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Virgin Galactic announced on Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company the license it needs to fly passengers on future spaceflights, a key hurdle as the venture completes development testing.

“The commercial license that we have had in place since 2016 remains in place, but is now cleared to allow us to carry commercial passengers when we’re ready to do so,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier told CNBC. “This is obviously an exciting milestone and a huge compliment to the team.”

While the FAA previously gave Virgin Galactic a launch license to conduct spaceflights, the license expansion allows the company to fly what the regulator calls “spaceflight participants.” The company completed a 29 element verification and validation program for the FAA, clearing the final two FAA milestones with its most recent spaceflight test in May. Colglazier noted the two last milestones were specific to the spacecraft’s flight control systems and inertial navigation systems.

Continue reading “Virgin Galactic jumps 12% after getting the green light from the FAA to fly passengers to space” | >

Circa 2012 Dilithium crystal created.

Fusion Engine Space

Brace yourselves: Researchers at University of Huntsville in Alabama say they are using “Dilithium Crystals” in a new fusion impulse engine that could cut the travel time to Mars down to as little as six weeks, not the six months it takes now.

Txchnologist, an online magazine sponsored by General Electric, talked to team member and aerospace engineering PH.D. candidate Ross Cortez, he said “The fusion fuel we’re focusing on is deuterium [a stable isotope of hydrogen] and Li6 [a stable isotope of the metal lithium] in a crystal structure.”

Continue reading “New Fusion Engine Could Cut Travel Time To Mars Down To Six Weeks” | >

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Last July, NASA successfully launched the Mars Perseverance rover into space. After traveling for 203 days and 300 million miles at the speed of about 24600 miles per hour, NASA Perseverance Rover landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Today, the top speed ever reached by NASA ion thruster-powered spacecraft is 200000 mph.

So, what about if NASA wants to explore other planets like Proxima b which is 4.24 light-years away? Unfortunately, we can’t. The current rocket propulsion technology hasn’t changed significantly since it was originally developed in the 1920s. As astronaut Scott Kelly pointed out, it’ll take us 800000 years to get to the TRAPPIST-1 star system. However, with today’s current space propulsion technology.

Continue reading “Antimatter rocket is a future spacecraft that could reach the speed of 72 million miles per hour” | >

Circa 2015 In theory this big bang laser could eventually create complex matter but would need to be pocket-size as I want it on a smartphone to make a replicator so I can make fruit or food in space 😀

The Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE), Osaka University, has succeeded to reinforce the Petawatt laser “LFEX” to deliver up to 2000 trillion watts in the duration of one trillionth of one second (this corresponds to 1000 times the integrated electric power consumed in the world). By using this high-power laser, it is now possible to generate all of the high-energy quantum beams (electrons, ions, gamma ray, neutron, positron). Owing to such quantum beams with large current, we can make a big step forward not only for creating new fundamental technologies such as medical applications and non-destructive inspection of social infrastructures to contribute to our future life of longevity, safety, and security, but also for realization of laser fusion energy triggered by fast ignition.

Background and output of research

Petawatt lasers are used for study of basic science, generating such high-energy quantum beams as neutrons and ions, but only a few facilities in the world have Petawatt laser. So far, Petawatt lasers in the world have had relatively a small output (to a few tens of joules). ILE has achieved the world’s largest laser output of dozens of times those at other world-class lasers facilities (1000 joules or more).

Continue reading “World-largest petawatt laser completed, delivering 2,000 trillion watts output” | >

In a study in Nature Plants, Yiping Qi, associate professor of Plant Science at the University of Maryland (UMD), introduces a new and improved CRISPR 3.0 system in plants, focusing on gene activation instead of traditional gene editing. This third generation CRISPR system focuses on multiplexed gene activation, meaning that it can boost the function of multiple genes simultaneously. According to the researchers, this system boasts four to six times the activation capacity of current state-of-the-art CRISPR technology, demonstrating high accuracy and efficiency in up to seven genes at once. While CRISPR is more often known for its gene editing capabilities that can knock out genes that are undesirable, activating genes to gain functionality is essential to creating better plants and crops for the future.

“While my lab has produced systems for simultaneous gene editing [multiplexed editing] before, editing is mostly about generating loss of function to improve the crop,” explains Qi. “But if you think about it, that strategy is finite, because there aren’t endless genes that you can turn off and actually still gain something valuable. Logically, it is a very limited way to engineer and breed better traits, whereas the plant may have already evolved to have different pathways, defense mechanisms, and traits that just need a boost. Through activation, you can really uplift pathways or enhance existing capacity, even achieve a novel function. Instead of shutting things down, you can take advantage of the functionality already there in the genome and enhance what you know is useful.”

In his new paper, Qi and his team validated the CRISPR 3.0 system in rice, tomatoes, and Arabidopsis (the most popular model plant species, commonly known as rockcress). The team showed that it is possible to simultaneously activate many kinds of genes, including faster flowering to speed up the breeding process. But this is just one of the many advantages of multiplexed activation, says Qi.

Continue reading “Researcher introduces new CRISPR 3.0 system for highly efficient gene activation in plants” | >

Learning the results sparked a moment of joyous celebration, Park says: high fives to everyone.

“This is some of the first experimental evidence of the formation of these collisionless shocks,” says plasma physicist Francisco Suzuki-Vidal of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. “This is something that has been really hard to reproduce in the laboratory.”

Continue reading “Giant lasers help re-create supernovas’ explosive, mysterious physics” | >

Other companies, including BlueNalu Inc., Upside Foods Inc. and Eat Just, have expressed an intention to sell cell-based products in the U.S. Like them, Future Meat must get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration before offering its products to the public. Kshuk is optimistic, though reaching price parity with conventional meat will probably take the nascent industry a few years.

An Israeli startup wants to replace chicken coops, barns and slaughterhouses with bioreactors to churn out cell-based meat for American diners.

Future Meat Technologies Ltd. is in talks with U.S. regulators to start offering its products in restaurants by the end of next year. The company has just opened what it calls the world’s first industrial cellular meat facility, which will be able to produce 500 kilograms (1102 pounds) a day.

“From the get-go, our main focus was around scaling up and reducing cost in order to have a commercially viable product,” Chief Executive Officer Rom Kshuk said in an interview.

Continue reading “Meat Grown in Israeli Bioreactors Is Coming to American Diners” | >