additive manufacturing

future predictions, future report, future scenario, future tech

Ethan Thornton: What He’s Doing to Defense is What Musk Did to Aerospace

January 16, 2026

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The Pattern Nobody’s Recognizing Yet

Elon Musk didn’t become Elon Musk by building better apps. He became Elon Musk by attacking civilization-scale infrastructure problems everyone else considered unsolvable: reusable rockets when aerospace experts said impossible, electric vehicles when they were jokes, solar energy when utilities controlled the grid.

The pattern was specific: hard tech, vertically integrated manufacturing, existential risk tolerance, and rebuilding foundational infrastructure rather than optimizing what exists.

That exact pattern is emerging again—not in someone famous, but in a 26-year-old MIT dropout named Ethan Thornton who’s doing to defense manufacturing what Musk did to aerospace: rebuilding it from scratch because the existing system is fundamentally broken.

Most people haven’t heard of him. But his trajectory suggests he might be the closest thing to “the next Elon Musk” currently operating—not because he acts like Musk, but because he’s running the identical playbook on a different broken industry.

3D Printer, Economy, Employment, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The end of work: The consequences of an economic singularity

February 20, 2019

Today, we are no longer confined to what nature or natural intelligence must offer. From the steam engine to electricity and digital transformations to artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing and bioengineering, each new transformative innovation has brought us a new (man-made) way of doing things in ways that nature did not provide for.

As new ways of manufacturing and production are emerging, they are taking away an ever-increasing number of tasks and roles previously performed by a human labor force. Furthermore, the automation, self-improvement, self-replication and distributed nature of the manufacturing processes are producing products and goods at a minimal cost. As a result, each of these existing and emerging technologies, individually and collectively, will likely one day eliminate the need for human labor for production of goods and services—shaking the very fundamentals of economics as we know today.

Continue reading… “The end of work: The consequences of an economic singularity”

3D Printer, Analysis, Future, NASA, Science & Technology News, Space

Homesteading in space

October 8, 2015

People rarely bring their houses with them when they move from one city to another — they just rent, buy or build a new one. Astronauts don’t have the luxury of a realtor on other planets, or even a hardware store in space.

Continue reading… “Homesteading in space”

3D Printer, Analysis, Business, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The impact of the Maker Movement on supply chains

September 5, 2014

3d printing is also known as additive manufacturing.

Brian Solis: I follow the Maker Movement as a consumer, analyst and also as a maker. What is the maker movement? It a manifestation of the DIY (Do It Yourself) or DIWO (Do It With Others) culture where everyday people design, build and/or market something that they want or need on their own rather than buying something off the shelf.

Continue reading… “The impact of the Maker Movement on supply chains”

Analysis, Science & Technology News, Space, top 10

Top 10 ways 3D printing could change space

April 21, 2014

A closeup of a titanium lattice ball manufactured using a 3D printing process.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has identified ten ways to transform how space missions put together in their investigation of the potential of additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing.

Continue reading… “Top 10 ways 3D printing could change space”