Category: habitats – Page 11
It’s not easy making green. For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ—injecting electric current into semiconductors—hasn’t worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths.
SpaceX, with its rapidly expanding squadron of Starship rockets and super-capsules, looks poised to dominate the creation of humanity’s first base camp on the Moon.
As it ramps up producing Starship upper stages that can double as Moon-orbiting space stations or as spectacular lunar resorts, SpaceX is positioned to speed past NASA’s plans for Spartan astronaut habitats on the orb’s South Pole.
NASA’s “lunar surface habitat concepts are currently in early conceptual stages or pre-formulation,” Corinne Beckinger, a NASA representative based at the Marshall Space Flight Center, told me in an interview.
Can we build solar-powered EVs that don’t need to be recharged? Technically yes. But this home-built project shows why it’s impractical for the real world.
Nanomaterials, with their distinctive physical and chemical properties, hold significant promise for revolutionizing the housing construction industry. By enabling the development of stronger, more durable, efficient, and sustainable structures, nanotechnology offers solutions to challenges such as climate change and global urbanization.
The use of nanomaterials in construction began in the mid-1980s with the advent of carbon-based structures. Since then, their application has become more widespread, driving innovations in the sector. Today, advances in nanotechnology are leading to the creation of increasingly sophisticated, selective, and efficient nanomaterials, broadening the scope of construction capabilities.
This study explored the application of various nanomaterials—titanium dioxide, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), nanosilica, nanocellulose, nanoalumina, and nanoclay—in residential construction. These materials were chosen for their potential to enhance the structural integrity, thermal performance, and overall functionality of building materials used in housing.
More than 100 sustainable homes, also known as “living vessels,” are built into the earth in Taos, New Mexico, and are not connected to any water or electricity.
Hey, I have a nice story for you. During my childhood, I used to live in Italy. We would eat pasta every day and life was simple. I loved my house, but one d…
It looks like Elon is about to rescue two people Boeing left stranded in outer space. Crew Dragon’s capacity will likely be increased from 4 to 6 people as the solution to this problem.
SpaceX is actively working on a plan to fly Starliner’s crew home.
The desert moss Syntrichia caninervis is a promising candidate for Mars colonization thanks to its extreme ability to tolerate harsh conditions lethal to most life forms. The moss is well known for its ability to tolerate drought conditions, but researchers report June 30 in the journal The Innovation that it can also survive freezing temperatures as low as −196°C, high levels of gamma radiation, and simulated Martian conditions involving these three stressors combined. In all cases, prior dehydration seemed to help the plants cope.
“Our study shows that the environmental resilience of S. caninervis is superior to that of some of highly stress-tolerant microorganisms and tardigrades,” write the researchers, who include ecologists Daoyuan Zhang and Yuanming Zhang and botanist Tingyun Kuang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “S. caninervis is a promising candidate pioneer plant for colonizing extraterrestrial environments, laying the foundation for building biologically sustainable human habitats beyond Earth.”
A small number of previous studies have tested the ability of microorganisms, algae, lichens, and plant spores to withstand the extreme environments of outer space or Mars, but this is the first study to test whole plants.