Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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The U.N. human rights chief is calling for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including face-scanning systems that track people in public spaces.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said Wednesday that countries should expressly ban AI applications which don’t comply with international human rights law.

Applications that should be prohibited include government “social scoring” systems that judge people based on their behavior and certain AI-based tools that categorize people into clusters such as by ethnicity or gender.

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Civilian Space Development has kicked-off: the work begins now!

Newsletter 17.09.2021 by Bernard Foing & Adriano V. Autino

During the last months we have seen the first civilian passengers fly to space, onboard Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic vehicles. September 15th, four civilian astronauts, onboard a Space X Dragon capsule, passed the 500 km orbit, more than 100 km higher than the ISS.In 2016 we started to publicly talk about and promote Civilian Space Development, while the whole space community kept on talking only about space exploration. Earlier, in 2,008 we founded the Space Renaissance movement, and a couple of years later the Space Renaissance International, as a philosophical association targeted to complete the Kopernican Revolution, supporting the Civilization expansion into space. Nowadays the concept of civilian space flight is everywhere on the media, and many people in the space community talk about a space renaissance. Of course the Coronavirus pandemics accelerated the awareness of the urgency to expand humanity into outer space. And space tourism — the first stage of civilian space settlement — is now a reality, in its first steps.

Of course nobody could be more happy than ourselves, for the above development, and of course**2 we want to congratulate with Elon, Richard and Jeff, for such a great achievement!

So, may we consider that our mission has been completed? Let’s see.

Firstly, were those crews composed by regular travelers, like normal air-flight passengers? Not exactly. The Inspiration4 crew members received astronaut training, for many months, including lessons in orbital mechanics, operating in a microgravity, stress testing, emergency preparedness training, and mission simulations. They have studied over 90 different kinds of training guides and manuals and lessons to learn to fly Crew Dragon, and what to do under emergency situations. The legal aspects are not clear: did FAA quickly authorize Space X and Blue Origin to deal commercial space flights? Doubt is more than legitimate, considering the long procedure followed by Virgin Galactic to be authorized to transport paying passengers in space. Likely, these first “civilian” passengers — like the first orbital tourist Dennis Tito did in 2001 — accepted conditions similar to the military astronauts (i.e. zero rights and warrants).

Therefore, we cannot say that the first “civilians” has gone to space. Yes, they are not military, but (i) they needed a hard astronautic training and (ii) they don’t have the rights and warrants given by air-flight companies to their passengers. It means, basically, that the vehicles are still more suitable to transport astronauts means than civilian passengers.

A lot of work is still to be done, to allow civilians to travel, live and work in space. And the real implementation of such work depends mostly on the right political decisions, and from the support by public opinion. We still need to fight against the fake news, the opposers, the misconceptions, the so many apparently reasonable objections to human expansion into outer space.

Our recently closed 3rd World Congress, significantly titled “The Civilian Space Development” approved a final resolution, including, among other, some relevant points. Some excerpts: * To allow a quick and smooth transition from the space exploration to the space settlement paradigm, **there are scientific works to be done with more energy and investments**, technologies to be consolidated and enhanced, collaborations to be agreed and pursued, in a spirit of a global support to the greatest enterprise of all times: the sustainable renaissance of our civilization in the outer space. * **Not going back, but going forward to the Moon**: develop proper industrial infrastructure to produce fuel in space, from lunar and asteroid materials, also mining resources such as water, rare earths, precious metals and Helium-3. * **Space debris recovery and reuse**. It is not only a necessary and overdue cleaning action. Starting the reuse of space debris is a bootstrapping point for Earth orbit industry, signaling the transition from a worthy public environmental initiative to the first orbital industrial business. * **Enhance life protection in space**. Radiation from our sun and deep galactic cosmic rays represent a big threat to health and reproduction. Humans cannot travel and live in space for long time and distances without proper protection. * **Start experimenting with simulated gravity**. It can be done by rotating connected modules, as an initial method: we need to learn a great deal about the effects of different diameters and rotation speeds on human perception, psychology and physical conditions. * **Keep on supporting the development of 100% reusable space vehicles**. Low cost, safe and reliable passenger space transportation vehicles. * **Support the space tourism industries** and their effort to develop civilian space travel and accommodations (hotels), turning the aeronautic experience into profit. * **To add an 18th SDG, bootstrap the civilian space development**, to UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In order to make the 17 SDG feasible and sustainable.”

Promoting the above key concepts, we strongly focus on inspiring and involving younger generations, to empower their growth and inspire them on their path to space.

SRI President — prof. Foing — was attending Luxembourg Space Forum on 14 Sept, and discussed projects and collaborations with industries, academia and entrepreneurs present there. He will give a keynote talk at SUTUS Space & Underwater Tourism Universal Summit on 22 Sept.

Our SRI webinar will host Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin on 4 October. Also see the SR Academy webinar series calendar.

SRI is co-organizer of events, and will talk to partners at IAC Dubai on 25–29 October. Several SRI members will present papers. Btw, we’re seeking for sponsors, **to support our mission to IAC 2021**.

https://spacerenaissance.space/space-renaissance-at-iac-2021-in-dubai/

In summary, we started to talk about space renaissance 13 years ago, and about civilians in space 5 years ago… Our 3rd Congress was fully centered on Civilian Space Development, it was a great success, and we have elected a new President and a new Board of Directors… Yet, we’re still a small organization, with many tens of thousands of followers but less than 100 registered members.

We need our many thousands followers to **join the SRI Crew as members,** and help us bringing SRI to its deserved place, in the galaxy of space advocacy! That will not cost too much to each member, yet it will allow us to better develop our programmes!

https://spacerenaissance.space/membership/international-membership-registration/

Keep on following and supporting the Space Renaissance!

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The UK government has approved Europe’s first field trials of Crispr-edited wheat. The experiments will be conducted in Hertfordshire by the agricultural science institute Rothamsted Research.

The Rothamsted project is aiming to produce wheat with lower levels of the amino acid asparagine. When bread is baked or toasted, asparagine is converted into acrylamide – a carcinogenic contaminant that requires close monitoring under EU law.

Laboratory and greenhouse studies have already shown Crispr can be used to create wheat plants that produce much lower levels of asparagine. Rothamsted Research says that the new five-year project will examine ‘how the plants fare in the field and whether asparagine concentrations continue to be low in grain produced under field conditions’.

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TEPCO has been repeatedly criticized for coverups and delayed disclosures of problems at the plant. In February, it said two seismometers at one reactor had remained broken since last year and failed to collect data during a powerful earthquake.

TOKYO (AP) — Officials at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant have acknowledged they neglected to investigate the cause of faulty exhaust filters that are key to preventing radioactive pollution, after being forced to replace them twice.

Representatives of the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, made the revelation Monday during a regular review of the Fukushima Daiichi plant at a meeting with Japanese regulatory authorities. Three reactors at the plant melted following a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

The filters are designed to prevent particles from escaping into the air from a contaminated water treatment system — called Advanced Liquid Processing System — that removes selected radioactive isotopes in the water to below legal limits.

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Good info.

Nobody is exempt from misunderstanding scientific concepts and/or applying them incorrectly. Statistics from the National Science Board show that Americans scored an average of 5.6 over 9 true-or-false and multiple-choice science-related questions in 2016. Because of the low number of questions, the study is better at differentiating low and medium levels of knowledge than those with higher levels of knowledge. However, the results weren’t much different in previous studies, suggesting that Americans generally have had the same basic levels of science literacy since the beginning of the century.

In this context, we’d like to clear up and emphasize the distinctions between scientific hypothesis, theory, and law, and why you shouldn’t use these terms interchangeably.

Hypothesis: the core of the scientific method

The scientific method is an empirical procedure that consists of systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. It’s a process that’s meant to ensure that the collection of evidence, results, and conclusions are not biased by subjective views and can be repeated consistently by others.

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South Korea’s parliament has approved a bill that will make it the first country to impose curbs on Google and Apple’s payment policies that force developers to only use the tech giants’ proprietary billing systems.

The legislation will become law once signed by President Moon Jae-in, whose party has been a vocal supporter of the bill.

Apple and Google’s policies usually require developers to pay the tech giants a commission as high as 30% of every transaction.

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“I think it’s changed everything, and I think it’s changed everything fundamentally,” James Livingston, a history professor at Rutgers University and the author of No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea, told Vox.

We’ll (probably) always have work, but could the job as the centerpiece of American life be on the way out?

To understand the question, you have to know how the country got to where it is today. The story starts, to some degree, with a failure. Much of American labor law — as well as the social safety net, such as it is — stems from union organizing and progressive action at the federal level in the 1930s, culminating in the New Deal. At that time, many unions were pushing for a national system of pensions not dependent on jobs, as well as national health care, Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, told Vox. They did win Social Security, but with many people left out, such as agricultural and domestic workers, it wasn’t a full nationwide retirement system. And when it came to universal health care, they lost entirely.

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El Salvador began installing Bitcoin ATMs, allowing its citizens to convert the cryptocurrency into U.S. dollars and withdraw it in cash, as part of the government’s plan to make the token legal tender.

The government will install 200 of the teller machines to initially accompany its digital wallet called Chivo, a local slang term for ‘cool,’ President Nayib Bukele said on Twitter. Transactions will be commission free, he said, adding that there will also be 50 financial branches across the country for withdrawing or depositing money.

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A pesticide that’s been linked to neurological damage in children, including reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders, has been banned by the Biden administration following a years-long legal battle.

Agency officials issued a final ruling on Wednesday saying chlorpyrifos can no longer be used on the food that makes its way onto American dinner plates. The move overturns a Trump-era decision.

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