Lifeboat Foundation

A resupply mission for the International Space Station, Progress MS-11, took off yesterday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, eventually docking with the space station and providing its inhabitants with over 5,400 pounds of supplies. In many ways it was exactly like the countless resupply missions carried out before it, but in one way it was very special.

The mission, which was carried out by Russian space agency Roscosmos, took just three hours and 21 minutes to go from Earth to a successful docking with the ISS. That’s incredibly fast, and it’s actually now the fastest trip to the International Space Station ever, beating out the previous record (also set by a Progress resupply spacecraft) by a solid 19 minutes.

Continue reading “Yesterday’s ISS resupply mission broke an incredible record” »

The world, it seems, is soon to see the first picture of a black hole.

On Wednesday, astronomers across the globe will hold “six major press conferences” simultaneously to announce the first results of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which was designed precisely for that purpose.

It has been a long wait.

Continue reading “Scientists set to unveil first picture of a black hole” »

Opinion: The average big construction project is overdue and over budget. A dose of automation could help.

Usually, this kind of surgery involves cutting and suturing, which is painful and leaves scars. Now, researchers at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine, have reshaped tissue with no incisions or scarring, and minimal recovery time.

It could be useful for cosmetic surgery – such as reshaping a nose or ear – but also for problems such as immobile joints and poor eyesight.

The new issue of the Cryonics Institute Newsletter is now available. Get the latest news and updates about CI and the cryonics movement!

Not sure how to post only a segment, but I found the first segment of this video interesting on the discussion of regulatory oversight of Facebook.

Facebook looks to the government for help censoring viewpoints, the old guard Democrats clash with the socialists, and we check the mailbag!

Continue reading “Big Brother Meets Big Tech | Ep. 753” »

CNBC flew to Fort Pickett with Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy to test the Army’s IVAS headset, which it’s building with Microsoft.

Scientists called for a bigger say over research funding under a stifling bureaucratic application system. Yuan Zhiming, an agricultural scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, said he spent so much time filling out funding applications that he did not have time for any research. Senior officials responded that they understood the need to speed up research for China to transform itself into an innovation powerhouse. Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang said the government would overhaul funding management to give researchers more incentives.

The country has to address a lot of shortcomings, but when it sets course to remedy them and commits a bigger share of resources, it could become a leading scientific power within a decade.