Lifeboat Foundation

Now more than ever both the importance and limitations of the global delivery infrastructure are on full display. But while Amazon and others try to speed up last mile delivery using drones, Dash Systems hopes to expedite the middle mile — with military-inspired airdrops putting pallets of parcels down at their penultimate destinations, even in the most inaccessible of locations.

Air-based delivery generally consists of four steps. First, an item is taken from the warehouse to the airport. Second, it goes by well-packed large cargo planes from there to another major hub, say from New York to Los Angeles. Third, a truck or smaller plane takes these to their regional destination, a sorting or distribution facility. Fourth, they go out on the familiar delivery trucks and end up on your doorstep.

Continue reading “Dash Systems raises $8M for precision-airdrops-as-a-service at distant or disaster-stricken destinations” »

This article shares the results from an evaluation of a novel thermal imaging technology that took place before the initial implementation in a Pfizer manufacturing facility. The manuscript describes the technology and reviews the extensive process used to challenge its inspection capabilities through field testing. Finally, the potential benefits of adopting this first-in-class pharmaceutical technology as a new standard for non-destructive testing^{1, 2} of bottle induction sealing integrity in the pharmaceutical industry is summarised.

HIGH-RESOLUTION, cryogenically cooled thermal imaging technology was initially developed for military purposes. Furthering the commercialisation of the technology for civil applications, a pharmaceutical assembly – for high-speed and 100 percent inline verification of induction integrity in bottle packaging – was first developed and made available for testing relatively recently.³ This article summarises outcomes from initial plant feasibility work and extended rigorous proof-of-concept trials. The evaluation process resulted in the first Pfizer network implementation of the technology for the routine inspection of heat induction foil sealing integrity in a high‑speed bottle packaging line at a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.

The satellites Blue Canyon developed for DARPA’s Blackjack program — based on the company’s commercial X-SAT bus — passed a critical design review.

WASHINGTON — Small satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies has been cleared to produce its first two satellites for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack program, the company announced Dec. 14.

DARPA plans to deploy up to 20 spacecraft in low-Earth orbit that will be connected by optical inter-satellite links and provide communications, missile tracking and navigation services.

Continue reading “DARPA okays Blue Canyon’s satellites for Blackjack program” »

Easy Aerial claims its Albatross UAS is a tethered machine that has an unbreachable data connection.

Drone startup Easy Aerial has launched a new unmanned aerial system (UAS), called Albatross, a tethered device with unlimited flight time and an unbreachable data connection.

The drone hexacopter can carry an 8.5 lb payload capacity with three hardpoints, two on the side that can carry up to 4 lb and the bottom hardpoint that can carry payloads of up to 8 lb. The side payload stations feature standard mounting as well as Picatinny rails that support a wide range of applications such as floodlights, communications relays, loudspeakers and cyber-related and other commercial and military electronic systems. The bottom hardpoint is designed for gimbaled cameras or large ISR loads such as radar or communication jammers.

Continue reading “Autonomous drone carries an 8 lb payload and unlimited flight time” »

Following four years of top-secret research and development, the scientists of the Manhattan Project were ready to test their first nuclear weapon, a plutonium bomb code-named Trinity.

When the bomb detonated over the sands of New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the fireball heralded the arrival of the nuclear era. It also created something a little smaller: scattered lumps of knobbly green glass.

Trinitite is the mineral that formed from sand that liquefied during the intense heat of the Trinity test. Initially it was believed that trinitite was created when the heat of the fireball liquefied the sand on the ground. In 2005, however, Nuclear Weapons Journal published a study that contradicted that assumption. After conducting “macroscopic measurements and theoretical calculations of the blast” using trinitite samples “approximately the size of a small pancake,” Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist Robert Hermes and his colleagues concluded that the chunks of mineral were formed when sand got scooped up into the atomic fireball, liquefied in the heat, then fell back onto the hot sand on the ground to form glassy clusters.

Chari is part of the 18-member team of the Artemis Lunar Exploration Programme, through which NASA hopes to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024.

The mystery ailment that has afflicted U.S. embassy staff and CIA officers off and on over the last four years in Cuba, China, Russia and other countries appears to have been caused by high-power microwaves, according to a report released by the National Academies. A committee of 19 experts in medicine and other fields concluded that directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy is the “most plausible mechanism” to explain the illness, dubbed Havana syndrome.

The report doesn’t clear up who targeted the embassies or why they were targeted. But the technology behind the suspected weapons is well understood and dates back to the Cold War arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. High-power microwave weapons are generally designed to disable electronic equipment. But as the Havana syndrome reports show, these pulses of energy can harm people, as well.

Continue reading “Scientists suggest US embassies were hit with high-power microwaves – here’s how the weapons work” »

To visually illustrate the risk of airborne transmission in real time, The Washington Post used a military-grade infrared camera capable of detecting exhaled breath. Numerous experts — epidemiologists, virologists and engineers — supported the notion of using exhalation as a conservative proxy to show potential transmission risk in various settings.

“The images are very, very telling,” said Rajat Mittal, a professor of mechanical engineering in Johns Hopkins University’s medical and engineering schools and an expert on virus transmission. “Getting two people and actually visualizing what’s happening between them, that’s very invaluable.”

We’re rigged for silent running in the Seawolf, America’s newest and fastest attack submarine.

In the January 1998 issue, Popular Mechanics boarded the U.S. Navy’s newest (and deadliest) attack submarine, the USS Seawolf. After the Cold War, the U.S. pivoted away from these heavily armed behemoths of the deep, but the Navy’s upcoming submarine, currently named the SSN(X), could be as armed to the teeth as its Seawolf forebear, a signal that times are changing on the high seas.

Capt. Dave McCall admits to one vice. “I like to drive fast,” he says, “I like to drive very fast.”

Continue reading “Run Silent, Run Deep: PM Meets the Deadly Seawolf Submarine” »