Space – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Nov 23
2016

DARPA is Placing “Big Bets” on Space-Based Weapons Systems

DARPA sees a real possibility for spaced based conflict. So, it’s hoping to create breakthrough technology to dissuade U.S. adversaries who might consider attacking from space.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency assists national security with efforts in space. It focuses on making space a “real-time operational domain,” as DARPA Director Dr. Arati Prabhakar recently said.

“The questions we ask ourselves at DARPA about the space domain … is what would it take to make the space domain robust for everything that we need militarily and for intelligence, and what would it take to make space a real-time operational domain, which it’s not at all today,” the director said last week at the 4th annual Defense One Summit. Many nation-states now orbit the Earth. Conflict is a real possibility, believes Prabhakar.

Nov 23
2016

Tiny ‘Black Magic’ Satellite Packs Origami-Like Radar Dish

A new NASA satellite packs an intricate radar dish in a tiny body.

Nov 19
2016

Space starshade to better see exoplanets

A flower-like starshade could give astronomers a direct look at planets orbiting distant stars. Cathal O’Connell explains how it would work.

Nov 19
2016

Colonizing the Inner Solar System

In this epic, 2-part episode, we team up with Isaac Arthur to imagine how humans will colonize the inner Solar System, becoming a true spacefaring civilization.

Nov 18
2016

China’s Shenzhou 11 manned space capsule returns to Earth

BEIJING China’s Shenzhou 11 space capsule landed safely in the northern region of Inner Mongolia on Friday with two astronauts aboard, state media said, completing the country’s longest manned space mission to date.

China Central Television showed images of the craft — whose name translates as “Divine Vessel” — on the ground flanked by Chinese flags and support teams. State news agency Xinhua said the capsule had touched down “successfully” just after 2 p.m.

The two astronauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, spent 30 days aboard the Tiangong 2 space laboratory, or “Heavenly Palace 2”, which China is using to carry out experiments ahead of a longer-range plan to have a permanent manned space station around 2022.

Nov 18
2016

Scientists Discovered a Mind-Boggling Chasm on Mercury

Placed on Earth, it would stretch from Washington DC to New York to Detroit. Larger than the Grand Canyon, wider and deeper than East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, Mercury’s newly-discovered “Great Valley” boggles the imagination. But it’s more than size that makes this geologic feature remarkable. The Great Valley may be our best evidence that Mercury’s entire crust is contracting.

Nov 17
2016

Colonizing the Solar System, part 2: the Outer Solar System

This is a nice vid but there are two things to note.

1. he does not mention Callisto in place of Europa. Europa gets enough radiation to kill you in a day where on Callisto you would not even get the radiation you get here on Earth.

2. It might be possible to puff up a given asteroid by creating a cylinder within as he points out, but filling it with water and then heating it from outside and once it’s molten the water will expand and blow the asteroid to a larger size. It may be possible to turn a 1 mile wide asteroid into a ten mile wide habitat. I do not know how well it scales up to larger asteroids.

This episode continues our team up with Fraser Cain to look at Colonizing the Solar System, we move from the inner solar system to the Asteroid Belt and beyond, all the way out to the Oort Cloud.

Part 1: The Inner Solar System, can be watched here:

Continue reading “Colonizing the Solar System, part 2: the Outer Solar System” | >

Nov 16
2016

Project Blue: A Space Telescope to Find Another Earth — Project Blue | Kickstarter

“Finding the first planet like Earth beyond our solar system would transform how we think about our place in the universe.”

Nov 11
2016

Forget about the election for a minute: There’s a rare supermoon coming

This could cause earthquakes because of the moons mass pulls of the mass of our planet.

There’s a rare supermoon coming this weekend, and no matter how devastated or thrilled you are by the latest election results, you don’t want to miss it.

In the wee hours of Sunday night and Monday morning, the moon will come closer to the Earth than it has in nearly 70 years.

Nov 10
2016

Astronomers have designed a house for Mars — take a look inside

Everyone from astronomers to tech companies wants to know what it would be like to live on Mars.

From growing vegetables in Martian soil, to claims that leaving Earth could save the human species, scientists are constantly making advances in this field.

Now, astronomers from the Royal Observatory in London and Stephen Petranek — author of “How We’ll Live on Mars” — have designed a Martian Show Home to demonstrate what life could be like on the Red Planet.