Technology

Are you ready to take this crazy ride to outer space in an 8-passenger luxury balloon?

Published

2 years ago

January 6, 2024

Press Room

Are you ready to take this crazy ride to outer space in an 8-passenger luxury balloon?

Space travel has long been the stuff of dreams, reserved for astronauts and elite scientists.

However, a company called Space Perspective is changing the game with its groundbreaking spacecraft, Spaceship Neptune.

Its goal is to make space accessible to everyone through its unique approach to space tourism.

Recently, Space Perspective unveiled the first images of its completed test capsule structure, marking a significant milestone in its journey toward making space exploration a reality for tourists.

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Spaceship Neptune capsule. (Space Perspective)

How the capsule will carry 8 passengers to space and back

Spaceship Neptune will hang beneath a hydrogen balloon the size of a football field, which will carry the capsule up to an altitude of 100,000 feet. Up that high, the curvature of the earth and the darkness of space can be seen with the naked eye. After two hours of rising, two hours of sightseeing and two hours of a slow descent, passengers would float safely inside the capsule on ocean waves until they were picked up.

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Spaceship Neptune hanging from a hydrogen balloon. (Space Perspective)

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How the Spaceship Neptune offers a gentle 12 mph ascent to space

One of the standout features of Spaceship Neptune is its use of the SpaceBalloon, a technology employed by NASA and other government agencies for decades. Unlike traditional rocket launches that subject passengers to intense g-forces, Spaceship Neptune offers a gentle ascent, rising at just 12 mph. This makes it accessible to anyone medically fit to fly on a commercial airline, removing the physical barriers associated with space travel.

Spaceship Neptune hanging from a hydrogen balloon. (Space Perspective)

The Spaceship Neptune capsule by the numbers

The centerpiece of Spaceship Neptune is its spherical capsule, designed for panoramic views of the cosmos. With 360-degree panoramic windows, passengers are treated to the largest windows ever flown into space.

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Inside the capsule, there are nine plush seats, offering a spacious and comfortable environment for eight passengers and a pilot.

Inside Spaceship Neptune. (Space Perspective)

The interior features dark and tactile materials to minimize glare and reflection. Passengers can enjoy refreshments from a well-appointed bar and store their belongings in a designated cabinet. The capsule is also equipped with Wi-Fi and communication devices for livestreaming, allowing them to share their journey with friends and family back on Earth.

Inside Spaceship Neptune. (Space Perspective)

The capsule also has a below-deck bathroom with a sink, toilet and two windows, as well.

Spaceship Neptune’s bathroom. (Space Perspective )

The inclusion of plants and herbs, such as lavender, basil and rosemary, adds a touch of Earth’s natural beauty to the space lounge.

Inside Spaceship Neptune (Space Perspective)

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What safety precautions will the spaceship offer?

Space Perspective places a strong emphasis on safety, and Neptune is equipped with a backup descent system featuring four parachutes. These parachutes can seamlessly take over in the event of an emergency, ensuring a safe landing. The company claims it is a proven technology and has maintained a 100 percent success rate, providing peace of mind to passengers.

The hydrogen balloon that carries Spaceship Neptune. (Space Perspective)

How the spaceship is sustainable and accessible

One of the most remarkable aspects of Spaceship Neptune is its commitment to sustainability. Propelled by renewable hydrogen, it leaves behind no rocket exhaust or associated carbon footprint. This carbon-neutral approach to space travel is a major step forward in reducing the environmental impact of space tourism.

Spaceship Neptune. (Space Perspective)

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The price of a ticket aboard Spaceship Neptune

The price of a ticket aboard Spaceship Neptune doesn’t come cheap. In fact, it costs a whopping $125,000 per seat. You can reserve your spot with a $1,000 refundable deposit to secure your seat. Each trip can accommodate up to eight people and a pilot. If you are looking for more, the company says you can also book a priority flight or a full-capsule experience for your special occasions, like a family reunion, a corporate event or a milestone celebration. While the idea is exciting, the capsule won’t be ready for human flight for a while. This iteration is designed to be used for uncrewed test flights, at least until the end of 2024.

Kurt’s key takeaways

Spaceship Neptune is poised to revolutionize the world of space tourism. With its innovative approach, the company is ushering in a new era of space exploration that promises to captivate the imaginations of people around the world. As the company prepares for its upcoming uncrewed test flights, the dream of experiencing the blackness of space from the comfort of Spaceship Neptune is closer than ever before. I just hope the price comes down eventually, so more people can enjoy it.

If you had the money, would you spend it on a trip like this to space? Why or why not? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

The Game Awards are losing their luster

Published

11 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

It’s Game Awards season, y’all. That special time of the year when we gather together to celebrate video games and the people who make them… by watching expensive commercials briefly punctuated by the odd awards speech or musical performance. For better or worse, The Game Awards is the biggest night on the video game event calendar. But with the way things have been going, lately it’s been more “worse” than it has been “better.”

Between host and industry hypeman Geoff Keighley’s two video game vanity projects, The Game Awards is older and ostensibly more mature than Summer Game Fest. Conceived in 2014 as a way to celebrate both the people who make and play games, the show has always been part awards ceremony, part commercial product. That idea has been executed with varying degrees of success. (Remember the Schick Hydrobot?) But for the last few years, it’s felt like the awards part was increasingly getting in the way of the commercial part.

Alas, poor Hydrobot, we knew him well.

Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for Schick

That was felt most acutely during the 2023 Game Awards. Developers accepting statues were often drowned out by music or cut off by teleprompters asking them to “please wrap it up” after their roughly 30 seconds of allotted time. Muppets and Death Stranding director Hideo Kojima, though, had no such time limits enforced on them, with Aftermath calculating that 13 acceptance speeches could have fit inside the five minutes Kojima took to explain his game / not-game OD.

2023 was also the first full year into the now endemic video game labor crisis that saw developers laid off by the tens of thousands while studios of popular games got shut down. That crisis went by that year’s game awards with no acknowledgement, angering developers further. “I’m incredibly disappointed in Geoff Keighley for his silence on the state of the industry this year,” Monomi Park senior environment artist Dillon Sommerville told The Verge in 2023.

How to watch The Game Awards

On Thursday, December 11th at 5PM PT / 8PM ET the TGAs will be streamed on Twitch and YouTube. This year, Keighley has also signed a deal to beam the show live via Prime Video where it’ll be free to watch for Prime subscribers.

Keighley, perhaps responding to the bad optics, acknowledged the continuing labor issue in 2024. The Game Awards also introduced a new category, Game Changer, with its inaugural award going to Amir Satvat, a business development director at Tencent who created a resource to help laid-off developers find jobs.

But in the months since the 2024 awards, Keighley has once again been accused of poor treatment of the people he’s supposed to be celebrating. In 2020, The Game Awards announced a new initiative called The Future Class, designed to celebrate game makers, “who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future of video games.” Inductees are honored during the broadcast and provided with networking opportunities, mentorship programs, and other resources throughout the following year. However, there have been reports alleging that Keighley has ignored Future Class concerns and that resources from the program have been materially lacking.

In 2023, the Future Class wrote an open letter to The Game Awards and Keighley demanding recognition of the war in Gaza. This wasn’t without precedent. In 2022, the awards show acknowledged the war in Ukraine. But Keighley didn’t respond to the letter, nor has he mentioned the Future Class that much either. The Game Awards hasn’t named a Future Class in the last two years and won’t be naming anymore according to Future Class organizer Emily Weir. “At this time, we are not planning a new Future Class for this year and do not have any active programming plans for Future Class,” she said in a statement to Game Developer.

Gif of a curly haired man named Pedro Eustache playing an alto flute

Pedro Eustache, affectionately known as Flute Guy, has confirmed he will be performing at The Game Awards.

Gif: The Game Awards

Like a lot of diversity and inclusion-minded programs, Future Class got started in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. But as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have become publicly verboten in the rise of the Trump Administration and the online right, many companies, including game publishers, have diminished or jettisoned their DEI programs. While there has been no explicitly stated reason for the seeming shut down of the Future Class, it seems like The Game Awards is just doing what it always does — whatever’s popular at the time.

For as much as The Game Awards has lost the veneer of respectability among some of the people whose work it’s meant to celebrate, rest assured, it ain’t going anywhere. The Game Awards broadcast nets millions of viewers with a record-breaking 154 million livestreams in 2024. That’s a lot of eyeballs that developers pay a lot of money to get in front of. And even for those who don’t buy airtime, having your game featured at all during the presentation can net a big boost in sales. After Balatro was nominated for and won multiple awards last year including best debut indie, its publisher PlayStack shouted out the awards specifically for contributing to a huge increase in players.

More generally, the awards also provide a nice focal point for the disparate online gaming communities to gather around… and bitch about. E3 is long gone, and the other big events (not also run by Keighley) are the publisher-specific direct livestreams. With everything so fractured now, yelling with your friends or colleagues about how Hades was robbed for game of the year (an event I will never get over) is fun and something TGAs are singularly suited to provide. It is not the Oscars of gaming — DICE, the BAFTAs, and the International Game Development Awards (IGDA) pretty well take care of that. But if you want popularity, production values, and Flute Guy, there’s nothing like The Game Awards — even though some of the shine is starting to wear off.

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Ash Parrish

Technology

3D printed cornea restores sight in world first

Published

12 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

3D printed cornea restores sight in world first

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Surgeons at Rambam Eye Institute have made medical history.

They restored sight to a legally blind patient using a fully 3D printed corneal implant grown entirely from cultured human corneal cells. This marked the first time a corneal implant that did not rely on donor tissue had ever been transplanted into a human eye.

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A breakthrough that turns one donor cornea into hundreds

The cornea came from a healthy deceased donor and was then multiplied in the lab. Researchers used the cultured cells to print about 300 transparent implants with Precise Bio’s regenerative platform.

Their system builds a layered structure that looks and behaves like a natural cornea. It is designed to provide clarity, strength and long-term function.

HOW A TINY RETINAL IMPLANT IS HELPING PEOPLE REGAIN THEIR SIGHT

Since donor shortages prevent millions from receiving sight-saving care each year, this approach could transform access. Many patients in developed countries wait only a few days for a transplant, while others wait years due to low tissue availability. A single donor cornea that can create hundreds of implants changes that equation.

The surgery used a fully 3D printed corneal implant grown from cultured human cells and restored sight to a legally blind patient. (Rambam Eye Institute)

The surgery that proved it works

Professor Michael Mimouni, director of the Cornea Unit in the Department of Ophthalmology at Rambam Eye Institute, led the surgical team. He described the moment as unforgettable because the lab-grown implant restored sight to a real patient for the first time.

He says, “What this platform shows and proves is that in the lab, you can expand human cells. Then print them on any layer you need, and that tissue will be sustainable and work. We can hopefully reduce waiting times for all kinds of patients waiting for all kinds of transplants.”

The procedure is part of an ongoing Phase 1 clinical trial that assesses safety and tolerability in people with corneal endothelial disease. This achievement reflects years of work across research labs, operating rooms and industry. It also shows how coordinated teams can push new treatments from concept to clinical reality.

How the science fits into a bigger future

The breakthrough will have a permanent home in Rambam’s upcoming Helmsley Health Discovery Tower. The new Eye Institute will consolidate care, training and research under one roof. It aims to speed the move from emerging science to real-world treatment for patients across Northern Israel and beyond.

Precise Bio says its 3D printing system could eventually support other tissues like cardiac muscle, liver and kidney cells. That future will require long trials and extensive validation, but the path now looks more achievable.

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Professor Michael Mimouni led the surgical team at Rambam Eye Institute’s Cornea Unit. (Rambam Eye Institute)

What this means for you

If corneal disease affects someone in your family, this work brings new hope. Donor tissue may continue to play a role in many regions, but lab-grown implants offer a way to expand access where shortages hold patients back. The success of this first transplant also suggests a future where regenerative medicine supports many types of tissue repair.

This milestone also shows how long scientific breakthroughs take to reach real patients. The first 3D printed cornea design appeared in 2018 and only now reached human use. Even so, the progress feels fast when the result is restored sight.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

This successful transplant marks a turning point for eye care. It suggests a world where the limits of donor supply do not decide who receives sight-saving surgery. As more trial results arrive, we will see how far this technology can scale and which patients stand to benefit first.

If regenerative implants become common, what medical challenge should researchers focus on next? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com

The breakthrough shows how one donor cornea can generate hundreds of lab-grown implants, offering new hope for people who face long waits for sight-saving treatment. (iStock)

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

Figma adds more Photoshop-like AI tools for image editing

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Press Room

Figma adds more Photoshop-like AI tools for image editing

Figma is launching three new AI-powered creative tools to help users edit their images without jumping to another platform. The new tools are available in Figma Design and Figma Draw, and can be used to quickly remove objects from an image, isolate objects so they can be repositioned, and extend images beyond their previous dimensions.

The Erase object and Isolate object tools are designed to work alongside Figma’s existing lasso tool, which allows users to draw around specific sections of the image they want to edit. Any objects or people within these selections can then be instantly erased from the image while filling in the background behind them, or separated from the background layer to reposition or edit them directly.

The Expand image tool expands the background of an image to fit new aspect ratios “without distortion,” according to Figma. It sounds similar to Adobe’s Generative Expand tool for Photoshop, using generative AI to fill the extended space in a way that blends into the original image. Adobe also has similar AI tools for erasing and isolating objects — Figma doesn’t size up to the vast suite of creative tools available across Adobe’s apps, but introducing its own native features gives Figma users fewer reasons to use other platforms for those editing requirements.

Figma is also launching a new image editing toolbar to house these editing features in one place, alongside existing capabilities like the Remove background tool. These new features are available to Figma users with “Full Seat” access, which is the subscription tier required to unlock all of Figma’s design products. Next year, Figma says it plans to make the new editing tools available across other apps within its platform.