{"id":6545,"date":"2014-02-27T22:51:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T06:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/?p=6545"},"modified":"2017-06-08T00:54:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T07:54:14","slug":"the-future-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2014\/02\/27\/the-future-is-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future is Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two notes about two of my favorite companies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.teslamotors.com\/\">Tesla Motors<\/a> announced a bit more about their proposed &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.teslamotors.com\/blog\/gigafactory\">gigafactory<\/a>&#8221; this week, which (if built) will produce as many lithium ion batteries in a single, massive US plant as were produced in the entire world in 2013.  They will be partnering with established battery manufacturing firms, giving them the necessary know-how and experience to make this happen, and making it possible that a component that we take for granted as coming from Asia could suddenly be produced primarily in the US.  What&#8217;s more, by bringing production in-house Tesla foresees significant economic advantages, and I suspect that they will work hard to innovate in battery technology and thus quickly drive down the cost and improve the efficiency of their most important component.  Longer term, Tesla <i>Motors<\/i> might follow Apple <i>Computer<\/i> in dropping the second half of its name as the company gains the ability to produce massive battery packs that could be tied to the electric grid to provide large-scale energy storage, thus revolutionizing the electrical grid in as significant a way as what Edison and Nikola Tesla did at the turn of the century.<\/li>\n<li>Meanwhile, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spacex.com\/\">Spacex<\/a> will be launching another rocket to the International Space Station in mid-March.  While they have seemingly made the once-unthinkable task of private rocket launches seem almost mundane, this launch will be noteworthy for having <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/2014\/02\/crs-3-falcon-9-first-stage-sport-legs-attempt-soft-splashdown\/\">landing legs attached to the first stage<\/a>.  The plan is to try to &#8220;soft land&#8221; the rocket into the ocean as a test, with the goal of controlling things sufficiently that the rocket can eventually be flown back to the pad and re-used.  Spacex has already reduced launch costs to almost one-third of what their competitors charge, but if they can create a truly reusable rocket then costs will plummet (think of the difference in costs of air travel if we only used each plane for a single flight) and an age of space exploration that rivals the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Age_of_Discovery\">journeys of European explorers after the Middle Ages<\/a> could conceivably begin.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is of course entirely possible that either of these companies could fail in their efforts, but it&#8217;s not hyperbole to say that if they each meet their goals that they will change the world as we know it in very dramatic ways.  It&#8217;s a fun time to be alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two notes about two of my favorite companies: Tesla Motors announced a bit more about their proposed &#8220;gigafactory&#8221; this week, which (if built) will produce as many lithium ion batteries in a single, massive US plant as were produced in the entire world in 2013. They will be partnering with established battery manufacturing firms, giving &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2014\/02\/27\/the-future-is-now\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Future is Now&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,25,54,53],"class_list":["post-6545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-engineering","tag-ramblings","tag-spacex","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6545"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6559,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6545\/revisions\/6559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}