Lifeboat Foundation

The two fundamental prerequisites for large-scale economic use of space resources are:

1. in-space manufacture of propellants from nonterrestrial bodies, and 2. in-space manufacture of heat shields for low-cost capture of materials into Earth orbit.

The former has been the subject of recent NIAC investigations. The latter would expand by a factor of 30 to 100 time the number of asteroids from which resources could be returned cost-effectively to Earth orbit. With vastly larger populations from which to choose, return opportunities will be much more frequent and targets can be selected where operations would be highly productive, not merely sufficient. The feedstocks for manufacture of life-support materials and propellants are found on C-type near-Earth asteroids, which have high concentrations of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. The total abundance of readily extractable (HCNOS) volatiles in the CI chondritic meteorite parent bodies (C asteroids) is roughly 40% of the total meteorite mass. Further, the residue from extraction of volatiles includes a mix of metallic iron (10% of total mass), iron oxide and iron sulphides (20% as Fe) plus 1% Ni and ~0.1% Co.

Continue reading “Many more mineable asteroids” »

Architecture has evolved and has become much more than just a design realized in concrete and modern building material. It has been transformed to help humanity in achieving all kinds of sustainability.

The eVolo Magazine for Architecture has been organizing another round of Skyscraper Competition in 2017 to honor those visionaries that try to realize a future that benefits humanity and the one Earth we all need to cherish and sustain.

A team from Spain with aspiring architects Arturo Emilio Garrido Ontiveros, Andrés Pastrana Bonillo, Judit Pinach Martí and Alex Tintea is thinking of a hybrid solution, that ensures Humanity’s survival in the early days of Mars’ colonization. The skyscraper design is both clever and beautiful, combining existing technologies with many practical ideas to open up and terraform more red soil as we understand the planet. It’s a genesis of Mars and a revival of form following function.

Continue reading “Entrance to Mars: How this fascinating Dome-Space-Elevator grows in all directions” »

Fascinating stuff!

NASA has new evidence that the most likely places to find life beyond Earth are Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus. In terms of potential habitability, Enceladus particularly has almost all of the key ingredients for life as we know it, researchers said.

New observations of these active ocean worlds in our solar system have been captured by two NASA missions and were presented in two separate studies in an announcement at NASA HQ in Washington today.

Continue reading “NASA: Nearby ocean worlds could be best bet for life beyond Earth” »

Details: http://go.nasa.gov/2or2LvX

NASA awarded $125,000 to a mining company to develop technology to extract minerals embedded in asteroids.

NASA will pay Deep Space Industries (DSI) for technology to return mined minerals from asteroids to Earth’s orbit. DSI is developing a way to use aerobraking to bring minerals back to Earth.

DSI said the grant will support the company’s research into creating aerobrakes out of materials found on near-Earth asteroids.

Continue reading “NASA Cuts A Huge Check To Underwrite Asteroid Mining” »

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Another “Great Spot” has been found at Jupiter, this one cold and high up.

Scientists reported Tuesday that the dark expanse is 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) across and 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) wide. It’s in the upper atmosphere and much cooler than the hot surroundings, thus the name Great Cold Spot. And unlike the giant planet’s familiar Great Red Spot, this newly discovered weather system is continually changing in shape and size. It’s formed by the energy from Jupiter’s polar auroras.

A British-led team used a telescope in Chile to chart the temperature and density of Jupiter’s atmosphere. When the researchers compared the data with thousands of images taken in years past by a telescope in Hawaii, the Great Cold Spot stood out. It could be thousands of years old.

From the archives.

Our Earth and Sun continue to have a delicate relationship. Credit: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center.

Complex life here on earth will hit a habitability wall in only 500 million years; not in an almost languorous 1.75 billion years, as reported in a recent global media flap.

Continue reading “Life On Earth To Hit Brick Wall In Another 500 Million Years” »

The United States Air Force may become a sort of space cop in the not-too-distant future.

An off-Earth economy cannot truly take off unless moon miners and other pioneering entrepreneurs are able to operate in a safe and stable environment, said Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Schilling, of Air University.

Continue reading “Next Job for US Air Force: Space Cop?” »

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b. This marks the first detection of an atmosphere around a low-mass super-Earth, in terms of radius and mass the most Earth-like planet around which an atmosphere has yet been detected. Thus, this is a significant step on the path towards the detection of life on an exoplanet. The team, which includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, used the 2.2-m ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to take images of the planet’s host star, GJ 1132, and measured the slight decrease in brightness as the planet and its atmosphere absorbed some of the starlight while passing directly in front of their host star.

While it’s not the detection of life on another planet, it’s an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time an atmosphere has been detected around a planet with a mass and radius close to Earth’s mass and radius (1.6 Earth masses, 1.4 Earth radii).

Astronomers’ current strategy for finding life on another planet is to detect the chemical composition of that planet’s atmosphere, on the lookout for certain chemical imbalances that require the presence of living organisms as an explanation. In the case of our own Earth, the presence of large amounts of oxygen is such a trace.