Painting playgrounds blue to reflect visual and infrared sunlight to reduce surface temperatures to fight the urban heat island effect.
Painting roofs white is seen as a way to reduce surface and building interior temperatures. Using blue paint adds infrared reflectivity.
The start of the Moon base begins with the Lunar Space Station going online. This is where Elon Musk’s SpaceX Lunar Starship, the HLS (Human Landing System) docks — picking up astronauts to take to the Lunar surface.
It only takes 3 days to reach the Moon. So technological development happens rapidly. From Lunar dust shields, a crater telescope, and a Boring Company tunnel digger digging out lava tubes for Lunar habitats, to a Lunar railroad using levitating cargo robots.
Additional footage from: NASA, ESA, SpaceX, ESA + Foster and Partners, Vladimir Vustyansky, ESO/M. Kornmesser, Relativity Space.
Thumbnail Credit (Used with Written Permission) — ICON and SEArch+
China, which face population collapse due to low fertility rate, is starting to take steps to encourage more births.
China’s fertility rate is 1.1 children per woman. Replacement level to maintain a stable population size is 2.1 children per woman.
A total of 17 Chinese government departments on Tuesday jointly released a guideline on support policies in finance, tax, housing, employment, education and other fields to create a fertility-friendly society and encourage families to have more children, as the country faces growing pressure from falling birth rates.
Analysts said that it is rare to see so many ministries and departments jointly release such a detailed and comprehensive guideline on encouraging fertility and supporting childbearing, underscoring the seriousness of the growth rate of China’s population, which has slowed significantly, with a contraction expected before 2025.
I find the following interesting because Firefly Aerospace is just a few miles from my house plus it is an example of one more company pulling out of Russia for good. Russia’s economy will be much weaker by the time this war is over and their space industry will be decimated.
Northrop Grumman is moving production of the engines and structures for its Antares rockets to the U.S. from Russia and Ukraine, a move that will have cascading effects throughout the space industry.
The aerospace giant said Monday it will move Antares production fully to the U.S. through a partnership with Texas-based Firefly Aerospace. Northrop Grumman had purchased Russian RD-181 engines to power the Antares 230+ series, and the rocket’s main body was manufactured by Ukraine’s Yuzhmash State Enterprise.
The new arrangement mainly resolves the break in Antares manufacturing caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. But in addition to salvaging the Antares rocket series, the cost-sharing deal also helps ensure NASA’s cargo missions to the International Space Station keep flying regularly and brings muscle to Firefly’s plan to build a larger rocket called Beta.
Sustained space exploration will require infrastructure that doesn’t currently exist: buildings, housing, rocket landing pads.
So, where do you turn for construction materials when they are too big to fit in your carry-on and there’s no Home Depot in outer space?
“If we’re going to live and work on another planet like Mars or the moon, we need to make concrete. But we can’t take bags of concrete with us—we need to use local resources,” said Norman Wagner, Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.
With the push of a button, a messy bedroom becomes a spotless living room. America’s housing crisis isn’t going away, but technology that allows small spaces to serve multiple purposes could help.
Iron will be key to human self-sufficiency on Mars.
When the first humans reach Mars, they’ll probably live in habitats that were there ahead of time or in habitats made from their landers.
In a world where 3D printing is being applied to everything from houses to rockets to guns 0, the question comes up as to where manufacturing might be headed next.
A new device, called LeviPrint, adds a unique feature to the manufacturing process: acoustic levitation. By trapping small objects in high frequency sound waves, LeviPrint can be used to build a variety of different structures without touching any of the pieces.
In a video released by researchers from Spain’s Universidad Publica de Navarra, or UPNA, LeviPrint can be seen building a variety of different things, including a bridge, a hoop made out of liquid glue droplets and a cat’s ears.
The state of Maine has started a campaign to educate residents about heat pumps and now they can heat homes even in the winter.
Heat pumps are i ncomprehensible to many people. How can a thing that looks like an air conditioner keep people warm in the winter? The state of Maine wants to install 100,000 heat pumps in the next 3 years and is off to a good start. 27,000 of them were installed by Maine residents last year. Presently, about 60% of all homes in Maine are heated by oil furnaces — one of the highest percentages in America. All those furnaces mean lots of carbon emissions.
Maine may not have the harshest winters in the United States, but it certainly comes close. Old time Mainers like to say their weather is “10 months of winter and 2 months of damn poor sleddin’.” Outside of cities like Portland, its residents tend to be skeptical of new ways of doing things, and that reticence extends to heat pumps.
To address those concerns, Efficiency Maine conducted an experiment last winter to see if heat pumps would keep homes in Maine comfortable even when temperatures outside dipped to-20º F. Lots of people who have heat pumps today also have an oil furnace as well, on the theory that a heat pump can’t make heat when the temperature drops below zero.
China’s fully reusable version of the Long March 9 super heavy-lift rocket, currently in design could blow the SpaceX Starship and even the Artemis Block 2 out of the water both in regards to cost and performance. See how SpaceX may yet counter this. Latest news on re-entry for China’s Long March 5B booster too.
Awesome deals for long term food supplies for those long missions to deep space (or prepping in case your spaceship crashes: See the Special Deals at My Patriot Supply: www.PrepWithGreg.com.
For gardening in your Lunar habitat Galactic Gregs has teamed up with True Leaf Market to bring you a great selection of seed for your planting. Check it out: http://www.pntrac.com/t/TUJGRklGSkJGTU1IS0hCRkpIRk1K
