:00:00. > :00:00.That's it from me. Lebo will be here at 2am.
:00:00. > :00:00.Now on BBC News, it's time for Click.
:00:07. > :00:10.This week, the best view in the world, super-smart Singapore,
:00:11. > :00:51.5:45am on Sunday 19th October 2014, 19 miles above New Mexico,
:00:52. > :01:00.and the type of sunrise that not many people have ever seen.
:01:01. > :01:03.It's the view from a test flight which is preparing to take tourists
:01:04. > :01:13.While all the attention has been focused on space tourism
:01:14. > :01:16.using rockets and space planes, we've got exclusive access to one
:01:17. > :01:18.company in the Arizona desert that's been quietly
:01:19. > :01:30.It's really the way to do space tourism, because you want to go
:01:31. > :01:33.and spend time and look at the view and have a gentle ride up
:01:34. > :01:38.I mean, look, the rocket rides are going to be great,
:01:39. > :01:41.I'm sure, but for me, I want to sit there with my glass
:01:42. > :01:44.of champagne and my best friend and look.
:01:45. > :01:48.Tickets are currently selling for $75,000 each for a two-hour
:01:49. > :01:53.ascent in a pressurised capsule to an altitude of 100,000 feet.
:01:54. > :02:01.Today, one of World View's co-founders and his team
:02:02. > :02:04.are showing me a small piece of the balloon's material,
:02:05. > :02:07.a secret blend of polyethylene and other materials.
:02:08. > :02:09.I can't help but notice you have, I think,
:02:10. > :02:12.Tell me you use this for Christmas dinners.
:02:13. > :02:16.Absolutely, you should see the parties we have on this table!
:02:17. > :02:23.And, seriously, are you going to make a balloon that covers
:02:24. > :02:26.So full-scale balloons for heavy-lift flights,
:02:27. > :02:31.so like a Voyager flight, use the entire table.
:02:32. > :02:34.If you want to take a payload that is 10,000 pounds to 105,000
:02:35. > :02:38.feet, it takes a balloon the size of this entire table,
:02:39. > :02:42.so you could take a football field and spin it inside the balloon
:02:43. > :02:48.Contrary to what I thought, as the helium expands,
:02:49. > :02:50.it doesn't cause the material to stretch.
:02:51. > :02:53.Instead, the gas just occupies more of the initially empty balloon.
:02:54. > :02:55.Can you navigate when you are up there?
:02:56. > :03:06.Or are you subject to whichever way the wind blows?
:03:07. > :03:08.So it turns out that in the stratosphere
:03:09. > :03:10.you very often get counter-flowing winds, the stratosphere
:03:11. > :03:13.and the troposphere going different directions, and in that interface
:03:14. > :03:18.So by guiding my altitude up and down, I can sort of sail
:03:19. > :03:21.the stratosphere, much like a ship uses the currents and winds
:03:22. > :03:30.I think that is really the innovation that were pushing,
:03:31. > :03:33.is figuring out how to do that navigation, when you can find
:03:34. > :03:36.the right winds and how you take advantage of different kinds
:03:37. > :03:40.That is a large part of the innovation, along with just
:03:41. > :03:44.the ability to control your altitude and use solar energy to go up
:03:45. > :03:48.And then there's the question of how you get back down again,
:03:49. > :03:56.They go into what's pretty close to freefall for something like ten
:03:57. > :03:59.seconds, so it feels very light, like going over the top
:04:00. > :04:02.of a roller-coaster, just feeling light, and then we come
:04:03. > :04:05.back to about 1G, 12 or 15 seconds later,
:04:06. > :04:08.so we're just gaining some speed, and then it feels like a normal
:04:09. > :04:14.But you have to be finished your champagne by then.
:04:15. > :04:18.One of our requirements was that you don't spill your champagne,
:04:19. > :04:21.literally, when that happens, and so I think we are going
:04:22. > :04:23.to have a little cup on the champagne.
:04:24. > :04:29."Could you now put a little lid over the top of your champagne as we drop
:04:30. > :04:36.The person who will make sure you don't spill your booze,
:04:37. > :04:38.or any other fluid for that matter, is the pilot.
:04:39. > :04:42.It's a unique job, and that's why an ex-Nasa test pilot and astronaut
:04:43. > :04:47.will be the one pulling the strings, as it were.
:04:48. > :04:52.When you are on a parafoil or something like that,
:04:53. > :04:55.you have this left-right thing going on, is that what you've
:04:56. > :04:59.You can think of it that way, but in reality the spacecraft
:05:00. > :05:04.We've got a parachute that's the size of a basketball court,
:05:05. > :05:06.so we couldn't physically, you know, have enough
:05:07. > :05:13.So we are actually controlling and probably with a joystick,
:05:14. > :05:16.we're still designing exactly what it's going to look like,
:05:17. > :05:20.but that joystick or that whatever controller is controlling motors
:05:21. > :05:23.that are pulling on lines on the parachute, just
:05:24. > :05:26.like you would if you were skydiving, but just on a much,
:05:27. > :05:30.What will this look like when it's kitted out for passengers?
:05:31. > :05:33.When it's kitted out for passengers, it will have these tremendous
:05:34. > :05:36.windows, at least four of them, four big ones and then
:05:37. > :05:40.There will be seats for everybody, there will be a bar,
:05:41. > :05:44.who wants a spacecraft without a bar?
:05:45. > :05:46.And it will have a bathroom, it's a five-hour flight,
:05:47. > :05:53.at least, so you need a bathroom on board too.
:05:54. > :05:56.And you say this is the first spacecraft you've flown with a bar,
:05:57. > :05:58.so you've flown other spacecraft, then?
:05:59. > :06:02.So I've flown on both the US Space Shuttle
:06:03. > :06:04.and I flew on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
:06:05. > :06:08.How do you think this will compare to that?
:06:09. > :06:13.It'll be a different experience, I can tell you that,
:06:14. > :06:16.you know, when we came back with the Soyuz,
:06:17. > :06:19.for instance, we hurtle through the atmosphere on fire
:06:20. > :06:23.It's a very violent, very dynamic, lots of G forces,
:06:24. > :06:25.you're getting thrown all over the place in the cockpit,
:06:26. > :06:30.you feel the heat, you're labouring to breathe.
:06:31. > :06:37.This will be a lot more gentle, a lot more relaxing,
:06:38. > :06:40.and frankly it will enable people to take in the experience
:06:41. > :06:44.It's not like you're wondering whether you're going to survive
:06:45. > :06:50.We are going to have more from World View in a few minutes,
:06:51. > :06:54.but first let's come back down to Earth and talk about the cities
:06:55. > :06:56.of our future, cities which are already capable
:06:57. > :06:59.of guiding our decisions, thanks to an explosion in cameras,
:07:00. > :07:01.sensors and artificially intelligent technology.
:07:02. > :07:04.Jen Copestake has been to one of the most hi-tech places on earth
:07:05. > :07:14.to see what might be in our connected future.
:07:15. > :07:17.There's been a great variety of connected devices that have
:07:18. > :07:19.entered our lives in the last few years.
:07:20. > :07:21.We've seen many concepts at trade shows around the world,
:07:22. > :07:23.with irons, fridges and robots communicating
:07:24. > :07:29.Finding the best ways to put these devices to good use for wider
:07:30. > :07:31.society is a challenge that large companies and governments
:07:32. > :07:40.Singapore is the perfect test-bed for internet of things technologies.
:07:41. > :07:43.It's a quintessential smart city, and that is because it's only 40
:07:44. > :07:45.kilometres across, so it's very small, and the government
:07:46. > :07:47.here is heavily invested in technology initiatives,
:07:48. > :07:50.including investing in sensors all around the city.
:07:51. > :07:54.Along with sensors to monitor pollution and traffic,
:07:55. > :07:56.some buildings in Singapore are equipped with accelerometers
:07:57. > :08:01.to monitor elderly people's movements.
:08:02. > :08:05.Yuhua is a smart region of the city where all the homes are kitted out
:08:06. > :08:10.The government has now created an impressive 3D map model of Yuhua
:08:11. > :08:18.What they did was they actually flew planes over the entire Singapore
:08:19. > :08:22.and scanned the entire country, and then what we did was take
:08:23. > :08:26.the model and load it in here, and we enhanced the model to this
:08:27. > :08:32.So these are separately modelled from the buildings,
:08:33. > :08:34.the buildings are separately modelled as each building,
:08:35. > :08:42.If you click on a building, it tells you consumption
:08:43. > :08:44.versus generation, for example, all right?
:08:45. > :08:47.And you could click on solar panel, and you just get...
:08:48. > :08:53.This is, again, very typical of Singapore, high-rise living.
:08:54. > :09:01.It incredible, we are seeing these green pathways shooting out
:09:02. > :09:05.across the building, where are they going?
:09:06. > :09:09.They are not meteors or anything like that,
:09:10. > :09:13.they are just simulating how garbage is disposed in high-rise living,
:09:14. > :09:16.down the chute, you open the hopper, you drop the garbage,
:09:17. > :09:20.and it gets collected in a huge bin down at the bottom.
:09:21. > :09:22.It's certainly mesmerising, which is something I never thought
:09:23. > :09:32.And for driving around the city, how about a ride in an autonomous taxi?
:09:33. > :09:36.Singapore became the world's first city to introduce the cars created
:09:37. > :09:38.by MIT start-up nuTonomy that travel around six kilometres
:09:39. > :09:44.Companies are also testing the way that artificial intelligence can
:09:45. > :09:51.IBM has opened a new lab here, focusing on AI.
:09:52. > :09:54.This includes a pilot we saw late last year,
:09:55. > :09:58.where its Watson system is helping this is in a busy ICU ward
:09:59. > :10:03.by monitoring vital signs and triaging the most at-risk patients.
:10:04. > :10:06.You could even think of this as a command and control centre
:10:07. > :10:12.Because Parkway has a network of hospitals, and if they really
:10:13. > :10:15.wanted to, they could create a kind of command and control centre,
:10:16. > :10:18.where someone is monitoring all their ICUs around the region.
:10:19. > :10:21.If you see that some of your patients are trending
:10:22. > :10:23.negatively, you obviously want to focus more on them,
:10:24. > :10:26.and the ones that are doing fine, you can just continue monitoring
:10:27. > :10:31.But you know where to put your energy and put your resources.
:10:32. > :10:33.The Singapore government is pushing digital transformation
:10:34. > :10:40.We had a brief demo of its online services, including MyInfo,
:10:41. > :10:43.a portal designed to make things like banking transactions easier
:10:44. > :10:46.by keeping verification details all in one place.
:10:47. > :10:48.It's protected by strict data-protection laws
:10:49. > :10:54.The overarching idea is to make technologies such a central part
:10:55. > :10:59.of life here, to make it possible to keep pace with regulation.
:11:00. > :11:01.We've seen this to be more challenging elsewhere,
:11:02. > :11:05.particularly with laws on autonomous vehicles.
:11:06. > :11:08.Singapore will continue to act as a tech testing ground for finding
:11:09. > :11:12.ways to integrate new technologies with society and be a case study
:11:13. > :11:20.Hello and welcome to the week in tech.
:11:21. > :11:24.It was the week that Mark Zuckerberg appeared in court to deny
:11:25. > :11:27.accusations that the software behind Facebook owned Oculus's
:11:28. > :11:33.Meanwhile, Instagram has followed in owner Facebook's footsteps,
:11:34. > :11:36.adding a live video streaming function for UK users,
:11:37. > :11:41.although each one will self-destruct as soon as it finishes.
:11:42. > :11:45.A disappearing photo option has appeared too.
:11:46. > :11:48.Mobile network EE has been fined ?2.7 million for overcharging tens
:11:49. > :11:56.And squirrels have been blamed for being a bigger threat
:11:57. > :11:59.to the power grid than the risks posed by international
:12:00. > :12:04.Samsung, listen up - researchers at Stanford University
:12:05. > :12:08.have developed a lithium-ion battery that claims to release a fire
:12:09. > :12:12.extinguishing material if overheating occurs.
:12:13. > :12:15.If you're wondering where the robots are in this week's news,
:12:16. > :12:16.well, they seem to have gone walkabout.
:12:17. > :12:19.This telepresence mind-controlled bot has been developed to help those
:12:20. > :12:27.Claiming to be the first of its kind available to consumers,
:12:28. > :12:31.it connects through an off-the-shelf brain control device,
:12:32. > :12:34.resulting in users feeling as though they are in two places at once.
:12:35. > :12:37.And finally, if you ever travelled to Japan, you'll know
:12:38. > :12:40.about the toilets, which are beautifully hi-tech,
:12:41. > :12:46.but you may not be quite sure what to make of them.
:12:47. > :12:52.Well, some leading manufacturers have agreed on a standardised set
:12:53. > :12:54.of icons for common cleaning features to help tourists know
:12:55. > :13:03.what they're letting themselves in for.
:13:04. > :13:06.I'm in the Arizona desert near Tucson at the new headquarters
:13:07. > :13:10.of World View, which is planning to take people to the stratosphere
:13:11. > :13:22.This is a 700 foot wide circle just outside of World View's buildings,
:13:23. > :13:25.and in just a couple of weeks' time, this is where they will launch
:13:26. > :13:30.a space balloon from for the first time.
:13:31. > :13:33.It's a circle so that they can lay the balloon out in any direction
:13:34. > :13:38.they need to, depending on the wins on that day.
:13:39. > :13:41.I've just got to say, if you've never been to the desert,
:13:42. > :13:44.I don't think you really have an appreciation of how big
:13:45. > :13:52.World View's boss, Jane Poynter, is a developer of technologies
:13:53. > :14:07.And she hopes that the view from 20 miles up will give passengers
:14:08. > :14:09.a unique perspective on the fragility of our planet.
:14:10. > :14:13.And curiously, this project was born out of a view that was pretty much
:14:14. > :14:17.the opposite - when its two founders took part in a two-year study of how
:14:18. > :14:20.age humans, plus animals and plants, would interact and survive
:14:21. > :14:25.You come from a space background, but really interesting,
:14:26. > :14:28.in the early 90s, you shut yourself away in Biosphere 2
:14:29. > :14:39.Oh, my gosh, so Biosphere 2 was actually an inspiration
:14:40. > :14:42.for World View, so when we were in the biosphere,
:14:43. > :14:52.one of the most extraordinary experiences that I had,
:14:53. > :14:55.and I think most of the people in there had, was the experience
:14:56. > :14:58.of really being part of our biosphere, and you really get
:14:59. > :15:01.this sense of the unity of the biosphere that we are in,
:15:02. > :15:05.that is on such a huge scale, but in normal life we can't even
:15:06. > :15:09.And it's a very similar idea to the experience that astronauts
:15:10. > :15:12.having the earth from space, and it was that experience
:15:13. > :15:15.that we wanted to give people, because of the experience that we've
:15:16. > :15:20.So I guess it's easy to imagine that we are all looking at you guys
:15:21. > :15:23.in the biosphere, but I suppose you're looking out from a unique
:15:24. > :15:28.That is right, so both truths are true, so we had people walk
:15:29. > :15:31.around the outside of the biosphere, and I got e-mails from people
:15:32. > :15:36.I've been hearing about the fact that this planet is a finite place
:15:37. > :15:39.for some many years, and I never understood
:15:40. > :15:41.until I walked around this miniature version of our planet.
:15:42. > :15:44.And suddenly I got it, I could see its boundaries,
:15:45. > :15:51.I knew that you guys that were living inside only had
:15:52. > :15:55.what you had in there, which is exactly the same as we have
:15:56. > :15:58.right here on planet earth, on spaceship earth.
:15:59. > :16:01.Emotions certainly run high in that kind of environment,
:16:02. > :16:06.One of the other Biosphere 2 crewmembers was Taber MacCallum,
:16:07. > :16:12.He's explaining how, although a balloon can't technically
:16:13. > :16:15.get you into the vacuum of space, the conditions in the stratosphere
:16:16. > :16:18.are similar enough, with very low air pressure and extremes
:16:19. > :16:21.of temperature in the sun and shade, to mean that World View's balloons
:16:22. > :16:24.are already carrying scientific equipment up in so-called
:16:25. > :16:30.stratolites, which can hang over one location for days at a time.
:16:31. > :16:35.So there's satellites in low earth orbit that are whizzing around
:16:36. > :16:40.at 17,000 mph, there are satellites in geostationary orbit that are very
:16:41. > :16:44.far away, have a hard time focusing in on things.
:16:45. > :16:47.And then below that we have aircraft, that can carry cameras
:16:48. > :16:50.and drones, and where we sit is sort of between all those.
:16:51. > :16:53.We can sit over a piece, persist over a piece of land
:16:54. > :16:57.for a while, and we have a close view, because we are only about 20
:16:58. > :17:00.miles up, but we don't have the speed and expense
:17:01. > :17:04.of being a rocket, and we don't have all of the fuel burn of flying
:17:05. > :17:11.It is a compelling argument, I suppose - that rockets
:17:12. > :17:14.are dangerous, and they are expensive, and they are rather
:17:15. > :17:18.And if you want to send something up close to space,
:17:19. > :17:21.and you can do it with a balloon, why wouldn't you?
:17:22. > :17:24.It's also a compelling argument that the more people who see
:17:25. > :17:27.the earth from way up there,the more people may have the kind
:17:28. > :17:30.of transcendental shifting viewpoint that seems to be striving
:17:31. > :17:39.It changes the way you embed yourself in our biosphere,
:17:40. > :17:43.the way you think about our place in this biosphere that we inhabit.
:17:44. > :17:46.I mean, it clearly changes the way many people have gone
:17:47. > :17:52.about developing our environmental movement.
:17:53. > :17:54.It changes the way we think about communication around
:17:55. > :17:56.the planet, collaborating with people around the planet.
:17:57. > :17:59.It really does strip away the notion of boundaries,
:18:00. > :18:01.of national boundaries, because we think of this
:18:02. > :18:09.as an entity that we all inhabit at once.
:18:10. > :18:13.What has changed is my definition of the word "home", and when we had
:18:14. > :18:15.the re-entry of the Soyuz spacecraft, we initially hit
:18:16. > :18:19.the ground, flipped and rolled over, and now my window was pointing down
:18:20. > :18:22.at the ground, and I remember looking at the window and seeing
:18:23. > :18:25.a rock, a flower and a blade of grass, and I remember thinking,
:18:26. > :18:33.What was really interesting about that thought is I was home,
:18:34. > :18:37.but I was in Kazakhstan, and so to me my home wasn't just
:18:38. > :18:40.in Houston, Texas, where at the time I lived with my family -
:18:41. > :18:44.my home expanded to include earth, and I think our definition of that
:18:45. > :18:47.word home has profound implications for how we problems on our planet,
:18:48. > :18:50.how we treat each other, how we treat our planet,
:18:51. > :18:53.and I think that is one of the things that we're trying
:18:54. > :19:01.We're trying to bring that perspective to as many people
:19:02. > :19:05.as we can, because I think the more people who have that perspective,
:19:06. > :19:08.the more people who have the opportunity to see our planet
:19:09. > :19:10.from that vantage point, the better of all of us
:19:11. > :19:16.There are few countries which can match the speed at which the US
:19:17. > :19:20.is boldly striding into the future, but China is certainly one of them.
:19:21. > :19:22.With an economy that is doubling in size every decade,
:19:23. > :19:35.But unlike America, often that progress is built literally on top
:19:36. > :19:38.of some amazing history - railroading through plans
:19:39. > :19:40.for new-builds without pausing to preserve the past.
:19:41. > :19:43.Dan Simmons has been to Shanghai to meet the city's
:19:44. > :20:23.I found this problem, they destroyed these older
:20:24. > :20:26.buildings, so I warned them, you can't do it.
:20:27. > :20:28.But I think they don't understand the value of these buildings,
:20:29. > :20:42.so after that I just gave the information to the newspaper.
:20:43. > :20:46.The professor is unusual for China in that he's not afraid to speak out
:20:47. > :20:48.against plans to destroy some of the country's
:20:49. > :21:04.Do you know why they've pulled down heritage buildings like this?
:21:05. > :21:08.I think the reason is they think these buildings are not safe and not
:21:09. > :21:11.comfortable for people who live here, so the government may be
:21:12. > :21:15.want to do some good thing, but in the wrong way.
:21:16. > :21:17.What used to be here looks like that building
:21:18. > :21:30.The same, yeah, quite old, I think most of them are about 100
:21:31. > :21:32.years old, wooden structure, typical local buildings.
:21:33. > :21:34.I think it's quite important historical memory of this,
:21:35. > :21:46.so I feel very sorrow for what they do.
:21:47. > :21:48.The Chinese authorities say these buildings,
:21:49. > :21:52.40 minutes' drive from downtown Shanghai, need upgrading.
:21:53. > :21:55.But the materials aren't traditional, and neither
:21:56. > :21:59.So for the professor, this is a race against time,
:22:00. > :22:14.first to capture everything that still here.
:22:15. > :22:16.The professor's team uses a 3D laser scanner.
:22:17. > :22:18.Pictures are taken, the taller structures by drone.
:22:19. > :22:21.And then back at base, image-based modelling allows them
:22:22. > :22:23.to add photorealistic skins to the inch-perfect reconstruction.
:22:24. > :22:25.In many examples, from temples to colonial schools,
:22:26. > :22:28.the professor tries to stop the destruction, but where he can't,
:22:29. > :22:33.his team recreates these communities virtually.
:22:34. > :22:36.This is one of the visualisations of the rubble that we were
:22:37. > :22:44.And here is the 3D model of what was there.
:22:45. > :22:47.Using old photos, some given to the team by local residents,
:22:48. > :22:54.the picture slowly builds, including of the buildings already destroyed.
:22:55. > :22:56.Materials, building styles and colour matching adds
:22:57. > :22:59.to the accuracy of what the professor hopes will be
:23:00. > :23:06.a lasting digital legacy to show future generations.
:23:07. > :23:08.Reconstructing the model is all done by hand.
:23:09. > :23:15.Even at this speed, the project will take around six
:23:16. > :23:22.For a city of China, we must face this problem.
:23:23. > :23:25.Removing so many older buildings, so many older districts.
:23:26. > :23:29.Comparing to a European city, I think we must focus on this kind
:23:30. > :23:45.of problem, because our city is becoming newer and newer so fast.
:23:46. > :23:48.That was Dan in Shanghai, and that is it from World View
:23:49. > :23:51.What a fascinating story this is turning out to be.
:23:52. > :23:54.You can follow us on Twitter, as always, @bbcclick throughout
:23:55. > :23:56.the week, we'll put loads of backstage photos
:23:57. > :24:04.Thanks for watching, and we'll see you soon.