Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: habitats

Hold onto your butts solar aficionados, the next generation solar roof is coming, and it looks good. During a brief event Friday night, Elon Musk presented his plan to integrate solar roofs with Powerwall power packs. But that’s not all. On Saturday Musk expanded on his talk by explaining via Twitter that the new solar tiles would come with some pretty sweet features — more specifically, built-in defrosters.

Unlike the solar systems of the past, Tesla’s newly designed roofs will feature aesthetically pleasing, energy efficient glass solar tiles, that will replace a home’s roof rather than sit on top of it.

Harsh weather conditions — like snow and ice — are known for wreaking havoc on traditional asphalt shingles, but that’s not the case with Musk’s new design. The solar glass tiles are not only more durable, but are also packing specialized heating elements that work much like the rear defroster does on your car.

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So, could this material be also in the metal exterior of their cars?

Last Friday, Tesla Motors??? (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk debuted new solar roof shingles for homes at an event at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, reminding all of us that the electric car maker is much more than just a car company.

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NASA is offering $1.1 million in prize money in Phase 2 of the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for new ways to build houses where future space explorers can live and work.

The three-part competition asks citizen inventors to use readily available and recyclable materials for the raw material to print habitats.

Phase 2 focuses on the material technologies needed to manufacture structural components from a combination of indigenous materials and recyclables, or indigenous materials alone. NASA may use these technologies to construct shelters for future human explorers to Mars. On Earth, these same capabilities could also be used to produce affordable housing wherever it is needed or where access to conventional building materials and skills is limited.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama sought Tuesday to reinvigorate his call for the U.S. to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, showcasing budding partnerships between the U.S. government and commercial companies to develop spacecraft capable of carrying out the extraterrestrial mission.

Obama was calling attention to government contracts awarded to six companies to build prototypes for “habitats” that could sustain human life in deep space. He also said that within two years, private companies will send astronauts to the International Space Station, part of a program to allow companies to use an open docking port on the station to develop their own innovations.

“These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth, something we’ll need for the long journey to Mars,” Obama wrote in an op-ed on CNN’s website. He said the ultimate goal is for humans eventually to stay on the red planet “for an extended time.”

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A 3D printed house, does it really exist? Here are the most fascinating 3D printed houses in the world, from tiny town cabins to an entire village.

“What’s wrong with brick and mortar, glass and concrete?”, you might ask. “Why to build a 3D printed house?” Apart from the obvious answer – because we can -, there are various good reasons for using 3D printing methods in constructing buildings:

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Tardigrades, tiny aquatic creatures found in habitats from backyard ponds to Antarctic glaciers, are tough enough to survive the radiation-fraught perils of space. But for a long time, scientists couldn’t agree on why the animals—also known as water bears—are so hardy. Now, researchers have identified a gene that protects the tardigrades’ DNA from radiation, BBC reports. The gene, called Dsup, showed its importance when researchers inserted it into human DNA strands and blasted them with x-rays. The modified genetic material suffered significantly less damage, they report today in. Scientists hope this finding will help them one day protect another animal—us—against radiation.

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