Technology and future possibilities

10 to explore

• Watch Try it What If? Lab What if a home ran on a big battery? A big home battery in our model stores 13,500 watt hours. Running a small 500-watt load, it lasts more than a day; switch on a 2,000-watt heater and it is empty in under seven hours. The secret is dividing the energy stored by how fast it is used.
• Watch Try it What If? Lab What if an electric plane carried more batteries? An electric plane needs batteries to fly, and more batteries could store more energy. But batteries are heavy. In our model, a small plane weighing 1,100 kg flies at 55 meters per second with lift to spare. Load it up to 1,500 kg and, at the same speed and wing tilt, its wings make only 88 percent of the lift it needs.
• Watch What If? Lab What if cars drove themselves? Self-driving cars use cameras, radar, lidar and maps, plus computers that decide when to steer, speed up and brake. Today most cars can only help a human driver, and cars that drive themselves work only in certain places. Explore how these cars see, how they decide, and what sharing the street with them could mean.
• Watch What If? Lab What if cities floated on the sea? Floating buildings already exist: in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, a three-story office floats in a harbor on concrete pontoons. Designers have also planned a floating neighborhood off Busan, South Korea, for up to 12,000 people. But a floating city would need to stay afloat, cope with waves and storms, and find fresh water in the middle of salty sea. Explore each challenge.
• Watch What If? Lab What if every roof grew food? Most city roofs are bare, but some already grow lettuce, tomatoes and herbs, in boxes of soil or in water with no soil at all. Imagine every roof growing food. How would the plants get light and water up there? How much food could a city grow on top of itself? Explore what real rooftop farms have shown, and what they cost.
• Watch What If? Lab What if people built homes on Mars? Mars has air you cannot breathe, temperatures far below freezing and no magnetic shield like Earth's. A home there would need sealed rooms, a way to make oxygen and water, and gardens for fresh food. NASA is already testing pieces of the puzzle, from an oxygen maker on Mars to a 3D-printed practice habitat in Texas.
• Watch What If? Lab What if robots did all the chores? Millions of robot vacuums already clean floors, but folding a T-shirt is still very hard for a robot. Explore what household robots can do today, why messy, changing jobs like laundry are so tricky, and what robots doing more chores could mean for people.
• Watch Try it What If? Lab What if solar panels became much more efficient? Efficiency is the share of sunlight a panel turns into electricity. Raise it from 20 to 30 percent in our model and the same panel, in the same sunshine, makes half as much electricity again, so a smaller roof could do the same job.
• Watch What If? Lab What if we built a space elevator? Rockets burn huge amounts of fuel to reach space. A space elevator would be a cable stretching from the equator about 35,786 kilometers up to a special orbit, with robot climbers riding up and down. NASA studies say it might cut the cost of reaching orbit hugely, but it needs a material far stronger than anything we can make in long lengths today. Explore the cable, the materials and the ride.
• Watch What If? Lab What if we could print a house? Giant 3D printers already build walls by squeezing out concrete one layer at a time, like icing from a piping bag. In 2026, a U.S. Army base in Texas opened the first of ten printed buildings for soldiers, and in 2022 a university in Maine printed a small house from wood fibers. What if we printed lots of our buildings? Explore how printed homes are made and whether they are really faster.