Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX founder Elon Musk is “80%-90% confident” that the company’s massive new Starship rocket will reach orbit next year and said there’s a chance it will be ready for an uncrewed cargo mission to Mars in 2024.

The initial test flights will be difficult and carry a high risk of failure, Musk said Friday at a virtual session of the Mars Society’s 2020 conference. “We’ll probably lose a few ships before we get the atmospheric return and landing right,” he said.

This is a continuation of a previous 3 million for a coupling device. In orbit refueling will allow trips to the Moon, and trips to Mars will take half the time it does now.

NASA tipping point awards.

Continue reading “SpaceX Starship wins $53M NASA Contract for Full Scale Orbital In Flight Refueling Test” »

Last year, Dr. Sergio Canavero created quite the ruckus (to put it mildly) when he vowed to be the primary person to transplant a person’s head onto a deceased donor’s body. Yes, he’s planning on attempting the world’s first caput transplant (or body transplant, betting on how you study it).

In fact, it’s been a few years since his initial proclamation, and therefore the Italian neurosurgeon still stands firm on his declaration, despite claims from other experts that it’s nothing but a PR Stunt (at best) or a hoax. Some have even hypothesized it’s all just a plot meant to push Metal Gear Solid.

Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule.

That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1.

Previously, researchers had dipped into the realm of zeptoseconds; in 2016, researchers reporting in the journal Nature Physics used lasers to measure time in increments down to 850 zeptoseconds.

Something to relax your mind ❤.

Refueling in orbit is a crucial step for SpaceX to allow its Starship spacecraft to make the journey to faraway places, including the Moon and Mars. The idea is to launch multiple Starships, some destined to top up others while in orbit.

“Combining Starship’s rapid reusability with orbital refilling is critical to economically transporting large numbers of crew and cargo to the Moon and Mars,” SpaceX wrote in a tweet celebrating the news.

NASA is contracting SpaceX to demonstrate the transfer of ten metric tons of liquid oxygen propellant between one Starship and another, a collaboration with NASA’s Glenn Research Center and the Marshall Space Flight Center.

This guy has spent eight years creating a seriously impressive Iron Man suit — some of the gadgets he has are ridiculous! 😮👏.

All of Earth’s civilization could be powered purely on solar energy, says Elon Musk on Twitter. Discover the reason behind his love for solar energy.

Keeping Calm

Over the last four years, the brightness of the other stars fluctuated wildly, whereas the Sun stayed relatively constant, according to research published Friday in the journal Science. In fact, the difference between the Sun’s brightest and dimmest moments is a fifth the size of other stars.

“We wanted to see if the Sun is somehow different,” Max Planck Institute researcher Timo Reinhold told Inverse. “People have claimed that it’s more quiet than other stars, while others have claimed that it’s similarly active so we wanted to really boil it down to this very solar-like sample that is very similar to the Sun.”