Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 387

😗 😁 Runs on the water it is surrounded by and solar.

The Aquon One is a luxury solar – hydrogen yacht completely powered by rooftop panels that generate electricity to run its twin 100kW motors and also create hydrogen for fuel cells from the water the boat sails through.

The system is similar to that of the zero emission Energy Observer research vessel which is sailing around the world on solar, wind and hydrogen power and is currently in French Guiana on its way from France to Japan. The difference being that the Aquon is not a research ship, but the world’s first leisure catamaran powered by green (no fossil fuels involved) hydrogen.

solar - hydrogen yacht in artists conception - tree quarter viewThe company behind the yacht is Swiss Sustainable Yachts (SSY), formed in2018by Dr. Adrian Beer, a passionate yachtsman and serial entrepreneur who also founded and is CEO of the GrupoBeer corporation which advises and assists companies recovering from natural disasters.

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The chernobyl special industrial zone — ecosystem restoration, remediation, and the development of energy and chemical byproducts — mykola tolmachov, chernobyl-51 industrial cluster.

The Chernobyl disaster / nuclear accident, occurred on April 26th, 1,986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of Ukraine.

The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, ultimately involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated US$68 billion, adjusted for inflation.

The current Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covers an area of approximately 2,600 km2 (1,000 sq mi) in Ukraine, immediately surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, where radioactive contamination is highest and public access and inhabitation are restricted.

The Exclusion Zone’s purpose is to restrict access to hazardous areas, reduce the further spread of radiological contamination, and conduct radiological and ecological monitoring activities.

Continue reading “Mykola Tolmachov — Chernobyl-51 Indust. Cluster — Ecosystem Restoration — Energy/Chemical Byproducts” | >

71 percent of the Earth is covered in water, but only 3 percent of that is freshwater. The effective desalination of seawater at a mass scale would clearly be a world-changing achievement, celebrated the world over.

With that goal in mind, London-based Solar Water PLC recently signed an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government as part of the country’s clean future $500 billion “NEOM” project. The company is building the “first desalination plant with solar dome technology”, a CNN Arabia report (translated on Solar Water PLC’s website) explains.

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China has shown off the prototype of its “Mars cruise drone” designed for surveillance work on future Mars missions, following the historic landing of a robotic rover on the Red Planet a few months ago.

The prototype of the miniature helicopter successfully passed the final acceptance, China’s National Space Science Center (CNNSC) announced on Wednesday. In the images shared by the science center, the prototype looks similar in appearance to NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, developed for its Perseverance mission this year.

The Chinese prototype sports two rotor blades, a sensor-and-camera base, and four thin legs, but there is no solar panel at the top like Ingenuity.

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Lotus targets almost2000horsepower for its new hypercar.

Lotus is wary of corporate hubris these days, preferring to remain quiet when previously it would have shouted. Former boss Dany Bahar once introduced five sports-car concepts on the same auto-show stand, none of which made it even close to production. Lotus’s resources have grown massively since the thinly applied gild of the Bahar era; Chinese automaker Geely took a majority stake in the British sports-car maker two years ago. But although the company has recruited hundreds of new engineers, and is known to be working on several new models, few details have been shared so far.

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Bill Gates made headlines for becoming the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. But he’s not the only one. Some of the wealthiest landowners including Jeff Bezos, John Malone and Thomas Peterffy are buying up forests, ranches and farmlands across the United States. Why? Watch the video to find out.

Investments in farmland are growing across the country as people, including the ultra-wealthy like Bill Gates, look for new ways to grow their money.

In 2,020 Gates made headlines for becoming the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. He had accumulated more than 269,000 acres of farmland across 18 states in less than a decade. His farmland grows onions, carrots and even the potatoes that are used to make McDonald’s French fries.

“It’s an asset with increasing value,” American Farmland Trust CEO John Piotti said. “It has great intrinsic value and beyond that, it is a limited resource.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 30% of all farmland is owned by landlords who don’t farm themselves. Buyers often purchase land from farmers who have owned it for decades; many of whom may be asset rich but maybe cash poor.

“The economic realities for them are typical that they’ve spent their life farming,” said Holly Rippon-Butler, land campaign director at the National Young Farmers Coalition. “Their retirement, their equity is all in the land and tied up in selling land.”

Continue reading “Why Bill Gates Is Buying Up U.S. Farmland” | >

The two companies have raised an initial US$6.5 million toward what could genuinely be a revolutionary powertrain for electric aircraft; a fully FAA-certified hydrogen system would instantly allow electric aircraft to carry several times more energy on board, vastly boosting flight endurance while also enabling fast refueling instead of slow charging.

HyPoint claims its “turbo air-cooled” fuel cell system” will be able to achieve up to 2,000 watts per kilogram (2.2 lb) of specific power, which is more than triple the power-to-weight ratio of traditional (liquid-cooled) hydrogen fuel cells systems. It will also boast up to 1,500 watt-hours per kilogram of energy density, enabling longer-distance journeys.” For comparison, today’s commercially available lithium battery packs rarely break the 300-Wh/kg mark.

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Plan ahead.

We have brought you multiple videos of Tesla cars in ‘boat mode’ wading through flooded streets across different parts of the world. Electric SUV maker, Rivian, seems to have an unofficial ‘boat mode’ as well, judging from a reasonably well performance in a recent test run.

Tesla’s rival electric SUV-maker Rivian just showcased its new R1T going through deep waters and unlike gas-powered cars, it seemed unbothered.

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The automotive electric vehicle revolution paves the way for urban air mobility, but people must not be naive to believe that electric vehicle batteries are enough for electric flight. The need for fast charging, 30 times the energy throughput, and three times the power demand requires a new generation of batteries.

Engineers at Penn State have now demonstrated two energy-dense lithium-ion batteries that can recharge with enough energy for a 50-mile eVTOL trip in five to ten minutes. These batteries could sustain more than 2,000 fast charges over their lifetime.

In the last couple of years, several prototypes have emerged – including from companies like Volocopter, Boeing, Lilium, SkyDrive. While some prototypes have included wheels, they all incorporate spinning rotors to facilitate takeoff and landing, including the air taxi shown off last year by Hyundai, which is basically a small helicopter.

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Elon Musk recently shared a rather interesting update on Twitter — his companies now employ about 110,000 people worldwide. This is quite impressive considering that in the grand scheme of things, Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk’s other ventures are still just getting started.

Musk’s update came as a response to a TSLA bull on Twitter who inquired if his companies had already reached the 100,000-employee milestone. Musk’s response revealed that his companies had not only met their 100,000 employee mark — they had already passed it.

Elon Musk did not share further details about his companies’ worldwide employee headcount, though there is a good chance that the lion’s share of his workers today are in the United States and China. These are the two countries where Tesla, one of Musk’s largest companies, has operational vehicle production plants, after all.

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