Lifeboat Foundation

Is Planetary Defense PI in the Sky?

In February of 2,013 skywatchers around the world turned their attention toward asteroid 2012 DA14, a cosmic rock about 150 feet (50 meters) in diameter that was going to fly closer to Earth than the spacecraft that bring us satellite TV.

Little did they realize as they prepared for the once-in-several-decades event that another bit of celestial debris was hurtling toward Earth, with a more direct heading. On February 15 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor, a roughly 62-foot (19 meter)-diameter asteroid exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, as it entered Earth’s atmosphere at a shallow angle. The blast shattered windows and damaged buildings, and nearly two thousand people were hurt, though thankfully no one died.

This looks familiar…

Robo Woman — 1,968 taken from the British Pathe reel “Miss Honeywell — World’s First Robotic Woman”. See this playlist of our best clips:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF58DA24745914ADC

Continue reading “World’s First Robotic Woman” »

The pandemic has disrupted global supply chains and markets in ways that have led to backlogs of cargo ships at key ports.

Booming demand for consumer and goods, labor shortages, bad weather, and an array of COVID-related supply chain snarls are contributing to backlogs of cargo ships at ports around the world.

Among those seaports are the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach in Southern California, the two busiest container ports in the United States. On October 10 2021, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this natural-color image of dozens of cargo ships waiting offshore for their turn to unload goods. On the same day, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA.

“This speed bag resupply feature is a game changer for the warfighter,” said in a statement Mike Goodwin, sales and strategy manager Bell. “With the ability to drop supplies quickly and efficiently in a drop zone or a remote location, we can get critical supplies delivered as soon as they’re needed.”

Bell claims the APT has already flown 420 times at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, in Georgia, and other sites. Now, the company is seeking to demonstrate how the aircraft can drop supplies on demand at its cruising speed of 80 mph (129 km/h).

Continue reading “Goodbye Paradrops! Bell Showcases Its New Autonomous Supply Drop Drone” »

By contrast, Lewis’s studies suggest it is extremely difficult for B. burgdorferi to evolve resistance to hygromycin. The chemical resembles essential nutrients that spirochaetes cannot make themselves and take up using a specific transporter, so mutations that block the take-up of hygromycin would also deprive spirochaetes of these nutrients.

Lewis says his team isn’t the first to discover the value of hygromycin. It was studied as a potential treatment for a pig disease in the 1980s but abandoned.

Vaccines against Lyme disease are also being developed, but eradicating the disease would be an even better option.

GPT-3 was meant to understand and construct natural language. But as these tools prove, it’s pretty good at programming languages, too.

Both environmentalists and space-enthusiasts want the human species to survive long term.

Is there really a conflict between the two movements?

Continue reading “Space and the environment, conflict or synergy? — William Shatner vs. Prince William” »

Sian Proctor went to space as part of the Inspiration4 mission. Re-adjusting to life back on Earth is not as easy as it seems, however.

Commenting on Elon Musk’s Dogecoin fortune, one youtuber drew the billionaire CEO of SpaceX’s attention to an important issue.

Considered the richest man in the world, Elon Musk is a Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum enthusiast in the cryptocurrency market. According to Forbes Real Time Billionaires, his current fortune is estimated at $214 billion.

In addition to running SpaceX, Musk is still ahead of Tesla, a company that has registered a great growth in the market with its electric vehicles. But he is mostly following the future of DOGE, which is his favorite meme currency.