Check out the jump at the end of the video. The robot is able to navigate rough terrain more reliably than robots with legs or wheels. [more information here]

I’m reading Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore, and a couple things so far are worth sharing:

The X-Prize was the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, who did not have $10 million of his own money, but inspired others to give to cause for which he was passionate. He was inspired by a biography about Charles Lindbergh, who was motivated to make the first flight across the Atlantic by a $25,000 prize offered in 1919 by Raymond Orteig. And, it was no small measure the consequence of Lindbergh’s fame that catapulted an entire new industry to the forefront of public conciousness.

Diamandis realized that a similar prize could possibly be the catalyst to jump-start a commercial space industry.

You can imagine the skeptics, when he went about trying to raise $10 million!

Arthur C. Clarke said in 1968: “All revolutionary ideas…pass through three stages, which may be summed up by these reactions: 1) It’s crazy – don’t waste my time. 2) It’s possible, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I always said it was a good idea.”

Also interesting is the vision from the book The High Frontier by Gerard O’Neil. Published in 1976, the book promotes a vision where space island colonies that house thousands of people. They are artificial worlds engineered with year-round sunshine, and even lakes and streams. Factories and farms would exist on nearby islands. And, all the energy the earth and the colonies need is generated by the sun. And, all raw materials and metals come from asteroids.

Free energy is available to all, which ends our dependence on fossil fuels, and improves the quality of life for all humans. The industries that cause the most pollution would be moved off of planet earth. And, there is virtually limitless space for the human population to expand.

Free energy for all human-kind is a recurring theme on sharkride:

Clean Free and constant energy.

Clean free energy tapped from the ionosphere.

Free energy and free water

Free energy generator

With free energy and also free, ubiquitous Internet… imagine the possibilities for humans.

We have so much to look forward to!

Dimensions!

A team of European researchers are developing tiny autonomous robots that cooperate to complete tasks. They could be used, for instance, to build habitable structures for humans, or explore terrain on Mars.

For more information, source article is here.

Video demonstration:

Most mathematicians and physicists agree that there are at least 8 additional dimensions beyond the dimensions we know.

We know there is time and space (distance).

What might the other dimensions be?

Some thoughts:

Maybe there is a dimension where time is not relative and forward moving, but where time moves in reverse, or where there is no time (and if we could tap into this dimension, we could time travel).

Or, a dimension where there is no space and no distance (and if we could tap into this dimension, we could teleport…)

These things are relatively easy to imagine, because they are based on existing known concepts.

But, it’s hard to imagine something with which you have no relative concept.

What does the world look like to a blind person, who has never seen. What do they imagine? Do they see colors in their imagination? Or, a related question, how does a deaf person conceptualize music?  [I have not done any research on this, so if you have insights, please let me know in comments.]

What if love is not a mental construct, but a dimension.  A dimension where nothing exists but love. The bible says God is love.  Maybe this dimension is heaven.

If this is the case, maybe hell is another dimension, where there is no matter, no air, no space, and no time. An infinity of nothingness.

to see the article in today’s WSJ, click here.

Born Rich has an interesting post about its top ten picks for futuristic hotels – click here to check it out!

previous hotel related posts:

The Radisson huge lobby acquarium

Waterworld in China

Underwater Hotels

The tennis court heliport at Burj al Arab

Poseidon underwater hotel (conceptual video):

It was Nikola Tesla, who first proposed there was unlimited energy that could potentially be tapped and beamed to earth from the ionosphere. In a different twist to a similar concept, there’s an article on Space.com about the potential to build huge solar satellites that orbit the earth and beam energy to us via microwave technology. Of course, billions of dollars would need to be spent on r and d and infrastructure, but as the article points out, we’re already spending billions securing our oil in the Middle East, and the prospective cost of global warming could be even more.

Check out the article here.

[And, in other space related news and insights, be sure to check out Roger von Oech's post today about the "Thuban Phenomenon."]

A research group from two Beijing, China universities is developing maglev technology to launch spaceships into orbit at a fraction of the cost of current rocket departure methods. A spaceship would be magnetically levitated over a track and up an incline, and lift off when it reaches a velocity of 620 miles/hour. [source link] Researchers at NASA are also apparently investigating similar technology. [source]

Another fascinating propulsion possibility are lasers. The Department of Defense has invested in developing battlefield viable lasers beyond 100kW solid state by 2009, but the same technology could allegedly be used for pushing satellites and probes to Mars in days rather than months. [for more information, click here.] [Thanks, Futurismic]