Trans-Future: Speculation - Upcoming stories

The Terasem Movement 4th Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

I’m in Melbourne Beach, Florida, for the 4th Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons. As one might assume from the title, this is a legally focused gathering, and addresses legal issues related to cryonics patients, cyborgs, artificial biological intelligent beings, enhanced human beings, and artificial intelligences. I’m attending to record the whole thing and summarize it for those that aren’t here. Our gracious hostesses are Martine Rothblatt and Bina Aspen Rothblatt, who covered all our expenses and put us up in a nice hotel on the beach, with fantastic views of the Atlantic Ocean and the palm tree-covered residential areas of Melbourne Beach. Martine Rothblatt, our hostess, opens us up with an intro to the conference. She’s wearing video eyeglasses invented by the famous Steve Mann. They’re continuously taking video and beaming it to the Internet, an example of sousveillance. She’s also showing us how it can be beamed directly to the big LCD screen at the front of the room. Pretty cool… I think I’d want these if I were a political protester in danger of being attacked by overly enthusiastic riot cops.

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Contact with extraterrestrial life by 2025?

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO--If you're one of the many people who doubt there's intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, or even someone who thinks there is but that it will take centuries to find it, get ready to be surprised. "We'll find E.T. within two dozen years," senior SETI astronomer Seth Shostak said Tuesday night at an event held at Yahoo's Brickhouse here. That is, he said, if the assumptions of many researchers within the SETI Institute are correct, assumptions that are based on a collision of computing power under Moore's Law and the distance into space we can look with new instruments that will be available to researchers in the years to come.

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Space Elevator by 2030 Possible

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

Space elevator: audacious idea will open space to entrepreneurs By Dick Pelletier “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Space Elevator. Your first stop will be ‘Hotel Row’ where we will enjoy a 2-hour dinner under the stars; then we continue on to the Geosynchronous Way Station where most of you will transfer to an L-5 Colony shuttlecraft. This entire ride takes 8 days, so sit back and enjoy the trip from your luxury sleeping quarters”. This scene may sound like science fiction, but it is not. According to visionaries, the Space Elevator, a revolutionary means of transport from Earth to space could become reality by as early as 2030 or before.

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Virgin unveils spaceship designs

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

Virgin Galactic has released the final design of the launch system that will take fare-paying passengers into space. It is based on the X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne concept - a rocket ship that is lifted initially by a carrier plane before blasting skywards. The Virgin system is essentially a refinement, but has been increased in size to take eight people at a time on a sub-orbital trip, starting in 2010. Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson said the space business had huge potential.

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The Future of Space

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

Space Tourism Have you ever dreamed of going to space? In the past, if you wanted to leave this planet you had to dedicate your life to becoming an astronaut. Even then, there is only a select few that ever get to see Earth in the rear view mirror. That could all change soon thanks to Virgin Galactic

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Space elevator needs a boost

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

I’ve been attending the 2008 Space Elevator Conference being held at Microsoft’s Redmond campus this weekend. The many talks and papers given there clearly demonstrate the tremendous dedication and creative engineering that can be found in this nascent field. For those of you who are fuzzy on the concept, the general idea of the space elevator involves running a tether from the surface of the earth to geosynchronous orbit and beyond. A mechanical “climber” then ascends and descends the tether, delivering payloads into orbit. If this sounds like science fiction, that’s because until recently, it was. Independently conceived by a Russian (Artsutanov) and an American (Pearson), the space elevator concept was popularized by the late science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke in his 1979 novel, “The Fountains of Paradise”. At that time, no material was light enough and strong enough to make it possible. But with the developing field of nanotechnology and the discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a number of people have begun to take the idea more seriously. (For the record, Clarke is also credited with originating the idea of using geosynchronous satellites as telecommunications relays back in 1945, a concept that completely revolutionized communications.)

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SpaceX Successful Launch to Earth Orbit

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

We all would like some good news about the future. Here is some. One of the most impressive people I have met is Elon Musk, whom I have seen at Future In Review conferences. He was founder of PayPal as well as Zip2 Corporation, and after selling them poured his efforts and money into two primary endeavors, the all-electric car company Tesla Motors, and a private space launch company, SpaceX. When I heard Elon a couple of years ago as SpaceX was nearing its test flights, he sounded to me like my mentor as a futurist and speaker, Ed Lindaman, who had been director of program planning for Apollo. In other words, Elon sounded like a space guy as he talked enthusiastically and confidently about how his company would achieve the first private launches into orbit, and eventually would lead the way to Mars. Here is the good news, amazing news really. Late last month, SpaceX successfully launched the first private, liquid-fuel rocket into earth orbit. It carried a dummy payload, and demonstrated the tremendous progress that SpaceX has made in a few short years. You can watch the inspiring video of the launch here.

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New Eye to the Universe Under Construction

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

The LSST, or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is a large survey telescope being constructed in northern Chile. When operational in 2015, it will be the widest, fastest, deepest eye of the new digital age, providing timelapse digital imaging across the entire night sky every three days, mapping the structure of our dynamic universe in three dimensions and exploring the nature of dark matter and dark energy. LSST hit a major milestone in its construction when the primary mirror blank was recently created. Project astronomers say the single-piece primary and tertiary mirror blank cast for the LSST is "perfect."

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Terraforming

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:56 GMT

The terraforming (literally, "Earth-shaping") of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to those of Earth to make it habitable by humans. The term is sometimes used more generally as a synonym for planetary engineering. The concept of terraforming developed from both science fiction and actual science. The term was probably invented by Jack Williamson in a science-fiction story ("Collision Orbit") published during 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction,[1] but the actual concept pre-dates this work. Based on experiences with Earth, the environment of a planet can be altered deliberately: however the feasibility of creating an unconstrained planetary biosphere that mimics Earth on another planet has yet to be verified. Mars is considered by many to be the most likely candidate for terraformation. Much study has been done concerning the possibility of heating the planet and altering its atmosphere, and NASA has even hosted debates on the subject. Several potential methods of altering the climate of Mars may fall within humanity's technological capabilities, but at present the economic resources required to do so are far beyond that which any government or society is willing to allocate to the purpose. The long timescales and practicality of terraforming are the subject of debate. Other unanswered questions relate to the ethics, logistics, economics, politics and methodology of altering the environment of an extraterrestrial world.

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