Shortly after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, space exploration went into a dark age. I believe the world will finally wake up when Moon Express puts half a dozen robots near one of the Apollo landers and wins the $30-million Lunar X Prize. The worldwide publicity this event will draw, with the help of Google, is likely to alter the way people view space. By the time this happens Virgin Galactic will have already taken hundreds of passengers into suborbital flight. It is also likely that The Peoples Republic of China will have a lunar sample return mission around 2014. Questions will arise about how cheaply sending a robot to the moon is.

The mega rich will realize that the times, they are a changin’. It is up to these individuals – the 1% – to make space happen. They are the ones with the expendable income to purchase lunar timeshares and rockets. The ambitious ones will use robots to snap up prime lunar real estate and harvest the water on the poles while simultaneously building condos and selling information to national space agencies.

The remunerations of manufacturing materials on the moon as opposed to Earth are infinitely greater. They are both more interesting, and important to the development of humanity. We are going to find all kinds of new nano and crystal structures. By sticking lunar regolith into a centrifuge we’ll be able to spin long strands of nanofiber that can be used to reinforce metal and make normal steel seem flimsy. We’ll discover new ways of synthesizing medicine and find cures to even the most puzzling diseases. These are the jobs of the future. The one-percent, the so-called “job creators”, need to make literally millions of jobs in space.

When you fully understand the benefits of micro-gravity and zero gravity, only then can you realize how important space is and how much better our technology will become. I don’t think we can possibly imagine how many computer processors we’ll be able to stack in zero gravity. 3D chips haven’t really been born yet. The fastest super computers will be made in space. One could build such a machine in a bunker on the moon but you would still have some gravity so the LaGrange points are a more ideal location. The problem is that you need appropriate radiation protection from the sun, so the LaGrange points are more challenging. And by challenging, I mean expensive, and by more expensive I mean rewarding. We’re only talking about a few hundred billion dollars.

This sounds like a lot but actually the United States spends this much on it’s military every year. Imagine what could be done if the military-industrial complex focused just a little more on civilian and commercial endeavors instead of slightly more advanced missile defense systems and fighter jets. Most of this technology is dual-use anyhow so the same workforce could be used to make materials and infrastructure in space instead of designing bombs for war. But I digress. It’s up to the private industry to figure things out and show the world what can be built in space. The sky is not the limit.

I would not recommend going through AuthorHouse. There are many other formatting issues I have, but there are also dozens of grammatical errors because I failed to get it properly proofread. We’ll just write it off as version .9, alpha. I’m actually hoping to republish a beta version with someone who is a better writer than myself. Anyone out there up to the challenge, or know someone who might be?
Looking at $15/hour for roughly 100-150 hours, enough to get through the entire book. Some chapters will need to be rewritten, some may need to be removed completely, and some chapters with additional character development will need to be created.
Additionally, I’m looking for a graphic designer who can remake some of the graphs and charts throughout the novel. Also paying $15/hour but with less total hours. This position is responsible for cross-referencing the indexes. Please send previous work to Justin@justinpark.com

The health care system in Switzerland is better, as is the education system. You have more freedoms, you are safer, and you have access to public transportation virtually anywhere. My only real gripe about living here is that almost everything is closed on Sunday and the Swiss-German dialect is excessively difficult because it’s not even a written language.

However, when it comes to starting a business, there is no better place in the world to launch a company than in the United States. The mass amounts of capital, entrepreneurial mentality, lack of employee protection laws, and the ability to make mistakes and try again, makes the US the greatest place on the planet to drive innovation. Despite NASA’s shortcomings, the wave of American NewSpace companies is on the verge of changing the world in which we live very dramatically.

Hey rich people and venture capitalists – try and wrap your head around these.
1) Create private LEO space station with toilet that implements artificial gravity. Nobody likes dingle berries. Oh, and make sure it doesn’t smell like the International Space Station (ISS).
2) Dyson Ltd and BAE Systems should clean up the moon dust with advanced fully autonomous lunar vacuum cleaners. Metal particle shavings are a major risk to astronauts and will likely cause robot gears to jam up.
3) Harvest HUGE containers of processed pure ice, LO|LH2, magnesium, titanium, aluminum, palladium, iridium, and other platinum group metals found on the lunar surface.
4) Hollywood (big four production companies) should pool their funds and build production sets on the lunar surface and in LEO. Consider renting facility to independent film developers and research institutions.
5) Get Saudi Amarco money [estimated $3-5 trillion – most highly valued company in the world] to do energy, Donald Trump to do real estate, and the Waltons to do a supply chain management system: high-tech lunar surface manufacturing directly to Wal-Mart shelves.
6) Build super dome in LEO that is so large it can be seen with the naked eye. Give exclusive broadcasting rights to Viacom (ESPN) and Eurosport for Spaceball. Most games are held at night because anyone can watch the game with a telescope –the telescope being your iPad15, which was produced in microgravity on the lunar surface.
7) Safely create energy with nuclear fast feeder reactors and solar fields. Then send enormous batteries – made from moon dirt – back to recharge the Earthly power grid. Battery payloads are intended to be one way.
8 ) Advertisements – built from extra-terrestrial materials – that are so large they cast a small shadow on Earth.
9) Lunar resorts, time-shares, restaurants, and clubs will eventually exists after basic life support systems are in place.
10) There is a moral imperative to alleviate human life from a mass catastrophe. The probability of our race wiping itself out – be it governments, terrorist groups, or crazy scientists – is increasing as we move into a more globalized society. Genetically engineered pandemics, international nuclear warfare, or a meltdown of the global financial system threaten our uni-planetary species. Expanding into a multi-planetary society is the only way to prevent extinction.

The problem with computer circuitry is that it’s not as robust or efficient as the synapses of the human brain yet. An electron passing over a wire between computer processors and memory consumes far more power than what is needed to pass information from one neuron to the next. The synapses can also pass chemical information as well as electrically encoded data. Most brain cells are capable of connecting to tens or even hundreds of thousands of other brain cells through tiny four-micron (.00003937 inch) gateways. We have super computers and multi-core processors but they are not as robust as their protein-based counterparts.

The inner workings of the human brain and nervous system consist of myelinated axons. They create complex and wonderful patterns that are constantly being reprogrammed with sensory information we take in from our eyes, from what we hear, from what we taste & smell, and from the millions of other inputs connected to the nervous system.

The graphics processing power of our eyes and the region of the brain that they communicate with directly is astonishing, just look around. However, the mammalian eye is limited in the range and amount of detail that can be detected. Science has provided us with tools to see further away and in different spectrums. Unfortunately, we can really only focus on a limited swath of visual information but so far the same can be said about the circuitry of a HD computer camera or deep-space telescope.

We have a long ways to go before we can mass manufacture robots that are physically as dexterous as the human body, with its 650 muscles and seemingly infinite degrees of freedom. The mechanical and electronical engineering disciplines still need time to mature. The question is, how long will it take?

One of the main things holding the space industry back now is price. Rockets are simply too expensive at this moment in time and that is why the space frontier has stalled. Aerospace technology will eventually blossom like the computer market. The difference between the computer industry and the space industry is that microprocessors have gotten exponentially cheaper. If people still had to pay $10,000 for a computer or a smart phone, they wouldn’t be ubiquitous. But since this technology is so cheap, we now take it for granted.

I believe we will all someday take space travel for granted but for this to happen the price to get high must come down.

The exciting part is that it actually is. The Falcon 9 has already shown incredible amounts of promise. The Atlas V and other rockets will likely need to come down in price to match the more competitive launch market but this is exactly the cost reduction the industry needs to begin. Once the essential seed funding is planted and lunar capable rockets become available for half or a third of what they cost today, the torrent can finally begin.

Meanwhile, high net-worth individuals will soon begin going into suborbital space. The NewSpace company Virgin Galactic, owned by Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson, is scheduled to begin launching SpaceShipTwo next year. The following year Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going to resupply the International Space Station and the Chinese government is going to perform a soft lunar landing. The year after that (2014) United States teams will win the Google Lunar X Prize by putting roving and hoping robots on the moon.

A lot of things are going to happen over a very short time. Wall Street still does not understand the benefit or potential of what is only a quarter of a million miles away (400,000km). Most investors will pick up on the moon rush only after a large underwriter gets behind industrial mining and manufacturing. Low-cost access to space is the key to developing the world economy.

The first major product I discuss in Pushing the Envelope is The Model C, which is essentially any modern-day smartphone but made by a fictional company called Maxion (M$) and still more advanced. For example, The Model C has a digital projector capable of displaying a 17-inch screen on any flat, white surface. I’m still not sure why this feature is not more common on cell phones. Maybe the components are just too large (for now)? I recall seeing this technology at the Consumer Electric Show in Las Vegas in 2006 but it has yet to surface broadly.

A few other cell phone applications that are still not what I would consider “broadly used” are lip reading and real-time language translation software. Voice recognition has indeed come a ways in the last 10 years but has yet to integrate with these two other incredibly valuable AI technologies. The utility of lip reading software could fix many existing problems with communicating in loud environments. While real-time language software speaks for itself, literally, most Americans don’t appreciate it enough because everyone speaks English. Try moving to Switzerland. Unfortunately, I think both these futuristic technologies are at least three or more years away from widespread adaptation.

The last “advanced” feature The Model C has is that it’s a credit card. Credit card integration is finally happening now, with Google Wallet and Square. I predicted this would have happened over four years ago in my chapter “CityBank Merger” in which CitiCards and other leading credit card companies merge with Microsoft. My how the tides have turned as Microsoft has failed to deliver, as it should have. They will soon realize that they are chasing Google into another valuable multi-gigadollar market now that mobile phones and tablets are the computers of choice.

Interestingly enough, enhanced GPS verification and biometric security, that I talk about in Pushing the Envelope, is still not seen anywhere today. If you work at Google and happen to read this, please integrate the technology I talk about. I was just reading the newest WIRED magazine and it said over 70% of metro robberies involve high-tech electronics. Why is theft still a problem, GPS tracking should be no brainer.

In terms of esthetics and cool electronic devices, Apple (called Banana in PtE) has come to dominate the worldwide arena. Their current market gap, closing on May 29th, 2011 ($310,000,000,000) speaks for itself. What they need is the Maxion SmartScreen (seen in photo below).

The first thing you notice in this picture is that all SmartScreens and M$ MiniScreens can be daisy chained together. I know enough about computer hardware now to realize that there is a limit to the graphic output of a CPU or graphics processing unit (GPU), but as computing power scales with multiple cores, this technology should scale in parallel. Another thing to note about SmartScreens are that they are paper-thin. In reality, lighter and more affordable LED screens are on the way, trust me. The capability of the average flat-screen now will soon seem as prehistoric as the cathode ray tubes (CRTs) of just a few years ago. It’s only a matter of time before a new wave of LED computer monitors hits the scene. Ideally these new electronic displays will have both touch screen and stylist capabilities. Microsoft was actually suppose to release this technology but decided instead to shut that particular R&D department down after J Allard left last year.

Oh, and lets not forget about the technology that ties everything together: Maxion I/O. Why can’t my cell phone integrated into the dashboard of my car? In Pushing the Envelope, M$ sets up deals with every major automotive manufacturers in the world. Microsoft/Nokia, Google, Samsung, Apple, what is the holdup? Really…

If you are still interesting in purchasing Pushing the Envelope, you can buy it here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1425980783

2) 01 – an electromagnetic propulsion device capable of achieving orbit launch speeds
Why: Because traditionally rockets are old, nonrenewable, and unreasonably expensive. They are prone explosive failure and are ridiculously inefficient.
Benefit of EM propulsion: Cost to orbit comes down several orders of magnitude and reinvigorates public interest. Reliability of infrastructure lowers cost of insurance allowing smaller companies to enter the space industry.
Hurdle: Financial

3) Global Military Union – an international, geo-political-independent coalition
Why: Because nationalism is old, isolated, and driven by self-promoting public policies. Traditional militaries are prone to ignorance and neglect the importance of an occupied territory’s culture.
Benefit of GMU: Education and employment opportunity for tens of millions of people. Non-political protection services alleviate conflict and intercultural understanding leads to more integrated world at large.
Hurdle: Socio-Legal

4) Lunar Sovereignty – bilateral agreements that recognize the moon as its own independent state
Why: Because existing space legislation is old and does not appropriately address private commerce or property rights. A new global intellectual property system must be put into place to handle the oncoming flood of new space inventions.
Benefit of Lunar Government: Creation of a politically balanced, multi-national country that can support itself. This system must coincide with the unique, advanced culture created on the lunar surface.
Hurdle: Time

Until we live in a time where this technology fits in your ear, I will continue to learn German. And eventually Zuger Swiss-German…