Lifeboat Foundation

In arguing against nuclear war, Dr. Tsipis said he came « to believe that reason must prevail. »

A curious boy who gazed at the stars from his mountainside Greek village and wondered how the universe came to be, Kosta Tsipis was only 11 when news arrived that the first atomic weapon had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

“After the bomb went off, I sent away for a book because I wanted to understand it,” he told the Globe in 1987.

Continue reading “Kosta Tsipis, MIT physicist and prominent voice for nuclear disarmament, dies at 86” »

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Continue reading “Four Quick Stories on Press Freedoms and Venture Funding: Age of Ingenuity” »

WASHINGTON — SpaceX was awarded a $29.6 million contract under the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contract that allows the U.S. Space Force to monitor and study data from the company’s commercial and civil space missions.

The one-year contract “provides early integration studies and fleet surveillance for non-national security space missions,” said the Space Force contract announcement Nov. 9.

Fleet surveillance includes access to proprietary “tools, systems, processes and launch site activities developed by the launch service provider for non-national security space missions,” said the Space Force.

SAN FRANCISCO – L3Harris Technologies will help the U.S. Defense Department extract information and insight from satellite and airborne imagery under a three-year U.S. Army Research Laboratory contract.

L3Harris will develop and demonstrate an artificial intelligence-machine learning interface for Defense Department applications under the multimillion-dollar contract announced Oct. 26.

“L3Harris will assist the Department of Defense with the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities and technologies,” Stacey Casella, general manager for L3Harris’ Geospatial Processing and Analytics business, told SpaceNews. L3Harris will help the Defense Department embed artificial intelligence and machine learning in its workflows “to ultimately accelerate our ability to extract usable intelligence from the pretty expansive set of remotely sensed data that we have available today from spaceborne and airborne assets,” she added.

Four decades of supersonic-combustion ramjet propulsion research culminated in a successful flight of the X-43A hypersonic technology demonstrator in March 2004, the first time a scramjet-powered aircraft had flown freely. After being launched by Dryden’s venerable B-52B mothership off the coast of Southern California, a modified first-stage Pegasus booster rocketed the X-43A to 95,000 feet before the X-43A separated and flew under its own scramjet power at an airspeed of Mach 6.8, or about 5,000 mph, for about 11 seconds. On Nov. 16, another identical scramjet-powered X-43A did it again, this time reaching hypersonic speeds above Mach 9.6, or about 6,800 mph, in the final flight of the X-43A project. Both flights set world airspeed records for an aircraft powered by an air-breathing engine, and proved that scramjet propulsion is a viable technology for powering future space-access vehicles and hypersonic aircraft.

The head of the UK military, General Sir Nick Carter, believes robots could make up a quarter of the army by the 2030s.

Imagine this scenario: You’re deployed to some godforsaken hellhole downrange, in desperate need of additional ammo and chow. You call your superior officer for a very special airdrop: with approval from the U.S. Transportation Command, your cargo is launched into low earth orbit in a rocket-assisted payload. Within an hour, voila — fresh 5.56mm rounds and some delicious pizza MRE, ready to refresh your arsenal and renew your spirit.

The idea of space-borne resupply pods may seem like something out of science-fiction but it could someday be a reality for troops downrange, according to Army officials.

India has decided to fly the three Rafale fighter jets from France directly to India, which are scheduled to arrive on November 4, according to Indian government sources. The Indian Air Force will now have eight of the 36 Rafale jets in operation.

This revolution has already started, with wealthy citizens building their own space programs and entrepreneurs building spacecraft on relatively tiny budgets.

This time it must be about people, not governments. Rather than a centrally controlled quasi-military government race to space by two superpowers, we must enable the people themselves to go where they want to go, to do there what they want. If governments decide to return to the Moon — as seems to be the case — it must be to build villages, not bases, and to do it as rapidly as possible, as it needs to be an immediate challenge, not a distant dream. And if some want to go to Mars or mine asteroids, they need to be seen as part of a new frontier community. Thus, with both public and private players doing what they do best where they want to do it, we can make it happen far faster than many might believe.

Continue reading “It is time to return to the Moon, open Free Space and go to Mars” »