Lifeboat Foundation

You might not know it, but you’re really just one Kickstarter away from launching your own satellite. CubeSats and other small, cheap spacecraft platforms have reduced the cost of getting to orbit by a huge margin, allowing for a more democratized age of space exploration.

As exciting as this populist spaceflight movement is, there is still one major technological hurdle it has to clear before it will meet its full potential: Propulsion.

Continue reading “The Race to Build Teeny Tiny Satellite Thrusters” »

Human missions to Mars will be difficult without artificial gravity, so why is this basic principle ignored?

Read more

Luv the whole beautiful picture of a Big Data Quantum Computing Cloud. And, we’re definitely going to need it for all of our data demands and performance demands when you layer in the future of AI (including robotics), wearables, our ongoing convergence to singularity with nanobots and other BMI technologies. Why we could easily exceed $4.6 bil by 2021.

From gene mapping to space exploration, humanity continues to generate ever-larger sets of data—far more information than people can actually process, manage, or understand.

Machine learning systems can help researchers deal with this ever-growing flood of information. Some of the most powerful of these analytical tools are based on a strange branch of geometry called topology, which deals with properties that stay the same even when something is bent and stretched every which way.

Continue reading “Big Data And Quantum Computers” »

So, here is a question that many AI experts are and have been asking themselves for a while; “as humans create robots and have other humans; what will the world look like when Humanoid Robots and other types of robots create their own?”

NASA is in the process of developing a humanoid robot that could help astronauts in risky and extremely hazardous expeditions in the future.

The six-feet tall, 131.5 kg heavy humanoid robot called R5 will work as a ready-to-assist machine in every dangerous task of the utmost importance during long-lasting journeys beyond the Earth, Astrowatch.net reported on Sunday. The robot was previously known as Valkyrie.

Continue reading “NASA to develop humanoid robot to help in deep space missions” »

Dreaming of wormholes: Kaku said “The only feasible way to break the light barriers is through general relativity and warping of space-time”. We call this warping as wormholes, theoretically, these allow something to break the cosmic speed limit by travelling huge distance in a short time. These wormholes have some exotic matter, holding them open. This exotic matter has been made in laboratories but in a small quantity. In 1988, Kip Thorne proposed a theory of Stable Wormholes to find out the possibility of a wormhole in the presence of that exotic matter (like the one in Interstellar Movie). Thorne says “After 30 years, the answer is still unknown and we are still away from the final answer.”

Read more

Glad to see The Martian get some Academy Award action; as much as I liked the novel, I found the film to be as good or better, which is rare. And I also found it to be personally inspiring in a way that few science fiction films are. But the point I’m trying to make here is that; we aren’t that far from Hermes-type spacecraft for interplanetary transfer. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities. I wonder if any of you feel the same way.

With six Academy Award nominations, the celebrated film adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel “The Martian” has been the perfect tonic for rousing interest in human missions to Mars.

But as good as the book truly is, the film transcends its source material about a stranded Mars astronaut with some practical takeaways that are as inspiring as any out there. They include:

Continue reading “5 Down-To-Earth Takeaways From ‘The Martian’” »

Blue Origin just launched and landed its suborbital rocket New Shepard — the same vehicle the company flew and then landed in November. The booster reached a maximum altitude of 333,582 feet, or 63 miles, above the Earth’s surface, before landing gently back at Blue Origin’s test facility in Texas. That makes it the first commercial vertical rocket to launch into space a second time.

It also means Blue Origin has seemingly beaten rival SpaceX yet again in the race to reuse rockets. SpaceX successfully landed one of its Falcon 9 rockets post-launch back in December for the first time, just a month after Blue Origin did. However, CEO Elon Musk said that particular rocket will never be launched again, as the company considers it too special to reuse. SpaceX tried to land another rocket last week, but the vehicle ultimately fell over and exploded, making it impossible to fly again.

Continue reading “Blue Origin beats SpaceX to re-launching a reusable rocket” »

Russia announces plans to construct a nuclear rocket engine as part of its ten-year Federal Space Program plans from 2016–2025.

Read more

“Though humble in appearance, this object is the product of great ambitions. Dubbed a “Lunar Rake,” it was designed and manufactured in the late 1960s in partnership with NASA. A facsimile of the implement that astronauts would theoretically use to scrape up dust on the moon, this model was used only during training.”

Read more