go on and on to see new examples, but let’s get to the point.

Everyday U.S. Military issues 21 warnings about space collisions. That is US alone, we can only guess that everyday there is more than one hundred warnings about space collision, so during whole year, there is at least more than 36 thousand warnings! This shows exactly how dangerous it becomes to travel into our orbit. Some specialist claims that every year we are getting closer to point of no retreat, and that means that Earth will become our jail, because we won’t be able to get safely into space.

But how can we fight with this threat you may ask? That is what you will find out in my next article!

Sources:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-quest-to-conquer-earths-space-junk-problem/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06170-1

 

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We are one step closer to the Orwellian reality

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Probably everyone has heard about 1984 by George Orwell, a grim dystopian novel about brain washing and surveillance at every step. Well, I have bad news for all of us, we just got a step closer to this reality. Recently, China has been developing their own AI program, and they are reaping the benefits.

The Chinese company Xloong has probably changed the history of police forever by developing glasses, but not so normal glasses, oh no! Smart glasses that recognize faces from a police database. In 100 miliseconds they compare your face with 10.000 others! Already during the testing phase it is clearly visible that this small gadget surpasses intelligent CCTV with the same features. In a short period of time, 26 people were identified as users of fake IDs, thus preventing them from traveling by train (Well, Chinese travel laws are so weird that I could make another article about them, so let’s not get into them right now). Also several other people were identified by their misdeeds, ranging from traffic infringements to human trafficking, but we don’t know the exact number, nonetheless it is a great achievement!

At the same time, Chinese government is building a system that will recognize any Chinese citizen in just 3 seconds, and (probably) will be compatible with glasses designed by Xloong, providing ability to identify anyone at any given moment. Recent use of this advanced gadget to prevent protesters from entering a designated area strongly suggests that this is a milestone of early 21st century in terms of surveillance and infringing on people’s privacy.

Sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-police-facial-recognition-sunglasses-security-smart-tech-travellers-criminals-a8206491.html

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/12/17110636/china-police-facial-recognition-sunglasses-surveillance

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Chinese-startup-makes-facial-recognition-glasses-for-police

Getty Images

 

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