With help from Derek Robertson

Normally this newsletter about the long-term future is all-digital — it’s in the name. But sometimes the “future” depends on some very physical questions that also deserve attention.

One of these is how we’ll someday get around in space.

We aren’t the only tech people fascinated by this question; when moguls like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk make money on digital tech, they pour it enthusiastically into space projects. Their main products right now are rockets to get off the Earth’s surface, but the real long game — the kind of thing that preoccupies tech billionaires and NASA planners — is what happens next.

Musk wants humanity to think about its potential future as “a multiplanet species & true spacefaring civilization,” NASA’s long-term human space travel plans now live firmly in the “research” zone, but its ideas for propelling craft deeper into space aren’t just experiments anymore.

One idea with momentum is electric propulsion, the idea that a spacecraft can be powered by small amounts of thrust for long periods of time — key for missions potentially lasting years, not just days or weeks.

“Instead of expelling large amounts of mass that you light on the fire using a traditional chemical combustion — the kind of rocket engines you see launching off of Cape Canaveral, huge plumes of red flame and tons of smoke — you are exciting tiny particles using electricity and and shooting them out the back end of a rocket,” said Thomas Roberts, a graduate research fellow at the MIT Astrodynamics, Space Robotics and Controls Laboratory. He was describing ion propulsion, a popular subset of electric propulsion that researchers have had their eye on.

The idea has been around for over a century, and is now in use both by NASA and some commercial projects. SpaceX’s smaller satellites already use electric thrusters to maneuver, with the company’s Starlink constellation being the most popular case. A few years ago, NASA tested an ion engine that could theoretically be deployed to ward off an apocalyptic asteroid.

Experiments in newer or more ambitious forms, the kind you might power human flight with, are proliferating, along with some homebrew projects.

Roberts acknowledged that ion propulsion may be having a moment, though, he cautions, “‘moments’ when it comes to space missions are a bit slow-paced — things that make it to space today were conceived many years ago, especially when they’re run by a government agency.”

Former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe has been a long-time proponent of the technology, and believes we could see it used for human space travel soon: “I think a decade is a reasonable proposition to actually go through a development phase,” he told Digital Future Daily. “We’re within striking distance of that capability.”

But, as with everything, politics eventually enters the equation. Many of these ion-thruster models are nuclear-powered, using small reactors to generate electricity that positively charge gasses like xenon or krypton. Because of Americans’ mixed feelings about nuclear power, “I do not see the U.S. using nuclear-powered electric propulsion for human spaceflight without a serious cultural change,” Roberts said.

Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) re-introduced their sweeping crypto regulation bill last week, and one crypto analyst broke down its impact in a lengthy Twitter thread yesterday.

Justin Slaughter, policy director at the investment firm Paradigm, wrote that the bill is especially notable for how it might interact with its counterpart in the House of Representatives. Mostly because, as he points out, it’s highly unlikely to even see a committee hearing due to opposition from Banking Committee chair Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — meaning that it’s most relevant in the explicit cues it might give for the forthcoming House bill.

Some of which are no small potatoes for the future of blockchain-based financial ideas, like legally defining smart contracts, adding disclosure requirements with potentially serious legal ramifications for CEOs, and laying out more explicit tax provisions for crypto assets than currently exist. “Even if you hate crypto… parts of this bill markedly increase consumer protections and agency funding,” Slaughter concludes. — Derek Robertson

Google’s chatbot Bard debuted in the European Union today, after the resolution of a dispute with Ireland’s data privacy regulator.

POLITICO’s Clothilde Goujard, Pieter Haeck, and Gian Volpicelli reported today on the rollout, noting that the Irish regulators acknowledged Google’s “increased transparency and changes to controls for users” in allowing Bard’s use there. (Google’s European headquarters are in Ireland, making the country its most relevant privacy regulator.)

The Europe team reports that key changes include how “Users will be able to know how their information is being used, to opt out of some uses and to control what conversations with Bard are saved or deleted by Google,” as well as a new “privacy hub” and more than 40 languages in which the chatbot will be available.

Bard is one in a long line of U.S. tech products to see delayed rollouts in the EU, including Meta’s Twitter competitor Threads, which remains unavailable in the bloc. — Derek Robertson

• Take a deep dive into the U.S.’ chip blockade against China.
• China’s regulators are taking a more flexible AI stance than expected.
• Read another skeptical case about the “AI apocalypse.”
• A new AI platform for drug discovery is raising big VC money.
• The founder and former CEO of Celsius was arrested this morning.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ([email protected]); Derek Robertson ([email protected]); Mohar Chatterjee ([email protected]); and Steve Heuser ([email protected]). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter.

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