Lifeboat Foundation

Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has finalized a 25 million euro agreement that includes direct capital investment of 12 million euros and grants of 13 million euros from the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the banking institution Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI). The funding will accelerate the company’s technical advancements with the aim of launching the first commercial asteroid prospecting mission by 2020.

Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 6 is equipped with the first commercially licensed mid-wave infrared imager, an essential tool for detecting water on asteroids. Two spacecraft are completed and will test this technology on orbit. Planetary Resources’ President & CEO Chris Lewicki and Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider pictured with the Arkyd 6 in Planetary Resources’ clean room facility in Redmond, Washington.

Continue reading “Planetary Resources And The Government Of Luxembourg Announce €25 Million Investment and target 2020 asteroid mining mission” »

Implanting false memories could cure Alzheimer’s, PTSD, and depression. It could also make scapegoating easier, allow for witness tampering, or give those under a brutal dictatorship false patriotism.

Check out my latest story for Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/dead-gone-forever-need-cryonics-policy-523030 #transhumanism #cryonics

The case of a 14-year-old UK girl whose body was preserved after death highlights the need for governments to take cryonics seriously.

In Brief:

• Computing pioneer, Vinod Khosla, envisions a future where Artificial Intelligence will take over 80 percent of IT jobs.
• IT guys are not the only white collar professionals who Khosla sees as replaceable by VR they also join doctors, lawyers, and accountants on the growing list.

Let’s be honest, we have our fair share of problems on planet Earth: war, floods, disease, poverty, environmental destruction, Justin Bieber (the list goes on and on, really). But we also have a lot of things going for us: the Alcubierre Warp Drive, invisibility cloaks, the Mars rover missions, the discovery of the Higgs (the list goes on and on, really).

How can we weigh all the exciting and inspiring scientific discoveries against all the destruction and chaos? We have an ever expanding list of catastrophes that is coupled with (indeed, that parallels) our unrelenting march towards technological perfection. With such a coupling of unimaginable horrors and magnificent advancements, how can we possibly measure our status as a civilization?

One of the easiest ways to answer this question is to form a scale that will allow us to scientifically measure our technological *abilities* against the technological *possibilities.* Or in layman’s terms, something that will allow us to measure our awesomeness against the total possible awesomeness. Fortunately, there are several ways of conducting such measurements.

The solar revolution.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the solar roof that will be sold under a combined Tesla-SolarCity will likely cost less than a normal roof to install.

Tesla and SolarCity shareholders voted in favour of the US$2 billion deal Thursday. In late October, Musk unveiled a new solar roof product to show his vision for a combined company with SolarCity, but did not provide specifics on how much it would cost.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Says a Tesla Solar Roof Could Cost Less Than Your Crappy Normal Roof” »

A world where DNA can be rewritten to fix deadly diseases has moved a step closer after scientists announced they had genetically-edited the cells of a human for the first time using a groundbreaking technique.

A man in China was injected with modified immune cells which had been engineered to fight his lung cancer. Larger trials are scheduled to take place next year in the US and Beijing, which scientists say could open up a new era of genetic medicine.

The technique used is called Crispr, which works like tiny molecular scissors snipping away genetic code and replacing it with new instructions to build better cells.

Continue reading “New era of ‘cut and paste’ humans close as man injected with genetically-edited blood” »

“I will answer very simply, that the internet will disappear… It will be part of your presence all the time.”

That was Eric Schmidt talking on a panel about the future of the web earlier last year. He’s referencing a vision of the future which, not too long ago would have felt very much a work of science fiction.

But today, we inch closer to this idea of architecturally integrated, living, breathing, dynamic spaces. The internet becomes something that’s omnipresent, instead of just something you click on.

A flower-like starshade could give astronomers a direct look at planets orbiting distant stars. Cathal O’Connell explains how it would work.