We are currently hosting lifeboat.com on free web space provided by rubyredlabs.com. Due to the growth in our traffic plus more general activity on this server, it would be best if we had our own server.

Note that we have additional space from KurzweilAI.net on a shared server (shared with many domains) but the shared server is always rather loaded since it has so many domains on it so we don’t host our main pages on it. (We use the shared server for backups, file transfers, and less important domains.)

Our current solution is to stay with the same provider as rubyredlabs.com but to move to our own machine. (This should simplify the transition.) The current provider is theplanet.com. We plan on getting: Intel Xeon 3210 Quad Core Kentsfield Processor, 250GB HDD, 4GB RAM, 2500GB bandwidth, 10 IPs, 100mbps uplink — $199 monthly / $25 setup.

We welcome any feedback. We are currently on a system equal to: Celeron 2.0, 80GB HDD, 1GB RAM, 750GB bandwidth, 5 IPs, 10mbps uplink — $89 monthly / $0 setup but don’t have access to all the systems resources. We just finished completing an upgrade so both our blog pages and regular web pages are cached, enabling us to handle a lot of traffic but it doesn’t help much if the server has activity on it besides ours which is not cached… We also upgraded our spam filter so it runs about one thousand times as fast which was rather helpful.

Our traffic is around 150GB but obviously if it surged a lot it is easier to pay for more bandwidth than to get a new machine on the spot. Also our current machine is running FreeBSD — we plan on getting Red Hat 5 since we have a choice.

We welcome your input on this!

UPDATE: Jaan Tallinn, cofounder of Skype, the only major IM client that both securely authenticates conversation. participants, and encrypts the communication, gets us started with a $300 donation. Our goal is to raise $2,500 to pay for a faster machine for a year.

UPDATE II: Chris Haley agrees to become System Administrator for our new machine. He also donates $1,500 bringing our Bigger Machine Fund to $1,925. Only $575 to go!

SUCCESS! We were able to quickly raise $3,400 for our Bigger Machine Fund — far exceeding our goal of $2,500. Additional funds raised will be used to pay for additional months, for improved network/software/hardware security, and for a backup plan. Long-term, we plan on hosting our site with more than one provider for the ultimate in backup plans. The more you donate, the more infrastructure we will implement.

Note: Like anyone who’s breathing, I have been tracking the Phoenix Lander. So I thought this might be a good moment to share a personal memory of one of its ancestors. That one did not survive to fulfill its mission, but the dream stayed alive. What I said then is even more true today, almost a decade later. The Greek version of this article was published in the largest Greek daily, Eleftherotypia (Free Press).

Prometheus Stealing Fire by André Durand (cropped)

It’s slightly cloudy — unusual for sunny Florida. The ocean-scented air is alive with birds: gulls, pelicans, hawks. On a wooden platform, a group of people of all ages and colors is squinting fixedly at a point on the horizon about two kilometers away, where a gantry holds a slim rocket that balances a tiny load on its nose. A level voice announces from the loudspeakers: “The T minus ten holding period is over. We’re going forward.”

The people break into wild cheers, then fall eerily silent. Curious children are shushed and told to look there, there; final adjustments are made to cameras and binoculars. The minus ten holding period is the last chance to abort. The weather was such that until this moment the decision to launch could change.

Like heartbeats, the announcements come. “T minus five… minus three… minus one… T minus thirty seconds… minus twenty seconds… minus ten seconds… Now you can hear a pin drop. “Nine… eight.. seven… six… five… four.… three… two…” All the spectators shiver, holding their breath.

“Liftoff!”

A fiery flower unfurls on the horizon. From within it emerges a dark blue arrow that pierces the sky, followed by a cloud of white smoke. The ground shakes from the aftershocks. Seconds later, the sonic boom reaches the group. Many of its members are wiping tears without making any effort to hide them – despite the Anglosaxon tradition that discourages public displays of emotion.

And so, in front of my eyes, accompanied by tears and cheers, loaded with blessings and expectations, on January 3, 1999, the Polar Lander left for Mars. After a year of travel, it will touch down on the South Pole of Mars and search for subterranean water.

Why is this mission important? Today Mars is bone-dry, but its surface features betray that it enjoyed liquid water in the past – gullies, wadis and coasts of now-vanished seas are clearly visible in its photos.

Wherever there’s water, there is life. Martian life, if it exists, is almost certainly at the bacterial stage. But if we find it – or just its petrified remains – this will give us the very first proof that we are not alone, that our Universe, vast as it is, may perhaps contain companions.

Such a discovery will overshadow even the upheavals brought about by Copernicus and Darwin. It will break our eternal isolation and force us to completely revise our ideas of the universe and our place in it. The existence of extraterrestrial life will make us understand that we occupy no special place in the universe, that we are observers or fellow travelers and not, by the grace of any god, lords of creation. And it will force us to remember yet again that humanity is a single entity, traveling on a lone ship that makes it way through an indifferent sea.

For a bearer of such a heavy literal and symbolic load, the Polar Lander is miniscule. The size of a small fridge, jam-packed with instruments, it resembles a beetle, with the fragile solar panels standing in for wings. Among other things, it carries a microphone. For the first time, we will hear the sounds of the winds on another planet.

The inventiveness required to put together a space mission is almost unbelievable. As an example, the two tiny instruments that will detect the potential underground water and send the results to the orbiters must achieve the following: land unscathed after enduring the heat of atmospheric entry; pierce like missiles a thick layer of ice without harming their electronic circuits; enter the ground in the correct orientation without rudders, parachutes, engines or further instructions from Earth; and last but not least, do exact measurements with fragile instruments the size of a small human finger. Such demands are the order of the day for NASA’s technical personnel.

The morning before the launch, the engineers and scientists who achieved these miracles explained to us the goals of the mission and the details of the craft and its instruments. All were trembling with tension and fatigue, but their eyes burned with their vision.

These men and women, whose names will never become known or celebrated like those of the astronauts, already dedicated four years of their lives to this mission – and will give as many in the future, analyzing the information sent by the spacecraft. Like the artisans who built Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Aghia Sofia, the Taj Mahal, these people grow old in obscurity, with their only reward the knowledge that will be added to the annals of the species… and with their sole but immense privilege to be the first who glimpse the New Worlds.

Because, in the end, that is the real mission. Exploration of space is the large collective effort of this era that will change all our lives. Not only because we may discover alien life. Closer to home, this exploration is the guarantee for our continuation.

Earth is truly the Garden of Eden, but its magnanimity has spoiled us. Now, having grown used to the caresses of a planet ideal for our needs as well as the luxuries of advanced technology, we have almost exhausted the finite resources of our paradise. With the pressures of the human population, the rest of the biosphere is contracting daily and the quality of life is dwindling for all except the privileged.

It is true that we have not solved our problems here, and inevitably we will take them with us wherever we go. However, if we wait till the last moment to launch the ships with the seeds of terrestrial life, the likelihood of finding another welcoming harbor before we suck our parent planet dry will dwindle to zero. We must prepare for this great step now, while we still have leeway.

All this is felt by those that came to wave farewell to the Lander. That is why they brought their children to share the stargazing, something very unusual for Americans who almost always separate their social activities by age: they want the next generation to remember that this tiny spacecraft and its companions carry our future.

Sojourner, the Lander’s predecessor, was the first to walk on Mars – a kid’s toy cart, which sent us thousands of pictures of the planet’s surface. A famous cartoonist showed it leaving human footprints, and he was right: these miniscule spacecraft, that have opened windows to the universe for us without costing even a millionth of a military aircraft, are the expression of our best selves. And they, along with our radio and television emissions, are our heralds and ambassadors to the unknown.

The day after the launch, the NASA PR office showed us around. The Space Center is within a national forest full of endangered flora and fauna. If the Federal Government had not inadvertently protected it, that entire coast would be a solid cement wall. The paths cross canals full of water lilies where alligators sun themselves. Egrets and cranes fish in the shallows. Above the rioting semi-tropical greenery rise the scaffoldings of the launch pads and the buildings where the spacecraft are built.

The building where the craft undergo final assembly is so large that it creates thermals. As a result, it is constantly circled by a fleet of hawks – a fitting retinue. Its vast interior creates such local temperature gradients that often it rains or fogs. Like an Escher drawing, it teems with skywalks and protrusions that hold entire labs. Looking down from the top you feel like a feather, as though here gravity doesn’t hold sway.

The launch pad that we visited is called Alpha. From there rose the Apollos for their trips to the moon. The pad is a giant Meccano set, a plaything for Titans. The surrounding wire fences are full of holes, from the jagged fragments of asphalt that erupt from the floor whenever it siphons the flames of liftoff.

I bent and took a piece of the worn, burnt asphalt. These scaffoldings don’t launch just spaceships and falcons. Around them fly the dreams of all humanity. This place is sacred, it has received sacrifices – the crew of the first Apollo, the crew of the Challenger, the nameless technicians of the missions. And the deity to whom these offerings are dedicated is Prometheus, who rose against mightier powers. His rebellion made us who we are and brought us here, in pain and in glory.

My name is Darnell Clayton (of Colony Worlds) and welcome to the Lifeboat Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving civilization upon our fragile world (as well as expanding it off world if all else fails).

Feel free to explore around the site, and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. Now without further ado, here is the Carnival of the Space Geeks!

Earthlings have caught a case of Mars fever, and the only cure is more images from Phoenix!

After NASA’s successful touchdown upon the red planet’s Northern pole, the Martian lander is capturing the attention of the media, not to mention the awe of the masses.

The Bad Astronomer goes into depth about what is so inspiring about Phoenix’s decent, while Dynamics of Cats displays the stunning images of Phoenix’s drifting into the Martian atmosphere.

Ian over at Astroblog was able to include his kids names within the Phoenix lander’s DVD (note: I’m jealous), while the Planetary Society provides informative highlights about the mission overall.

Update: It looks as if one individual had to choose between sleep and rediscovering Mars through Phoenix’s “eyes,” and it looks as if Phoenix won.

For those of you wondering why scientists are “jumping for joy” over the dusty polygons, the Martian Chronicles will enlighten you, while the mysterious Professor known as AstroProf gives a short lesson about Martian days.

Despite the excitement surrounding Phoenix, collectSpace notes the lander lacks its own action figure (note: yes, even rovers have action figures), and Brian Dunbar of Space For Commerce “lays the smack down” against Phoenix nay-sayers.

Even though Phoenix has just arrived on Mars, its life on the red planet may be short lived as few think the lander will survive the cold, dark winters upon the North Pole beyond September (as the craft needs solar power in order to function).

But just in case the craft emerges unscathed, the lander may be able to “resurrect itself” back from the brink, an item Chris Lintott highlights.

David Portree discusses JPL’s past focus of landing Martian rovers (as well as returning Martian soil to Earth), while Discovery News provides even more updates regarding the Martian lander.

For those of you tired of hearing about landing robots on Mars braving the new frontier, Universe Today has another suggestion: why not send the troops instead?

Moving on, readers may want to rest their eyes and focus their ears upon listening to Tom Hanks discuss From Earth to the Moon, with video entertainment being provided by Space Feeds.

Done watching the video? Great! Now you can enjoy Brian Wang’s articles reporting on some upcoming breakthroughs in cold fusion and fusion power, which may be useful for future space craft (not to mention space settlements).

Meanwhile Music of the Sphere discusses about the possibilities of other advanced civilizations arising in our galaxy, while Centauri Dreams focuses on humanity finding another Earth like world.

Update: Speaking of finding other worlds around other stars, new technology (such as Microsoft Worldwide Telescope) is enabling the average person as well as the professional astronomer to scan the heavens in search of stars (whether big or small).

In order to take advantage of this, Rob (via Orbiting Frog) enlightens us to an upcoming Astronomy Conference called Dot Astronomy, which teaches both novice and expert astronomers on how to use these “geek toys” to promote astronomy towards the public. You can pre-register over here.

Catholic Sensibility has some interesting news about how stars (and even massive planets) affecting Nebulae, while Ian of AstroEngine reports on the shutdown of the world’s largest satellite Earth station.

Last but not least we have Starts With A Bang remembering the fallen hero’s (and heroine’s) who gave their lives to help advance the human species “spaceward.”

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Carnival of Space! For those of you seeking to submit a space related article into the next round, you can visit Universe Today for the necessary details on how to enter.

Update: Replaced image of Phoenix Lander.

Update 2: Additional links added (they were accidentally left out).

Wow! I installed the XP Service Pack 3 yesterday after it was provided by the Windows Update feature and my computer crashed. I tried a few variations and did some investigations and couldn’t make it work. At least I was able to use a system restore point to keep the system alive. I should point out that I wasted hours on this as I had a variety of problems including the installation process just freezing up. (My computer is 100% solid, it passes a multi-hour memory test, etc.)

My investigations showed *many* people having serious problems with this service pack which is ridiculous since it shouldn’t be a big upgrade for people with fully updated XP Service Pack 2 setups as I had.

This plus the Vista disaster makes it rather likely that I will switch to a Macintosh for my next system. I have been using Microsoft operating systems on my PC since 1986 so this is a major thing to say. (Hey, my first computer was an Apple II+, so perhaps I am coming full circle…)

Now that the Macintosh uses Intel/AMD chips instead of slow proprietary crap, and is now based on Unix which is extremely useful for me since I have been using Unix systems since 1995 (for all webserver activities), and now that my main browser works on the Macintosh (Firefox), a switch seems like a reasonable thing to do. It also helps that you can now boot Windows on a Macintosh now that Macs use the same chips.

Even though I’ve upgraded my Windows system so it can run some Unix commands and Perl, I don’t have nearly the Unix functionality that I would get from the current Macintosh operating system. And finally I should mention that the reason I’ve been using Unix systems for webserver activities since 1995 was due to past disgust for Windows capabilities… (Was running 500 Linux servers at one point.)

Below are some quotes that I dug up during my research.

Quote 1.

After several more months of investigating and interviewing friends, I took the plunge. I was comforted by the fact that underneath the slick Mac OS exterior was real Unix… including Perl, Vim, bash, X11, etc. I spent many years of my career neck deep in Unix so it did help to see some old familiar things. Oh, and by the way, don’t tell me about the various Windows Unix-like shells — it is not the same! I can’t do “real” unix stuff like named pipes and I can’t do things like, “runapp | grep –i error | tee error.log” or run programs in the background (&), etc.

Quote 2.

“However, if you already have IE7 on your system when you install Service Pack 3, you will not be able to migrate back to IE6.” Just in case I decided to remove IE7 (no problem); install SP3 (no problem); install IE7 (PROBLEM). IE7 just would not install!

I had to remove SP3 (no problem); install IE7 (no problem); install SP3 (no problem).

I wonder if this is the “best possible experience” Microsoft were aiming for. I am not aware of Microsoft advising of a limitation.”

Quote 3.

Windows update offered it to me today and I accepted… BIG mistake. PC won’t boot, won’t restore to last good config. Safe mode appears to be starting up and I’m crossing my fingers. I’m a techie PC for a living — this is NOT ready for the general user.

Quote 4.

Windows XP service pack 3, SUCKS! Our computers were running perfectly on XPSP2, my husband I and I downloaded and installed SP3 and BOTH of our systems CRASHED, DUMPED to where they were not even bootable. We BOTH had to reformat and reinstall Windows XP. What a WASTE of time and the DAMAGE??? OUCH

No we have no idea what in SP3 did this, but we have 6 computers in the house, and THANK GOODNESS we only tried it on these 2 computers. Too bad we did not try it on a backup computer instead of our main systems. How dumb were we? All I had read were GOOD results. Not for us! We both have huge hard drives, Pentium 4, 3.75 GHZ and 2 gigs of ram, the best of everything, and up to date.

DOWNLOAD IT ONLY IF YOU ARE BRAVE!”

Quote 5.

I installed SP3 on my up-to-the-minute XP sp2 and discovered a number of previously done updates were rolled back. For example, IE7 was rolled back to IE6 and Mediaplayer 11 was also rolled back. Nice going Microsoft. What the hell is going on in Redmond these days?

Quote 6.

Microsoft hasn’t so much as fixed the incompatibility problem that prompted it to delay pushing out Service Pack 3 last week. Instead it put filters in place so that customers running the incompatible software installed won’t be offered the update.

Garbage. No matter where you go or how far you travel, it seems that every society has a means of acquiring it and dumping it in vast landfills–a fitting tribute towards humanities pursuit of a better future.

While recycling and “reducing” can help diminish the amount that goes into these trash havens, it may not be enough to counter the vast amount people throw away everyday.

Since convincing people to throw away less is a never ending battle (especially in this day and age), why not instead turn these “mountains” of garbage into energy?

(Israel 21st Century) There may be gold, or at least electricity, in those dumps. So says Jean Claude Ohayon, CEO of Israeli startup TGE Tech, which has developed and patented a system whereby unrecycled refuse can be converted into fuel with a special patented device that turns garbage into gas — syngas, a well-known element that has some of the properties of gas, oil and coal. […]

But with the TGE system, “the trash is turned into syngas, which can be burned for fuel like any other material. The trash is gone, and in its place is electricity, which can then be used to supply power to a whole neighborhood or small city,” says Ohayon.

Syngas is not as effective as oil or coal, Ohayon realizes; it only has about 15% of the calorie (energy) power of its authentic siblings. However, Ohayon explains, that level of energy is more than enough to power the gasifier, the waste treatment plant, and probably all the streetlights and traffic lights in a city on any particular day.

“One ton of garbage can generate 0.4 kilowatts of electricity an hour, which isn’t a huge amount, but can definitely contribute somewhat to the energy pool in a locality,” he says. And at the same time — the garbage is gone.

If humanity chooses to remain on planet Earth (as opposed to conquering the final frontier) then they will need to find a way to deal with the massive amounts of garbage we “enjoy” creating.

By turning these heaps into fuel, our species could find a semi-lucrative way of not only getting rid of these trash havens, but perhaps easing the burden of energy as well.

Hopefully more cities will consider what TGE Tech (and similar companies) have to offer, as the less we have on planet Earth, the greener the future will be for the upcoming generation.