Hi, I'm Daniel from Norway. In the banner above you can see a small portion of a terraformed planet that I made with a CGI program. The planet in this picture is Mars. I'm wondering why we want to make settlements on the Moon? It doesn't seem possible, at least not a settlement that could ever be independent from Earth. So why the Moon when Mars is a so much better choice? Mars has water(ice) that can be split into hydrogen and oxygen (air and fuel), an atmosphere that will give some limited protection against radiation, and gravity that will ensure our bones and heart stays relatively healthy.

Colonizing the moon seems like it would make for a very rough start. Why do that when we instead can colonize space itself by building a mobile space station? Many years ago I wrote up a plan on how to construct this based of the work of done on the buildtheenterprise website. This website tries very hard to maintain the Star Trek look, but the theory is sound enough, and if it's built without trying to make it look like Star Trek it could work even better. It would be the first mobile interplanetary space station that would work great as a staging platform not just for colonizing our solar system but also for launching mining operations and possibly even terraforming operations. It could be re-stocked in low Earth orbit, no need to send things all the way to the Moon, or to Mars. It could travel back and forth between Earth and Mars in a matter of months, maybe even less. The only problem, and it's a big one, is that this is estimated to cost about a trillion USD, and estimates are usually off by quite a bit. Even if it stays at that price, that's the entire savings fund of Norway.

If we're going to get serious about this, then quite a few things have to change around here. First of all, why Kingdom? Isn't Kingdom rather outdated for something that is supposed to be about the future? Do we really need to build another government mirroring the ones we already have? Shouldn't it be about finding new solutions? New ways of living?

I'll write more on this later, but even after just finding this page, I feel like the whole project needs a serious overhaul. Maybe I'll try to run for election one day and make a lot of changes. Anyway, something to think about. Thanks for reading, and have a nice day.

With innovative approaches to both technology and policy, Asgardia will lay the foundation for humanity as a spacefaring or even multiplanetary species. We need to ensure that this is done in a humane, orderly and sustainable way, and we've wasted enough time already. Let's make it happen.

My experience includes space station (see image) and launch vehicle design and engineering, as well as politics including basic income, sustainability and automated societies. These are things I would promote if elected.

While it plans to someday host a moon colony and space station, the proposed space-based nation Asgardia is starting small: The project will launch its first satellite this fall to store data for the nation's newly selected citizens. Some 200,000 were chosen from the more than 500,000 applicants.

During a press conference in Hong Kong on June 13, Asgardia's founder, Igor Ashurbeyli, revealed concrete details about the satellite: Asgardia-1 will be deployed from Orbital ATK's Cygnus OA-8 resupply spacecraft launching in September. The satellite is 10 x 20 x 20 centimeters (3.9 x 7.9 x 7.9 inches) and has eight batteries and four deployable solar arrays. It will orbit at up to 500 kilometers (310 miles) above Earth. Texas-based space-services firm NanoRacks acts as the satellite's prime contractor and operator.

Someday, Ashurbeyli said, he hopes to create a planetary-defense constellation that will help protect against asteroids, solar flares and human-made space debris; this satellite is just the first step.

During the conference, Ashurbeyli also described plans for a space station and moon colony. "We plan to have this station in space and on the moon," he said. "It will be a four-level orbital station. I think the technical details will be defined by the Ministry of Science, which I hope we will have in the autumn of this year."

Ashurbeyli didn't provide additional details, but Asgardia has released imagery of the potential off-Earth locations. One image shows a rotating-wheel space station alongside an interplanetary rocket, and another shows, presumably, the interior of that space station with a wall of windows, a canal and greenery. The rocket has a habitation module and a lunar lander that looks like a cross between the NASA Orion spacecraft and the 1960s Apollo program lunar lander.

The approved applicants for Asgardian citizenship will be invited to vote on a constitution for the space-based nation on June 18. At that time, Ashurbeyli said, the organs of the proposed state — the ministries, parliament and executive branch — should be created. Ashurbeyli is calling June 18 Asgardian National Unity Day, and the date will be a public holiday if the state is realized.

More than 500,000 people applied for Asgardian citizenship online within 20 days when the project was announced in October last year. The organizers removed ineligible people, such as children, and were left with almost 200,000 people from about 200 countries. (Now, the website lists more than 210,000.) The approved applicants have each received personal certificates of Asgardia and can vote to approve the lawyer-designed constitution on June 18. The constitution was published on June 13.

Of the citizenship applicants, 80 percent are men, and the largest demographic comprises 18- to 35-year-olds. While there are applicants from almost every country on Earth, China has the most applicants, followed by Turkey, then the United States and then Italy. People can register as prospective Asgardians on the website.

Asgardia is being funded by Ashurbeyli's nonprofit Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC), based in Vienna. He said he expects that once Asgardia's constitution is approved, the state will be built by its citizen volunteers and Asgardia will become self-funding. Ashurbeyli said he expects to file for United Nations recognition by April 2018, if Asgardia's parliament and government have been set up and the satellite launched before then, he said during the conference.

In the meantime, AIRC owns Asgardian intellectual property. The company will collect, analyze and fund ideas and startups in space technology for the benefit of Asgardia. Ashurbeyli is also offering 300KB of free data storage on board Asgardia-1 for Asgardian citizens. Family members, up to a maximum of 400,000 people, will get 200KB. Another 1 million people will get 100KB.

"Sixty years after the launch of the first-ever artificial satellite, Sputnik, our own space satellite, Asgardia-1, will mark the beginning of a new space era, taking our citizens into space in virtual form, at first," Ashurbeyli said.

Ram Jakhu, the director of McGill University's Institute of Air and Space Law in Montreal, is the Asgardia project team legal expert. During the conference, he told the press that the Asgardian data stored on Asgardia-1 would be subject to U.S. privacy laws. The Asgardians' data will also be stored on future Asgardian satellites.