Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2017

Imagine materials strong enough to use in building airplanes or motor cars, yet are literally lighter than air. Soon, that may not be so hard to do because a team of researchers from MIT and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed new ultra-lightweight materials that are as light as aerogel, but 10,000 times stiffer, and may one day revolutionize aerospace and automotive designs.

Aerogels are incredibly light, so light that the record holder, aerographene, boasts a density of just 0.16 mg/cm³. Currently, aerogels are used for insulation, tennis racquets, as a means of controlling oil spills, and were used on the NASA Stardust mission to collect samples from a comet’s tail. Unfortunately, despite its seemingly ephemeral nature, its very much a solid and will shatter if pressed hard enough, so its use is limited.

Continue reading “New materials developed that are as light as aerogel, yet 10,000 times stronger” »

The Defense Department expects to stand up its first battalion of Stryker vehicles outfitted with high-powered laser weapons by some time next year, Army officials say.

“Expect to have the first battalion fielded in 2021 with four battalions by 2023,” U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command chief Lt. Gen. Dan Karbler told the audience at the virtual Space Missile Defense symposium on Tuesday.

The so-called “laser battalion,” as Defense One described it, would eventually deploy the new 50 kw Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE-MSHORAD) Stryker that the Army is working to field by 2022, a ten-fold power increase over the 5 kw-class system that artillery soldiers have been testing in Germany since early 2018.

This week:

🚀 The first piece of NASA’s Orion Spacecraft #Artemis III pressure vessel arrived in New Orleans
👩🏿‍🚀 Astronaut Jeanette Epps is assigned to The Boeing Company’s Starliner crewed mission
🌀 Hurricane Laura observed from space.

Launch is scheduled for Aug. 29, with a launch time of 2:04 a.m. EDT. Live broadcast begine 1:44 a.m. EDT.

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing announced an updated schedule of test flights of the company’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle that would allow it to begin operational missions to the International Space Station at the end of 2021.

In an Aug. 28 statement, NASA said it had scheduled a second uncrewed test flight, known as Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2, for no earlier than December. That mission will be a repeat of the original OFT mission flown last December, which was cut short by technical problems that prevented the spacecraft from approaching and docking with the ISS.

The NASA statement confirmed recent comments by agency officials on the schedule for OFT-2. “The Boeing folks are working hard for their reflight to be done by the end of the year, maybe early January,” Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in an Aug. 24 webinar during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Propulsion and Energy Forum.

The inside of future nuclear fusion energy reactors will be among the harshest environments ever produced on Earth. What’s strong enough to protect the inside of a fusion reactor from plasma-produced heat fluxes akin to space shuttles reentering Earth’s atmosphere?

“This was a big milestone, as it was our first opportunity to turn on Ingenuity and give its electronics a ‘test drive’ since we launched on July 30,” said Tim Canham, the operations lead for Mars Helicopter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in the statement. “Since everything went by the book, we’ll perform the same activity about every two weeks to maintain an acceptable state of charge.”

It’s one more step on the road to what NASA hopes will be humankind’s first flight on an alien world.

“This charge activity shows we have survived launch and that so far we can handle the harsh environment of interplanetary space,” MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager, added. “We have a lot more firsts to go before we can attempt the first experimental flight test on another planet, but right now we are all feeling very good about the future.”

Episode 13; please check out this candid interview with Lowell Observatory astronomer Gerard van Belle on why we need interferometry in space. Many thanks!

Lowell Observatory astronomer Gerard van Belle, Chief Scientist at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) in Flagstaff. Arizona talks about the possibility of arrays of space telescopes that are 3D printed after launch. We also discuss the history of optical interferometry; why such interlinked telescopes are the key to America’s future in astronomy and why Arizona skies remain as vital today as they were a century ago.

Continue reading “Episode 13 --- Why Future Space-Based Arrays Of Optical Telescopes Will Likely Be 3D Printed In Orbit” »

MUST-WATCH video of a rocket launch as seen from the International Space Station. You can track the tiny spot rising into the darkness as if it’s an animated cartoon. But it’s REAL. Hopefully, it will soon be just one of the flights in the regular commuter network between the planets, a future #Asgardia seeks to make true as soon as possible.\n(Credit: NASA, ISS, Riccardo Rossi (ISAA))\n\nYou can make it happen sooner by sharing your ideas and joining #TheFirstSpaceNation’s Business Partnership Program!