Spaceship Earth Grants (SEG), a US public-benefit organization and an affiliate of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, has launched a contest that aims to give away one space flight for every 50,000 applications it receives. With a judging panel made up of former NASA astronauts, industry experts, space enthusiasts, and others, this new program aims to be a crowd-driven and crowd-funded effort to send private citizens into space.

3D Printing has become quite the phenomenon here on Earth over the past few years. While the technology has been available for over 25 years in one form or another, just recently has it caught on among small businesses and at-home users. It provides so much potential to the future of manufacturing, as well as possibilities for one day providing complete self-sufficiency. There is no doubt that the technology will be one to watch in the coming months, years and decades ahead, as new and improved methods of 3D printing become available, not only for large corporations but also at the consumer level. It was only a matter of time before 3D printers would make their way into outer space. While the world has been talking about a project that NASA and Made In Space have been planning for quite some time now, in which they are sending a zero-gravity 3D printer to the International Space Station, very few know what the ultimate goal of this project is. It may surprise you!

It expects the latter to launch as a product in 2017 at 9 petflops, with up to 17.1 exaflops (17,100 petaflops) by 2020. By way of contrast, the Tianhe-2 does about 34 petaflops. It all sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky at this point, but we should have a better idea of the feasibility when the prototype arrives in January.