Lifeboat Foundation

Our Space Apps London hosts Inmarsat are launching today with a SpaceX rocket!

The SpaceX Falcon 9 🚀 has been raised to launch position and we are go for #I5F4 lift-off at 19:20 EDT/00:20 BST today! Watch all the live action here: http://www.inmarsat.com/i5f4/

Quantum communication is a strange beast, but one of the weirdest proposed forms of it is called counterfactual communication — a type of quantum communication where no particles travel between two recipients.

Theoretical physicists have long proposed that such a form of communication would be possible, but now, for the first time, researchers have been able to experimentally achieve it — transferring a black and white bitmap image from one location to another without sending any physical particles.

Continue reading “Scientists Achieve Direct Counterfactual Quantum Communication For The First Time” »

Sometimes, albeit rarely, people object to rejuvenation biotechnologies saying that ageing has its pluses too, thus subtly implying that we should leave it alone in order not to lose these pluses. The thing is, they’re not talking about the same kind of ageing that science is trying to undo. They’re mixing up chronological and biological ageing, and they’re not at all the same thing.

This objection is very simple to explain and even simpler to dismantle, because it boils down to a gross misunderstanding.

Whoever raises this objection generally says that with ageing comes experience, that later in life people are generally happier, more accomplished, and so on. I have nothing to object to that, except that all those nice things are a (possible) consequence of chronological ageing, most definitely not of biological ageing. It is not very often that people mix the two up, but at times they do, so let us clarify once and for all what the difference is.

Chronological ageing is nothing more, nothing less than the passing of time. Becoming chronologically older simply means that the time you’ve existed for is getting longer. There’s nothing wrong with it, and no one (to my knowledge) wants to stop, ‘cure’, or reverse chronological ageing—especially because that would be a bit complicated to do and it would have annoying side-effects, such as time freezing or rewinding your life back to your elementary school years, possibly dragging the entire universe along, and would do nothing to eliminate the ill health of old age. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun—and I speak as a chap with a thing for time travel.

Continue reading “Ageing has its good sides” »

This is an extensive new interview on my major platform proposal to eliminate all poverty in California (and eventually the nation) and to restore the massive wealth of government resources to your wallet. Also, I’m currently calling this a Federal Land Dividend, as that name sits better with libertarians, though it is of course a new way of paying (withut raising taxes) a #basicincome to everyone. It will also massively jumpstart the economy and end the healthcare affordability issues, since everyone would be able to afford healthcare.

Zoltan Istvan is running for governor of California in 2018 and has made headlines for his proposal to develop California lands and use the revenue to form a Universal Basic Income for all California households.

Continue reading “Interview: California gubernatorial candidate proposes state-wide basic income” »

Happy Birthday to Elie Metchnikoff the father of modern Gerontology and an inspiration to those working on rejuvention biotechnology.

May 15th is the birthday of Elie Metchnikoff, famous Russian/French scientist, a vice director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908 (together with Paul Ehrlich) for his work on Immunity in infectious diseases. But healthy longevity supporters know him for another achievement: a strong statement he made regarding aging, that helped to ignite interest in aging research for the next century. In his 1903 book “Studies of optimism” he wrote: “Aging is a disease that should be treated like any other”. Today to commemorate Elie Metchnikoff’s input in the development of gerontology we will talk with Dr. Ilia Stambler, the author of the book “A History of Life-extensionism in the Twentieth Century” and likely the only expert on the history of the longevity movement in the world.

Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Stambler. First, could you please tell us a little more about the studies of Elie Metchnikoff? He is most of all recognised as a pioneer in immunology, what are the main discoveries he made? And how are they related to his understanding of aging as a disease?

Continue reading “Commemorating the Work of Dr. Elie Metchnikoff – Founder of Gerontology” »

Al Globus and Joe Strout have an analysis that space settlements in low (~500 km) Earth equatorial orbits may not require any radiation shielding at all. This is based on a careful analysis of requirements and extensive simulation of radiation effects. This radically reduces system mass and has profound implications for space settlement, as extraterrestrial mining and manufacturing are no longer on the critical path to the first settlements, although they will be essential in later stages. It also means the first settlements can evolve from space stations, hotels, and retirement communities in relatively small steps.

This huge reduction in total mass compensates for the greater energetic difficulty of launching materials from Earth to ELEO as opposed to launching from the Moon to L5, the design location of the Stanford Torus. In the early studies, the Earth­Moon L5 point was chosen as the location of a settlement for the energetic advantage of launching materials from the Moon. Going from the Moon to L5 requires a delta­-v 3 of 2.3 km/sec, and going from Earth to 500 km ELEO is 10 km/sec [Cassell 2015]. Using the velocity squared as our energy measure, Earth to ELEO requires 19 times more energy per unit mass. Analysis suggests that at least 19 times less mass is needed if no radiation shielding is required. Thus, the energetic advantage to launching the mass of a settlement with deep space radiation shielding from the Moon to L5 is balanced by launching far less mass from Earth if no radiation shielding is necessary.

A 500 km circular ELEO using polyethylene shielding was analyzed. Even at 10 kg/m2 shielding, the equivalent of which is very likely to be provided by any reasonable hull, the 20 mSv/yr and 6.6 mGy/yr are met. Indeed, with no shielding at all the general population limit is met and the pregnancy limit is very nearly met. This has an interesting consequence: spacewalks in ELEO may be safe enough from a radiation point of view to be a significant recreational activity.

Continue reading “Towards an Economically Viable roadmap to large scale space colonization” »

Moon Express is one of only two teams in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition with a verified launch contract for its 2017 lunar mission. In October 2015, Moon Express announced that it had signed the worlds’ first multi-mission launch contract with Rocket Lab USA for 3 lunar missions between 2017 and 2020.

Moon Express sees the moon as critical for humanity to become a multi-world species, and that our sister world, the Moon, is an eighth continent holding vast resources than can help us enrich and secure our future.

MoonEx had been planning to place the International Lunar Observatory (ILO) on the Moon as early as 2018. The plan calls for placement of both a 2 meters (6 ft 7 in) radio telescope as well as an optical telescope at the South Pole of the Moon.

Continue reading “Moon as unprospected eighth continent that will produce trillionaires” »

Far out —

Forget Mars—let’s go colonize Titan!

The book Beyond Earth says we’re looking too close to home for our space colonies.

Continue reading “Forget Mars—let’s go colonize Titan!” »