Lifeboat Foundation

On December 15, NASA announced that SpaceX submitted a new proposal to build a Starship launch site at Launch Complex-49 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Previously, SpaceX officials mentioned plans to build a Starship launch tower at historic Launch Complex-39A, the launch site from where NASA Apollo astronauts lifted off atop Saturn V on a voyage to the Moon half a century ago. NASA and SpaceX are working to return humans to the lunar surface by 2025. SpaceX is developing a lunar-optimized Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to land astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program that aims to build a sustainable presence on our closest celestial neighbor.

The unbuilt Launch Complex-49 is an 175-acre land located north of Launch Pad-39B and Pad-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center premises. The agency released a map of the region, pictured below, that outlines the locations of each launch site. “LC-49 has been a part of Kennedy’s master plan for several years,” said Tom Engler, Kennedy’s director of Center Planning and Development. “The Notice of Availability was updated in 2014.”

“Every new construction project, whether government or commercial, goes through a comprehensive environmental review process,” said Don Dankert, technical lead for the Kennedy Environmental Planning Office. “This ensures that we are able to identify potential environmental impacts and define any associated mitigations prior to project implementation.”

OneZoom is a one-stop site for exploring all life on Earth, its evolutionary history, and how much of it is threatened with extinction.

The OneZoom explorer – available at onezoom.org – maps the connections between 2.2 million living species, the closest thing yet to a single view of all species known to science. The interactive tree of life allows users to zoom in to any species and explore its relationships with others, in a seamless visualisation on a single web page. The explorer also includes images of over 85,000 species, plus, where known, their vulnerability to extinction.

Continue reading “‘The Google Earth of Biology’ — Visually Stunning Tree of All Known Life Unveiled Online” »

The resulting solar cell exhibits a power conversion efficiency of 15.2% and almost 80% transparency.

Researchers make the case for a semisolid electrochemical compound as a cost-efficient, grid-scale battery backup for wind and solar power.

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, is defending himself once again against public criticism. It is time for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to answer to questions regarding his income tax bill.

“If you opened your eyes for two seconds, you would know that I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.” Musk tweeted earlier this week.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted a reaction to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s criticism of him as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for not paying his taxes.

Elon Musk has announced a new timeframe for his massive Mars project, and it is a lot closer than you would believe.

In an article published Monday, Musk said, ‘I’ll be surprised if we’re not landing on Mars within five years.

Musk, the 50-year-old SpaceX founder and CEO who was selected Time’s Person of the Year, has grandiose ambitions for Mars: a self-sustaining metropolis with solar-powered hydroponic fields where people may live indefinitely, 34 million miles from Earth.

Combining two forms of sustainable energy into one range-extending propulsion system, Swiss Sustainable Yachts’ clean, quiet catamaran promises to jumpstart a future in which the word “range” becomes obsolete. The 64-footer harnesses solar energy to create its own hydrogen, powering a fuel cell-electric drive to potentially limitless autonomy, so long as the sun is shining and the captain isn’t pushing past cruising speed. The Aquon One might prove the ultimate luxury smart yacht of the sustainable generation.

The Aquon One has a 134-hp fuel cell-powered electric engine in each hull. Swiss Sustainable Yachts (SSY) explains that it opts for hydrogen power because of its light weight as compared to batteries or fossil fuels, long-lasting storage capability and lack of harmful emissions. Also critical to the Aquon One design is hydrogen’s ability to be created sustainably, in this case using a solar-powered electrolyzer that splits hydrogen from desalinated seawater. The 689 square feet (64 sq m) of solar panels covering the Aquon One’s hard-top generate all the electricity needed to develop the hydrogen, which is then stored away in carbon tanks.

Continue reading “Swiss smart yacht points solar-hydrogen power toward ‘limitless’ range” »

Designed for research into climate change this high-precision gas sensor is good to 133 parts per trillion CO and 65 parts per trillion N₂O.

Moderator: Michael Wall.
Panelists: Kennda Lynch, Abigail Fraeman, Morgan Cable.

Part of the Earth at the Crossroads conference held on Nov. 18, 2021.

Continue reading “Habitability in the Solar System” »