Lifeboat Foundation

On a cold March night last year in Portsmouth, England, an entirely new type of aircraft flew for the first time, along a dimly lit 120-meter corridor in a cavernous building once used to build minesweepers for the Royal Navy.

This is the Phoenix, an uncrewed blimp that has no engines but propels itself forward by varying its buoyancy and its orientation. The prototype measures 15 meters in length, 10.5 meters in wingspan, and when fully loaded weighs 150 kilograms (330 pounds). It flew over the full length of the building, each flight requiring it to undulate up and down about five times.

Flying in this strange way has advantages. For one, it demands very little energy, allowing the craft to be used for long-duration missions. Also, it dispenses with whirring rotors and compressor blades and violent exhaust streams—all potentially dangerous to people or objects on the ground and even in the air. Finally, it’s cool: an airship that moves like a sea creature.

On Friday afternoon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Director of Policy and Government Affairs Craig Hulse landed in Tulsa, OK, for a meeting with local officials. Musk’s trip comes amidst Tesla’s highly anticipated announcement about the site of the Cybertruck Gigafactory, the electric car maker’s upcoming manufacturing plant for its unique all-electric pickup.

Musk and Hulse were welcomed by Gov. Kevin Stitt and Secretary of Commerce Sean Kouplen, as well as the property owner of a plot of land that the city is offering to the electric car maker. Images shared by the Gov. Stitt show Musk and local officials conversing in the middle of a massive plot of land. The meetup seemed to be private and simple, though the governor highlighted that he still believes that Tulsa is the perfect place for Tesla’s next vehicle production plant.

A company wants to use an advanced balloon to fly customers from Earth’s surface in Alaska to the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere.

Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune, The Anchorage Daily News reported on Sunday.

The balloon rides will be manned by a flight crew taking eight passengers in a pressurized capsule suspended beneath a hydrogen balloon the size of a football stadium.

NASA’s newest spacecraft concept looks like it belongs in a steampunk convention more than a distant moon, but that’s exactly where it’s supposed to be headed.

Steam power sounds like a relic of the Victorian era only glamorized by steampunk culture, but NASA is developing SPARROW (Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocaen Worlds), a new steam-powered robot concept that could potentially unearth life on moons like Enceladus or Europa. Sure, our space agency might be known for the most cutting-edge technology, but even that could face potential disaster on frozen moons whose surfaces could be perilous. This relatively simple contraption is capable of doing things more complex robots can’t.

The first black US Drone company has created a new drone training program to help people re-tool their careers in a post-Covid-19 world.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine have found types of cells in the brain that are most susceptible to inherited genetic variants linked to schizophrenia. As a result, their work reveals a shortlist of the variants that most likely impact disease risk.

Details of the scientists’ analysis, published April 17, 2020, in Genome Research, compared human genetic studies with data on how DNA is folded in mouse cells, including a diversity of brain cells.

“Every common disease has a major genetic component at its root,” says Andrew McCallion, Ph.D., professor of genetic medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Studying genomes across human populations helps us find the genetic landmarks that are linked to disease, but these often don’t give us the biological insight that pinpoints the cells in which that variation acts to impact disease risk.”

A glove that translates sign language into speech in real time has been developed by scientists — potentially allowing deaf people to communicate directly with anyone, without the need for a translator.

A glove that translates sign language into speech in real time has been developed by scientists — potentially allowing deaf people to communicate directly with anyone, without the need for a translator.

The wearable device contains sensors that run along the four fingers and thumb to identify each word, phrase or letter as it is made in American Sign Language.

Continue reading “High-tech glove translates sign language into speech in real time” »

Imagine being completely blind but still being able to see. Does that sound impossible? Well, it happens.

A few years ago, a man (let’s call him Barry) suffered two strokes in quick succession. As a result, Barry was completely blind, and he walked with a stick.

One day, some psychologists placed Barry in a corridor full of obstacles like boxes and chairs. They took away his walking stick and told him to walk down the corridor.

Astronaut Christina Koch spent a record 11 months in space, the longest spaceflight of any woman. She returned to Earth in February and is just completing her NASA-mandated readjustment period. What’s life like when you leave a space station, only to be confined in your own home under lockdown?

Guests

Christina Koch, NASA astronaut and former flight engineer on the International Space Station. She set the record for longest single spaceflight by a woman: 328 days. She and Jessica Meir performed the first all-female spacewalk. Koch has performed a total of six spacewalks. (@Astro_Christina)