Lifeboat Foundation

The precursor to manned space exploration of new worlds is typically unmanned exploration, and NASA has made phenomenal progress with remote controlled rovers on the Martian surface in recent years with MER-A Spirit, MER-B Opportunity and now MSL Curiosity. However, for all our success in reliance on AI in such rovers — similar if not more advanced to AI technology we see around us in the automotive and aviation industries — such as operational real-time clear-air turbulence prediction in aviation — such AI is typically to aid control systems and not mission-level decision making. NASA still controls via detailed commands transmitted to the rover directly from Earth, typically 225 kbit/day of commands are transmitted to the rover, at a data rate of 1–2 kbit/s, during a 15 minute transmit window, with larger volumes of data collected by the rover returned via satellite relay — a one-way communication that incorporates a delay of on average 12 or so light minutes. This becomes less and less practical the further away the rover is.

If for example we landed a similar rover on Titan in the future, I would expect the current method of step-by-step remote control would render the mission impractical — Saturn being typically at least 16 times more distant — dependent on time of year.

With the tasks of the science labs well determined in advance, it should be practical to develop AI engines to react to hazards, change course of analysis dependent on data processed — and so on — the perfect playground for advanced AI programmes. The current Curiosity mission incorporates tasks such as 1. Determine the mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials. 2. Attempt to detect chemical building blocks of life (bio-signatures). 3. Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils. 4. Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes. 5. Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide. 6. Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons. All of these are very deterministic processes in terms of mapping results to action points, which could be the foundation for shaping such into an AI learning engine, so that such rovers can be entrusted with making their own mission-level decisions on next phases of exploration based on such AI analyses.

Whilst the current explorations on Mars works quite well with the remote control strategy, it would show great foresight for NASA to engineer such unmanned rovers to operate in a more independent fashion with AI operating the mission-level control — learning to adapt to its environment as it explores the terrain, with only the return-link in use in the main — to relay back the analyzed data — and the low-bandwidth control-link reserved for maintenance and corrective action only. NASA has taken great strides in the last decade with unmanned missions. One can expect the next generation to be even more fascinating — and perhaps a trailblazer for advanced AI based technology.

Whether via spintronics or some quantum breakthrough, artificial intelligence and the bizarre idea of intellects far greater than ours will soon have to be faced.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819153743.htm

http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/solar/concentrating-solar/ni…tinue.html

Cover the deserts in solar energy plants and use electric trains for our transportation infrastructure; the best future I can imagine. A favorite Einstein quote is “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Perhaps the number we are counting that counts is the amount of energy it would require for a future population of 10 billion people to live like we do in the west.

I was surprised to find a statement to the effect that only one method of generating this energy is practical; solar energy beamed to Earth from the Moon; from wiki–

Continue reading “Ivanpah as the future” »

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre87f15x-us-california-gmo/

Filthy Lucre will certainly destroy us all if we cannot even pass a law that makes food companies tell us what they are feeding us.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815131137.htm

One more step has been taken toward making whole body cryopreservation a practical reality. An understanding of the properties of water allows the temperature of the human body to be lowered without damaging cell structures.

Just as the microchip revolution was unforeseen the societal effects of suspending death have been overlooked completely.

The first successful procedure to freeze a human being and then revive that person without damage at a later date will be the most important single event in human history. When that person is revived he or she will awaken to a completely different world.

Continue reading “Approaching the Great Rescue” »

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120814121119.htm

Just as the tax incentives that expired after the Carter Administration destroyed a whole new industry, and just as bio fuels recently turned into the bio bomb, wind energy is poised to crash.

We just will not stop destroying our future.

A coal fired power plant runs for years with very little maintenance, without being shut down or started up- the boilers make steam and turn the turbines and we cannot see the stars because we might as well burn those city lights all night long. It is impossible to compete with black rock you dig out of the ground and put on a train and turn into dependable cheap electricity.

Continue reading “Boom and Bust for Wind Energy” »

AI scientist Hugo de Garis has prophesied the next great historical conflict will be between those who would build gods and those who would stop them.

It seems to be happening before our eyes as the incredible pace of scientific discovery leaves our imaginations behind.

We need only flush the toilet to power the artificial mega mind coming into existence within the next few decades. I am actually not intentionally trying to write anything bizarre- it is just this strange planet we are living on.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813155525.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813123034.htm

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-impact-crater-arctic.html

They found yet another reason to build nuclear interceptors to deflect asteroids and comet impact threats.

Sooner or later something is going to hit us. It could be like Tunguska in 1908 and destroy a city instead of a forest in Siberia- or it could be like what hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago.

Except just a little bigger and nothing larger than bacteria will survive. There is nothing written anywhere that says it will not happen tomorrow.

Continue reading “One Hundred and Eighty Impact Craters” »

This essay was posted previously last year and removed and has appeared in abridged form in the European Space Safety online Magazine and can also be found on Yahoo voices.

Several dates are cited as marking the beginning of the space age. Sputnik, October 4th, 1957, Yuri’s day April 12th, 1961, and the first successful V-2 launch by the Nazis on October 3rd, 1942, to name a few. Some prefer December 21st, 1968, when human beings first escaped the Earth’s gravitational field on Apollo 8. When studying the events that allowed man to leave Earth, future historians may agree on a date not generally associated with space flight. July 16th, 1945 was Trinity, the first nuclear weapon test. Stanislaw Ulam, a 36-year-old Polish mathematician who helped build “the gadget”, visited ground zero after the test. Ulam later conceived the idea of propelling a spaceship with atomic bombs. Near the end of his life the eccentric genius stated the idea was his greatest work.

When considering nuclear propulsion, it must be understood that space is not an ocean, though often characterized as one. The distances and conditions are not comparable. While chemical energy has allowed humankind to travel across and above the surface of Earth, the energy required to travel in space is of a different order. Water, in the form of steam, was the agent of change that brought about the industrial revolution. Fossil fuel, burned and transformed by steam into mechanical work, would radically change the world in the span of a century. What is difficult for moderns to understand is not only how limited human capabilities were before steam, but how limited they are in the present in terms of space travel. The psychological limits of human beings limit space journeys to a few years. Chemical propulsion is not capable of taking human beings to the outer solar system and back within those crew limits. The solution is a reaction one million times more powerful. Nuclear energy is to the space age as steam was to the industrial age.

Continue reading “Water and Bombs again” »