Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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As humans explore other worlds, the colonies they develop may change over time. While the first settlements may rely on individuals, as the outposts grow more self-sustaining, families will likely become the colonists of choice, a panel of experts said.

“The socioeconomic origins of colonists are going to change over time,” science fiction author Charles E. Gannon told Space.com.

Earlier this year at Dragon Con in Atlanta, Gannon was part a panel of scientists and science communicators who discussed how future space colonies might look and act, and how such developments might affect the rest of humanity on Earth. Gannon was joined by nuclear physicist Ben Davis, forensic anthropologist Emily Finke, science teacher Lali DeRosier and moderator Kishore Hari, a self-described “professional nerd.” [NASA’s Wild Space Colony Concepts in Images].

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Entrepreneur’s Space X agency files request for $10bn project with the FCC and says internet speeds globally will reach 1Gb/s.

The man who wants to take humans to Mars also wants to connect the whole of planet Earth and bring digital equality across the globe.

Elon Musk’s Space X spacial agency has requested to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorisation to launch 4,425 satellites which would be used to provide connectivity to the more than 7.2 billion humans on Earth.

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Now that the EmDrive has made its way into the peer-reviewed literature, it falls in range of Tau Zero’s network of scientist reviewers. Marc Millis, former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project and founding architect of the Tau Zero Foundation, has spent the last two months reviewing the relevant papers. Although he is the primary author of what follows, he has enlisted the help of scientists with expertise in experimental issues, all of whom also contributed to BPP, and all of whom remain active in experimental work. The revisions and insertions of George Hathaway (Hathaway Consulting), Martin Tajmar (Dresden University), Eric Davis (EarthTech) and Jordan Maclay (Quantum Fields, LLC) have been discussed through frequent email exchanges as the final text began to emerge. Next week I’ll also be presenting a supplemental report from George Hathaway. So is EmDrive new physics or the result of experimental error? The answer turns out to be surprisingly complex.

By marc millis, george hathaway, martin tajmar, eric davis, & jordan maclay

It’s time to weigh in about the controversial EmDrive. I say, controversial, because of its profound implications if genuine, plus the lack of enough information with which to determine if it is genuine. A peer-reviewed article about experimental tests of an EmDrive was just published in the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power by Harold (Sonny) White and colleagues: White, H., March, P., Lawrence, J., Vera, J., Sylvester, A., Brady, D., & Bailey, P. (2016), “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum,” Journal of Propulsion and Power, (print version pending, online version here.

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Some end of year thoughts on what we can hope to expect over the next few decades in terms of pushing the envelope of space travel.

Thoughts on a few benchmark dates for pushing humanity offworld and beyond the solar system. Here are few estimates for when we should expect future milestones in our crewed voyages beyond low-Earth orbit and to Proxima Centauri b.

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Meaning “alone”, and ipse, meaning “self”) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.

This video is targeted to blind users.

Attribution:
Article text available under CC-BY-SA
Creative Commons image source in video.

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Fans of science fiction movies that depict weird, speculative or dystopian futures have plenty to look forward to in 2017. Here are our picks of the movies you should put on your radar if you enjoy cinematic depictions of future technology, from a couple of space station thrillers to a story that turns our current social media exhibitionist tendencies into an Orwellian take on the importance of privacy in a digital age.

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