Alliance for Space Development (ASD)
The Lifeboat Foundation is working with ten other organizations
including the National Space Society and the Space Frontier Foundation
to launch a new strategic alliance for space development and commerce
named the Alliance for Space Development (ASD).
"We are pushing very specific pieces of legislation," Charles Miller,
executive coordinator of ASD, said at a press conference at the 2325
Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC announcing the formation
of the group.
Perhaps the most ambitious part of the ASD agenda is a proposed "Cheap
Access to Space Act" that would offer $3.5 billion in government prizes
for the development of reusable launch vehicles. Those prizes include,
in a draft version of the bill provided by ASD, $1 billion to the first
fully reusable vehicle that can place at least one metric ton into orbit
and fly again a week later.
Charles said the proposed bill is based on the belief that economics,
and not technology, has inhibited the development of reusable launchers. "We have, in most respects, the fundamental technology," he said. "We
think the number one issue is closing the business case." A large prize,
he said, would incentivize development of reusable launch vehicles.
ASD has already lined up a sponsor for another element of its agenda. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) has agreed to introduce a bill that
would amend the National Aeronautics and Space Act to make space
settlement and development an official national purpose. "That will be
introduced soon," Charles said. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) is also
supporting ASD.
Learn about the Alliance for Space Development at
http://allianceforspacedevelopment.org/
AGI-15 @ Berlin Update
Our Itamar Arel, Joscha Bach, Eric Baum, Antonio Chella, Stan Franklin,
Deon Garrett, Ben Goertzel, Marcus Hutter, Matthew Iklé, Randal Koene,
Kai-Uwe Kühnberger, Moshe Looks, Alexey Potapov, Rafal Rzepka, Jürgen
Schmidhuber, Claes Strannegård, Kristinn Thórisson, Julian Togelius,
Viktoras Veitas, Pei Wang, David Weinbaum (Weaver), and Roman Yampolskiy
are participating in The Eighth Conference on Artificial General
Intelligence (AGI-15) which will be held July 22–25, 2015 at the
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany.
This conference gathers an international group of leading academic and
industry researchers involved in scientific and engineering work aimed
directly toward the goal of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Blog Contest Winner
The winner of our blog contest is Ian Pearson who won for his post
"Benign AI" at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/benign-ai
He wins a signed copy of "The Utopia Experiment" which tells the true
story of a real-life attempt to simulate life after the collapse of
global civilization. Learn about "The Utopia Experiment" at
http://amzn.to/1KO6BVM
New Blog Contest
Anyone who posts to our blog gets a chance to win a signed copy of "Edge
of Dark".
What if a society banished its worst nightmare to the far edge of the
solar system, destined to sip only dregs of light and struggle for the
barest living. And yet, that life thrived? It grew and learned and
became far more than you ever expected, and it wanted to return to the
sun. What if it didn't share your moral compass in any way? Learn about
"Edge of Dark" at http://amzn.to/16IfFLV
The deadline for the contest is April 30. If you need access to our
blog, send an email with the subject of "Lifeboat Foundation blog" to
Blog
Ian D. Pearson joins our blog team with the post "Benign AI" at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/benign-ai
Other recent interesting blog posts include:
"Best tribute to Leonard Nimoy--from a real spaceship!" by Eric Klien at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/best-t...paceship
"Bitcoin's Unique Features Lighten Up its Ambiguous Future" by Chris
Evans at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/bitcoi...s-future
"Blockchains as a Granular Universal Transaction System" by Rob
Chamberlain at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/blockc...n-system
"The Coming Boom In Brain Medicines" by Seb at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/the-co...edicines
"Lifeboat Foundation — Futurism Update" by Andres Agostini at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/future..._26_2015
"The Rise of Supranational Governance" by Travis Patron at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/the-ri...vernance
"What happens when computers, not teachers, pick what students learn?"
by Seb at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/what-h...ts-learn
"World's Data Could Fit on a Teaspoon-Sized DNA Hard Drive and Survive
Thousands of Years" by Seb at
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/02/worlds...of-years
Growing Membership
Recent donations/pledges we have received since our last newsletter:
Humberto Castaneda: $200,
Michael Dickey: $85,
Sergio M.L. Tarrero: $85,
Philippe Van Nedervelde: $85,
Kenneth P. Weiss: $85,
Matthew L. McGuirl: $25,
Lawrence Uhlin: $25,
Rebecca R. Cooper: $10,
Thomas Dolphin: $10,
Alexander Macrae: $10,
Aaron Mayzes: $10,
Anonymous: $10,
Philip Morehead: $10,
Roland Schiefer: $10,
and Kelley White-Ricks: $10.
Our Join Us page at https://lifeboat.com/ex/join.us now allows you to
pay for your membership anywhere from monthly to every ten years.
