Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: military – Page 220

NASA is warning that meteors pose a major threat to Earth, so agencies are already testing out ways to defend against them by using lasers or by ramming spacecraft into them.

During a conference last week, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine explained that not taking meteors seriously could have catastrophic consequences. In 2013, a 20-metre meteor exploded over Russia and the sonic boom caused windows and glass to shatter, injuring more than 1,000 people.

That relatively small meteor contained more than 30 times the energy of the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War.

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The Navy just awarded Boeing a contract to build a giant robot submarine, called the Orca Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle, which it says will prowl the depths of the ocean autonomously for months at a time.

The U.S. Naval Institute says the sub will be used for “mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare and strike missions.”

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At last, it’s done. The biggest spaceship size chart ever created is now complete and fully operational. 4,268 × 5,690 pixels of technological terror that includes everything from the smaller Star War ships to EVE. According to its author, Dirk Loechel, this is the last update. It’s epic.

The last update

For real this time: This is the final major content update, though if there are issues I’ll still fix them. I also haven’t forgotten I wanted to vectorize the writing. It’s still on the radar. But content-wise, I think that is about all I can put in.

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New Mexico additive manufacturing software developer Sigma Labs, has obtained third-party validation of its PrintRite3D platform in a study by U.S. defense agency DARPA.

The study discusses the validation process involved in producing complex metal parts of consistent quality. It was sponsored by DARPA’s Open Manufacturing Program and conducted in conjunction with aircraft engine manufacturer Honeywell Aerospace, which has been collaborating with Sigma labs since 2014.

As an agency of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), DARPA is responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. In line with this goal, it created the Open Manufacturing program to ‘lower the cost and speed the delivery of high-quality manufactured goods with predictable performance.’


The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is eyeing flight tests later this year for two hypersonic weapons, and it is teaming up with the US Army on developing such a ground-launched capability. However, at the same time, army leaders are drafting plans to consolidate duelling lines of effort within their hypersonic weapons’ portfolio.

During a 1 May Defense Writers’ Group breakfast with reporters, DARPA Director Dr Steven Walker fielded questions about ongoing projects inside the Pentagon’s research arm including the development of two hypersonic weapons with the US Air Force (USAF) — the Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) and the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC).

“[They are] two very different concepts but when you’re talking hypersonic [weapons], it is good to have what I consider intended redundancy because it’s a hard technology, making materials and propulsion systems that last in 3,000° Fahrenheit temperatures is not easy,” Walker said.

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