Lifeboat Foundation

This variable gravity station would have space for research, processing and living quarters that range from a full 1G to zero G.

The Juno spacecraft has made several close flybys of the gas giant, revealing massive cyclones—and other weird features beneath its surface.

The science community just figured out why we wont actually be doing space mining, until capitalism is no longer a factor anyways.

It might have just pushed back its manned mission to Mars, but NASA just fast-tracked a planned journey to 16 Psyche — an asteroid made almost entirely of nickel-iron metal.

Estimated to contain $10,000 quadrillion in iron alone, if we could somehow mine Psyche’s minerals and bring them back to Earth, it would collapse our comparatively puny global economy of $78 trillion many times over. Fortunately for the economic stability of our planet, NASA plans on looking but not extracting.

Continue reading “NASA Just Fast-Tracked Its Mission to Explore a $10,000 Quadrillion Metal Asteroid” »

Now is the time to voice your opinions on the lander’s instruments.

The galaxy M87 emits a jet of plasma that looks like it’s breaking the cosmic speed limit – here’s how it manages the trick.

Bigelow Aerospace is building space habitats for the public. Get an exclusive tour inside one of their prototypes, and see where we would live in space.

For the first time, scientists have detected evidence of a magnetic field that’s associated with the vast intergalactic ‘bridge’ that links our two nearest galactic neighbours.

Known as the Magellanic Bridge, the bridge is a huge stream of neutral gas that stretches some 75,000 light-years between our two neighbouring galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). Although researchers had predicted it was there, this is the first observation of its magnetic field, and it could help us understand how these vast bridges come to be.

“There were hints that this magnetic field might exist, but no one had observed it until now,” said lead researcher, Jane Kaczmarek from the University of Sydney.

Continue reading “For The First Time, Physicists Have Observed a Giant Magnetic ‘Bridge’ Between Galaxies” »

Nearly a half-century has passed since the earliest rotational artificial gravity testing was performed, such as at the Rockwell Rotational Test Facility and the NASA Langley Rotating Space Station Simulator. Periodically over the decades since then a few experiments have taken place, and proposals have been made for government-sponsored rotating artificial gravity test facilities, both on the ground and in orbit.^1,2 And yet no such project has been started since those early government programs.

Al Globus and Joe Strout have an analysis that space settlements in low (~500 km) Earth equatorial orbits may not require any radiation shielding at all. This is based on a careful analysis of requirements and extensive simulation of radiation effects. This radically reduces system mass and has profound implications for space settlement, as extraterrestrial mining and manufacturing are no longer on the critical path to the first settlements, although they will be essential in later stages. It also means the first settlements can evolve from space stations, hotels, and retirement communities in relatively small steps.

This huge reduction in total mass compensates for the greater energetic difficulty of launching materials from Earth to ELEO as opposed to launching from the Moon to L5, the design location of the Stanford Torus. In the early studies, the Earth­Moon L5 point was chosen as the location of a settlement for the energetic advantage of launching materials from the Moon. Going from the Moon to L5 requires a delta­-v 3 of 2.3 km/sec, and going from Earth to 500 km ELEO is 10 km/sec [Cassell 2015]. Using the velocity squared as our energy measure, Earth to ELEO requires 19 times more energy per unit mass. Analysis suggests that at least 19 times less mass is needed if no radiation shielding is required. Thus, the energetic advantage to launching the mass of a settlement with deep space radiation shielding from the Moon to L5 is balanced by launching far less mass from Earth if no radiation shielding is necessary.

A 500 km circular ELEO using polyethylene shielding was analyzed. Even at 10 kg/m2 shielding, the equivalent of which is very likely to be provided by any reasonable hull, the 20 mSv/yr and 6.6 mGy/yr are met. Indeed, with no shielding at all the general population limit is met and the pregnancy limit is very nearly met. This has an interesting consequence: spacewalks in ELEO may be safe enough from a radiation point of view to be a significant recreational activity.

Continue reading “Towards an Economically Viable roadmap to large scale space colonization” »