Tag Archives: startup

Startup Looking to Launch Stadium-Sized Space Habitats on SpaceX – Futurism

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A space startup called Max Space is looking to launch expandable, "stadium-sized" habitats into the Earth's orbit on board a SpaceX rocket by the end of the decade.

In theory, the startup's goal is straightforward. Its habitats are designed to give us as much room to live in space by minimizing the mass and volume of the payload required to be launched into space, a notoriously costly process.

"The problem with space today is, there isn't enough habitable space in space," said co-founder Aaron Kemmer in a statement. "Unless we make usable space in space a lot less expensive, and much larger, humanity's future in space will remain limited."

The one-year-old company's "scalable habitat" designs range from 20 cubic meters to a whopping 1,000, or 700 and 35,300 cubic feet respectively which would dwarf existing habitat concepts out there if they're launched in 2027 and 2030 as planned.

These habitats could not only float in the microgravity of orbit, the company says, but even be deployed on the surface of the Moon or even Mars.

"My dream is to have a city on the Moon before I die," Kemmer said. "So I look at this like, this is going to be the habitat, the structures, that are going to go inside the lava tubes buried under the [lunar] surface," Kemmer told Space.com.

That's all with a huge disclaimer, of course: it's a wildly ambitious plan and the company is bound to encounter plenty of obstacles along the way.

At least the startup's leadership has some existing experience to draw from. Kemmer co-founded Redwire Space (formerly Made in Space), a company that has sent several 3D-printing devices to the International Space Station to explore off-Earth manufacturing.

Making habitats inflatable has some key advantages, including a much smaller size that could squeeze into a rocket fairing.

The idea isn't exactly new. As Space.com points out, there are three inflatable space habitat modules orbiting the Earth right now, all of which were developed and built by Bigelow Aerospace, which has been pioneering the concept.

Max Space cofounder Maxim de Jong worked on the pressure-restraining hulls of two of these habitats at Canadian contractor Thin Red Line Aerospace.

The startup is hoping to bring costs down by using a new approach that's highly scalable, and launch its first off-Earth test a module roughly the size of two suitcases that expands into a volume of 700 cubic feet just two years from now, per Space.com.

If everything goes according to plan, the prototype could set a new record, ballooning past the volumes of all three inflatable habitats currently orbiting the Earth.

But Max Space isn't the only company looking to launch a new generation of expanding habitats into space.

Competitor Sierra Space has also been busy intentionally blowing up full-scale inflatable habitat prototypes on Earth, and is planning to start work on flight-ready hardware by mid-2026.

More on inflatable habitats: Full-Scale Prototype Space Habitat Explodes Under Pressure

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Startup Looking to Launch Stadium-Sized Space Habitats on SpaceX - Futurism

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 6) – Singularity Hub

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To Build a Better AI Supercomputer, Let There Be Light Will Knight | Wired Lightmatter wants to directly connect hundreds of thousands or even millions of GPUsthose silicon chips that are crucial to AI trainingusing optical links. Reducing the conversion bottleneck should allow data to move between chips at much higher speeds than is possible today, potentially enabling distributed AI supercomputers of extraordinary scale.

Apple Has Been Secretly Building Home Robots That Could End up as a New Product Line, Report Says Aaron Mok | Business Insider Apple is in the early stages of looking into making home robots, a move that appears to be an effort to create its next big thing after it killed its self-driving car project earlier this year, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Engineers are looking into developing a robot that could follow users around their houses, Bloomberg reported. Theyre also exploring a tabletop at-home device that uses robotics to rotate the display, a more advanced project than the mobile robot.

A Tantalizing Hint That Astronomers Got Dark Energy All Wrong Dennis Overbye | The New York Times On Thursday, astronomers who are conducting what they describe as the biggest and most precise survey yet of the history of the universe announced that they might have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of dark energy, the mysterious force that is speeding up the expansion of the cosmos. Dark energy was assumed to be a constant force in the universe, both currently and throughout cosmic history. But the new data suggest that it may be more changeable, growing stronger or weaker over time, reversing or even fading away.

How ASML Took Over the Chipmaking Chessboard Mat Honan and James ODonnell | MIT Technology Review When asked what he thought might eventually cause Moores Law to finally stall out, van den Brink rejected the premise entirely. Theres no reason to believe this will stop. You wont get the answer from me where it will end, he said. It will end when were running out of ideas where the value we create with all this will not balance with the cost it will take. Then it will end. And not by the lack of ideas.'

The Very First Jet Suit Grand Prix Takes Off in Dubai Mike Hanlon | New Atlas A new sport kicked away this month when the first ever jet-suit race was held in Dubai. Each racer wore an array of seven 130-hp jet engines (two on each arm and three in the backpack for a total 1,050 hp) that are controlled by hand-throttles. After that, the pilots use the three thrust vectors to gain lift, move forward and try to stay above ground level while negotiating the coursefaster than anyone else.

Toyotas Bubble-ized Humanoid Grasps With Its Whole Body Evan Ackerman | IEEE Spectrum Many of those motions look very human-like, because this is how humans manipulate things. Not to throw too much shade at all those humanoid warehouse robots, but as is pointed out in the video above, using just our hands outstretched in front of us to lift things is not how humans do it, because using other parts of our bodies to provide extra support makes lifting easier.

A Brief History of the Future Offers a Hopeful Antidote to Cynical Tech Takes Devin Coldewey | TechCrunch The future, he said, isnt just what a Silicon Valley publicist tells you, or what Big Dystopia warns you of, or even what a TechCrunch writer predicts. In the six-episode series, he talks with dozens of individuals, companies and communities about how theyre working to improve and secure a future they may never see. From mushroom leather to ocean cleanup to death doulas, Wallach finds people who see the same scary future we do but are choosing to do something about it, even if that thing seems hopelessly small or nave.

This AI Startup Wants You to Talk to Houses, Cars, and Factories Steven Levy | Wired Weve all been astonished at how chatbots seem to understand the world. But what if they were truly connect to thereal world? What if the dataset behind the chat interface was physical reality itself, captured in real time by interpreting the input of billions of sensors sprinkled around the globe? Thats the idea behind Archetype AI, an ambitious startup launching today. As cofounder and CEO Ivan Poupyrev puts it, Think of ChatGPT, but for physical reality.'

How One Tech Skeptic Decided AI Might Benefit the Middle Class Steve Lohr | The New York Times David Autor seems an unlikely AI optimist. The labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is best known for his in-depth studies showing how much technology and trade have eroded the incomes of millions of American workers over the years. But Mr. Autor is now making the case that the new wave of technologygenerative artificial intelligence, which can produce hyper-realistic images and video and convincingly imitate humans voices and writingcould reverse that trend.

Image Credit:Harole Ethan / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 6) - Singularity Hub

Seattle’s Pioneer Square Labs and Silicon Valley stalwart Mayfield form AI co-investing partnership – GeekWire

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Navin Chaddha (left), managing partner at Mayfield, and Greg Gottesman, managing director at Pioneer Square Labs. (Mayfield and PSL Photos)

Seattle startup studio Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) and esteemed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Mayfield are teaming up to fund the next generation of AI-focused startups.

The partnership combines the startup incubation prowess of PSL, a 9-year-old studio that helps get companies off the ground, with Mayfield, a Menlo Park fixture founded in 1969 that has stalwarts such as Lyft, HashiCorp, ServiceMax and others in its portfolio.

As part of the agreement, PSL spinouts focused on AI-related technology will get a minimum of $1.5 million in seed funding from PSLs venture arm (PSL Ventures) and Mayfield.

Weve really been focusing a lot of our efforts on building defensible new AI-based technology companies and found a partner who feels very similarly and has incredible talent, resources, and thought leadership around this area, said PSL Managing Director Greg Gottesman.

Navin Chaddha, managing partner at Mayfield, described the partnership as very complimentary. PSL specializes in testing new ideas before spinning out startups. Mayfield steps in when companies are ready to raise a venture round and at later stages.

They have strengths, we have strengths, Chaddha said.

Its a bet by both firms on the promise of AI technology and startup creation.

Its a once-in-a-lifetime transformational opportunity in the tech industry, Chaddha said.

Mayfield last year launched a $250 million fund dedicated to AI. Chaddha published a blog post last month about what Mayfield describes as the AI cognitive plumbing layer, where the picks and shovels infrastructure companies of the AI industry reside.

Theres so much infrastructure to be built, Chaddha said. He added that the applications enabled by new AI technologies such as generative AI are endless.

Gottesman, who helped launch PSL in 2015 after a long stint with Seattle venture firm Madrona, said more than 60% of code written at PSL is now completed by AI a stark difference from just a year ago.

Its not that we have humans writing less code were just moving faster, Gottesman said.

The $1.5 million seed investments are a minimum;PSL and Mayfield are open to partnering with other investors and firms. The Richard King Mellon Foundation is also participating in the partnership.

The deal marks the latest connection point between the Seattle and Silicon Valley tech ecosystems.

Madrona, Seattles oldest and largest venture capital firm, opened a new Bay Area office in 2022 and hired a local managing director.

Bay Area investors have increasingly invested in Seattle-area startups including Mayfield, which has backed Outreach, Skilljar, SeekOut, Revefi, and others in the region. The firm was an early investor in Concur, the travel expense giant that went public in 1998.

Chaddha previously lived in the Seattle area after Microsoft acquired his streaming media startup VXtreme in 1997. He spent a few years at the Redmond tech giant, working alongside Satya Nadella who later went on to become CEO.

I think its fantastic that Mayfield is making a commitment not just to AI, but also to the Seattle area as well, said Gottesman.

PSL raised $20 million third fund last year to support its studio, which has spun out more than 35 companies including Boundless, Recurrent, SingleFile, and others. Job postings show new company ideas related to automation around hardware development and workflow operations for go-to-market execs. The PSL Ventures fundraised$100 million in 2021.

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Seattle's Pioneer Square Labs and Silicon Valley stalwart Mayfield form AI co-investing partnership - GeekWire