Yes, it's been confirmed, China has partnered with Europe to build a village on the Moon. The European Space Agency (ESA) and and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) are talking about collaborating on a very ambitious project.

And, unlike the International Space Station, the ISS, they plan to open up the Moon Village to the whole world.

China was barred from going to the ISS from US concerns over China's possible military application of its space program thanks to an act of Congress in 2011. No one from NASA may " develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China."

Obviously with this policy, the US will not be involved in building this Moon village.

The Moon village could create a launch pad for trips further out into space, to places like Mars, eventually perhaps Saturn's moon Titan. It could become a tourist destination and home base for lunar mining.

The deep space drones podcast has been fun to make, and I, Claude Chateauvert, have learned a lot. But this your podcast, not mine. It’s on your device. It gets copied and redistributed from one site to another, bouncing all over the Internet. It’s open source soundware.

Just about 10 thousand of you are now following Deep Space Drones on Twitter.

It’s time to pivot the podcast, to you.

Tell us about yourself.

Who are you?

What do you do?

When do you listen to the deep space drones podcast?

Where are you when listening to it?

Why do you listen?

You don’t have to answer any or all of these questions. Pick one or two if you like.

Would you like to contribute, as in have your thoughts read on air, be interviewed?

If so, what would you like to say. Keep this context in mind. The deep space drones podcast is about space exploration and disruptive technology.

As always, thank you for listening.

For life to exist as we know it, there must be an ocean and a source of energy, no sun required. Deep in the Earth's oceans, where there is no sun, hot vents provide the energy for life.

So, find an ocean, with hot vents, find life, Simple.

So where are these oceans worlds? Find out, in this episode.

Elon Musk Tweeted on Friday, saying he had a good level of confidence that they could reuse the upper stage too by the end of next year to achieve 100% re-usability.

In an unprecedented discovery, scientists have discovered an atmosphere around a planet outside our solar system.

It's called GJ 1132b. GJ is in orbit around a red dwarf star 39 light years away. It's a little bit bigger than Earth, with a radius of 1.4 times more and 1.6 Earth masses.

A new startup is receiving $8 million in funding from investors including Andy Rubin, co-founder of Android and the former head of Google's robotics division.

It's called RightHand Robotics out of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Their new robot with it's head in the cloud is called RightPick. They say it can pick up and sort small objects, under five pounds, 500 to 1,000 times an hour. The bot uses machine learning to figure out how to handle various items on the fly.

March was not without incidents for UBER. An UBER driver plowed into a gas pump causing it to explode. A human was driving though.

Last week a self-driving UBER SUV was also involved in an accident. UBER shut down the self-driving program at that point in Arizona, San Francisco and Pittsburgh while investigated the accident.

Google self-driving cars have also been involved in accidents. According to their own accident reports, their self-driving cars were involved in 14 collisions. Out of 14 crashes their test cars were at fault only once, when they dinged the back of a bus at 5 miles per hour.

Still, this technology is getting better every day. This will cause a massive disruption sooner than you might think.

This episode looks at what self-driving cars will be like.

Elon Musk is executing the integration of human intelligence with artificial intelligence he once referred to as neural lace, to save us from the impending AI planetary hostile takeover.

On Monday he announced the new company, Neuralink. The idea is to create a new brain to computer interface.

It isn't news that Elon is worried about AI. He thinks it will turn us into pets. He said that with artificial intelligence, we are summoning a demon. It's our biggest existential threat.

What will creating a strong AI will result in? It could make our world a paradise, or Skynet will decide to terminate us.

Find out more, in this episode.