Lifeboat Foundation

A few years ago, a friend and fellow author Manu Saadia (author of Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek) posed a question to me about the viability of creating actual cities on other planets. It was, in his mind, one of the few things about Star Trek which seemed unrealistic, because of the fact that cities here on Earth thrive due to one important reason: imports/exports, i.e. resource exchange.

As we continue planning ahead for the future of both space travel and space colonization, the need for advanced 3D printing will ultimately dictate our ability to maintain viable civilizations on other planets.

Continue reading “3D Printing and the Viability of Interplanetary City Construction” »

“Astronauts at the international space station expecting a delivery on Monday that private company SpaceX launched a cargo capsule loaded with supplies from Cape Canaveral early this morning the shipment. The company’s seventeenth to the orbiting outpost includes a new instrument to measure CO two in the atmosphere. Then peers Rebecca hersher reports it will be attached. To the space station measuring how much carbon dioxide is. In the atmosphere is really fundamental for understanding how the climate is changing. But it’s difficult for one thing. The amount of co two varies each day and each season and each year and measurements have to be both global and extremely precise. The new instrument can do both. It’s designed to scan the earth measuring not only how much co two is entering the atmosphere. But how much of the greenhouse gas is being absorbed by plants and oceans the instrument is called the orbiting carbon observatory three two other versions. Have previously been launched. Overall. NASA says the ability to measure co two from space has already helped scientists better understand our climate and predict how it will change”

KQED Radio

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See photos from the 11th test flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft. The reusable rocket and capsule aced the launch and landing at Blue Origin’s West Texas test site on May 2, 2019.

In air-breathing vertebrates, the circulatory and pulmonary systems contain separate networks of channels that intertwine but do not intersect with each other. Recreating such structures within cell-compatible materials has been a major challenge; even a single vasculature system can be a burden to create. Grigoryan et al. show that natural and synthetic food dyes can be used as photoabsorbers that enable stereolithographic production of hydrogels containing intricate and functional vascular architectures. Using this approach, they demonstrate functional vascular topologies for studies of fluid mixers, valves, intervascular transport, nutrient delivery, and host engraftment.

Science, this issue p. 458

Solid organs transport fluids through distinct vascular networks that are biophysically and biochemically entangled, creating complex three-dimensional (3D) transport regimes that have remained difficult to produce and study. We establish intravascular and multivascular design freedoms with photopolymerizable hydrogels by using food dye additives as biocompatible yet potent photoabsorbers for projection stereolithography. We demonstrate monolithic transparent hydrogels, produced in minutes, comprising efficient intravascular 3D fluid mixers and functional bicuspid valves. We further elaborate entangled vascular networks from space-filling mathematical topologies and explore the oxygenation and flow of human red blood cells during tidal ventilation and distension of a proximate airway. In addition, we deploy structured biodegradable hydrogel carriers in a rodent model of chronic liver injury to highlight the potential translational utility of this materials innovation.

Continue reading “Multivascular networks and functional intravascular topologies within biocompatible hydrogels” »

The Dragon cargo capsule will arrive at the orbiting lab on Monday morning (May 6).

Success! This morning, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a mission to deliver more than 5,500 pounds of scientific research, supplies and hardware to the crew aboard the International Space Station. Get the details: https://go.nasa.gov/2vLx99b

Bruce Damer is a living legend and international man of mystery – specifically, the mystery of our cosmos, to which he’s devoted his life to exploring: the origins of life, simulating artificial life in computers, deriving amazing new plans for asteroid mining, and cultivating his ability to receive scientific inspiration from “endotripping” (in which he stimulates his brain’s own release of psychoactive compounds known to increase functional connectivity between brain regions). He’s about to work with Google to adapt his origins of life research to simulated models of the increasingly exciting hot springs origin hypothesis he’s been working on with Dave Deamer of UC Santa Cruz for the last several years. And he’s been traveling around the world experimenting with thermal pools, getting extremely close to actually creating new living systems in situ as evidence of their model. Not to mention his talks with numerous national and private space agencies to take the S.H.E.P.H.E.R.D. asteroid mining scheme into space to kickstart the division and reproduction of our biosphere among/between the stars…

LIVE ROCKET LAUNCH! Tune in to see us send tons of research and supplies to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket is slated for no earlier than 3:11 a.m. EDT, Friday, May 3. from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Don’t miss the countdown to liftoff!

The vehicle carried 38 experiments to suborbital space and back today.