Lifeboat Foundation

“We will not have an active exoskeleton with servomotors tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow. That’s science fiction,” Sergei Smagluk, of the EO-1 design team told Russian newspaper RIA Novosti. He adds that as soon as a suitable power source is available, it will create a boom in exoskeleton development, one which his company is well-placed to lead.

While America’s ambitious attempts to build Iron Man-style powered armor are making little progress, Russia is already fielding modest but effective unpowered military exoskeletons.

Continue reading “Why Russian Military Exoskeletons Are Not Science Fiction” »

A historic French brand is set to return with one of the most extreme hypercar designs ever. The new holders of the Delage brand are squarely focused on the Nurburgring lap record with the monstrous D12 and its 7.6-liter, naturally aspirated V12.

Miami-based French entrepreneur Laurent Tapie has leased the rights to the Delage name, with an option to buy, and is building the first Delage car in some 64 years. And how! With backing from “four deeply invested billionaires” according to an interview with Robb Report, he’s fulfilling his dream of an F1 car for the street.

The D12 is a wasp-waisted monster whose dart-shaped cabin is so separated from the front wheels that it might as well be an open-wheeler. Its colossal mid-mounted V12, developed in-house, will put power down through an eight-speed single-clutch transmission with an electric motor built in to form a hybrid system.

This ginormous device turns wave energy into electricity.

Fleet operator SES on Aug. 20 said it selected SpaceX to launch four recently ordered O3b mPower broadband satellites.

SES’s four-satellite expansion order, announced Aug. 7, further increased its launch needs.

SES has now grouped the satellites into trios for the first three Falcon 9 launches, scheduled for the third quarter of 2021, the first quarter of 2022, and the second half of 2022. The last two satellites are projected to launch in the second half of 2024. Each mission will take place from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Continue reading “SES taps SpaceX for two additional Falcon 9 launches” »

The only slight hitch is it costs as much as a brand new Rolls-Royce Phantom, so it’s for millionaires.

We wrote earlier this year that because the demand for electrified classics was on the rise, Lunaz, U.K.-based company that specializes in EV conversions had doubled its workforce to keep up with demand. The company’s first product was a pure-electric 1953 Jaguar XK120, but if that was not opulent enough, it now offers a car that makes a lot of sense on paper: an electric 1961 Rolls-Royce Phantom V.

In fact, an old electric Roller is about as fitting as an EV converted classic could get, simply because no internal combustion engine can match the blend of smoothness, quietness and power provided by an electric motor. To top it all off, the guys from Lunaz equip their electric Phantom with a really big 120 kWh battery pack that is said to provide enough juice for a range of 300+ miles (480+ km).

Plans for a €1.1 billion project to build crucial new underwater electrical connections between France and the UK have been delayed by Brexit, as the French energy commission has said it poses “too much uncertainty”.

Air conditioners are a convenient way to cool down offices and homes, but they use huge amounts of energy in the process. A team of scientists has been developing an alternative solution for those warm summer months called the Cold Tube, which works by absorbing body heat emitted from a person and can use around half the energy of traditional systems as a result.

The notoriously bad energy efficiency of air conditioners has motivated the development a range of environmentally friendly solutions, from attachments that use water mist to pre-cool the units to solar-powered systems that produce hot water at the same time. In 2018, Richard Branson even launched a US$3 million competition aimed at developing more energy efficient air conditioners.

Similarly, the research team behind the Cold Tube has been investigating next-generation systems that keep people cool in more efficient ways. Made up of scientists from the University of British Columbia, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley and the Singapore-ETH Centre, the team took aim at the dehumidification process that is a critical function of today’s air conditioning systems.

Circa 2014

The waste fibres from hemp crops can be transformed into high-performance energy storage devices, scientists say.

They “cooked” cannabis bark into carbon nanosheets and built supercapacitors “on a par with or better than graphene” — the industry gold standard.

Continue reading “Hemp fibres ‘better than graphene’” »

The Philippines’ traditional three-hulled boat is being redesigned, to draw its power not from fossil fuels, but from the energy of the waves.