Buzzworthy | Origami House | Exocise - The Convo Kit #22

Sunsets: We yearn for their romantic ambiance and fleeting sky pallet, yet scold them when the same beauty arrives early. ISS astronauts enjoy 16 sunsets a day, can you imagine?

-Steve

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What All The Buzz is About

Asian honey bees communicate hornet attacks with distinct buzzing, aka “anti-predator pipes”. Scientists documented various complex sounds bees use to coordinate defense, attacks, and other hive activities.

• Buzzing is “vibroacoustic”, perceived as sound and vibration

• 1 Asian giant hornet can decapitate 20 bees per minute

• Bee ball defense: Cover a hornet with hundreds of bees to suffocate it

While defending the hive against a hornet attack is important, preventing an attack is even more impressive. Hornets are far less likely to attack a hive if its entrance is lined with animal dung, so bees paint their doorway with it. Hey, you gotta poo what you gotta poo.

Listen to the bee defense in a hornet attack video here.

Origami House

Danish space architects, SAGA, developed a folding shelter that expands to 750 times its packed size. Its origami-like habitat, LUNARK, tested in Greenland with ambitions of lunar use.

• Folding panels made of mostly carbon fiber

• Tested conditions: -22 °F with hurricane-force winds

• Capacity: 2 people

Solar panels generated enough power during the 60-day test and made the tiny-home feel a bit more comfortable with daylight simulations. It can even withstand a curious polar bear, you know, for all those moon bears up there.

Check out more details, schematics, and 3D models.

Exocise

Enhanced Robotics’s Sportsmate 5 is a consumer exoskeleton aimed at providing tougher workouts and easier hikes. The lower-body device detects movement to accurately apply resistance or assistance.

• Weight: 5.5 lb.

• Price: $899 on Kickstarter (estimated retail: $1,517)

• Runtime: 3 hours via 22.2V lithium battery

Adding extra resistance to at-home workouts and increasing access to short hikes brings Sportsmate into boujee fitness territory. Though the running assistance seems like cheating, unless you’re catching a train.

Promo Vid Pro Tip: Don’t do deadlifts in your living room.

Kinetic Moon Shot

SpinLaunch wants to throw rockets into orbit like a “shot put” in a vacuum-sealed launcher. The company plans to expand on their successful test flight from October.

• Spin speed: 5,000 mph 

• Test Launcher Size: 165 feet tall

• Goal: Orbital Accelerator that can launch 440 lb satellites

Traditional rockets require large amounts of fuel, adding to the mass of the launch, requiring more fuel, etc. SpinLaunch’s system could dramatically reduce the cost of launching satellites and do what Uncle Rico never could, throw a football, uh, rocket over them mountains.

More details and images of the launcher here.

Deep Sea Wall-E

Scientists are learning more about how the ocean floor contributes to the global carbon cycle thanks to Benthic Rover II. The deep-sea autonomous vehicle ventures to the depths in one-year cycles.

• Measures O2 consumption to determine CO2 output

• Currently stationed ~140 miles off central Cali coast

• Maximum depth rating: 19,685 ft

Designed at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Benthic II relays information through an autonomous Wave Glider on the surface. Similar to how Martian rovers send data back to earth.

Pics and a video of Benthic Rover II here.

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