Lifeboat Foundation

Last year, a Made In Space-led team achieved something that had never been accomplished. For the first time in history, a commercial in-space manufacturing facility began operation aboard the International Space Station (ISS). While private parties are able to commission objects to be built by Made In Space’s Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) on orbit, the hardy device also supports astronauts by manufacturing parts, tools, and supplies that can be used on the ISS.

Made In Space has continued its mission to enable humans to live and work in space by demonstrating several new technologies in microgravity. Testing machines on Earth that are optimized to work in environments which have little or no gravity can be difficult at the bottom of Earth’s gravity well. The Flight Opportunities Program (FOP) at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas utilizes high-tech aircraft to fly in aggressive parabolic arcsa nose dive followed by a sharp ascent. This maneuver creates a gravity-free environment within the plane’s cabin for less than a minute before having to pull up and repeat. After partaking in over 200 of these parabolic flights, MIS has demonstrated several manufacturing techniques in microgravity that will be critical to the success of our journeys to other planets.

Current holographic technologies are nowhere near capable of producing realistic, life-size projections that maintain quality from an array of viewing angles like those portrayed in movies like Star Wars. But things are moving in the right direction with researchers having developed a new type of 3D dynamic holographic display that they claim performs 2,600 times better than existing technologies.

One key limitation to current holographic display technology is that, despite two-dimensional display technologies with tens of millions of pixels, it takes a lot more information than is contained in all those megapixels to generate a sizable 3D image. Using existing display and wavefront modulator technology, which is an optical manipulation device that controls the direction of the light, a tiny hologram about 1 cm in size with a narrow viewing angle of 3 degrees is about as good as it gets.

The more impressive holograms in recent years, like a memorable one of Tupac Shakur, were actually two-dimensional projections, while others require special equipment like augmented reality goggles such as Microsoft’s HoloLens. In essence, these are really just optical illusions.

Continue reading “New approach yields bigger and better holographic displays” »

The annual 3D Bioprinting Conference is underway in the Netherlands today. While printing human body parts remains largely experimental, there are growing signs of commercial activity.

What do the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush, about a thousand musical compositions and even a few recent food recipes all have in common?

They were invented by computers, but you won’t find a nonhuman credited with any of these creations on U.S. patents. One patent attorney would like to see that changed.

Ryan Abbott is petitioning to address what he sees as more than a quirk in current laws but a fundamental flaw in policy that could have wide-ranging implications in areas of patent jurisprudence, economics and beyond if his proposals are adopted.

Continue reading “When the Mother of Invention Is a Machine, Who Gets Credit?” »

We have taken another step toward realizing Elon Musk’s vision.

For kids and teens to make there dreams for the future possible. A resource to find a greater education to grow to be the future of our tomorrow.

This skin stretching mechanism helps wounds heal much faster.

The pair are kicking in $85 million a piece to build a plant in Michigan.

Sipping coffee to wake up is so 2016. Now you can just wear it around your wrist.