Lifeboat Foundation

On Friday, May 19, SpaceX released a 20-second video demonstrating that it is already conducting tests on technology aimed at fortifying the ground beneath its enormous Starship rocket’s orbital launch pad. The launch pad, situated at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, endured significant damage during the inaugural test flight of a fully-integrated Starship vehicle on April 20. During the test flight, the sheer power of the Super Heavy rocket’s 33 Raptor engines created a substantial crater beneath the pad. As a result, chunks of shattered concrete were sent soaring through the air.

SpaceX founder Chief Engineer Elon Musk shared that SpaceX is actively developing a solution to mitigate such damage. He said that they plan to build “a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount.” The footage of the test shows a methane-fueled Raptor engine ignited with its beam hitting a steel-plate and a massive stream of water. “One hell of a plasma beam!” said Musk when he shared the video via Twitter, shown below. A single Raptor V2 engine is capable of generating around 230 tons of thrust. Engineers must build a strong structure that could support such intense power, collectively, all 33 Raptor engines generate over 17 million pounds of thrust!

Regarding launch pad modifications –“We’re going to put down a lot of steel” under the launch tower before the next Starship flight with a water flame diverter system, Musk said during a Subscriber-only Twitter Spaces discussion on April 29. “We certainly didn’t expect” to destroy the concrete under the launch pad during the flight test, he said (pictured below). He speculates that the crater was caused due to “compressed the sand underneath the concrete to such a degree that the concrete effectively bent and then cracked.”

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German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg first introduced his uncertainty principle in a 1925 paper. It’s special because it remains intact no matter how good our experimental methods get; this isn’t a lack of precision in measurement. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how sophisticated your equipment, is you can’t think your way past it. It’s a fact of nature.

Legendary physicist and master bongo player Richard Feynman put it like this: “The uncertainty principle ‘protects’ quantum mechanics. Heisenberg recognized that if it were possible to measure both the momentum and the position simultaneously with greater accuracy, quantum mechanics would collapse. So he proposed that must be impossible.”

Continue reading “Our Existence Always Contains Some Uncertainty. This Physics Principle Explains Why” »

It’s the second mission chartered by the Houston company Axiom Space. Aboard will be a veteran NASA astronaut, two Saudis and an American entrepreneur.

But that may change soon enough.

A recent study in Nature Communications finally found a possible death cap mushroom antidote. The researchers report that an FDA-approved compound known as indocyanine green (ICG) can inhibit the mushroom’s deadly toxin.

Scientists have been studying death cap mushrooms since the early 1700s but an antidote has largely eluded them because “we know little about how mushroom toxins kill cells,” Qiaoping Wang, a professor of pharmacology at Sun Yat-Sen University and one of the study’s lead authors, told Insider.

The Mediterranean diet has become famous far beyond its namesake sea, as research increasingly supports its longstanding reputation for boosting health and longevity.

Studies have shown that people on the Mediterranean diet – which emphasizes plant-based foods and fish, and not so much red meat or dairy – tend to be healthier in multiple ways, with lower rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and overall mortality.

But why? Despite strong evidence for health benefits, it remains unclear how exactly this mix of foods, at the cellular level, can lengthen lifespan.

$100 million from IBM to help develop quantum-centric supercomputer; $50 million from Google to support quantum research and workforce development.

Black holes have always been fascinating to scientists and the general public alike as even light can’t escape their gravitational pull.

Many of us will be familiar with feelings of sluggishness and lethargy in the afternoon, but for those with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the problem is more severe.

Fortunately, researchers have now identified a drug that offers a good chance of helping. And no, it doesn’t come in espresso form.

Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) for people who have OSA can severely affect daily life. It means having overwhelming urges to sleep at inappropriate times – while driving or eating, for example – and often struggle to complete simple tasks.

Self-described mixed reality nerd, Brad Lynch, has tweeted out several interesting details about Apple’s yet-to-be announced VR/AR headset. He has managed to compile information from several sources — mostly reports produced by hardware analysts based in China. His summation of the leaked info states: “The Apple HMD’s Bill of Materials (BoM) cost to be about $1500–1600 (USD). This is about double the reported BoM for the (Meta) Quest Pro (which was 800 dollars including the controllers and charging pad).”