Lifeboat Foundation

Call it whatever you like—a blue red moon, a purple moon, a blood moon—but the moon will be a special sight on Jan. 31.

Three separate celestial events will occur simultaneously that night, resulting in what some are calling a super blue blood moon eclipse. The astronomical rarity hasn’t happened for more than 150 years.

A super moon, like the one visible on New Year’s Day, is the term for when a full moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit, appearing bigger and brighter than normal.

These humanoid bots can handle tools, shoot and upload photos, catch flying objects, and navigate obstacles—even think for themselves.

We’re used to dealing with three physical dimensions and one extra dimension of time as we move through the Universe, but two teams of scientists have shown that a fourth spatial dimension could reach beyond the limits of up and down, left and right, and forwards and backwards.

As you might expect given this is bending the laws of physics, the experiments involved are partly theoretical and very complex, and touch on our old friend quantum mechanics.

Continue reading “Experiments Show The Effects of a Fourth Spatial Dimension” »

Speed breeding was initially explored by NASA over a decade ago as a means to enhance food production during space missions where efficiency is critical and every square inch counts. Scientists at the University of Sydney, the University of Queensland, and the John Innes Centre, continued the project, picking up from where NASA left off.

A welcomed solution to our growing food problems.

Next, the technology maturation process, unfolds in a linear fashion with the ultimate objective of transitioning to the NASA program that established the requirement. This process sacrifices science and the ability to iterate fast; does not incentivize providers to develop affordable and systematic capabilities, and the consideration of economic intelligence and market pull is anything but strategic (engagement model with industry is secondary, i.e “work for hire” contracts, and commercialization is serendipitous). As the sole customer, NASA/the government needs to maintain the unique infrastructure needed for these missions and maintains large per mission costs.

While science missions are largely competitive and outcome focused, human missions start by establishing a destination — the political choice of Moon or Mars — often becoming a solution in search of a problem. Since the Apollo era, the overall result of this “swing” approach has basically resulted in “grounding” the human space program, negatively affecting the morale of the working force, and making many feel that it is little more than a job welfare program.

From an HR perspective, NASA, like any other government organization, is a great example of Peter’s principle, structured and incentivized by the slogan “the hierarchy needs to be preserved by all costs”, frequently leading to the alienation or outright removal of highly competent people focused on problem solving and with a desire of seeing accelerated progress.

Continue reading “From ‘flags and footprints’ to having a routine presence in space” »

“An end of year compilation of conversations with various NASA scientists, engineers, and researchers throughout 2017 on the NASA in Silicon Valley Podcast.”

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“The mission from California’s central coast was Space Exploration Technologies Corp’s 18th this year.”

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“What is the right way to do a lunar gateway, then?”

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“To adventure and fellowship.”

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