Friday, March 29, 2024

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: hoverbikes, UFOs and a Lego Titanic

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Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Inhabitat's Week in Green

A couple years ago, Elon Musk unveiled his vision for the future of long-distance travel: the Hyperloop, a superfast train that would travel inside large tubes. The futuristic concept is a long way from becoming a reality, but Hyperloop Transportation Technologies CEO Dirk Ahlborn is already kicking around the idea of making it free to ride. Meanwhile, Musk has been trying to open Tesla dealerships throughout the US — but some states are still holding out. This week, Texas upheld a ban on Tesla’s direct sales model. Musk gets all the headlines when it comes to Tesla, but Ian Wright, one of the companies’ other co-founders who left the company a decade ago, is back in the news. Wright is now converting fleets of gas-guzzling garbage trucks into electric vehicles.

On the topic of futuristic transportation solutions, a hoverbike called Flike recently took to the skies on its first manned flight. When it comes to more traditional bikes, the Portland-based company Industry recently rolled out an innovative 3D-printed titanium bike that has vibrating handlebars designed to give you directions. And Australian designer Kyle Armstrong unveiled the LINDO Smart vehicle — a modern take on the tuk tuk. The small three-wheeler runs on two in-wheel electric motors that are powered by lithium-ion batteries. And if you see a UFO in the skies this week, don’t call SETI — it’s probably just NASA’s new flying saucer spaceship. The space agency postponed tests this weekend due to bad weather and is now looking at Monday, June 8th, or beyond.

On the green design front, London-based ecoLogicStudio recently constructed an algae-filled building that grows food and produces fuel. Want to buy a house over the internet? Studio H is selling its 112-square-foot, solar-powered tiny house on eBay for just $10,000. In the Danish town of Viborg, Henning Larson Architects have transformed the roof of the city’s sprawling town hall into a lush greenscape covered with solar panels. Los Angeles-based studio amphibianArc has unveiled plans for an otherworldly Chinese shopping mall that will feature an enormous vertical aquarium, gondola rides and an LED canopy. 3D printing company Emerging Objects recently teamed up with Bold Machines to create the Star Lounge, one of the world’s biggest 3D-printed PLA structures. The 8.5-foot-tall structure was built using more than 2,000 hexagonal 3D-printed blocks. And in Germany, French artist Tomi Ungerer and architect d’Ayla-Suzan Yöndel teamed up to build a kindergarten that’s shaped like an enormous cat, complete with a green roof that looks like fur.

When he was but a wee teenager, Boyan Slat invented an Ocean Cleanup Array that he believed could remove mountains of plastic trash from the world’s oceans. Now, two years later, Slat is putting his invention to the test. The array is set to be deployed to the area between Japan and South Korea in the second quarter of 2016. In other tech and innovation news, a team of researchers just announced a new technology that could charge your phone with WiFi. Google just launched a $20 million grant program that aims to design products to help people with disabilities, and Amazon recently opened a store devoted to selling solar-powered products in Bangalore, India. Bill Gates is warning that a Spanish Flu-like pandemic is the one big fear that keeps him up at night. The tech mogul warned that failing to act on the threat right now is “reckless.” Tech accessory company Native Union has created a clever and fashionable keychain that can charge your smartphone. The cord is short enough to fit in your pocket, but long enough to connect to your computer or another outlet. A Norwegian boy built a massive replica of the Titanic using 30,000 Lego bricks — watch a time-lapse video to see how he did it.

Spring has sprung, and parks and backyards everywhere are in full bloom — why not take advantage of nature’s bounty and forage your own food? Our latest video shows how to find and prepare seven common weeds you probably didn’t know you could eat. And speaking of the great outdoors, you won’t want to miss photographer Steve Axford’s incredible photos of the mushrooms and fungus among us.

Filed under: Misc, Transportation, Science

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