Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transportation

The next decade is going to be a transforming decade as many many technologies (some of which we all like to share in this group) are converging and maturing enough to rearrange our society in almost any aspect we can conceive.

I’m calling to those who are interested in creating and implementing an alternative model for the current social and governance systems, let’s build an open state that we can all support and trust regardless of our age, sex, geographical location, or belief system.

In the next 10 years, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors—information, energy, food, transportation, and materials—that underpin our global economy. We need to make sure the disruption benefits everyone.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk in July urged miners to produce more nickel, a key ingredient in the batteries that power the company’s electric cars. Musk offered a “giant contract” if supplies could be produced in an environmentally sensitive way.

While EVs are expected to help reduce global carbon emission, environmentalists are concerned that production of EV parts and increased mining may damage the environment.

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Tesla Model 3 is crushing Dodge Charger as a police car when it comes to the cost of ownership as the Bargersville Police Chief who pushed to electrify his fleet shares a 1-year review of the cost of operation.

Last year, we reported on the Bargersville, Indiana, police department updating their fleet with Tesla Model 3 vehicles.

Bargersville Police Chief Todd Bertram commented at the time:

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When Danish racing team True Cousins got started with electric motorcycle racing, their first attempt was rather modest. But twelve years after fielding their first custom 12 kW electric motorcycle, the team returned to set a new world record with a new bike featuring 100x the power.

The Silver Lightning is a custom built electric drag racing motorcycle featuring up to 1,200 kW of power.

Last week it laid rubber down on the strip at the Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire, England during the event dubbed “NOT the Euro Finals”.

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On a blustery winter day last December, a car carrying radioactive material approached one of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s major transportation hubs. As the car got closer, an alarm flashed and sounded on a large monitor in the police operations center, identifying on a digital map the exact location of the vehicle and the specific radioactive isotope radiating from the car – Cesium-137. Within minutes, officers in the Port Authority Police Department – equipped with vehicle-mounted and pocket-sized radiation sensors displaying the same real-time digital map – tracked the vehicle and apprehended the suspects in a parking lot. Thankfully, the potential terrorists and radiation-emitting isotope were not a threat, as the scenario was only a drill.

The December exercise marked the capstone for DARPA’s SIGMA program, culminating a five-year effort to develop and deploy an automated, high-performance, networked radiation detection capability for counterterrorism and continuous city-to-region scale radiological and nuclear threat monitoring. The transition of the radiation-detection system took place prior to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. In the eight months since the SIGMA transition, DARPA has been developing and testing additional sensors under its SIGMA+ effort to detect chemical, biological and explosive threats as well.

“We want to thank the Port Authority for their outstanding support throughout the SIGMA program and their continued support as we test SIGMA+ sensors,” said Mark Wrobel, DARPA program manager in the Defense Sciences Office. “Being able to test and refine the system in the country’s largest metropolitan region was invaluable in taking SIGMA from a research project to an operationally deployed system in just five years.”

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Elon Musk confirmed that a new “vector-space bird’s eye view” is coming to Tesla vehicles under the FSD package.

Bird’s eye view, a vision monitoring system that renders a view of a vehicle from the top to help park and navigate tight spaces, has become a popular feature in premium vehicles and it has even moved down market over the last few years.

It is generally made possible due to an array of 5 or 6 camera around the vehicle.

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Virgin Hyperloop and Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), operator of the Kempegowda International Airport (BLR), have signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct a pre-feasibility study for a proposed hyperloop from the airport to the city centre.

Virgin says its 1,080km/h vacuum-tube travel concept could whisk passengers in pods downtown in 10 minutes.

Signatories were Sultan bin Sulayem, chairman of Virgin Hyperloop and DP World, and Mr. TM Vijay Bhaskar, chief secretary of the Government of Karnataka and chairman of BIAL’s board of directors.

“A hyperloop-connected airport would dramatically improve the delivery of cargo and create an ultra-efficient supply chain,” Sultan bin Sulayem said.

The study on technical, economic and route feasibility is expected to be done in two six-month phases.

“This mode of transportation offers enormous economic potential, connecting passengers at unprecedented speeds, with zero emissions,” said Mr. Hari Marar, BIAL chief executive.

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