Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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[Kurt Schaefer] was watching YouTube videos of people making molds for injection molding purposes using what he considered to be the toy 3,018 CNC machines, and looking at the results, decided he needed a piece of the action. However, once you have molds, the next obvious issue to address is lack of access to an injection molding machine. But these things are expensive. As luck would have it, you can get a nice-looking pneumatic press for less than $350, and with a little more money spent, [Kurt] found he could convert it into a functional injection molding machine (video, embedded below), and get some half-decent results out of it.

After ordering the press on eBay, what eventually arrived was quite a mess, having clearly been inadequately packed for its weight, and had sustained some damage in transit. Despite this, it seemed the functional bits were fine, so [Kurt] decided to press on with the build. The first obvious change is the requirement of a heated chamber to deal with the feedstock material. Using an off-the-shelf injection molding chamber by buster beagle 3D, only a few standoffs and a support bracket needed machining in order to complete the mechanics. A common PID controller available from the usual suppliers, with some heat bands wrapped around the chamber, dealt with the injection temperature requirements, and some 3D printed enclosures wrapped it all up neatly.

After some initial wobbles, and a couple of hacks to the design, [Kurt] got some pretty good results out of this simple setup, and it appears to be pretty tune-able and repeatable, which will help maintain the quality of those results. In short, a neat hack of easy to get parts, and perhaps a welcome addition to a hackerspace near you?

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As I suspected, SpaceX is now doing well with building laser satellites and is rushing to launch them so, among other things, they can service East Ukraine.

They are launching Starlink satellites from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral SFS (Space Force Station) on March 8th, only 15 days after they launched Starlink satellites from the same tower. At this rate, with their 3 towers, they can do more than 1 launch/week on average.

Last year, SpaceX did 31 orbital launches. This year they will do closer to 62. The last Starlink launch was March 3rd from LC-39A Kennedy Space Center.

Live coverage and the most up-to-date schedule of all upcoming orbital rocket launches, including SpaceX, ULA, Arianespace and others. Check back for live coverage on launch day!

Continue reading “Launch Schedule” | >

“The next universe will be just like ours — but only in overall appearance, not in detail, of course…”

A researcher may just have discovered conclusive evidence that another cosmos existed before this one. Not only that, but he also claims that ours is just the latest in an infinite series of universes. Professor Sir Roger Penrose argues that our known cosmos is the latest in a long line of previous universes, answering the question of what was ‘there’ before the Big Bang.

Another Universe Before This One

According to Professor Sir Roger Penrose, a former College of late Professor Hawking, our universe still carries the scars of the events of our universe’s predecessor, which was destroyed some 14 billion years ago. Prof Penrose, a researcher from the University of Oxford, is one of the world’s most distinguished theoretical physicists. He claims evidence suggests our universe is just the latest in an infinite series of universes, each emerging phoenix-like from its predecessor in a Big Bang.

Continue reading “Scientist Finds ‘Evidence’ of Another Universe Before This One” | >

Dutch firm MVRDV has launched the first look at its upcoming “Sun Rock” project in Taiwan, an environmentally conscious and design-minded power supply building. Anticipating Taiwan’s planned transition to green energy, the features of the Sun Rock building, from its shape to its façade, are focused on generating solar energy as efficiently as possible.

Located at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, near Taichung, the building’s primary purpose is to store and maintain suitable energy equipment. The building is almost totally covered with solar panels, capable of generating roughly 1 million kWh of green energy every year.

The site for Taipower’s new facility receives a significant amount of solar exposure throughout the year, and so the rounded shape of Sun Rock is designed to maximize how much of that sunlight can be harnessed for energy. The building slopes gently downwards on the southern side, creating a large surface area that directly faces the sun during the middle of the day. At the northern end, on the other hand, the dome shape is intended to maximize the area of the building exposed to the sun in the mornings and evenings.

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Amid ongoing hostilities with advancing Russian forces, Ukraine has been increasingly relying on cryptocurrency donations to solve humanitarian problems and finance its defense efforts. Crypto helps the country to receive and quickly distribute money and operate internationally, a high-ranking government official has indicated.

Ukraine Accepts, Spends Millions in Crypto, Deputy Minister Reveals

Since the Russian military assault started, Ukraine has been actively seeking financial support in the form of crypto donations. “It’s a very rapid way to get a payment — in times like that you can’t just wait for days to get money and then you have to distribute them,” the country’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksandr Bornyakov said in an interview.

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Thanks to the work of squirrels, researchers in Siberia were able to grow viable Silene stenophylla plants from 32,000-year-old seeds. This incredible event, which happened in 2012, is still having a dramatic event on the scientific community and now Austrian researchers are trying to sequence the plant’s DNA to find out how it was able to survive so long.

The story starts over 10 years ago, when a team of Russian, Hungarian, and American scientists recovered the frozen seeds in 2007. They were buried 125 feet underground, deep in the Siberian permafrost. The team was investigating the burrows of ancient squirrels when they made the discovery. Fruit and seeds had been perfectly sealed from the elements thanks to the squirrels’ burrowing techniques.

“The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,” shared Stanislav Gubin, one of the researchers who explored the burrows. “It’s a natural cryobank.”

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Charging station manufacturer Tritium (Nasdaq: DCFC) has formed a partnership with Wise EV, a subsidiary of renewable energy service provider Wise Power, to provide DC fast chargers for a new national EV charging network.

The new network is expected to start with 25 locations at Florida gas stations. Florida is the number-two US state for EV sales, and received the third largest state allocation under the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program Guidance.

Wise EV plans to build its network using a hub-and-spoke strategy, centering the charging around metropolitan hubs and connecting those cities with Interstate highways as spokes. The eventual goal is to build a coast-to-coast charging network. The company plans to establish its metropolitan charging hubs in 2022, and connect those hubs with Interstate charging spokes in 2022 and 2023.

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