Lifeboat Foundation

Commonwealth Fusion Systems a spinout from MIT has received additional funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures (which investment from billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, Mukesh Ambani, and Richard Branson).

Commonwealth Fusion Systems will use new superconducting materials to make far stronger magnets for a smaller Tokamak fusion system. The planned fusion experiment, called Sparc, is set to be far smaller – about 1/65th of the volume – than that of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, an international collaboration.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures’ portfolio company @CFS_energy is building on decades of government-funded research to accelerate the path toward clean, limitless commercial fusion energy. #cleanenergy https://www.cfs.energy/

Continue reading “Commonwealth Fusion stronger magnet tokomak gets billionaire funding” »

Can Tesla survive without Elon Musk? If he is banned from CEO or director positions or being a board member what will the impact to SpaceX be?

Tesla without Elon Musk at the wheel? To many of the electric car maker’s customers and investors that would be unthinkable. But that’s what government securities regulators now want to see.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a federal court to oust Musk as Tesla’s chairman and CEO, alleging he committed securities fraud with false statements about plans to take the company private.

Continue reading “Tesla without Musk at the wheel? That’s what the SEC wants” »

Just how valuable is that stretch of space between Earth and the moon’s orbit? Might this celestial real estate become hot property as an extension of military arenas in low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, and geosynchronous orbit?

Given forecasts of 21st-century activity on and around the moon by both private and government entities, could this be an economic area of development that needs protection in sthe years and decades to come? [In Photos: President Donald Trump and NASA].

The new digital communications policy (NDCP) 2018, approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday, looks too good to believe. It has promised to create an additional four million jobs in five years and reskill another one million people in new-age skills and sectors such as 5G LTE and artificial intelligence. Six lakh villages will be connected which will eventually lead to creating jobs and several earning avenues such as managing WiFi hotspots and laying optical fibre, among others. The policy will give an impetus to the job market.

NDCP is bound to create a massive infrastructure and help the debt-ridden telecom sector emerge from its current turbulence. The policy document envisages the reduction in levies and ease of doing business, and this will help restore the financial health of the long-bleeding sector. The focus will be on the proliferation of telecom services and facilitating low-cost financing. The government’s ambitious plan of Digital India will get a booster shot. Thanks to the promise of 50 Mbps speed in the broadband connection, the consumer will be the ultimate beneficiary.

Plans are afoot to reform the licensing and regulatory regime to facilitate investments and innovation, besides promoting ease of doing business. The success of the policy will depend on the execution of the policy.

Continue reading “DNA Money Edit: Telecom sector awaits a turnaround” »

I began my life as an activist academic in 1979 when the Western Australian government closed the Fremantle railway, saying buses would be better. Patronage immediately fell by 30% and I ran a four-year campaign to save the railway. We won. I have been writing books and running campaigns ever since on why trains and trams are better than buses. But I have changed my mind. The technology has changed, and I think it will end the need for new light rail.

“Trackless trams” are based on technology created in Europe and China by taking innovations from high-speed rail and putting them in a bus.

Continue reading “Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail” »

When you think about the amount of time we spend behind the wheel today, whether in congestion or helping friends and family getting to and forth, being able to spend this time on other activities whilst on the move opens up a whole host of possibilities.

But not only will we have more free time, driverless cars also promise to make our roads safer and make our journeys faster.

Driverless cars are set to arrive on UK roads by 2021 according to the government and are predicted to change the face of personal mobility forever. Looking past the obvious benefits, Select Car Leasing have looked into the less predictable consequences of driverless cars.

Continue reading “10 Surprising Ways Driverless Cars Will Change The World” »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The White House will hold a meeting on Monday on U.S. government efforts to boost quantum information science, with administration officials, leading companies including Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL.O ), IBM Corp ( IBM.N ), JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM.N ) and academic experts taking part.

Electric drones booked through smartphones pick people up from office rooftops, shortening travel time by hours, reducing the need for parking and clearing smog from the air.

This vision of the future is driving the Japanese government’s “flying car” project. Major carrier All Nippon Airways, electronics company NEC Corp. and more than a dozen other companies and academic experts hope to have a road map for the plan ready by the year’s end.

“This is such a totally new sector Japan has a good chance for not falling behind,” said Fumiaki Ebihara, the government official in charge of the project.

Continue reading “Japan eager to be on board vertical-takeoff ‘flying cars’” »

The east coast is currently flooded. Why don’t we have pipelines for pumping water around the country where it is needed? We do it for oil and gas, and you know if it leaks it would not be a toxic mess.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack last week suggested the government would look at changing the law to allow water to be taken from the environment and given to farmers struggling with the drought.

This is a bad idea for several reasons. First, the environment needs water in dry years as well as wet ones. Second, unilaterally intervening in the way water is distributed between users undermines the water market, which is now worth billions of dollars. And, third, in dry years the environment gets a smaller allocation too, so there simply isn’t enough water to make this worthwhile.

Continue reading “Giving environmental water to drought-stricken farmers sounds straightforward, but it’s a bad idea” »