Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability

Circa 2010

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are used in many applications to gather intelligence without risking human lives. These aircraft, however, have limited flight time because of their reconnaissance payload requirements coupled with their limited scale. A microwave-powered flight vehicle would be able to perform a reconnaissance mission continuously.

Using beamed microwave energy from a remote source on the ground, the airplane gathers energy using onboard antennas. A rectifying antenna, or rectenna, harvests power and rectifies it into a form usable by an onboard electric motor that drives the propeller, providing thrust. Using a rectenna array affixed to the underside of the aircraft, the power needed to maintain flight can be remotely transmitted.

The idea of a fuel-less flight vehicle, or an aircraft that does not carry its own fuel, has been pursued in few different forms over the past decades. There are many different approaches for how to power these vehicles; however, the common theme is that power must be transmitted from a source remote to the aircraft. Some of the possibilities for power transmission include solar power, the heating of air underneath the aircraft to cause thrust, and using antennas to convert microwave radiation into electrical power.

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Hyundai and Apple teaming up to challenge Tesla? 😃

Apple and Hyundai plan to sign a deal that would lead to a “beta” version of an Apple electric vehicle as early as 2022, according to a Sunday report from Reuters.

Reuters cited a report from Korea IT News that said the companies are planning to sign a deal by March 2021 to partner on the self-driving electric cars, according to a Sunday report from Korea IT News.

With a deal in place, the companies may have a beta version of the vehicle ready by next year, according to the report. Mass production of the self-driving electric vehicles could begin by 2024. The plan would be to build about 100000 vehicles in the US that year, according to Reuters.

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If humans plan to go to live and work beyond Earth someday, they will need technologies that allow for sustainable living in alien environments. This is especially true of Mars, which is extremely cold, dry, and subject to more radiation than we are used to. On top of that, it also takes six to nine months to send spacecraft there, and that’s every two years when Earth and Mars are closest to each other in their orbits.

As such, settling on the Red Planet will require some serious creativity!

This the purpose of Mars City Design (the Mars City®), an innovation and design platform founded by architect and filmmaker Vera Mulyani. Every year since its inception, this organization has hosted the Mars City Design Challenges, where students from around the world come together with industry experts to produce architectural designs for living on Mars (what Mulyani calls “Marchitecture”).

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The term “LASER” stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Lasers are a form of artificial light with a uniform phase and wavelength.

A core property of a laser is a low divergence angle that spreads out very little as it projects out further from its source. Lasers are also small enough to fit within compact instrumentation, which makes them ideal for inter-orbit optical communication systems and other systems for communicating over long distances. The Laser-based SSPS (L-SSPS) uses these unique properties to send solar-powered laser energy from space to Earth, where it is converted into electricity.

The transmittance of laser beams depends upon their wavelength. The SSPS Research Team has been studying a laser wireless power transmission technology operating at a wavelength of about 1070 nm (near-infrared) and a continuous-wave (CW).

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O,.o.

It is no secret that Apple is working on the development of electric vehicle technology for almost 5–6 years now. Codenamed as Project Titan, the project contains many ex-employees of renowned automobile brands such as Tesla, Land Rover, and Aston Martin. Recently, there were rumours of Apple linking up with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) for producing self-driving chips for their planned vehicles.

It was unclear until now whether Apple will be manufacturing the vehicles on their own, or will they act as a software provider for existing automobile brands. Now, however, there are reports that the tech company is in early talks with the Hyundai Motor Group, among others.

A Hyundai Motors representative confirmed yesterday that the South Korean automobile company is in discussion with Apple. Of course, ever since the tech company announced its intentions of developing an electric vehicle, it is in talks with a number of global manufacturers. However, Hyundai is one of the first major names to have come up.

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Reactive molecules, such as free radicals, can be produced in the body after exposure to certain environments or substances and go on to cause cell damage. Antioxidants can minimize this damage by interacting with the radicals before they affect cells.

Led by Enrique Gomez, professor of chemical engineering and and engineering, Penn State researchers have applied this concept to prevent imaging damage to conducting polymers that comprise soft electronic devices, such as , organic transistors, bioelectronic devices and flexible electronics. The researchers published their findings in Nature Communications today (Jan. 8).

According to Gomez, visualizing the structures of conducting polymers is crucial to further develop these materials and enable commercialization of soft electronic devices—but the actual imaging can cause damage that limits what researchers can see and understand.

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Scientists have figured out a cheaper, more efficient way to conduct a chemical reaction at the heart of many biological processes, which may lead to better ways to create biofuels from plants.

Scientists around the world have been trying for years to create biofuels and other bioproducts more cheaply; this study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that it is possible to do so.

“The process of converting sugar to alcohol has to be very efficient if you want to have the end product be competitive with ,” said Venkat Gopalan, a senior author on the paper and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “The process of how to do that is well-established, but the cost makes it not competitive, even with significant government subsidies. This new development is likely to help lower the cost.”

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There were a number of fascinating new electric motorcycles that were slated for release in 2020, but many saw their timelines stretched by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now 2021 appears to be the year of the new e-moto swarm with a score of models set to finally debut. Here are the ones keeping me on the edge of my seat.

I’ve been following this one for way too long.

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