Lifeboat Foundation

New reports that Russia is considering lava tubes as habitat; here’s one from my lava tube archives…

Nearside of Moon, by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With only a trace of an exosphere, future lunar astronauts working nights outside will likely feel as if they are walking a catwalk through space itself.

Continue reading “Life In A Lunar Lava Tube: Nearside Tunnels As Ready-Made Moonbases” »

For the second time in less than a month, SpaceX has landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a ship at sea.

The booster settled softly onto the deck of SpaceX’s robotic “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship at 1:30 a.m. EDT (0530 GMT) on Friday (May 6), nine minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a successful mission to carry the Japanese communications satellite JCSAT-14 to orbit.

Chants of “USA! USA! USA!” erupted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California as the Falcon 9 stuck its landing on the ship, which was stationed about 200 miles (320 kilometers) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. [Photos: SpaceX Launches Satellite, Lands Rocket at Sea].

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower is tonight, and it’s going to be a spectacular show. Here’s how, when, and where to watch the Eta Aquarids—and why they’ve been so unjustly ignored for so long.

The Eta Aquarids are a late spring meteor shower made up of the icy debris of Halley’s Comet. The comet is actually responsible for two separate meteor showers a year—this one and the Orionids, which occurs in October.

The Orionids are typically overshadowed by the Eta Aquarids, but that shouldn’t be seen as a judgement on the latter’s quality. All it means is that people have been sleeping through a really excellent meteor shower for no good reason. Tonight is your chance to rectify that.

Continue reading “How to Watch Tonight’s Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower” »

Iridium oxide (IrO₂) nanoparticles are useful electrocatalysts for splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen — a clean source of hydrogen for fuel and power. However, its high cost demands that researchers find the most efficient structure for IrO₂ nanoparticles for hydrogen production.

A study conducted by a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory, published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A, describes a new empirical interatomic potential that models the IrO₂ properties important to catalytic activity at scales relevant to technology development. Also known as a force field, the interatomic potential is a set of values describing the relationship between structure and energy in a system based on its configuration in space. The team developed their new force field based on the MS-Q force field.

Continue reading “Iridium Oxide Nanoparticles Used to Harvest Hydrogen” »

With long-term plans for in-space resource extraction in the form of asteroid mining, Deep Space Industries (DSI) is offering an exciting business opportunity. It is aiming to change the economics of space by providing the technical resources, capabilities and systems required to harvest, process, manufacture and market in-space resources. DSI is already generating revenue from commercial contracts, as well as government and university research projects.

The Disrupt Space summit brought together a large number of entrepreneurs from around Europe and the world who are intent on reinventing the space industry. A panel of judges chose Deep Space Industries as the winner among five finalists in a start-up pitch.

Spaceoneers caught up with Daniel Faber, Deep Space Industries’ CEO at the summit to hear about the company’s long-term plans and the exciting business opportunity in asteroid mining.

Continue reading “Interview: CEO of Deep Space Industries, Daniel Faber” »

I like it!

Inspiring the next generation of space explorers and scientists at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, one of America’s most-loved visitor attractions, thousands of visitors were taken on a first of its kind, high-tech journey into space for Spirit of Exploration held during the Holidays in Space festive season from December 2015 through January 2016.

Like a commercial jet airplane, Reaction Engines’ SKYLON will place a Personnel and Logistics Module in its payload bay, capable of carrying 8 astronauts and their gear to Low Earth Orbiting stations, factories, hotels or other facilities.

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/space_skylon.html

(Phys.org)—The question of why space is three-dimensional (3D) and not some other number of dimensions has puzzled philosophers and scientists since ancient Greece. Space-time overall is four-dimensional, or (3 + 1)-dimensional, where time is the fourth dimension. It’s well-known that the time dimension is related to the second law of thermodynamics: time has one direction (forward) because entropy (a measure of disorder) never decreases in a closed system such as the universe.

In a new paper published in EPL, researchers have proposed that the second law of thermodynamics may also explain why space is 3D.

“A number of researchers in the fields of science and philosophy have addressed the problem of the (3+1)-dimensional nature of space-time by justifying the suitable choice of its dimensionality in order to maintain life, stability and complexity,” coauthor Julian Gonzalez-Ayala, at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico and the University of Salamanca in Spain, told Phys.org.

A Germany-based company, Paravan, is a leader in the electric wheelchair market and related accessories to adapt vehicles for people with disabilities. While they mostly work with vans and trucks, their latest product makes almost any car with enough trunk space extremely practical for someone using a wheelchair.

They installed it in a Tesla Model S to illustrate the functionalities of the product and the range of vehicles it can be installed on.

A robotic arm, called Robot 3000, can automatically lift a wheelchair (up to 25 kg – 55 lbs) from the trunk of a vehicle, then it moves the chair to the driver’s side and extends it all the way to the driver’s door.

Continue reading “A Tesla Model S equipped with a robotic arm for your wheelchair [Video]” »