Lifeboat Foundation

China is already well on the way to establishing its own version of America’s GPS network with its Beidou satellite constellation, but now it is seeking to take navigation and timing to stellar levels.

In November China will launch the X-ray pulsar navigation satellite — XPNAV-1 — a satellite that will conduct the world’s first test of the possibilities of using the regular emission of X-ray signals from pulsars for spacecraft navigation.

The spacecraft will attempt to triangulate its position relative to the Sun using the highly regular emissions from pulsars.

Continue reading “China to launch pioneering pulsar navigation satellite in November” »

Want to reach for the stars? Here’s how to do it.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lJxV4kSWSUI

There has been a lot of talk recently about reusable rockets and asteroid mining making space travel cheaper, but a proposed idea for a maglev train into space might be the real answer.

Using existing maglev technology, the Startram project proposes to launch people and cargo down a 1,000-mile long tunnel 12 miles high at 20,000 mph using a superconducting cable.

Continue reading “A Train Into Space? Startram Project Could Make Colonizing Mars Easier” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVett3htjBM

Interstellar travel is the term used for hypothetical manned or unmanned travel between stars. Interstellar travel will be much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight; the distances between the planets in the Solar System are less than 30 astronomical units (AU)—whereas the distances between stars are typically hundreds of thousands of AU, and usually expressed in light-years. Because of the vastness of those distances, interstellar travel would require a high percentage of the speed of light, or huge travel time, lasting from decades to millennia or longer.

I Don’t Not Own Any Of This Content. Hope You Enjoy.

The plan is heavy on ambition, light on specifics.

Ww.geekwire.com/2016/iot-genetics-self-driving-ships-space-travel-darpa-chief-arati-prabhakar-tours-agencys-landscape/

The Internet of Things so widely predicted as the Next Big Thing in computing is full of promise but presents a correspondingly large vulnerability to cyber attacks, said Arati Prabhakar, director of DARPA, at the 2016 GeekWire Summit in Seattle today.

IoT offers “a huge value, but then with every advance comes more attack surface,” said Prabhakar during an interview with Alan Boyle, GeekWire’s aerospace and science editor. “Provably secure embedded systems is part of the answer.”

Continue reading “DARPA chief Arati Prabhakar on self-driving ships, space travel, IoT, genetics, and more” »

Now THIS is a competition I’m absolutely ecstatic to see take hold!

Elon Musk wants to put humans on Mars by 2025, but the Boeing CEO says the first person to arrive on the planet will do so on a Boeing rocket.

Continue reading “Boeing says it will overtake Elon Musk in race to Mars” »

You may be thinking this is not a big deal but u would be wrong. Competition DRIVES INNOVATION!

Competition breeds progress, so it’s a bit thrilling to hear Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg say that he’s going to beat SpaceX to Mars in terms of delivering real humans to the surface of the red planet.

Muilenburg said that he’s “convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,” speaking at a conference in Chicago Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. Boeing is working on a heavy-lift rocket project called the Space Launch System which would aim for a similar goal to what SpaceX is hoping to achieve with its Interplanetary Transport System, the details of which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared in a keynote presented at an international aeronautics convention last week.

Continue reading “A new private space race as Boeing CEO says he’ll beat SpaceX to Mars” »

In Brief.

• The spaceplanes are designed for repeated use, clocking in as many as 50 flights per usable lifespan.
• A ride could cost between $200,000 to $250,000.

Imagine the hybrid of a rocket and a sleek airplane, blasting off and taking you all the way up to outer space. China might be offering just that in a few years.