Hey readers, it's the 43rd issue of the White Pill, your favorite newsletter covering developments at the frontier of space, science, engineering, AI, and more.

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OK — now let's get to it.

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Space

Edge of space tourism. The space tourism company Space Perspective recently unveiled the first model of its Spaceship Neptune, dubbed "Excelsior." Unlike other space-focused companies, Space Perspective will use balloons instead of rockets to reach the edge of space.

The balloon — over 600 feet tall — will raise its capsule from a boat at a leisurely 12 mph (19 km/h), meaning passengers won’t have to experience the high gravities of a rocket launch, and will ride for about six hours before reaching (I think) 100,000 feet (18 miles or about 30 km). They're expecting to start flights at the end of this year, tickets going for $125,000 per seat.

The crewed experience — a future, less austere model of Spaceship Neptune — will be unlike anything else operating today. Eight passengers will enjoy cushioned chairs that face outward to view the world through tall windows. The capsule will also contain a bar station and a bathroom. Pretty cool.

Check out their announcement on Twitter for more pics of the vessel. (Space.com)

One more Odysseus update. Ars Technica published a great recap of Intuitive Machines' lunar lander Odysseus' moon landing, arguing that despite the fact that it toppled over on landing, the project was a success, and is seen as such by the company and NASA. From the piece:

The reality is that Intuitive Machines is a private company with about 250 people working on this lunar lander program. That's a small fraction of the resources that national space programs typically devote to these initiatives, and with all the data it has gathered, Intuitive Machines and its customers can be pretty confident that the company will stick the landing next time.

And here's a great visual description from Phil of how the landing probably went down:

I will always envision a lander whose vision was blinded but it flies heroically toward the surface, guessing how far to go, impacting too hard and sliding across the ground, flinging rocks and dust while the engine still spews flame, metal bending and a leg snapping free before it skids to a stop, teetering, bruised and covered with dust, but proudly upright on the freaking Moon for a brief moment...

How did we get light? The Big Bang was not a conventional explosion; there was no sound and no visible light from the moment of the Bang until about 400,000 years later. The Bang did not originate from a single point in space, but rather it took place at every point in space, simultaneously. This expansion, silent and completely dark, though insanely powerful and epic, was for 380,000 years filled with plasma so hot that photons could not travel freely without being absorbed and re-emitted by charged particles. Thus, our universe at this time was like opaque sludge.

But then there was a dark age in our universe, when it cooled enough for protons to combine with electrons to form neutrally-charged hydrogen molecules, and photons could travel freely, making the universe 'transparent' but still completely dark. Also present was helium, formed during the first 30 seconds after Bang, which began to form gas clouds with hydrogen after this dark age. In what's known as the Cosmic Dawn, the gas clouds collapsed under the weight of their own gravity, igniting nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium and releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the form of light and heat. This marked the birth of the first stars.

Let there be light!

Varda's return. After nearly eight months stranded in low earth orbit (LEO), the Varda in-space drug manufacturing capsule finally touched down in Utah this week. The machinery in the capsule crystalized an HIV treatment drug called Ritonavir in microgravity, allowing it to potentially form purer and more efficiently than under Earth’s gravity. Above is a still from a really cool five-minute video of the capsule's re-entry (watch it here); you can also check out pics of the recovery.

For background on the capsule, read our interview with Varda co-founder Delian Asparouhov, which we literally conducted while the preliminary results of first drug manufacturing run were coming in.

More:

• Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, who has been on the ISS now for six months, posted some incredible photos of Aurora Australis (Southern Lights) — preview above. For higher resolution images, check out his X post.

• Valdez, Alaska wants to install a Riker statue, as it's the character's fictional birthplace. Make it so. (@TheTrekCentral)

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Energy, Engineering, AI

What are the most epic feats of engineering in American history? Glad you asked. This week, White Pill co-writer Owen Lewis takes readers on a tour of the most epic-scale engineering projects in US history in a piece called 12 Epic Feats of American Engineering.

Did you know, for example, that:

• in the late 19th century, we literally raised much of the city of Chicago by up to six feet?

• the Empire State Building, the world's first 100+ story tower, was completed in a year and 45 days, a full month ahead of schedule?

• building the Hoover Dam, which would create the largest reservoir in the world at the time, necessitated building the world’s largest refrigeration system, capable of producing 1,000 tons of ice a day to be used in pipes that ran throughout the construction to help the concrete dry?

Owen's piece isn't just a list of descriptions of big American engineering projects. He goes deep into the sheer force of will that each project required, challenges their builders overcame, and provides a sense of the epic scale of every megaproject in the list. It's a great read.

AI aiding fusion. Last week a Princeton-led team of scientists used AI to predict plasma instabilities in fusion reactors up to 300 milliseconds in advance.

Why do you, as a liker of fusion, care? The superheated plasma that drives fusion reactions is notoriously difficult to control, and if it loses its stability and escapes the magnetic fields containing the reaction, the reaction just stops — meaning no more energy. These instabilities are one of several challenges that need to be overcome for fusion to power the future.

The researchers trained an AI on past experimental data, which allowed it both to predict and modify the operating parameters of the reactor before the instabilities arose. This is a particularly exciting discovery because these instabilities (known as tearing mode instabilities) are one of the major causes of plasma disruption, and will become only more challenging as fusion reactors reach the higher energies demanded of commercial use. (princeton.edu)

Petabit discs. Current data centers are enormous affairs that consume large amounts of energy. But this week, researchers in China released a paper that details a new design for optical discs (think DVDs). Historically, most DVDs only stored data in a single layer, but these researchers designed a disc with 100s of layers. They estimate a single disc would have approximately 1.6 Petabits of storage, which is roughly equivalent to 256 DVDs.

With this technology, the research team believes they can build an exabit-scale data center in a small room, instead of the enormous buildings tech companies use today. Not only would the space requirements be much smaller than a traditional data center, but they won’t require electricity at rest, meaning power consumption would be much less, too. (Interesting Engineering)

More:

• Image-to-video LLM. Chinese company Alibaba seems to have generated a pretty compelling LLM that turns still images into moving videos. (VentureBeat) (@SelfieTT)

• Above is a still from a video showing the largest reciprocating engine in the world. Reciprocating engines are pretty widely used; they're in cars, motorcycles, airplanes, and even power plants for example; this one powers a container ship. Pretty epic... (@Rainmaker1973)

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The White Pill Investment Index tracks investments in companies developing interesting, exciting, forward-thinking products. Deals are sourced using a combination of Pitchbook and reach outs to each company.

• Robotic technology that reduces tremor during microsurgery. Medical Microinstruments, a company that developed a robotic system comprised of miniaturized instruments and motion-scaling technologies to perform microsurgeries (it has been used in a broad range of procedures so far including lymphatic surgery), raises $110 million of Series C venture funding

• Personal air taxis. LIFT Aircraft, a company that created an electric-propulsion, carbon fiber personal aircraft called Hexa and seeks to democratize human flight with “no runway or pilot’s license required,” raises $6.6 million of equity crowdfunding. (Hope there's some kind of requirement, ultimately, for flying these...)

• Using AI to inspect power lines. Buzz Solutions, a company that uses AI to help detect faults and anomalies on power lines and other infrastructure (in order to reduce the likelihood of wildfires, forced shutdowns, and power outages), raises $5 million of venture funding

• Vertical farming that uses 99% less water. Emirates Bustanica, a UAE company that operates the world’s largest vertical farm growing a variety of produce (and uses 99% less water than outdoor fields, all without pesticides and herbicides), was acquired by Emirates Flight Catering for an undisclosed amount

• Autonomous mobile robots to enhance productivity. Brain Corp, the autonomous technology company that has developed AI-based robotics automation software and has deployed over 30,000 autonomous mobile robots globally (to enhance productivity across several commercial spaces, including warehouses, airports, schools, and more), raises $32 million of venture funding

• New medicines for cancer treatment — brought to you by AI. CoRegen, a company that has found and patented a new way for the immune system to attack cancer by modifying Treg cells (they use machine learning to identify and prioritize drug targets), raises $14.5 million from a private investor

• Wearable robotics for human augmentation. DEPHY, a robotics startup that has developed performance-enhancing wearable robotics technologies for use in a variety of fields, including the military, academics, and business, raises an undisclosed amount of seed funding, putting the company’s post-valuation at $40 million

• AI for world building. Promethean AI, a company that uses custom AI models to help with 3D design for things like video games, movies, and architecture (it works with any 3D editor software and saves time by handling mundane, non-creative work), joins Disney Accelerator as part of its 10th Accelerator Program

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Medicine

Natural sensations from prosthetic limbs. A few years ago, researchers in Switzerland announced that they had developed new prosthetic legs that enabled amputees to feel sensations. The device connected to the sciatic nerve in the thigh via electrodes. This week, they published a paper announcing a further advance.

In the past, neuroprosthetics used constant electrical impulses to stimulate the nervous system, which often evoked artificial, unpleasant sensations. To solve this, researchers recorded the activity of neural receptors in the sole of the foot, creating a model of how receptors respond to different stimuli.

With the model, they were able to simulate much more closely the signals the brain would have naturally received. Test subjects were able to climb steps faster and perhaps more importantly, think about other things while walking, a sign the artificial stimulation is less taxing on the brain. (SciTechDaily)

Spiral diopters. Contact lenses with a spiral pattern have been made that allow human eyes to have clear focus at different distances. These lenses are called spiral diopters (diopter is a unit of measurement used in ophthalmology), and “causes incoming light to spin in an optical vortex,” creating “many separate points of focus — much like having multiple lenses in one.” This gives the wearer clear sight at multiple distances, and also eliminates distortions in peripheral vision common with eyeglasses. Contacts like these could circumvent the need for bifocals or progressive lenses as we age. (Science Alert) (Optica)

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Fun stuff

• Patrick Blumenthal has been creating great ads for the future, lateley. Above are two — here's another, and another. (@PatrickJBlum)

• Medieval combat: not like the movies (who would have thought?). Read this great thread that describes, in detail, how death at the hands of an enemy soldier during the middle ages was generally frenzied, terrifying, and achieved by tens of blows as opposed to, for example, one clean slice.

• Last, enjoy this remarkable art by Hariton Pushwagner, part of his visual novel called 'Soft City'. Find higher res versions here.

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Touch grass this weekend, everyone.

— Brandon Gorrell

This issue of the White Pill was written with an enormous amount of help from Owen Lewis and Ryan Kirk.