Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 5587

The elixir of technological innovation and the information it delivers at our very fingertips every day has proven to be a Pandora’s Box unleashing misinformation, rumour, hate, selfish malfeasance, and violence. Since when did access to knowledge produce so much havoc? Because that’s what appears to be happening with COVID-19, climate change, and more.

My more recent personal experience is equally relevant. When I got COVID-19 in April 2020, it attacked the lining of my heart temporarily enlarging the upper left chamber where pulmonary veins interact with the muscle. Those veins were damaged by the virus leading to the beginning of changes to my heart rhythm and the onset of atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias.

Three weeks before getting infected I had a full physical in preparation for upcoming knee replacement surgery. At the time I was told that my heart was healthy with no underlying medical conditions of concern. Then COVID-19 struck leading me to go to the hospital emergency where I was told that I was in danger of an imminent stroke and was now a heart patient.

There was no vaccine at the time to protect me, but today there is now, and more than one good option. So I would say to this young man, the certainty of the virus further damaging your heart is much greater than the likelihood of vaccination doing more damage to it than already is there. And I would say to his mom, please help your son find the real experts and not Internet-based influencers so that you together can separate the disinformation chaff from the knowledge wheat, and by doing so give him the best chance to survive.

Continue reading “Technology, Human Behaviour and the March of Events Setting Us Up for Catastrophe” | >

The ISS is 1,000 times closer to us than the Moon, and 600,000 times closer than Mars. To get to the latter and back safely, we need faster rocket propulsion systems.

Using the conventional chemical rocket technology we have perfected at this time, a single mission to Mars will require the launch of a mass equal to 10 ISS to be put into space. It will involve at least 30 and as many as 40 of the largest rockets we have today to put the spacecraft, crew and fuel needed for the mission. That doesn’t include adding reserves of fuel placed strategically along the route should a problem arise going to Mars and coming back. Brown states that the total cost of a single mission using this approach would exceed $80 billion using the yet-to-be-launched SLS as the primary vehicle. With SpaceX and the Starship and Heavy booster, the cost could be cut by half. But even $40 billion for a single mission seems excessive.

Using nuclear-powered propulsion systems, however, would eliminate the need to put megatons of fuel into orbit. The only time chemical rockets would be used would be in launching the crew and spaceship components to Earth orbit. That could be done in as few as three launches with the final assembled ship going to Mars and back and then being parked in Earth orbit to be used again on future missions.

What additional advantages can be derived from using nuclear? Thermal-powered nuclear is at least twice as efficient as current chemical rockets and requires a tiny fraction of the fuel to get the job done. Electric-powered nuclear starts moving the rocket slowly away from Earth and then continuously accelerates to attain peak speeds of 200,000 kilometres (120,000 miles) per hour. An electric-powered nuclear propulsion system would use even less fuel than thermal-powered nuclear and would shorten the voyage to a month.

Continue reading “Why the Nuclear Option is a Necessity if Humans Are Ever Going to Get to Mars and Return Alive” | >

Paroxysmal AF occurs when the upper chambers of the heart beat irregularly. Instead of initiating normal sinus rhythm, the two atria fibrillate or quiver. That doesn’t stop blood flowing from the upper to lower chambers, but it does upset the normal heartbeat causing the heart to race. In my case, the paroxysmal reference meant that my heart was going in and out of AF. Sometimes everything was normal. At other times I would experience a racing heartbeat exceeding 120 beats per minute and lasting from minutes to hours.

When an AF episode ends what happens inside the heart? An apt analogy is the electric control panel in every home that either contains circuit breakers or fuses. When lights go out you can go to the box to reset a tripped circuit or replace a blown fuse. In Paroxysmal AF that reset is automatic with the heartbeat returning to normal sinus rhythm.

So where does conversion come into the conversation? I had worn a Holter Monitor (a portable ECG device) for 14-days back in the latter part of November of last year. In this pandemic-disrupted world, it took a while before a cardiologist got back to me about what the Holter showed. In a video call last week I learned about conversion in an entirely new context. The cardiologist told me that over the two weeks of wearing the Holter Monitor I had been in AF for 8.5% of the time and had experienced seven conversion pauses lasting between 3.5 and 5 seconds. A pause is exactly what you think it means. If we carry the analogy of the fuse box, it is as if a power fluctuation caused the lights to go out and it took five seconds to reset the circuit breaker for them to come back on. The cardiologist said the AF occurrences were less of a concern than the conversion pauses, particularly one lasting 5 seconds (apparently happened in my sleep).

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