Lifeboat Foundation

It has been more than a decade since the Concorde was retired from service, and since then no passenger aircraft has exceeded the speed of sound. That might change in the not-too-distant future, thanks to a project from NASA and industry partner Lockheed Martin Corporation. The agency is close to testing its design for Quiet Supersonic Transport, or QueSST, which could lead to passenger jets that can again reach supersonic speeds.

The Concorde was never seen as a major commercial success — more of a vanity project for the few European airlines that operated the planes. The nature of supersonic flight meant the sonic boom at ground level could shatter windows. Thus, the plane could only fly at high speeds over the ocean. The trip between Europe and New York was fast, but other routes were not feasible. When the travel industry took a downturn in 2003, the Concorde was mothballed.

Continue reading “NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Plane Could Soon Take Flight” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q2_1_YI4Ads

National Electric Vehicle Sweden, which purchased Saab’s assets back in 2012, is using CES Asia to show its vision of autonomous commuting. Owning a car is out in this particular mobility vision, and vehicles not only pick you up and drop you off autonomously, they change their interiors around your needs and whims. So you enjoy a personalized ride and can make the most of every moment.

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is keenly interested in nanotechnology – an approach that can reduce the mass and improve the performance of aerospace systems. NASA computer modeling analysis has shown that composites using carbon nanotube reinforcements could lead to a 30 percent reduction in the total mass of a launch vehicle.

“No single technology would have that much of an impact to reduce the mass of a launch vehicle by that much,” explains Michael Meador, Program Element Manager for Lightweight Materials and Manufacturing at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Tensile properties of a carbon nanotube fiber-based composite tank were tested in a May 16 test flight.

Continue reading “Carbon nanotube reinforce Composites can reduce space vehicle mass” »

We can all agree that solar panels are pretty awesome. It’s hard to beat turning sunlight into electricity. Unless you’re talking turning sunlight into stored chemical fuel. “Solar chemical” takes the logic of photosynthesis and applies it to fuel.

It may have a boring name, but it is getting exciting boring done. The aptly yet ironically named company has just reached an important milestone in fulfilling Elon Musk’s newest moonshot. The visionary and entrepreneur extraordinaire took to Twitter to almost nonchalantly revealed that boring machine Godot has just completed the first segment underneath LA, while still leaving plenty of room for mystery and suspense.

Musk is anything but boring, of course, as can be seen by his ambitions turned into successful companies. His latest endeavor, however, is probably one of the most debated. It came out of the blue and, given the tongue-in-cheek name, not everyone might have taken it seriously at first. And some of those that did though Musk had finally lost it. Of course, it had its fair share of fans who shared a dream of escaping traffic congestion.

Musk’s plan to solve the traffic problem wasn’t simply to bore tunnels that cars and all sorts of vehicles would simply fill up again. Instead, the tunnels would ferry these vehicles on sleds traveling at 200 km/h. Back in April, that was nothing more than a pretty rendered animation, but last month Musk showed off a demo of just how fast that sled really is.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Boring Company finishes first tunnel segment in LA” »

The Managed, Reconfigurable, In-space Nodal Assembly (MARINA), developed by MIT graduate students, recently took first place at NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkage Design Competition Forum. MARINA is designed as a habitable commercially owned module for use in low Earth orbit that would be extensible for future use as a Mars transit vehicle.

Image courtesy of the MARINA team.

Ride sharing and self-driving vehicles will redefine our relationship with cars. Auto makers and startups are already gearing up for the change.

Construction could potentially start in 2018, according to Hyperloop Transportation Technologies CEO Dirk Ahlborn.

An article discussing why extreme risk aversion deriving from indefinite lifespans is neither very likely, nor rational.

There’s a theory suggesting that, if we could live indefinitely, we might become extremely risk-averse. Presently, regardless of when you die, you ‘only’ lose a handful of decades of life at worst, because you would have died of old age eventually anyway. However, the reasoning goes, if you could live for an indefinitely long time, your untimely death would cost you no less than eternity; the conclusion is that, in order to avoid such an unimaginable loss, people wouldn’t dare taking even the most insignificant risks, such as crossing the street, ultimately making their own lives quite miserable.

The problem with this argument is that it hinges on a flawed assumption. The assumption is that we dare taking any risks at all only because we know that in a few decades at best we’re going to be dead anyway. Why do you take a plane for a holiday at the Antipodes? Because you’re going to die anyway when you’re old. Why do you go on a rollercoaster ride? Because the reaper would get you sooner or later anyway. Why do you go out without an umbrella even though it looks like it might rain? Because pneumonia would cut your life only a few decades shorter. Note that this argument also answers the age-old question, ‘Why did the chicken cross the street?’ Because YOLO.

This is not how smart people (or chickens) think. The question is one of magnitude of benefits and risks of a certain course of action. Consider the case of John, 40 years old, taking a plane from New York to Madrid for a two-week holiday. There is a chance the plane might fall into the Atlantic Ocean during the flight, in which case John would die. The chance isn’t very big, but it’s not zero nonetheless. If the plane doesn’t fall, then John gets his holiday (the benefits); however, if the plane falls, not only does John not get his holiday, but he also loses his life. At age 40, John isn’t exactly a youngster any more, but he does have some 40 years of life left, though. While the perceived value of the holiday and the remaining 40 years of life are subjective, it is quite reasonable to say that two weeks in Madrid aren’t worth losing 40 years of life.

Continue reading “Living ‘forever’ would cause extreme risk aversion” »