This is an image of the new Mobile Launcher for NASA's Space Launch System, which will be used to return humans to the moon, then on to Mars, sitting on top of the Crawler-Transporter at Kennedy Space Center's historic LC39B where both Apollo and the Space Shuttle launched in the past. The newly completed tower was moved out to the pad for the first time for its first fit check and initial testing. The full resolution image is available at my Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/LUrfmZ

Chairman Opik closed the meeting with a brief review of the translation services that were trialed and the topics covered during the meeting. After reviewing the action steps next needed to be taken, Chairman Opik reminded the MPs of the next weekly meeting time.

Humans evolved to educate themselves — not sit in rows. All normal children are intensely curious, playful and sociable, beginning at birth or shortly after. A fourth drive, which we might call "planfulness" — the drive to think about and make plans for the future–emerges and strengthens as children grow older. It is reasonable to refer to these drives as the "educative drives". The biological foundations of these drives, encoded in DNA, have been shaped by natural selection, over our evolutionary history, to serve the purpose of education. Our standard schools quite deliberately suppress these drives, especially the first three of them, in the interest of promoting conformity and keeping children fixed to the school’s curriculum. Self Directed Education operate by allowing these natural drives to flourish. Here is a bit of elaboration on each of these drives and how they interact with one another to promote education: CURIOSITY Aristotle began his great work on the origin of knowledge (Metaphysica) with the words, “Human beings are naturally curious about things.” Nothing could be truer. We are intensely curious, from the moment of our birth to, in many cases, the moment of our death. Within hours of birth, infants begin to look longer at novel objects than at those they have already seen. As they gain mobility, first with their arms and hands and then their legs, they use that mobility to explore ever-larger realms of their environment. They want to understand the objects in their environment, and they particularly want to know what they can do with those objects. That’s why they are continuously getting into things, always exploring. That’s why, once they have language, they ask so many questions. Such curiosity does not diminish as children grow older, unless schooling quashes it, but continues to motivate ever more sophisticated modes of exploration and experimentation. Children are, by nature, scientists. PLAYFULNESS The drive to play serves educative purposes complementary to those of curiosity. While curiosity motivates children to seek new knowledge and understanding, playfulness motivates them to practice new skills and use those skills creatively. Children everywhere, when they are free to do so and have plenty of playmates, spend enormous amounts of time playing. They play to have fun, not deliberately to educate themselves, but education is the side effect for which the strong drive to play came about in the course of evolution. They play at the full range of skills that are crucial to their long-term survival and wellbeing. They play in physical ways, as they climb, chase, and rough-and-tumble, and that is how they develop strong bodies and graceful movement. They play in risky ways, and that is how they learn to manage fear and develop courage. They play with language, and that is how they become competent with language. They play socially, with other children, and that is how they learn to negotiate, compromise, and get along with peers. They play games with implicit or explicit rules, and that is how they learn to follow rules. They play imaginative games, and that is how they learn to think hypothetically and creatively. They play with logic, and that is how they become logical. They play at building things, and that is how they learn to build. They play with the tools of their culture, and that is how they become skilled at using those tools. Play is not recess from education; it IS education. Children learn far more in play, and with far more joy, than they could possibly learn in a classroom. SOCIABILITY We humans are not only the most curious and playful of mammals, but also the most social. Our children come into the world with an instinctive understanding that their survival and wellbeing depend on their ability to connect with and learn from other people. All humans, but especially young humans, want to know what those around them know and share their own thoughts and knowledge with others. Anthropologists report that children everywhere learn more by watching and listening to the people around them than through any other means.[1] Our most unique adaptation for social life, which enhances tremendously our ability to learn from one another, is language. Almost as soon as they can talk at all, children start to ask questions. They don’t want to be told about things that don’t interest them, but they almost demand to be told about things that do. Language allows us to share all sorts of information with one another. It allows us to tell one another not just about the here and now, but also about the past, future, and hypothetical. As the philosopher Daniel Dennett put it in a chapter on language and intelligence, “Comparing our brains with bird brains or dolphin brains is almost beside the point, because our brains are in effect joined together into a single cognitive system that dwarfs all others. They are joined by an innovation that has invaded our brain and no others: language.”[2] Self-directed learners, eagerly and naturally, hook themselves into that network. Today, because of the Internet, that cognitive system is bigger than ever before. Young people with access to the Internet have access to the whole world of hypotheses, ideas, and information. Self-Directed Education has never been easier. PLANFULNESS We, far more than any other species, have the capacity to think ahead. In fact, we are driven to do so. We don’t just react to immediate conditions; we make plans and follow through on those plans. This is the most consciously cognitive of our basic educative drives, and it develops more slowly than the others. As children grow older, they become increasingly able and motivated to plan ahead, and ever farther ahead. This is the drive that leads self-directed learners to think about their life goals, big and small, and to deliberately seek out the knowledge and practice the skills needed to achieve those goals. Cognitive scientists refer to this capacity to make plans and carry them out as self-directed executive functioning. Research by such scientists has shown that children who have ample free time to play and explore on their own and with other children, independent of adults, develop this capacity more fully than do children who spend more time in adult-structured activities.[3] That is not surprising. When children create their own activities, without adult control, they are continuously practicing the ability to make plans and carry them out. They make mistakes, but they learn from those mistakes. [by Prof. Dr. Peter Gray] [1] Lancy, D. F., Bock, J., & Gaskins, S. (2010). Putting learning into context. In D. F. Lancy, J. Bock, & S. Gaskins (Eds.), The anthropology of learning in childhood, 3–10. AltaMira Press. [2] Dennett, D. C. (1994). Language and intelligence. In J. Khalfa (Ed.), What is intelligence? Cambridge University Press. [3] Barker, J. et al (2014). Less-structured time in children’s lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1-16.

Super excited about asgadiatv.com I created my own channel and will start uploading my videos to it. My first contribution : https://asgardiatv.com/v/72?channelName=Riebens

Hello dear Asgardians, What do you think about building cities for Asgardia on the sea like the Oceanix city project ? With this, we'll have our true (and first) sovereign territory. This is compatible with our national constitution (article 5, point 3 of the constitution). The link of the Oceanix cities project : https://oceanix.org/

Congratulations to the honorees and all participants in the "Bridge to Space" Art Competition, the artworks were all notable and it was a great success overall. asgardia.space/news/Bridge-to-Space-Results-Announced?-link

The national memory is a form of collective memory defined by shared experiences and culture. It is an integral part of national identity. It is a collective collection of what we have seen, what we will witness, and what we wish to tell our future generations. The reality check is that our generation will not go to space (hopefully I am wrong) and maybe I am too early with this idea, but to collect and archive our most valued moments and achievements are of utmost importance. So to tackle this, I would actually suggest making a digital platform that houses the information and events that we witness. Most things happen digitally, after all, something physical is not yet at hand. We will cross that bridge when it comes to it. Maybe to explore the possibilities of an interactive page of key milestone moments that are very important to us. What do you all think?

Currently we do not have sovereign terrestrial territory and I believe we never will. That leaves us with "digital territory", and there the sky is the limit. The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States supports the declarative theory of statehood ( and nationhood) in that we are a nation because we say so and do not need the acceptance of others to be such. The first sentence of Article 3 explicitly states that "The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states." I am attending the US Space Force and Air Force Legal Conference, and one of the subjects that came up: When a city is created on another orbiting body, moon or mars - and permanent habitation is achieved, does that make them a state in their own right, as no earth state can claim sovereignty in space? This idea and thinking was offered by a law professor of the university of Nebraska, and the idea is also used in a lot of his exams for legal and military students. Think of the future that holds and how that works or can work to the advantage of Asgardia as a nation without any earth territory where we are not bound by the Outer Space Treaty on current earth nations.