Lifeboat Foundation

At first glance, one would consider the proposition of a base on Mercury, our Sun’s closest satellite, as ludicrous. With daytime temperatures reaching up to 700K — hot enough to melt lead — while the dark side of the planet experiences a temperature average of 110K — far colder than anywhere on Earth, combined with the lack of any substantial atmosphere, and being deep in the Sun’s gravitational potential well, conditions seem unfavorable.

First impressions can be misleading however, as it is well known that polar areas do not experience the extreme daily variation in temperature, with temperatures in a more habitable range (< 273 K (0 °C)) and it has been anticipated there may even be deposits of ice inside craters. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_mercury.html

And is not just habitable temperature and ice-water in its polar regions that make Mercury an interesting candidate for an industrial base. There are a number of other factors making it more favourable than either a Looner or Martian base:

Mercury is the second densest planet in our solar system — being just slightly less dense than our Earth — and is rich in valuable resources, the highest concentrations of many valuable minerals of any surface in the Solar System, in highly concentrated ores. Also, being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury has vast amounts of solar power available, and there are predictions that Mercury’s soil may contain large amounts of helium-3, which could become an important source of clean nuclear fusion energy on Earth and a driver for the future economy of the Solar System. Therefore it is a strong candidate for an industrial base.

Continue reading “The Unlikely Option? An Industrial Base on Planet Mercury” »

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts:

1. Legal Standing. 2. Safety Awareness. 3. Economic Viability. 4. Theoretical-Empirical Relationship. 5. Technological Feasibility.

In this post I will explore Legal Standing.

With respect to space exploration, the first person I know of who pushed the limits of the law is Mr. Gregory W. Nemitz of The Eros Project. He started this project in March 2000. As a US taxpayer, Nemitz made the claim that he is the Owner of Asteroid 433, Eros, and published his claim about 11 months prior to NASA landing its “NEAR Shoemaker” spacecraft on this asteroid.

Continue reading “The Kline Directive: Legal Standing” »

… when I point to my published scientific finding that our own slower-ticking clocks down here on earth – compared to their twins installed in those high-flying G.P.S. satellites – are, apart from being slowed, also enlarged, mass-reduced and charge-reduced by the same factor.

This T-L-M-Ch theorem is a corollary to Einstein’s “happiest thought.” As long as it stays un-refuted, as it does for 5 years, no one on earth contradicts the conclusion that BLACK HOLES possess radically new properties. Hence the ongoing attempt at producing them on earth needs to be stopped immediately.

Greece could ingratiate the planet by her immediately convoking the “safety conference” suggested by a court on January 27, 2011. Humankind owes science to Greece as everyone knows. If today, Greece takes up the named suggestion (made by the Cologne Administrative Court), every mother on the planet will praise her for a whole new reason while the debts incurred by Greece will be considered a privilege to shoulder by the world community at large.

ZEYS SOTHP – Greece our savior

Science and engineering are hard to do. If it wasn’t we would have a space bridge from here to the Moon by now. If you don’t have the real world practical experience doing either science or engineering you won’t understand this, or the effort and resources companies like Boeing, Lockheed, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corp, Scaled Composites, Virgin Galactic, and the Ad Astra Rocket Company have put into their innovations and products to get to where they are, today.

If we are to achieve interstellar travel, we have to be bold.
We have to explore what others have not.
We have to seek what others will not.
We have to change what others dare not.

The dictionary definition of a directive is, an instruction or order, tending to direct or directing, and indicating direction.

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, US Department of Defense 2005, provides three similar meanings,

Continue reading “The Kline Directive: Introduction” »

Using an innocuous bacterial virus, bioengineers have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities…

In harnessing DNA for cell-cell messaging the researchers have also greatly increased the amount of data they can transmit at any one time. In digital terms, they have increased the bit rate of their system. The largest DNA strand M13 is known to have packaged includes more than 40,000 base pairs. Base pairs, like 1s and 0s in digital encoding, are the basic building blocks of genetic data. Most genetic messages of interest in bioengineering range from several hundred to many thousand base pairs.

Ortiz was even able to broadcast her genetic messages between cells separated by a gelatinous medium at a distance of greater than 7 centimeters.

“That’s very long-range communication, cellularly speaking,” she said.

Down the road, the biological Internet could lead to biosynthetic factories in which huge masses of microbes collaborate to make more complicated fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful chemicals. With improvements, the engineers say, their cell-cell communication platform might someday allow more complex three-dimensional programming of cellular systems, including the regeneration of tissue or organs.

Continue reading “Stanford Bioengineers Introduce ‘Bi-Fi’ — The Biological Internet”

The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, “we are as gods, we might as well get good at it”. Photographs of earth from space had that god-like perspective.

What I’m saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it. Necessity comes from climate change, potentially disastrous for civilization. The planet will be okay, life will be okay. We will lose vast quantities of species, probably lose the rain forests if the climate keeps heating up. So it’s a global issue, a global phenomenon. It doesn’t happen in just one area. The planetary perspective now is not just aesthetic. It’s not just perspective. It’s actually a world-sized problem that will take world sized solutions that involves forms of governance we don’t have yet. It involves technologies we are just glimpsing. It involves what ecologists call ecosystem engineering. Beavers do it, earthworms do it. They don’t usually do it at a planetary scale. We have to do it at a planetary scale. A lot of sentiments and aesthetics of the environmental movement stand in the way of that.

Continue reading “We are as Gods…” and watch the video interview

The New York Time reported Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif. — SpaceX, for short — launched its Falcon 9 rocket on schedule at 8:35 p.m. Eastern time from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The Wall Street Journal reported, “trouble-free countdown followed by liftoff at 8:35 p.m. ET, precisely as scheduled.”

Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator said, “It actually marks the beginning of true commercial spaceflight to take cargo to the International Space Station for us.”

This is a milestone in the relationship between public and private enterprise. The handoff of what public enterprise, NACA/NASA, pioneered, developed and brought to maturity, to private enterprises capable of lowering the costs of space travel with ambitions to do more than stay in low earth orbit.

Congratulations, to Elon Musk, who believed it was possible, and went ahead and proved all the nay sayers wrong. This is an example of how one man’s vision and tenacity has changed the way we perceive the world. Congratulations!

At the halfway point to a climate gamble, 50 contributor ideas give just a taste of the creativity and innovation available to us

“One or other of us will have to go,” Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said on his deathbed to the hated wallpaper in his room. The perilous acceleration of Arctic ice loss, and the imminent threat of irreversible climate change poses a similar ultimatum to the economic system that is pushing us over the brink. For society’s sake I hope this time we redecorate.

Fortunately, many people are queuing up to propose better designs, rather than just cursing the interiors, as you can read about here.

Monday 1 October marks the halfway point in a 100-month countdown to a game of climate roulette.

Continue reading “50 months to avoid climate disaster – and a change is in the air” »