Lifeboat Foundation

With 3D printers (like the one in India) printing buildings while leveraging AI technology we could see the building of complexes in space v. needing an inflatable room.

NASA on Saturday successfully expanded and pressurized an add-on room at the International Space Station two days after aborting the first attempt when it ran into problems.

The flexible habitat, known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), completed slowly extending 67 inches (170 centimeters) at 4:10 pm (2010 GMT) following more than seven hours during which astronaut Jeff Williams released short blasts of air into the pod’s walls from the orbiting lab using a manual valve.

Continue reading “NASA inflates spare room in space” »

This video animation was created for SunSat Design Competition, held by National Space Society. Concept: Keith Henson.

1000 × 15 ton skylon payloads.

Continue reading “Space beamed energy bootstrapping video” »

The International Space Station grew in size on Saturday when the Bigelow Expandable Module (BEAM) was successfully expanded on the second attempt after the initial deployment on Thursday did not work out as planned.

Putting in a long weekend shift, teams at Mission Control and Astronaut Jeff Williams worked for close to eight hours to finally accomplish a safe expansion & pressurization of the module.

BEAM’s expansion marks the conclusion of a two-decade effort between NASA and private industry to test out expandable habitat technology in space.

Watch this fantastic futuristic short film directed by talented Collin Davis and Matt Litwiller, written by Eric Bodge and shot by Travis Labella! The year is 2183. Earth is dead. With all evidence of organic life lost, a cosmic archaeologist travels faster than light into deep space to capture images of the once vibrant planet. When his vessel is damaged he must take matters into his own hands, risking his life to witness humanity’s lost home.

Telescope Sound Track — Download Now: http://www.telescopemovie.com/about/2013/11/18/telescope-sou…wnload-now

Continue reading “A Futuristic Short Film HD: ‘Telescope’ — by The Telescope Team” »

Physics can be pretty intense at times, but one of the most straightforward aspects is that everything in the Universe is controlled by just four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces.

But now physicists in Hungary think they might have found evidence of a mysterious fifth force of nature. And, if verified, it would mean we’d need to rethink our understanding of how the Universe actually works.

Before we get into that, let’s go back to those four forces for a second, because they’re pretty important. They’re a fundamental part of the standard model of physics, which explain all the behaviour and particles we see in the Universe.

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A more efficient way to mine water and other chemical volatiles to create rocket fuel in situ is arguably the fastest way to colonize the Moon and Mars.

Despite the recent buzz about eventually mining asteroids for metals, their real near-term value may be as space-based sources of water and carbon dioxide from which to make rocket propellant. The trick is in mining such volatile compounds efficiently enough to convert them to fuel in situ. That is, without having to import such resources from gravitationally-bound, planetary surfaces like the Moon, Mars or even Earth.

Here’s where a potentially revolutionary patent pending process dubbed “Optical-Mining” would figure in. The idea is to use this new technology to excavate both water ices and other volatile compounds from small 10 meter-diameter Near-Earth Asteroids. If successful, such an In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) asteroid-mining operation could mark the tipping point in viably extracting resources from thousands of such asteroids.

Continue reading “How To ‘Optically-Mine’ Water From An Asteroid” »

“European industry has begun assembling the “back end” of the Orion crewship that is due to make an important 2018 demonstration flight around the Moon.”

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Enough said; China officially makes Quantum communications available via Satellite in July. Now, what does this mean to government funded hackers and the US and Europe?

The launch of the world’s first quantum space satellite developed by China is scheduled for July, according to the project’s chief scientist Pan Jianwei.

BEIJING (Sputnik) — According to the physicist, cited by the People’s Daily Online, the quantum network will connect Beijing, Jinan, Hefei and Shanghai among other cities spanning a 2,000-kilometer (1,243 miles) area.

Continue reading “China to Launch World’s First Quantum Space Satellite in July” »

A modified version of the Drake Equation, and what it tells us.