Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk has agreed to build what is being hailed the “world’s largest virtual power plant”, by rolling out solar panels and Tesla batteries to 50,000 homes in South Australia. The scheme, which will be completed over the next four years, will see any excess energy stored in each battery fed back into the grid to provide power to the rest of the state whenever required. The South Australian government claims participating households will generate a total of 250MW of electricity – about half as much energy produced by a typical coal-fired power station. Read more — Elon Musk about to launch…

TAE Technologies, Inc. (formerly Tri Alpha Energy), the world’s largest and most advanced private fusion company, has announced that its proprietary beam-driven field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma generator, “Norman,” surpassed a new technical milestone, bringing the company closer to the reality of commercial fusion power. This latest achievement marks a significant step in the company’s mission to create a global energy revolution with clean, safe, sustainable fusion energy.

Norman, the $100MM National Laboratory-scale device named for company founder Dr. Norman Rostoker, was unveiled in May 2017 and quickly reached first plasma in June 2017. After over 4,000 experiments to date, Norman has now exceeded the capabilities and performance of the company’s previous FRC plasma generator, C-2U, and sets a new company record for plasma temperature.

Continue reading “TAE Technologies Gen 5 reactor targets tripling confinement with 10 times the power by 2020” »

TAE Technologies, the California-based fusion company backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, said its latest and greatest plasma generator has exceeded the headline-grabbing performance of its previous machine.

“This announcement is an important milestone on our quest to deliver world-changing, clean fusion energy to help combat climate change and improve the quality of life for people globally,” Michl Binderbauer, the company’s president and chief technology officer, said in a news release. “This achievement further validates the robustness of TAE’s underlying science and unique pathway.”

Continue reading “TAE Technologies pushes plasma machine to a new high on the nuclear fusion frontier” »

The successful launch of the new rocket, the Falcon Heavy, by SpaceX from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida into a Mars orbit around the Sun, has captured the world’s imagination and attention mainly because of its power but also because of its payload.

Famously aboard the spacecraft is a Tesla Roadster, owned by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, but joining the bright red sports car on its journey around our solar system is the Arch Library, created using 5D optical storage technology developed by Professor Peter Kazansky and his team at the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre.

This first Arch library (pronounced Ark) – known as the Solar Library — contains the Foundation Trilogy of science fiction books written by Elon Musk’s favourite American author, Isaac Asimov… Archs are the vision of the Arch Mission Foundation which wants to permanently preserve and disseminate human knowledge as part of an ‘Encyclopedia Galactica’ across time and space for the benefit of future generations.

Quantum dots are rapidly taking center stage in emerging applications and research developments, from enhanced LCD TVs and thin-film solar cells, to high-speed data transfer and fluorescent labeling in biomedical applications.

The Tesla Roadster and its mannequin driver that launched into space aboard SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday (Feb. 6), has been spotted by a telescope on the ground.

Tesla said residential solar deployments were affected by the short supply of Powerwalls for customers who wanted solar plus Powerwall in their house.

New material pulls double-duty as shade and perovskite solar cell

By

Maria Temming

Continue reading “Forget curtains. One day, you could block out glare with smart windows that also charge your phone” »

The Falcon Heavy is finally on its way to mars and this rocket has had its fair share of delays. Elon Musk gave us a first glimpse of the rocket a couple of months ago and then a little later announced the unique cargo that it would be carrying. At the start of this year, he announced that the rocket will be launched within the first month but there were more unexpected delays and things finally got back on track as it completed the static test last week.

The Falcon Heavy Rocket launched its test flight successfully from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Millions of fans from all around the globe watched the launch go off without a hitch. The Falcon Heavy has 27 engines which give a thrust equal to 18 Boeing (BA) 747 jetliners making it the biggest rocket ever made. “It’s the biggest rocket in the world by far,” SpaceX CEO Musk told CNN’s Rachel Crane on Monday.

Continue reading “SpaceX Successfully Launches The Falcon Heavy With A Tesla Roadster On Board” »