Lifeboat Foundation

Learning to deal with lignin is important for recycling and space settlements. Unused biomass on space settlements and long-term voyages is something that just can’t be tolerated. The same problem exists in dealing with plant waste on earth. A new process helps convert it into a precursor for polyester, which can be used for all kinds of other materials.

Plant cells are composed of three main substances: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. According to Yining Zeng, Michael E. Himmel, and Shi-You Ding in Biotechnology for Biofuels, the composition amounts to “40 to 50% of cellulose, 15 to 25% hemicelluloses, 20 to 25% lignin, and 5 to 10% other components.^[1]” For the most part, the only truly useful part is the cellulose and the hemicellulose. The lignin is usually just thrown away. The most common use is fuel for heating units. That’s right. They just burn it.

Continue reading “What to do with the lignin?” »

A paper, “The potential science and engineering value of samples delivered to Earth by Mars sample return,” authored by 71 scientists is available. According to the summary at Science Daily.

Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that have motivated Mars exploration for decades. A new paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science describes the results of a major collaboration among 71 scientists from throughout the international science community to define specific scientific objectives for a Mars Sample Return campaign, to describe the critical measurements that would need to be done on returned samples to address the objectives, and to identify the kinds of samples that would be most likely to carry the key information.

Two huge bubbles, thousands of light-years across, have been discovered jiggling near the center of a distant galaxy. They could be spitting all over Earth.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and Vera Rubin all helped change the way we view the universe. So why don’t we hear more about them?

Almost 35 years after Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space, history will once again be made.

Since 1998, there have been 213 spacewalks at the International Space Station. In March, an all-female spacewalk is happening aboard the ISS.

Despite being the very first candidate planet discovered by our Kepler Mission, Kepler-1658b had a rocky road to confirmation. Ten years later, scientists have now confirmed that it is, in fact, a planet. It whips around its star every 3.85 days. Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2TDlaIl

Circa 2013

Enlarge | +

Continue reading “Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy, say astronomers” »

Astronauts or astro-nots?

Visitors will get a chance to tackle the types of problems colonists might face on the real Mars.