Hey readers, it's the 39th White Pill, your favorite newsletter covering developments at the frontier of space, science, engineering, AI, and more. Let's skip the long-winded intro this week and get right to it.

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Space

The International Space Station (ISS) is getting a 3D metal printer. This won't be the first 3D printer on the ISS; there are several plastic 3D printers already aboard. But it is the first metal one to go up there.

The subject of 3D printing metal object in low earth orbit (LEO) is interesting. In practice, it's not as straightforward in a microgravity environment. On land, gravity plays a crucial role in several aspects of 3D metal printing, particularly in processes like powder bed fusion — when a thin layer of metal powder needs to be evenly spread over the build area (uniformity here is critical for achieving parts with good mechanical properties and dimensional accuracy) — and directed energy deposition, when the metal substrate is fed into a melt pool created by a laser. Gravity is also essential to terrestrial 3D printing's cooling and solidification stage, because it influences the direction and rate of heat dissipation, which in turn affects the grain structure of the solidified metal, and ultimately, the mechanical properties of the product. So, a fair amount of challenges to overcome here.

But 3D metal printing in space is probably a must have, not just a nice to have, for a space economy, moon base, or other off-planet economic activity; as far as I know, you can't just pop into a Lowe's to grab the right size wrench when you're on your two-week maintenance stint at Amazon's Lunar Cloud server farm. So we're going to have to get this tech up and running, and sooner rather than later. As Singularity Hub notes,

The need to manufacture items on-demand will only grow the further we travel from home and the longer we stay there. The ISS is relatively nearby — a mere 200 miles overhead — but astronauts exploring and building a more permanent presence on the moon or Mars will need to repair and replace anything that breaks on their mission.

Ambitiously, and even further out, metal 3D printing could contribute to ESA’s vision of a “circular space economy,” in which material from old satellites, spent rocket stages, and other infrastructure is recycled into new structures, tools, and parts as needed.

The printer the ISS is getting is the size of a washing machine, designed by Airbus, and will use a wire as its substrate to avoid the obvious challenges metal powder introduces in LEO. Per the company's press release, which is worth a read in full:

The metal 3D printer will bring new on-orbit manufacturing capabilities, including the possibility to produce load-bearing structural parts that are more resilient than a plastic equivalent. Astronauts will be able to directly manufacture tools such as wrenches or mounting interfaces that could connect several parts together. The flexibility and rapid availability of 3D printing will greatly improve astronauts’ autonomy.

While eventually the printer will help astronauts replace parts that break or wear out, like Airbus says, the first thing ISS astronauts will do with it is print four parts to send back home, to see how they compare with similar parts printed under normal Earth gravity. Progress!

Water observed in atmosphere of “small” exoplanet. The Hubble Space Telescope found water vapor in the atmosphere of a relatively small, potentially rocky world. Around twice the diameter of Earth, exoplanet GJ 9827d orbits its parent star — a red dwarf — about 97 light years away. Temperatures on the planet are similar to Venus, 800 °F (425 °C), due to proximity to its star; astronomers think it's either a mini-Neptune with a hydrogen atmosphere containing some water vapor, or a rocky “water world” with a scalding liquid water ocean under high pressure, and a blistering atmosphere of steam. (Science Alert)

More:

• NASA released 19 new crystal-clear, astounding images of spiral galaxies this week.

• Check out this surprising thread detailing the history of both fungus and lichens surviving on the outside of the ISS for months at a time. For example, the lichen Xanthoria elegans survived for 18 months on the ISS' exterior around 2012; "the BEST PART is that the lichen didn't go into stasis, but kept right on photosynthesizing." Cool.

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Engineering, Computing

Neuralink implants chip in first human patient. After receiving approval for human trials, Elon Musk announced that Neuralink implanted its first device in a person last week, and is doing well. The product is called Telepathy, and according to Musk, it “enables control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking. Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs.”

Imagine, he said, if someone like “Steven Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal.” But this is only step 1. The ultimate goal with Neuralink, Elon has said, is restoring full function to damaged brains and paralyzed bodies, and eventually upgrading healthy humans, to at least partly “merge” with AI. (@elonmusk)

More:

• Solana asked his Twitter followers for ideas for "a several billion dollar towering giant statute" for the SF Bay, and they delivered. Check out the thread; one of the concepts above.

• Gene edited crops are finally starting to be grown in Africa, giving the continent hope of catching up in agricultural productivity, which to date has significantly lagged behind the rest of the world. Both maize (corn) and sorghum (a cereal grain) are being grown, with the sorghum specifically engineered to help it resist a local parasitic plant called witchweed. CRISPR gene editing enables relatively fast and cheap new plant and animal varieties to be designed for farmers, a huge potential benefit for lower income countries in places like Africa. (Nature)

• Watch a railgun shoot "a hypervelocity projectile through concrete" in this video.

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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.

• VR brain training for athletes — ImproVR, a startup developing VR-based brain training (their goal is to enable athletes to “access the ultimate level of sports related cognition” by improving response time, for example), raises an undisclosed amount of financing

• Robotic kitchen — Circus Group, a Munich-based company building the “Circus OS” fully automated kitchen (it even does the dishes), completes its IPO on the German stock exchange

• Endless floor for VR — Unlocked Reality, a startup building a treadmill-like floor that allows virtual reality users to simulate walking and running (unlike a treadmill, users can walk in any direction), raises $1 million of angel funding from undisclosed investors

• Nuclear reactors that fit on a truck — Nano Nuclear Energy, a company developing nano-scale modular nuclear reactors that are smaller than a semi trailer and can be used for temporary power applications, raises $2.17 million of venture funding from undisclosed investors

• Virtual fences but for cows — Corral, a company developing shock collars to keep cows fenced within a a digitally-defined pasture area (this allows farmers to move cows to a new pasture at the push of a button), raises $3.29 million of venture funding

• Space debris tracking — Aldoria, a company that provides high-resolution data on space debris (satellite operators can use this to predict and avoid orbital collisions in space), raises a $10.8 milllion Series A

• Super-detailed space imagery — Albedo, a company that offers aerial-quality satellite imagery (10cm resolution) with a one-hour delay, raises a $35 million Series A1

• Capturing carbon from the ocean — Captura, a company that uses electrodialysis to extract CO2 from seawater, which amplifies the ocean’s capacity to remove carbon from the air, raises a $35 million Series A

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Medicine

Gene therapy lets deaf children hear. Two different trials recently announced successes in using gene therapy to treat children who were born deaf. The first was a boy in the States with a rare mutation in a gene called OTOF that causes hereditary hearing loss. Normal copies of the gene were “delivered directly to his inner ear,” and now — four months later — he's able to hear out of the treated ear. The second trial involved six children in China with the same type of hereditary hearing loss; the therapy took five of them from total deafness to being able to hear. While OTOF is just one out of about 150 different genes potentially responsible for hearing loss, these studies illuminate a path forward with gene therapy. Early days yet: all the children are still hearing impaired, but that shouldn’t take away from the miracle that they couldn’t hear at all — and never had — and now they do. (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) (GEN)

CAR T-cells can fight age, not just cancer. Many are familiar with the role CAR T-cells play in treating blood cancers (we gave an overview of CAR T in a mid-January issue of the White Pill, read it here, in the Medicine section), but scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York recently discovered that if you genetically modify them in the right way, the cells will target senescent cells — “old” cells that have stopped replicating and can cause inflammation, and are thought to play a role in aging and age-related diseases.

Results on mice with this approach are pretty astounding, with one of the scientists commenting: “If we give it to aged mice, they rejuvenate. If we give it to young mice, they age slower. No other therapy right now can do this.” Not only did the mice age slower, they were healthier too, with “lower body weight, improved metabolism and glucose tolerance, and increased physical activity.” It appears to be safe — at least in mice — with no toxicity or tissue damage observed. Someone should really let Bryan Johnson know about this. (SciTechDaily) (Nature)

• For more longevity, read Solana's interview with Bryan Johnson that we published last week.

Silicon that kills viruses. Surfaces consisting of microscopic spikes to kill bacteria and fungi have previously been developed — now researchers from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili" in Catalonia, Spain and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Austrailia have taken things a step further and built one to take out viruses. Made of silicon, the surface consists of needles 2 nanometers thick, and 290 nanometers high. About 30,000 would fit in a human hair. The surface successfully killed about 96% of viruses it came in contact with, absolutely no chemicals required. Really cool. (Phys.org)

More:

• Loyal, a company working on a longevity pill for dogs, dosed its first dog (Boo, a whippet) in its clinical trial for its LOY-002 daily chewable pill, which will ultimately include over 1,000 dogs who are over 14 pounds and 10 years of age. The pill "works in part by improving age-related metabolic decline, which we have shown drives increased frailty and reduced quality of life in dogs," said Loyal founder and CEO Celine Halioua. The company is looking for more participants, as well — find out more on their site. (@celinehalioua)

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Fun stuff

Predjama Castle is a Renaissance castle built within a cave mouth in southwestern Slovenia. It's one of the most unique fortifications in the world. With origins dating back to the 13th century, it apparently had a huge strategic advantage for defense, and was virtually impregnable in the medieval period. Let's go (literally). (@historyinmemes)