Are we going to live long enough to go to Mars?

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Since I was a kid I thought about visiting other planets, but almost every time I brought it up someone told me that maybe our kids would since we might not live long enough to wait for the required scientific advancements in order to take us there. 

But now, thanks to companies like Space X, we might even go visit other planets!

In a tweet on April 27, 2016; Space X announced their plans to send a Space Capsule to mars as soon as 2018:

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It will be a unmanned expedition, but it will be the first of its kind for a private company. And it seems Mars could just be a stepping stone into exploring the depths of our solar system. Elon Musk, Space X CEO, hinted at this in a tweet: "Dragon 2 is designed to be able to land anywhere in the solar system. Red Dragon Mars mission is the first test flight."

It might take a decade or more before astronauts step on to another planet. 

But we might have more time in this life than previously thought: 

Say hello to "Calico" a Google company which sole purpose is "combating aging and associated diseases" and maybe even "solve death".

So even though colonizing other planets its still years away, we might live long enough to visit or maybe for the already planned one-way trip to Mars.

What do you think? Let me know in the comment section below!

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Is using apps to build Smart Cities possible?

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Nowadays everything in our life can become "smart", there are smartphones, smart-fridges, smart-desks, smart-bracelets, smart-watches, and so on... 

To the point that we start hearing of even smart-cars:

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But can there be a Smart City? Or is that where the "smartification" ends.

In deed it seems like the trend is going towards the Smart Cities:

For instance app developers are now using the data recorded by the users of their apps to help (for a price) City Managers in order to make "urban living more manageable, and the more information they have about how people move around in cities, the easier that proposition becomes (source)"

The first city that used this opportunity to make use of this data was Oregon (They paid Strava $20,000 USD for data on 20,000 bikers). But Strava is not the only app doing this, for instance "Ototo"an Israeli startup is trying to do what Waze did for public transportation and therefore to help governments plan they public infrastructure bette.
(Update: Seems like Ototo was bought by an undisclosed company and their service is not longer public) 

There's a lot of things that are being done to "smartify" our cities:

A mathematician in Sweden has developed a new algorithm to predict train delays, and it's already in used, to predict the effect of one or multiple delays in the entire system.

There are also free web apps available, like Streetmix, where users (housing developers, government officials, urban planners, etc) can build better streets to fit their needs.

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Do you think we are going to see a surge of "app-designed" cities in the near future?

Pleas lets talk about it in the comments below/

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3d Printing, the future is here!

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3D Printing is not a new term. The first incarnation of this technique was first patented in 1984,  but at the time it was commercially unviable, and "lacked business perspective".

By the mid 1990s the concept was still being explored. In 1997 Cristina H. Amon from Carnegie Mellon University published a paper about "Shape deposition manufacturing with microcasting". But it was less than a decade ago that the term"3D Printing" started to become common knowledge.

In 2009 it got traction, even Jay Leno started to use a 3D Printer to replace old car parts:

Image source Popular Mechanics 

But by that time 3D printing was expensive and not widely available.
Jay Leno's setup was about $18,000 USD and it consisted of:
The NextEngine scanner $2,995 (at the time) and the Dimension uPrint Personal 3D printer $15,000 (at the time).


Fast forward a decade and in 2009 3D Printing evolved so much that you could get a custom made design of your own printed in Stainless Steel, it still was expensive but not as much as before. It was about $10 per square centimeter.

Just a few years after that 3D printing started

The possibilities are endless, you can print "impossible things" such as these mind-blowing Interwoven Gears:

You can print anything; from household items (and save money), a futurist-looking solar clock ("Digital Sundial"), or maybe a personalized tie-bar =) in matter of minutes:

Even some have printed weapons.


It became so common that in 2014 Amazon launched a 3D Printing Store "which allows customers to customize and then purchase "more than 200 unique print-on-demand products." (Via Gizmodo)


A study conducted in 2013 by Michigan Technological University showed that a 3D printer can pay for itself in less than a year (the printer cost was calculated to be around $2,000 USD). And now they are less than $1,000 USD. Thats a big incentive to give 3D Printing a try!


What do you think about 3D printing? Have you tried it? Please let me know in the comments below.



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About Me

I'm Eduardo VK a proud Mexican (Mexican not a Mexican't).

I hold a major in Industrial Engineering with a minor in Systems Engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (TEC de Monterrey). 

I'm studying two masters at the same time:

A master in Applied Government Administration (TEC de Monterrey) 

A Master in Liberal Arts of Management at the Harvard Extension School. 

I'm the COO of a Private Hospital Chain called “Hospitales MAC," the CEO of a construction and commercialization company called “Grupo Inhabitat”, the President of a Nonprofit called “SER Soluciones Responsables” (Responsible Solutions) and the Director For Latin America at the Harvard Extension Business Society.

I'm a Traveler, an Engineer, a bit of a Workaholic, a Daydreamer and Doer. Also, I'm madly in love with life

Find mi in Instagram and on Twitter!