Lifeboat Foundation

By Jim and Drury Ambitious plans to build a twenty kilometer (12.4 miles) tall space elevator tower have been announced by a Canadian space technology firm. Although this distance is a mere fraction of that reached in space missions, Thoth Technology says its ThothX Tower will make a major cost reduction in space flights by helping navigate the difficult first 50 kilometers (31 miles) of travel that traditionally requires rockets. In addition to needing to carry sufficient fuel to get a payload into orbit, they need extra fuel in order to carry the required fuel to reach that point in the first place. Despite first being proposed more than a century ago, the idea of a space elevator has always appeared fanciful. Thoth Technology has been granted a United States (US) patent for the elevator, which is pneumatically pressurized and actively-guided over its base.

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NASA Glenn Research Center, GRC, currently has several programs to advance near-term photovoltaic array development. One project is to design, build, and test two 20 kW-sized deployable solar arrays, bringing them to technology readiness level (TRL) 5, and through analysis show that they should be extensible to 300 kW-class systems (150 kw per wing). These solar arrays are approximately 1500 square meters in total area which is about an order-of-magnitude larger than the 160 square meters solar array blankets on the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS has the four (pair) sets of solar arrays that can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity. Each of the eight solar arrays is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide and weighs 2400 pounds. There were space missions involving astronauts working in space to install and deploy the ISS solar panels.

Continue reading “NASA developing megawatt solar power arrays and will be used with solar electric propulsion” »

Astronomers have discovered a galaxy is being powered by a quasar that contains two black holes whirling about each other.

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Drones are everywhere these days. They’re at your local park, they’re in the ocean, they’re hovering over the White House lawn, and they may even be hovering overhead armed with tear gas.

In a world that’s becoming increasingly drone friendly, there are some serious safety considerations that shouldn’t be ignored.

Continue reading “Boeing's new laser canon can destroy drones in mid-flight” »

Other self-healing plastics exist, but they take much longer to repair themselves. The ability to instantly plug holes could be especially useful to protect structures in space, where flying objects can puncture spacecraft or orbiting habitats. The plastic could be incorporated into their walls, creating a seal if the atmosphere inside a vessel starts to leak out, putting astronauts at risk.

Other fabrics take a different approach: stopping projectiles altogether. A futuristic tissue combining human skin cells with spider silk can cushion a gunshot when fired at half speed. Pure graphene, which is made up of layers of carbon one-atom thick, is being investigated for use in bulletproof armour because it can handle blows better than steel.

Continue reading “Terminator-style 'skin' quickly repairs itself after a gunshot | New Scientist” »

Here are some misconceptions about Mars that just won’t die.

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The closer we get to Ceres, the largest object in our solar system’s asteroid belt, the stranger it becomes.

In June, NASA released a photo of Ceres, taken by the Dawn spacecraft from 2,700 miles away, that showed a several-mile high “pyramid” protruding from the dwarf planet’s otherwise generally smooth surface. And a new photo, taken last Wednesday from only 900 miles away, shows the mountain is four miles high and has a perimeter of previously unseen, reflective streaked slopes.

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Laniakea is made up of about 100,000 galaxies with a total mass about 100 million billion times that of the sun.

Image via Beyond Our Sight.

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Could the mysterious moons of Jupiter be hiding habitable zones under their icy crusts?

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