Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: space travel

While NASA and SpaceX figure out how to get to Mars, they’re also thinking about how the 200-day journey and life on the red planet will affect humans. Astronauts will be dealing with nasty things like muscle atrophy and bone loss, intra-cranial pressure, psychological issues, lack of resources and long-term radiation exposure. NASA and its partners are working on things like “torpor,” a type of space hibernation, and protective Mars cave dwellings with a view. To learn more, Engadget spoke with NASA scientist Laura Kerber and Spaceworks COO John Bradford at the Hello Tomorrow symposium in Paris.

“There are a lot of challenges that are preventing us from even getting there in a healthy state,” said Bradford in a keynote speech at the event. As a human-space-exploration expert, he’s been working on a way to mitigate many of those problems by putting astronauts in a “torpor state” of prolonged hypothermia. It not only reduces the human problems but helps with technical and engineering challenges, too.

On the medical side, it addresses the so-called psycho-social challenges (you can’t get depressed if you’re asleep), reduces intra-cranial pressure, opens up new approaches like electrostimulation to reduce muscle atrophy and bone loss, and even helps minimize radiation exposure.

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Have you heard of Dennis Hope? How about The Lunar Embassy of the Galactic Government—no? As space enthusiasts and investors, you really should be familiar with the infamous man who has spent nearly thirty years becoming Earth’s most successful interplanetary real estate agent. As (legitimate) terrestrial governments consider a return to the Moon and the establishment of permanent lunar settlements, however, Hope and his customers may soon face legal challenges from national space agencies and commercial ventures alike.

Read full details here: https://goo.gl/VoVoZz

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=kRlb10nBWiM

Science fiction is plagued by the slow march of time. What might have looked sleek and futuristic ten or more years ago might today look fantastic-but-unrealistic at best, or silly and outdated at worst. But whatever the case may be, the bottom line is this: no speculative sci-fi, not even cyberpunk, survives contact with the time period it portrays.

Of course, the point of science fiction isn’t to make our best attempts at clairvoyance. In fact, one may argue that, since the genre’s birth, science fiction is more like a subgenre of fantasy; it draws upon concepts that are simply more plausible to modern sensibilities (and thereby more capable of suspending disbelief) than magic and sorcery. Early works within the genre depict grand feats of science unreachable by the technological constraints of the time period, (such as defeating death, traveling through time, or voyaging through space) and remain unfulfilled to this day. Even today, we make stories that stretch the truth of what humankind is capable of in our near future, enjoyable as they may be.

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In what promises to be one small step for space travel, and one giant leap for the next generation of manufacturing, an Israeli startup is planning to land a vehicle on the moon that has crucial parts made using 3D printing technology.

SpaceIL is among five teams vying for Google’s $30 million in prize money to get a spacecraft to the moon by the end of March. One of the startup’s suppliers, Zurich-based RUAG Space, advised turning to 3D printing to manufacture the legs of its unmanned lunar lander. With financial stakes high and a tight deadline, SpaceIL engineers were at first deeply skeptical, according to RUAG executive Franck Mouriaux. They finally acquiesced after a lot of convincing.

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NASA’s new X3 thruster, which is being developed by researchers at the University of Michigan in collaboration with the agency and the US Air Force, has broken records in recent test. It’s hoped that the technology could be used to ferry humans to Mars.

The X3 is a type of Hall thruster, a design that uses a stream of ions to propel a spacecraft. Plasma is expelled to generate thrust, producing far greater speeds than are possible with chemical propulsion rockets, according to NASA.

A chemical rocket tops out at around five kilometers per second (3.1 miles/sec), while a Hall thruster can reach speeds of up to 40 kilometers per second (25 miles/sec).

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Centauri Dreams returns with an essay by long-time contributor Alex Tolley. If we need to grow a much bigger economy to make starships possible one day, the best way to proceed should be through building an infrastructure starting in the inner Solar System and working outward. Alex digs into the issues here, starting with earlier conceptions of how it might be done, and the present understanding that artificial intelligence is moving at such a clip that it will affect all of our ventures as we transform into a truly space-faring species. Under the microscope here is a company called SpaceFab, as Alex explains below, and the potential of ISRU — in situ resource utilization. Emerging out of all this is a new model for expansion.

by Alex Tolley

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Based in Los Angeles, Relativity Space is developing a new 3D printer for, “scaling and sustaining an interplanetary society”.

Since founding in 2015, Relativity Space has received $10 million in funding – with backers including Mark Cuban and Y Combinator.

The company promises that 3D printing will allow them to go, “from raw material to flight in less than 60 days” and claims their Stargate 3D printer is, “the largest metal 3D printer in the world.”

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Google Maps launched itself into space once again with new opportunities to explore parts of the galaxy.

Google announced this week that it added a dozen new places including Pluto, Venus and several moons to its galactic exploration feature. There are now 17 different planetary maps to look through.

The feature allows users to explore planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, along with some dwarf planets, like Pluto. For Earth, zooming in offers 3D Google Maps showing borders, cities, countries and terrain. When looking at Google Maps in the terrain view, you can also zoom out until it shows Earth in space. Clicking on specific places will also provide some basic information.

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Elon Musk is racing to land SpaceX on Mars in five years, a vision he unveiled late last month at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress.

One man not among Musk’s critics is Scott Kelly, a retired astronaut who set the record in 2015 for total accumulated days in space, during the single longest mission by an American.

“When Elon Musk said he was going to launch his rocket and then land the first stage on a barge, I thought he was crazy,” Kelly told “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “And then he did it. I’m not going to ever doubt what he says, ever again.”

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