Lifeboat Foundation

Satellites in outer space will soon provide broadband internet to some remote regions of the world, thanks to a company called ViaSat, in partnership with Boeing.

By 2019, three ViaSat satellites will dispatch a whopping one-terabit internet connection to obscure residential areas in the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They will also provide connectivity to airplanes in flight and even maritime vessels in the middle of the oceans, which have always previously been drastically removed from anything approaching broadband.

Presently in development at Boeing, ViaSat’s three-satellite system will reportedly offer double the capacity of all the 400 communications satellites already in orbit around the Earth combined. It’s existing technology, just re-executed to be way more efficient.

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Frankly brainwashing tactics never worked with me. I am not sure what the media is up to; but this is truly become a bit ridiculous. Up until last week; the media and dooms day believers where telling everyone in the next 10 years; most of the jobs would no longer be held by humans. Until me and a few other folks on the web started sharing the facts on why that was not a reality. So, recently, the journalists new story is in 30 years most of the jobs will be taken by robots.

Again, we will settle down from the hype and learn that the reality is people will have jobs because new careers will be created plus some of the corporate and special skilled jobs that we have today have too much access to IP and other private information. And, this type of information most companies will want some level of human oversight managing the information and operations around it. Also, we will see that in order to keep creativity and real innovation moving forward that we will always need humans involved.

Continue reading “Machines could make half of humans unemployed in 30 years” »

China’s public report on their own Cyber Security Strategy — don’t get too excited; it is a “public” version of their plan (mean nothing in depth).

New cyber warfare unit

While China was assessed to have cyber warfare capabilities for quite some time, the declaration by its Central Military Council of the formation of a new military branch focussed on digital battleground technically called Strategic Support Force on 1st Jan. 2016 confirmed this. This new force is mainly aimed at providing resources capable of protecting China’s cyber and space security. On this occasion Xi pointed out that this force is central to achieving the “Chinese Dream” suggesting its importance.

Continue reading “Chinese cyber strategy-building deterrence” »

This story crosses into the realm of satellite launchers and commercial space, but has troubling implications for international security. I personally am a bit more worried about North Korea’s ability to secure ballistic sub-launched weapons of mass destruction since I think that they offer more stealth than an ICBM silo, which we can fairly easily detect.

North Korea’s potential intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat may be stealing headlines, but the rogue state’s interest in submarine-launched nuclear weapons is arguably even more worrisome.

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Press Release From: Ames Research Center Posted: Friday, February 12, 2016.

Reporters are invited to a media day on Friday, Feb. 19, at 10 a.m. PST at Made In Space, Inc. (MIS), located at NASA’s Research Park, at Moffett Field, California, to learn about the startup company’s recent proposal award as part of NASA’s “Utilizing Public-Private Partnerships to Advance Tipping Point Technologies” solicitation, issued through NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for STMD, will share the importance of the solicitation and give remarks, followed by a tour of the MIS facilities. The two-hour event will include informal briefings with MIS leadership as they discuss their winning proposal.

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GPS is an utterly pervasive and wonderful technology, but it’s increasingly not accurate enough for modern demands. Now a team of researchers can make it accurate right down to an inch.

Regular GPS registers your location and velocity by measuring the time it takes to receive signals from four or more satellites, that were sent into space by the military. Alone, it can tell you where you are to within 30 feet. More recently a technique called Differential GPS (DGPS) improved on that resolution by adding ground-based reference stations—increasing accuracy to within 3 feet.

Now, a team from the University of California, Riverside, has developed a technique that augments the regular GPS data with on-board inertial measurements from a sensor. Actually, that’s been tried before, but in the past it’s required large computers to combine the two data streams, rendering it ineffective for use in cars or mobile devices. Instead what the University of California team has done is create a set of new algorithms which, it claims, reduce the complexity of the calculation by several order of magnitude.

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Speaking to packed house of journalists, scientists and members of The Planetary Society, Bill Nye the Science Guy, along with some very, very smart people, discussed how human beings might survive for long periods of time on Mars.

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When I was a kid I remember being a member of Ms. Frizzle’s classroom. We went on adventures under the ocean, into the rainforest, out to the stars, and even to the center of the Earth and it was amazing.

Of course I am talking about my time on the Magic School Bus.

Continue reading “This Mixed Reality Educational App Gives You X-Ray Goggles and Takes You Into the Human Body” »

What it might be like to live on Mars.

NASA revealed what homes on Mars will be like — and we don’t have to wait long.

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