The prototype is one step closer to real liftoff.
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Category: space travel – Page 393
“This is the first clear demonstration of controlling the speed of a pulse light in free space,” Abouraddy said in the statement. “And it opens up doors for many applications, an optical buffer being just one of them, but most importantly it’s done in a simple way, that’s repeatable and reliable.”
READ MORE: Researchers develop way to control speed of light, send it backward [Phys.org]
More on light: New NASA Animations Show How Slowly Light Travels Through Space.
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A University of California Irvine student may have stumbled upon an invention to end your phone-charging woes for good. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of where that could take us as a society. Forget about your phone; the world would be a different place without ever having to worry about replacing car batteries, and imagine the uses that it could have in space exploration. Technology is the ultimate wildcard.
A battery that lasts a whole lifetime is now one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to Mya Le Thai, a PhD student who’s been researching how to make better nanowire rechargeable batteries. In theory, her discovery could lead to a battery that lasts centuries—as long as 400 years.
She made the discovery while studying the properties of gold nanowire for commercial batteries. Typically, the gold filaments lose their integrity (and the battery dies) after 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles—“seven thousand at the most,” adds Reginald Penner, head of the chemistry department, who called Thai’s discovery “crazy.”
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Humans could build a permanent settlement on Mars where a new branch of human civilization and social order could be created, said a Mars exploration advocate on Thursday.
“We could easily have humans on Mars in 10 years or faster if it is an international project,” Robert Zubrin, the Mars Society president, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Thursday in Beijing.
By then, human beings could go back and forth between Mars and Earth anytime by taking reusable rockets and the technology would be cheaper and cheaper as the spaceflight frequency to Mars increases, he said.
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White Rabbit
Recorded Live: 11/8/1975 — Winterland — San Francisco, CA
More Jefferson Starship at Music Vault: http://www.musicvault.com
Personnel:
Grace Slick — vocals
Paul Kantner — vocals, guitar
Marty Balin — vocals, percussion
David Frieberg — keyboards, bass, vocals.
Craig Chaquico — lead guitar
Pete Sears — bass, piano
Johnny Barbata — drums, vocals (on track #4)
Summary:
Recorded after the monumentally successful Red Octopus album release, but prior to 1976’s Spitfire album, this Jefferson Starship concert captures the band performing a diverse set before a hometown audience. With singer Marty Balin back in the fold, the group again contained the three primary vocalists from the Jefferson Airplane, now supported by vocalist, keyboardist, part-time bassist, and ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service member David Frieberg; the young guitar prodigy Craig Chaquico; and the superb rhythm section of bassist/pianist Pete Sears and drummer Johnny Barbata. The group was riding high on the multi-platinum Red Octopus album and was arguably at a new peak of popularity.
This set is not only represented by material from the early Jefferson Starship albums and a couple of Jefferson Airplane classics, but interestingly features live performances of material from Grace Slick’s first solo album plus two of the best tracks Marty Balin recorded with his post-Jefferson Airplane project, Bodacious D F.
The recording begins in progress, with the group wrapping up Vic Smith’s “Drivin’ Me Crazy,” the most infectious track from the obscure Bodacious D F album. This sweeping, heart-breaking song about longing for lost love serves as a perfect vehicle for Balin’s romantically emotive vocals. An extended version of the Jerry Gallup/Craig Chaquico composition, “That’s For Sure” follows, clocking in at nearly twice the length of the studio recording featured on the 1974 Jefferson Starship album, Dragonfly. With barrelhouse piano support from Sears, Grace Slick next takes over with a very bawdy take on “Better Lying Down,” a track from her first solo album, Manhole.
In a rare instance of drummer Johnny Barbata fronting the band, they next deliver “Big City,” the song he co-wrote with ex-Canned Heat guitarist Joel Scott Hill and original Flying Burrito Brothers bassist Chris Etheridge. Here Barbata handles lead vocals on a song soon to be recorded for the group’s next album, Spitfire. Returning to Dragonfly material, David Frieberg next fronts the band on “Come To Life,” a song containing words by the Grateful Dead’s lyricist extraordinaire, Robert Hunter.
From precision GPS to batteries for one of the world’s first commercial all-electric airplanes, NASA technology turns up in nearly every corner of modern life. The latest edition of NASA’s Spinoff publication features dozens of commercial technologies that were developed or improved by the agency’s space program and benefit people everywhere.
“NASA works hard, not only to develop technology that pushes the boundaries of aeronautics and space exploration, but also to put those innovations into the hands of businesses and entrepreneurs who can turn them into solutions for challenges we all face here on Earth,” said Jim Reuter, acting associate administrator of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “These are sometimes predictable, like the many NASA technologies now adopted by the burgeoning commercial space industry, but more often they appear in places that may seem unrelated, like hospitals, farms, factories and family rooms.”
In this issue of Spinoff, the agency shares new stories of how:
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As 3D printing evolves and changes manufacturing, no sector will be left untouched—including rocket-building. Using the world’s largest 3D metal printer and Dell technology, Relativity Space will streamline the rocket-building process and make space exploration faster and more accessible. Watch how this revolutionary startup is partnering with Dell to take a leading spot in the race to space.
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Science fiction met space fact this week in the Seattle area when the cast of “The Expanse,” the science-fiction jewel in Amazon’s streaming-video crown, got a look at Blue Origin’s spaceship.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is the common denominator in the meetup: He personally engineered the sci-fi series’ shift from SyFy to Prime Video, and announced it onstage at a space conference last May while I was sitting beside him. Bezos is also the founder of Blue Origin, the space venture that is testing its New Shepard suborbital spaceship and gearing up to build its orbital-class New Glenn rocket.
During last May’s sit-down with Bezos, I joked that cast of “The Expanse” might want to take a ride on New Shepard, just to get some real-life experience behind their portrayal of space travel. And Bezos played along.
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Rocket Lab has successfully launched its first rocket of 2019, a mission for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that will test a novel method to deploy a satellite antenna in orbit.
The Electron rocket carrying the single satellite lifted off today, Thursday, March 28 from the company’s Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand, where all of the company’s previous four rockets have also launched from. As per tradition, the rocket was given a nickname, this time being “Two Thumbs Up” – in honor of a team member who tragically died in a motorbike accident recently.
Inside the rocket is DARPA’s Radio Frequency Risk Reduction Deployment Demonstration (R3D2) satellite. Weighing in at 150 kilograms (330 pounds), it is the largest single satellite Rocket Lab has ever launched. Indeed, 150 kilograms is the upper limit of what the Electron can lift.
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