Lifeboat Foundation

New research — conducted both in space and on Earth — suggests that simulated microgravity could be used to boost stem-cell therapy for cardiac repair.

In 1969, William Safire was President Nixon’s speech writer. He wrote the short speech shown below, and delivered it to Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman. The speech was to be read by Nixon in the event that the Apollo 11 lunar lander failed to launch or that some other problem caused the lander or mothership to crash back onto the surface of the moon.

In 1969, the space race was at full throttle. Russians were first to launch a satellite, send a dog and a man into space,* and perform an extravehicular space walk. America was under great pressure to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s promise and beat the Russians in landing a man on the moon. Today, former engineers at NASA acknowledge that they believed the chances of such a catastrophe were more than 50%.

Continue reading “What if Apollo 11 had failed? Nixon’s undelivered speech” »

India’s premier space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has built a reputation for launching rockets into space at very convenient prices. The consequent effect?

A lot of customers from around the world have come flocking to avail India’s economical rocket-launching services and this has helped the country make some extra bucks from its space exploration program.

However, it’s a pretty competitive space.

Continue reading “SpaceX or ISRO, Who’s Winning the Race to Space?” »

Astronomer Kathryn Neugent discusses how scientists found the supermassive star moving at 300,000 miles per hour—and what caused its speedy travel.

Outside John Snow Pub, arguably one of the best pubs to visit on a rainy November day in Soho, London, I was having a beer with my dear friend Alex, discussing tech and cryptocurrency like we always do. The thing that struck me the most from the conversation that Alex brought up was the technical challenges of Mars to have its own blockchain due to speed of light delays between Earth and Mars. It took me on a little journey of determining what might a blockchain on Mars look like, what are the challenges brought upon by speed of light and other factors, and how to push forward the efforts of colonizing the Red Planet.

The past few years and especially 2017 have brought cryptocurrency to the mainstream. Everyone and their grandmother can be seen at one point asking around “How can one buy bitcoin?” and “Would you buy Ripple?” among other questions. Every day, someone armed with a badly-edited whitepaper (a paper outlining how the technology works) will raise millions of dollars in Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs (the cryptocurrency version of a stock market IPO). By now, one can see that, while 99% of the coins will probably fail due to bad planning, overpromised marketing, or because of their scammy nature, there is no doubt that the future of the cryptocurrency market is bright and it has a lot of room for growth.

The race to Mars is on going. SpaceX still is leading the efforts to allow humans for colonization of the Red Planet, most recently with their two simultaneous Falcon Heavy rocket landings.

The tech-industry is led by sci-fi nerds who want to create the things they read about, or saw on screen.

We all stand to benefit, provided that is, they can avoid the ethical pitfalls depicted in science fiction.

Continue reading “How does science fiction influence the real world?” »

T he world’s most advanced litter-picker will be launched into space next week to clean up floating debris which is threatening satellites and the International Space Station (ISS).

Surrey University has designed a spacecraft which can grab space junk then pull it into Earth’s atmosphere where it is burned up.

The little craft, named RemoveDebris, is due to launch from the Kennedy Space Centre on Monday, on board one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

Continue reading “Astro litter-picker launches to help clean up 7,600 tonnes of space junk” »

A one-way trip to Mars with conventional chemical rockets could take up to nine months. It’s a long time for humans to be in a spaceship exposed to radiation and other hazards. That’s one reason NASA, space agencies, universities, and private industry are pursuing different rocket technologies. Here’s a look at them.

Many asteroids are rich in minerals, metals and water, making them potential life support systems for humans venturing deep into the solar system.

“Asteroids contain all the materials necessary to enable human activity,” says Peter Stibrany, chief business developer and strategist of California-based Deep Space Industries (DSI). “Just those near Earth could sustain more than 10bn people.”

Moreover, their relatively small mass means their gravitational field is weak, so in this respect, at least, they are much easier than larger bodies such as the moon to land on and leave, he argues.