In a recent SpaceNews Op-ed, Louis Friedman, co-founder and executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society, argues that the U.S. should pursue “a policy more directed to Mars and away from commercial participation.” With all due respect to Friedman, I totally disagree. Focusing NASA programs on distant (in space, time, and money) goals can only ensure that U.S. space policy remains empty talk with no action. I am persuaded that Mars can wait a bit, and going back to the moon to build a...

3D printing promises no less than the possibility to treat the physical world of atoms like the virtual world of bits, allowing users to “email” all sorts of physical objects — that is, they can send validated specs to be 3D printed by a recipient with one click. In 3D printing, or “additive manufacturing,” successive layers of material are added to create the desired object, which can be of almost any shape or geometry. There’s still a perception that 3D printing is an expensive and...

Lipscomb University, based in Nashville, Tennessee, has formed a partnership with Hashed Health, a healthcare innovation company focused on blockchain technology. The partnership, as reported by the Tennessean (USA Today network) in June, will explore potential uses for distributed ledgers in the healthcare sector. Blockchain technology in the healthcare industry is "still in its infancy, but you've got pockets of experts who are innovating," said Beth Breeden, chair of Lipscomb's program in...

Yesterday a video teaser from blockchain technology company Blockstream created waves of excitement among enthusiasts of both cryptocurrencies and space. Most participants speculated that Blockstream was about to implement the idea, promoted by Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik (among others), of a satellite system that streams the Bitcoin blockchain to the whole planet from space. The speculations were, indeed, correct. Today, the company is announcing Blockstream Satellite, a new service that...

"The core of the sharing economy is people renting things from each other," reads a 2013 reference article published in The Economist . "[Airbnb] is the most prominent example of a huge new 'sharing economy,' in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, coordinated via the internet." In retrospect, this article was a clear harbinger of the age we now live in. Airbnb and Uber are still the first names that come to everyone's mind when thinking about the...