Space – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Earth Is Outside Our Delivery Zone

Sep 1
2016

Something different.

“The real task with dealing with extraterrestrials is to know when you’ve got one.

It’s completely silly to search the galaxy with radio telescopes for a radio civilisation. I mean to my mind that is as chuckle-headed as deciding you are going to search the galaxy for a decent Italian restaurant.” –Terence McKenna

Russia Plans Mission to Land a Rocket on Jupiter’s Ganymede, Only Moon with its Own Magnetic Field –“100-Kilometer-Deep Ocean a Hotspot for Life”

Posted by Andreas Matt in bioengineering, space

Sep 1
2016

In a video uploaded to YouTube on August 3rd (below), engineers from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, proposed an orbiter and lander mission to Ganymede. The video suggests a launch could come in the next decade. Although the commentary is in Russian, the video appears to suggest that Ganymede may be as good a candidate or better for life than Europa.

How NASA is working to take us deeper into space

Posted by Andreas Matt in space

Sep 1
2016

The U.S. space agency has contracted with six private companies to develope systems needed for a Mars mission.

NASA is Designing A Submarine To Explore Titan’s Largest Ocean

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in space

Aug 31
2016

NASA is designing a submarine that will one day be deployed to Saturn’s moon Titan, and explore it’s largest hydrocarbon ocean Kraken Mare. The project is just in the conceptional phase with the mission beginning in 2038, at the earliest.

Despite being a moon, Saturn’s natural satellite Titan is remarkably planet-like. More notably, it has striking similarities to Earth such as clouds and a dense atmosphere.

It does, however, have oceans of liquid methane instead of water, since its temperature is far too cold for liquid water to exist. This would make is most uncomfortable for much of life on Earth. Still, scientists have reasons to believe that life could emerge under these harsh circumstances, since its thick atmosphere is rich in methane and other organic compounds—signs indicative of life from an Earthling’s perspective.

The Golden Age

Posted by Sean Brazell in government, life extension, singularity, space

Aug 31
2016

I HIGHLY recommend reading this novel, as well as it sequels! It’s a beautiful, smart, and occasionally frightening exploration of what our civilization will look like post singularity, what WE will look like as posthumans, and where we might go from there.

The Golden Age is Grand Space Opera, a large-scale SF adventure novel in the tradition of A. E. Van vogt and Roger Zelazny, with perhaps a bit of Cordwainer Smith enriching the style. It is an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF’s golden age writers.

The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale-the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia-Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion.

Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself.

‘Star in a jar’ could lead to limitless fusion energy

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in energy, physics, space

Aug 31
2016

A test cell for the National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade with tokamak in the center. (credit: Elle Starkman/PPPL Office of Communications)

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are building a “star in a jar” — a miniature version of the how our Sun creates energy through fusion. It could provide humankind with near limitless energy, ending dependence on fossil fuels for generating electricity — without contributing greenhouse gases that warm the Earth, and with no long-term radioactive waste.

But that requires a “jar” that can contain superhot plasma — and is low-cost enough to be built around the world. A model for such a “jar,” or fusion device, already exists in experimental form: the tokamak, or fusion reactor. Invented in the 1950s by Soviet physicists, it’s a device that uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma (superhot charged gas) in the shape of a torus.