- A lunar mining factory must launch for < $50 USD / kg and process its own seed mass in ore every Earth day for 20 years just to break even; the dominant cost is the initial “clanking replicator” hardware, not the return leg.  
- Neumann Space’s metal-ion thruster can vaporize and accelerate Mg, Fe, Ni, etc. directly from asteroid material, eliminating Earth-launched propellant; specific impulse is tens of km s⁻¹ and a single rod lasts months at practical power.  
- A Science Advances paper (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba7406) demonstrates “digital near-infrared photopolymerization” that uses patterned NIR light to non-invasively polymerize subcutaneous bio-ink, enabling 3-D tissue printing inside living organisms without surgery.  
- 1980s laser-isotope-separation concepts (Freitas, Los Alamos LIS) are being revisited for space: tune lasers to atomic spectral lines to ablate and collect high-value atoms (e.g., Pt) while using the bulk material as ion-thruster propellant, enabling orbital refining of asteroids or lunar regolith.  
- First-ionization of Fe costs only ~13.7 MJ kg⁻¹, making large-scale ion extraction energetically plausible; multi-photon UV or solar-pumped lasers could supply the required energy in situ.  
- Stanisław Lem’s 1964 “Summa Technologiae” coined terms like “phantomatics” (VR), “molectronics” (nanotech), “cerebromatics” (cognitive enhancement), and “ariadnology” (search); debate centers on whether gene-regulation-driven regenerative medicine will mature before we can design an entire artificial chromosome apparatus.  
- A 10 µm hollow-glass-fiber X-ray array failed on Earth due to gravity-induced asymmetry; the same components might succeed in microgravity, paralleling current ISS ZBLAN fiber experiments.  
- Recent Bloomberg coverage (archive.is/HNQ1F) argues that even a 140 000× gold price spike cannot justify current asteroid-mining business models; participants counter that falling launch costs and proven metal-plasma propulsion would radically alter the economics.