Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX has made good on a high-priority delivery: the world’s first inflatable room for astronauts.

A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Station astronauts used a robot arm to capture the Dragon, orbiting 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

The Dragon holds 7,000 pounds (3,175 kilograms) of freight, including the soft-sided compartment built by Bigelow Aerospace. The pioneering pod—packed tightly for launch—should swell to the size of a small bedroom once filled with air next month.

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Space shuttle launches are expensive and inefficient, but for now they’re the only way we have of getting into space. For now. But it’s possible that we’ll soon have an elevator. Here’s how.

Full story at In a Nutshell.

MIT printed this fully functional robot right out of a 3D printer.

MIT printed this robot this fully functional robot right out of a 3D printer. http://voc.tv/14JQHoo

London to New York…

…in 11 minutes. MINUTES.

Strange light in space could prove to be earth-shattering.

The Japanese government is considering giving away money ‘vouchers’ to poor young people to boost consumption, according to reports.

Following the examples of Finland, Canada and the Netherlands, Japan is considering the introduction of basic income, a tax-free income, after recent surveys showed that under-34s in Japan have cut spending by 11.7 per cent year on year.

Proponents of basic income say that not only does it reduce financial poverty but it has a number of other benefits, such as rewarding unpaid activities not recognised as economic contributions (parenting, for instance).

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Global warming is shifting the way the Earth wobbles on its polar axis, a new NASA study finds.

Melting ice sheets — especially in Greenland — are changing the distribution of weight on Earth.

And that has caused both the North Pole and the wobble, which is called polar motion, to change course, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

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Interesting: China wants more cross sharing of Cyber Security information with US. This will only get more interesting with the advancement of Quantum tech.

Article’s headline “Obama warned by China against undermining ‘national security’ interests”.

He made the remarks while addressing the Korean Peninsula situation in separate meetings here with U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye on the sidelines of the fourth Nuclear Security Summit (NSS).

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As the third most abundant element in the universe, oxygen is both abundant and the best element in the periodic table from which to produce energy for metabolism. That’s one reason planetary scientist David Catling argues that E.T. would also breathe oxygen; as noted in this article blast from the past.

What are the odds that visiting space aliens could simply walk off their craft and start breathing our own oxygen-rich atmosphere?

Better than is generally appreciated; even among some astrobiologists.

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