Lifeboat Foundation

It takes a bold person to declare that interstellar travel is now within our grasp. Physicist Stephen Hawking has shown that he is just that, taking part in the Breakthrough Starshot initiative. The project has announced a $100m research programme to investigate the technology of using light to propel spacecraft out of the solar system to explore neighbouring stars.

For the first time in human history, interstellar travel is a realistic and achievable aspiration, and not just the playground of science fiction.

So what has changed that makes interstellar travel achievable? First of all, clear expectations. This is not about a great big spaceship with a colony of astronauts travelling for generations to settle a planet around a distant star. Neither is it about faster-than-light travel, tunnelling through wormholes to arrive at the other side of the universe in an instant of time. This is about technology that already exists, or nearly exists, being applied in new and exciting ways.

Continue reading “Why sailing to the stars has suddenly become a realistic goal” »

Real-life space-mining could be a reality next year.

I suppose that us being in a simulation would answer Fermi’s Paradox very (disturbingly) neatly…

(Business Insider)

Continue reading “Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks there’s a ‘very high’ chance the universe is just a simulation” »

“NASA is soliciting ideas from U.S. industry for designs of a Mars orbiter for potential launch in the 2020s. The satellite would provide advanced communications and imaging, as well as robotic science exploration, in support of NASA’s Journey to Mars.”

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Ever notice how maps of the large structures of the Universe look like maps of the brain or a Pollock painting?

On the grandest scale, our universe is a network of galaxies tied together by the force of gravity. Cosmic Web, a new effort led by cosmologists and designers at Northeastern’s Center for Complex Network Research, offers a roadmap toward understanding how all of those tremendous clusters of stars connect—and the visualizations are stunning.

Continue reading “Breathtaking Visualization of the Universe Will Make You Feel Like an Ant” »

It may sound like sci-fi. But millions and millions of dollars are pouring into projects to mine asteroids and the moon. And with a space gold rush comes space pirates.

With trillions of dollars worth of minerals lying just under the moon’s surface or spinning around the solar system inside asteroids, space mining is big business.

Well, big potential business. No one has dug nickel out of an asteroid or scooped any tantalum from the lunar dust—at least not for profit. Before space miners can get drilling, they need to invent specialized industrial robots, set up orbital outposts and—arguably most importantly—convince investors, workers, and prospective buyers that space minerals are worth the cost and effort of mining them.

Continue reading “Who Will Protect Us From Space Pirates?” »

A new paper concludes that a super-Earth size planet may reside in the habitable zone of a star only 16 light years away.

That’s fine with me…

As long as it doesn’t plan on having us for desert. (not until it turns red, gets fat, and burns our planet alive, at least)

Continue reading “Our Sun May Have Eaten A Super Earth For Breakfast” »

Playing the new experience from Fusion, NASA and MIT.