At the moment, companies around the world are scrambling to build ventilators quickly, including Virgin Orbit, a firm backed by billionaire Richard Branson which usually manufactures rockets. Virgin Orbit, however, is building a simple version of the machine. “This one is going to basically be for all the patients who need a ventilator but do not need a top-line ventilator. That will free up all these top-line ventilators for the sickest of the sick,” said Dr.

For almost a decade, chemical engineers at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, have been working on materials that are either derived or inspired by squids, octopus, and cuttlefish.

Humans have not been able to make themselves seem invisible yet, but our species just got closer — at least in a petri dish.

SpinLaunch may face a major obstacle up in the air because it does the opposite of a standard rocket, says Julián Rimoli, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Irvine …. “I would expect this to get really hot,” Rimoli says, similar to how space capsules create mini-fireballs upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. That heat could prove disastrous for SpinLaunch’s precious cargo. … One of the biggest current unknowns: how SpinLaunch payloads will fare at much higher speeds, Rimoli says.