Lifeboat Foundation

The three major lessons on energy security.

On October 19, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU had replaced two-thirds of its Russian gas imports since February by switching to other suppliers. Such a turnaround seemed unattainable last spring when the invasion of Ukraine turned Moscow from an EU business partner into a military threat.

Despite the EU’s reduction of its energy dependence on Russia, there is work to be done in the long term. To achieve autonomy from Russian energy, the Union could learn from the experience of one of its members, Lithuania – a country which, since declaring its independence from the USSR in 1990, has been able to adapt to a complex geopolitical context to ensure its energy security.

Continue reading “How one small European country could hold the key to energy self-sufficiency” »

Switch-Science has just announced a trio of quantum computing products that the company claims are the world’s first portable quantum computers. Sourced from SpinQ Technology, a Chinese quantum computing company based in Shenzen, the new quantum computing products have been designed for educational purposes. The aim is to democratize access to physical quantum computing solutions that can be deployed (and redeployed) at will. But considering the actual quantum machinery on offer, none of these (which we’re internally calling “quantops”) are likely to be a part of the future of quantum.

The new products being developed with education in mind shows in their qubit counts, which top out at three (compare that to Google’s Sycamore or IBM’s 433-qubit Osprey Quantum Processing Unit [QPU], both based on superconducting qubits). That’s not enough a number for any viable, problem-solving quantum computing to take place within these machines, but it’s enough that users can program and run quantum circuits — either the integrated, educational ones, or a single custom algorithm.

“This platform can be for manufacturing, human habitation, military applications, and whatnot.”

In-space manufacturing will form a massive part of the future of space exploration as it massively reduces the cost of launching otherwise fully-built structures to orbit and beyond.

Not only that, one of its co-founders says it could be compatible with SpaceX’s in-development fully reusable Starship rocket, which could eventually take humans to Mars.

Continue reading “A startup is building an in-space manufacturing platform that could attach to Starship” »

A study published Wednesday in the JAMA Psychiatry journal shows that four key genetic variations are more common in military veterans who have taken their own life or considered it.

Scientists from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, found the pattern while analyzing blood samples from a database that included 633,778 U.S. veterans, cross-referenced with the International Suicide Genetics Consortium of more than 549,000 individuals.

The obtained samples were sequenced to create genetic profiles compared to participants’ medical records, showing that 121,211 recorded cases of attempted suicide or thoughts about killing themselves.

These Remote Carriers will supplement manned aircraft and support pilots in their tasks and missions.

A group led by Airbus has successfully tested the launch and operation of a Remote Carrier flight test demonstrator, a modified Airbus Do-DT25 drone, from a flying A400M.

Continue reading “Airbus successfully launches wingman drones from A400M” »

WASHINGTON — The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution calling for a halt to one type of anti-satellite (ASAT) testing, a largely symbolic move intended to support broader space sustainability initiatives.

The resolution, introduced by the United States and several other nations, was approved by the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 7 among dozens of other resolutions on arms control and related topics with little discussion or debate. A total of 155 nations voted in favor of the resolution, with 9 voting against it and 9 others abstaining.

The resolution calls on countries to halt destructive testing of direct-ascent ASAT weapons, citing concern that such creates large amounts of debris that threaten the safety of other satellites. An example is the November 2021 ASAT test by Russia that destroyed the Cosmos 1,408 satellite, creating nearly 1,800 tracked pieces of debris and likely many more objects too small to be tracked. About a third of the tracked debris from that test was still in orbit nearly a year later.

It reached speeds greater than Mach 5, maybe even Mach 20.

The U.S. Air Force has successfully completed the test of its full prototype operational hypersonic missile at the Elgin Air Force Base off the Southern California coast on December 9, a press release said. The hypersonic missile, dubbed Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), met all objectives of the test flight.

Designed and developed by Lockheed Martin, ARRW, an air-to-ground missile, is a boost-glide vehicle that can strike “fixed, high-value and time-sensitive targets”, as per the press release. The missile can be carried under the wing of an aircraft such as the B-52 bomber.

Continue reading “US Air Force successfully tests first full prototype of its hypersonic missile” »

Decades-old US silos holding Minuteman III missiles that have been a key nuclear deterrent since the 1970s will be assessed by robots that can crawl straight up walls.

“The ARRW team successfully designed and tested an air-launched hypersonic missile in five years,” Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, program executive officer for the Air Force’s armament directorate. “I am immensely proud of the tenacity and dedication this team has shown to provide a vital capability to our warfighter.”

Hypersonic weapons can travel at speeds greater than Mach 5 and maneuver mid-flight, making them much harder to track and shoot down than conventional ballistic missiles and capable of penetrating defenses. Russia and China have invested heavily in developing their own hypersonic weapons, and the U.S. military has faced pressure, including from lawmakers, to show more progress on its own hypersonic capabilities.

The successful test of the operational ARRW prototype continues a series of successful tests for the program in 2022, marking a turnaround from a disappointing 2021 that left the effort in trouble.