Lifeboat Foundation

Alternate history has never been more entertaining than in the hit Apple TV+ series, “For All Mankind.” The science fiction television show is so popular that it was renewed for a fourth season even before Season 3 ended on August 12, 2022.

Unlike most science fiction, “For All Mankind” re-imagines the past instead of envisioning the future. Starting in the 1960s and running through the 1990s in Season 3, the series is built around the space race that began with the United States and the Soviet Union competing to reach the moon. But in the fantastical world created by “For All Mankind,” things turn out very differently. Here are five fictional realities showing how the series cleverly rewrites history.

Meet ROSS, Russia’s new space station.

But unlike the ISS, ROSS won’t have permanent residents year-round. Instead, it will only host cosmonauts “twice a year for extended periods,” according to Reuters.

ROSS is still years out and shrouded in secrecy, so it’s hard to predict exactly how the new space station could surpass the ISS’s capabilities.

Continue reading “After quitting the ISS, Russia reveals its next-gen space station” »

Artificial intelligence is being used to design magazine covers and provide pictures for internet newsletters. What could possibly go wrong?

It all started with the headline over an entry in Charlie Warzel’s Galaxy Brain newsletter.

Watching the Alex Jones trial with an ex-Infowars staffer.

Continue reading “Where Does Alex Jones Go From Here?” »

The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module will fly farther from Earth than any human-rated vehicle has ever flown before. This video gives an overview of the first mission – without astronauts – for Artemis, focussing on ESA’s European Service Module that powers the spacecraft.

The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth – further than any human has ever travelled, where it will inject itself in a Distant Retrograde Orbit around the Moon.

Continue reading “Artemis I — European Service Module perspective” »

While for decades Mars has been the planet outside Earth that has arguably received the most attention, in recent years, planetary scientists have been setting their sites on our other neighbor: Venus. This strange planet with its hellishly high temperatures and incredible surface pressure will be the site for two upcoming NASA missions and one European Space Agency mission in the next decade, and these agency missions will also be joined by a private space mission from New Zealand-based company Rocket Lab.

Rocket Lab recently shared more details for its planned mission to Venus in a publication in the journal Aerospace. With a planned launch in 2023, it will be the first private mission to Venus and will use Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft.

The aim of the mission is to investigate whether anything could be living in the thick clouds of Venus. This topic received international attention in 2020 when a study suggested that there could be phosphine, a potential indicator of life, in the Venusian clouds. However, subsequent research suggested that the indicator was likely only sulfur dioxide, a common gas not particularly related to life. Even so, the potential for microscopic life to exist on Venus has been long been debated, as the planet was once similar to Earth.

Hennessey has revealed further details about its first electric car, the six-wheeled Project Deep Space grand tourer with a mind-boggling power output and a $3 million (£2.25m) price.

The outlandish EV — rendered by Autocar above, based on official sketches — will feature a central driving position within a diamond-shaped four-seat layout.

American luxury GT will appear in show form in 2024; priced from £2 million, targeting 620 miles on each charge.

Continue reading “2026 Hennessey 2400bhp six-wheeler EV targets 1000km range” »

Tiny fragments of rock brought back from an asteroid in near-Earth solar orbit are so old, they predate the Solar System.

A new analysis of samples of asteroid Ryugu has revealed the presence of mineral grains forged in the outflows or explosions of old stars before our own Sun formed.

As identified by previous research, these presolar grains reveal Ryugu is very similar to a class of meteorites known as Ivuna-type carbonaceous (CI) chondrites. However, the presence of some fragile grains indicate that parts of Ryugu may be unchanged since the asteroid formed.

The 13 regions at the moon’s South Pole are a long way from where Neil Armstrong explored.

Scientists have discovered the remarkable impact of reversing a standard method for combatting a key obstacle to producing fusion energy on Earth. Theorists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have proposed doing precisely the opposite of the prescribed procedure to sharply improve future results.

Tearing holes in plasma

The problem, called “locked tearing modes,” occurs in all today’s tokamaks, doughnut-shaped magnetic facilities designed to create and control the virtually unlimited fusion power that drives the sun and stars. The instability-caused modes rotate with the hot, charged plasma — the fourth state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion reactions —and tear holes called islands in the magnetic field that confines the gas, allowing the leakage of key heat.