Lifeboat Foundation

The latest on some space debris…

The Falcon 9 DSCOVR’s booster: 7 Feb. 2022.

The animation above comes from 268, single, 4-second exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the booster, so it looks like a sharp dot, with surrounding stars moving on the background. East is up, South on the left.

Continue reading “The Falcon 9 DSCOVR’s booster going to hit the Moon: a video — 7 Feb. 2022” »

Autonomous, electric vehicles are driving around Yellowstone National Park in a new test program that could become a permanent mode of transportation.

Last week, the park debuted its new “TEDDY” program — or The Electronic Driverless Demonstration in Yellowstone.

Continue reading “Yellowstone National Park Testing Out Driverless Shuttles This Summer” »

Swedish power company Vattenfall has announced plans to embark on further research into whether painting one of the three blades on a wind turbine black can help to reduce the number of bird collisions, with a new three-year study.

Despite stories spread by some media outlets and across social media platforms, wind turbines have been shown to be much less likely to kill birds compared to other man-made obstacles and threats, including coal-fired power plants, as one prime example.

Nevertheless, Vattenfall is seeking to mitigate the impact wind turbines can have on bird populations through a new study in the Dutch seaport of Eemshaven.

SpaceX plans to launch Crew-4 in April.

SpaceX’s human-carrying capsule has a surprise issue with its parachutes. Here’s what it could mean for Crew Dragon Crew-4 and the upcoming Axiom Space mission.

This graph shows the progress in telecommunications bit rates over the last two centuries, and a future extrapolation to the 22nd century.

A primitive form of telecommunications emerged in the late 18th century, when French inventor Claude Chappe demonstrated a practical semaphore system that delivered messages between Paris and Lille. Known as the optical telegraph, it had a transmission rate of two to three symbols (196 different types) each minute, or about 0.4 b/s.

Continue reading “Telecommunications bit rates 1798-2120” »

Tom HlavacSustainable would be a home built of hempcrete, with a greenhouse capable of growing enough food for the family, a small henhouse, and a few bee hives. And a septic system capable of producing fertilizer.

No need for megacorporate involvement. Somethi… See more.

Tom HlavacIf Musk could catalyze adoption of hempcrete and mass produce 3D printers for that, he would do more if value than everything he has done before.

Continue reading “Feds arrest married couple, seize $3.6 billion in hacked bitcoin funds” »

Julie PhelpsThere should be NO nuclear at all.

Kyle SagerAug 2020…

I’ll have what Elon Musk is having.

Continue reading “Smaller Nuclear Plants May Come With Less Stringent Safety Rules” »

Shinobu Sakamoto was just 15 when she left her home in the southern Japanese fishing village of Minamata to go to Stockholm and tell the world of the horrors of mercury poisoning.

Scientific Reports — Mercury Isotopes as Proxies to Identify Sources and Environmental Impacts of Mercury in Sphalerites. Sci. Rep. 6, 18686; doi: 10.1038/srep18686 (2016).