Lifeboat Foundation

Humanity’s brutal and bellicose past provides ample justification for pursuing settlements on the moon and Mars, Elon Musk says.

The billionaire entrepreneur has long stressed that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species — a giant leap that would render us much less vulnerable to extinction.

Human civilization faces many grave threats over the long haul, from asteroid strikes and climate change to artificial intelligence run amok, Musk has said over the years. And he recently highlighted our well-documented inability to get along with each other as another frightening factor. [The BFR: SpaceX’s Mars Colony Plan in Images].

One of the big issues for traveling to Mars is fuel. It’s a lot of weight to carry in order to travel that far. A new thruster from the European Space Agency could be the answer to that problem and the next step in interplanetary journeys to the red planet.

Amazon’s “summer camp for geeks” brought together some of the world’s leaders in AI, home automation, robotics, and space exploration. And, naturally, a robotic dog.

Toyota is developing a device that would allow objects to turn invisible, or at least transparent. The Japanese car maker recently received a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a device meant to improve the visibility of drivers.

From cloaking devices that conceal spaceships, to Harry Potter’s hand-me-down disappearing blanket, or even the One Ring and its power to conceal its wearer, invisibility is a staple in science fiction and fiction in general. Scientists have been hard at work, however, to bring such a technology into reality. Joining the research and development of cloaking technology is Japanese car manufacturer Toyota.

Space has suddenly become big in New Zealand, but Rocket Lab is just one example of what is starting to look like exponential growth in commercial activity. Business consultant and self-confessed space junkie Kevin Jenkins looks into how things are shaping up.

One space narrative is about disappointment. The 1950s and 1960s were about possibilities, and landing on the Moon seemed to prove that the science fiction of the 20th century really was just history written before it happened. But the promise of space seemed to peter out. The Apollo moon programme came to look more like a peak or end-point, rather than the trial run for Mars some in the space programme had hoped it would be.

After Apollo, “space” seemed to shift back to being more of a popular culture theme. For example, the famous song, album and movie Space is the Place is by one of my favourite jazz weirdos, Sun Ra, who was adamant he came from Saturn. Space became a dominant meme in pop and rock music too, as well as a mainstay in novels and films.

Continue reading “The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market” »

Will the wagers of a few entrepreneurs yield a golden age in space exploration?

The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 spacecraft will be a test bed for future missions wanting to use solar sails — including NASA’s proposed Near-Earth Asteroid Scout cubesat.

The U.S. and Russia each sent astronauts to the International Space Station with a Wednesday, March 21 launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA sent two astronauts to the space station while Russian space agency Roscosmos sent one. The three crew members were launched aboard the Soyuz spacecraft, and are expected to dock with the space station’s module sometime Friday afternoon. NASA will have a stream of this docking starting 3 p.m. Friday on NASA TV and its website.

Neutral-particle beams, a concept first tried in the 1980s, may get a fresh look under Michael Griffin.

“Directed energy is more than just big lasers, Griffin said. ”That’s important. High-powered microwave approaches can effect an electronics kill. The same with the neutral particle beam systems we explored briefly in the 1990s” for use in space-based anti-missile systems. Such weapons can be ”useful in a variety of environments” and have the ”advantage of being non-attributable,” meaning that it can be hard to pin an attack with a particle weapon on any particular culprit since it leaves no evidence behind of who or even what did the damage.

Like lasers, neutral-particle beams focus beams of energy that travel in straight lines, unaffected by electromagnetic fields. But instead of light, neutral-particle beams use composed of accelerated subatomic particles traveling at near-light speed, making them easier to work with (though the folks that run CERNs hadron collider may disagree). When its particles touche the surface of a target, they takes on a charge that allows them to penetrate the target’s shell or exterior more deeply.

Continue reading “Pentagon’s New Arms-Research Chief Eyes Space-Based Ray Guns” »