Lifeboat Foundation

Say hello to Temi. Wired reports that this sleek, 3-foot robot with a tablet for a face is essentially a kind of travelling AI butler for your home—a Siri or Alexa, only on wheels. It will come rolling when you holler. It can use facial recognition to follow people around, so they can watch TV or Skype as they stroll. And it taps Google’s artificial intelligence to help answer your questions. A run of 1,000 robots will be made available November by its maker, Roboteam, and it’s planned to cost under $1,500 when it launches widely next year. But, as we’ve argued in the past, these kinds of domestic robots are more a source of entertainment than much practical use, and are certainly not the kinds of practical machines that may one day be able to take over some of your household chores. For now, you might be better off carrying your phone around the home—especially if you have stairs.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-5jcq3RlxJQ

Cell by Cell

3D-printing technology has made significant strides over the past several years. What started as a tool for producing small objects can now be used to craft food, build houses, and even construct “space fabric.”

Continue reading “Scientists Have Developed a New Method to 3D-Print Living Tissue” »

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Amazon.com Inc is exploring a technology first developed for the U.S. military to produce tasty prepared meals that do not need refrigeration, as it looks for new ways to muscle into the $700 billion U.S. grocery business.

The world’s biggest online retailer has discussed selling ready-to-eat dishes such as beef stew and a vegetable frittata as soon as next year, officials at the startup firm marketing the technology told Reuters.

The dishes would be easy to stockpile and ship because they do not require refrigeration and could be offered quite cheaply compared with take-out from a restaurant.

Ever wonder how astronauts will live on other worlds? Welcome to the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, a habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston built to simulate the isolation of missions to deep space. You can take a tour of the HERA habitat with NASA interns in this new video in the style of the MTV series “Cribs.”

“HERA is a unique three-story habitat designed to serve as an analog for isolation, confinement, and remote conditions in exploration scenarios,” NASA officials explained in a video description. “This video gives a tour of where crew members live, work, sleep, and eat during the analog missions.”

Continue reading “NASA ‘Cribs’: Tour an Astronaut Habitat for Mock Space Missions (Video)” »

Nextbigfuture wrote about the designs for an improved nuclear thermal rocket by John Bucknell. John has worked as a senior engineer on the SpaceX Raptor rocket. John provides high quality qualified work to his rocket designs and to his proposed space habitat.

Nextbigfuture comments had some technical observations about Project Timberwind and a comment from John himself that his design improves on flaws in the last major nuclear thermal rocket experiments. There were also comments and discussion about Star Trek and communism and O’Neill space stations.

Continue reading “Comparing Reactions of different Groups to Nuclear Thermal Rocket enabled space colonization” »

John Bucknell presented at the Starship Congress 2017 his Nuclear Thermal Turbo Rocket and applied for a single stage to orbit mission of placing a space habitat. John Bucknell worked on the SpaceX Raptor rocket as a senior engineer so he is very qualified to understand current rocket technology and rockets in general.

Nextbigfuture has noted that NASA has funded $18.8 million on advancing nuclear thermal rocket propulsion by studying low enriched uranium for the fuel. Nuclear-powered rocket concepts are not new. The United States conducted studies and significant ground tests from 1955 to 1972 to determine the viability of such systems, but ceased testing when plans for a crewed Mars mission were deferred.

The NERVA NRX (Nuclear Rocket Experimental) program started testing in September 1964. The final engine in this series was the XE, designed with flight design hardware and fired in a downward position into a low-pressure chamber to simulate a vacuum. SNPO fired NERVA NRX/XE twenty-eight times in March 1968. The series all generated 1100 MW, and many of the tests concluded only when the test-stand ran out of hydrogen propellant. NERVA NRX/XE produced the baseline 75,000 lbf (334 kN) thrust that Marshall required in Mars mission plans.

Continue reading “Constructing full earth like conditions in Space with technology proven in the sixties” »

Space exploration contains large potential for the creation of innovative applications, products and services, also benefitting Earth. With new topics and application areas arise countless possibilities for technology transfer and novel ideas for space-based technologies and their application in non-space industries, as well as new targets and opportunities for business.

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