Look, I can't confirm that Asgardian Solars actually exist on the Blockchain. If the Solars that are referred to in this thread are a coincidence, and I don't see the Asgardian Solar on Coinbase, then it seems to me that this Coin is Fictional, and all payments are just made in Euro. Why are you faking a Coin? Just say that the fee requires Euro.

I don't know about no computer is safe, I've things that've never seen the interwebs and the last time it was powered up was well before the days of persistent firmware infections and it's too old for other modern plagues. But certainly, some things are less safe than others. The "low tech" solution has been used by countries such as Russia, as they've broken out the old mechanical typewriters in the 21'st century because even the best side channel attacks fail on a room full of them operating, and such areas are regularly swept for external devices. The long term solution - as Russia is doing (Baikal) - is to develop our own hardware from scratch, that is absent things like onchip 3G that the user never gets the number for that dials directly into the core controlling the other cores or onchip software like VNC. Or at least make the embedded hardware secure instead of intentionally remotely breachable. One thing I've been meaning to devel for many months is something similar to a "USB condom" but for power sockets, so Faraday caged equipement can run without using the power lines as a communications medium once the smartmeter epidemic reaches a scale where even the power supply isn't trustable. Things like embedding nasties into the CPU is actually yesterdays news - currently the focus is on the likes of sensors, packing as much equipment into the smallest remotely acessible package possible.

The only system safe from hacking is the one you cannot reach. In space, it would be sort of obvious whether or not someone had 'reached' you. Limit communications to a dedicated system purely used for external communications. That way, if things are 'hacked' only the external comms would be affected and can be reset. Have everything else be isolated into pocketed systems, with no one central computer running everything. If information needs to be relayed, use people. Sure, it isn't uberfast or efficient, but such a system would be hack-proof and still be useful.

My short answer: is not at this time and I don't see the utility and messing with the ONE moon Earth has. In the short term, I'd like to see Asgardia get a satellite up, lets do Goal #1 before jumping ahead to Goal # 264. I think down the line it might be worth doing a colony or other long term experiments on other moons comparable to our own, maybe Phobos or Deimos of Mars at some point might be worth trying something like that. All that being said, please don't let my gruffness bother you. We should all dream big and continue to look at the stars while imagining new ways of doing things. However, we should keep our actions grounded in a systematic process to achieve the stated (current) goals of Asgardia. Sincerely, Manny

From what I have read in the past I don't see the Moon ever being colonized. It is just not suitable for us humans to sustain a colony with no atmosphere and no fertile land. It's a complete barren satellite. Not to mention it would cost to build and maintain a colony there far more than Mars. If such a feat were possible we would have had a colony by now on the Moon but we don't. I do not believe it is top priority for Earth. Until we can develop a tech level far beyond than what we have now, all we get to see is a nice bright white ball in the sky.

I think Asgardia will need to be at the forefront of space infrastructure and development, if it is to be true to its purpose. It will by necessity need to be full of people like you who are willing to ask these questions and push these ideas, even when they seem out of reach for the moment. I think, like NASA, qualified Asgardians should regularly collaborate with each other to propose plans to make these ideas come true, but unlike NASA, will have a much higher level of influence in government thinking. In fact, don't these ideas belong directly in the office of at least two Asgardian government ministries? Hard to imagine the above mentioned qualified engineers and scientists not being members of the Ministry of Science.

We should say whatever the ***** we want at all times...and we should also expect and be prepared for the negative social consequences that may or may not come with that in certain contexts. Sometimes a simple profane word or phrase is appropriate or it just simply feels good. We're not computers or robots, sometimes saying ***** just feels good or cathartic. Generally speaking, it would be nice if people took their audience into account and didn't deliberately use profanity to offend or hurt, but I think (outside of libel, threats, and direct calls for violence/harrassment) some forms of word policing can go down a path that isn't productive or conducive to a free society or critical/progressive thinking in general.

While, in my personal life, I can swear like a sailor when something rankles me, I tend to not do so under normal conditions as it commonly demonstrates a limited vocabulary. However, in this circumstance, I feel I must use certain words to prove points. In writing, I usually just say to hell with it. Some phrases are simply too common not to use, as most everyone knows what it means, even if it is somewhat vulgar. In everything, it is about how to best communicate your feelings to another. If one feels like shit, one should be able to say this. Where it crosses the line is when it is used disrespectfully; to draw attention to oneself or when used aggressively to verbally assault another. I fear, if we try to limit swearing from our vocabulary, that we may well damn ourselves to failure, as it isn't practical to expect people to always behave themselves. It is human nature to dick themselves over, it seems. (Given the rules of the forums, replace dick with another four-letter f word for similar effect.) So, swearing can be used in communication effectively. As with all things, it is the manner in which it is used that matters.

A lot of interesting and precious things can be found in Space and mined. However, the challenge is to do that mining a bit better than we do on Earth. For example, asteroid 16 Psyche is mostly iron and nickel, so it's far more efficient to do on-site processing (mining on the asteroid itself). To get the platinum and other precious metals out, solvents are needed. On earth those create massive pollution and contamination. In space, virtually nobody is watching. Technically it is possible, though, to do real and proper checking of local processes. With Blockchain technology, for example, non-repudiation can be added on monitoring. We, Asgardia, should insist on that kind of checking, to prevent Space becoming the next domain where humans destroy beautiful things just to make profit. (maybe this discussion could be made broader, e.g. via https://asgardia.space/en/social/communities/258 ) See also www.MADmelange.space/Asgardia on a "Sustainable Space Colony Swarm Architecture" and about my need to emigrate to space in some 15 years from now.

"Jean-Michel André Jarre (born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, synthpop, ambient and new-age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks."

Automation is likely to play a significant role in the deployment and maintainence of any significant or long term initative - as much as day-to-day life. To become leaders in this field will take significant effort - many have a long head start. It will take time to even catch up with the gimmicky toys in the daily fail link provided. Companies like Honda, Mitzubishi. iRobot, Lockheed Martin, Samsung, Toyota, Boston Dynamics, Hitachi, panasonic etc will be a little more difficult to be better than. It's going to be quite some time before we're building things the likes of Asimo or even Atlas. We should definitely embrace leaders in such fields - but I question if they would be so eager to embrace us. It may be "best" for us to initially focus into industrial automation techniques, these typically provide easier to control input variables. Things like OSRF and ROS may be worthy of attention.

These are still weak AIs. It's basically Siri plus a Roomba on a platform designed to look vaguely humanoid. Other than the UI, this kind of robotics has been steadily replacing humans for simple task execution for a long time now.

The EU are drawing up plans to grant Robots human rights http://www.techspot.com/news/67773-european-union-calls-robot-rights-but-wants-kill.html

This change is coming... and fast. I've often thought about this recently and I think it will come from a slightly unexpected angle - not for convenience, but for insurance purposes. For example, take the heavy road transport industry. Insurance is a necessity to protect business from catastrophic loss (and often a legislated requirement). Insurers have to take into account the level of risk when setting a premium. No matter how well trained and experienced a driver is, they are prone to lapses in concentrations, fatigue, errors in judgement and limitations due to illness or injury. Enter a self driving truck (a robot on wheels), that executes the same work without limitations, without getting tired, with more situational awareness and without making mistakes. It becomes simple mathematics.The risk of a self driving truck causing damage and loss is less than a human operated one. Therefore the insurance premium for a self driving truck becomes lower by comparison. Combined with the ability of a self driving truck to essentially work 24/7, eventually, a tipping point will be reached where it becomes uneconomic to run a heavy road transport business without self driving trucks. This will happen far quicker than when internal combustion driven trucks replaced horse drawn carts. You could apply this line of thinking to nearly every unskilled or semi-skilled service currently dependant on human labour. As for personal assistance droids, I think these may take a little longer to be ubiquitous in society. Currently, they are primarilly limited by power. However, once the next advances in battery technology occurs (again, not far away), there will undoubtedly be big leaps forward.

You mean the same technicality I was continually highlighting? The one that actually stops it being a "helicopter"? To assume "drone" equates "quadracopter" then all the questioned systems are unviable as they require atmosphere. Should "drone" not equate "qaudracopter" then there are propulsion systems that could make that viable, in one form or another. The flight mechanics of such a system is vastly adjusted also - for example a simple maneuver like a stable hover. On Earth the consistent 1G combined with air pressure at all sides means that unless your're close enough to the floor to get hit by your own rotor wash then stability is not much of a chore. Unless you're being gimp with the controls then it should pretty much achieve itself and you just compensate for wind and it's inconsistencies. In the low gravity environment there's less force pulling you "down" which makes holding height harder - software is far more likely to cope - it'll be "easier" and more efficient to repeatedly fire many short bursts than a continual specific pressure unless this is of significant weight. There's also issues with getting relative velocity to 0.00m/s, despite lacking wind. Center of mass and center of thrust begin to really matter - rotor damage aside, the thrust on a helicopter is pretty easy to blalance, even on a CH-47 - 0.0001 off in any direction encourages drift/rotation and there's no atmosphere to provide lateral resistence so the effect is magnified. Again, far more likely for software to cope with the constant and rapid adjustments required. Such a system is highly unlikely to behave in the remotest as a helicopter. More comparable in terms of the mechanical effect leveraged than a helicopter would the Harrier - which is balanced well enough to prevent rotation/yaw, if the pilot compensates for angular momentum (can't confess to trying this on the moon however) as this leaves vector thrust mode and enters hover mode it's technically neither a jet nor a helicopter. Reltative velocity to 0.00m/s is still difficult. 0.05m/s » 0.1m/s for a few seconds is more realistic, with pilot correcting slightly to give an overall effect of stability - keeping it in a ten meter square box from 250 ft away looks like hovering static. It's kind of like standing on stilts, attempting to remain static requires constant compensation and ultimately doomed failure but even the smallest amount of constant momentum allows for smooth and easy progression. Or like an air hockey table - unless *perfectly* balanced, both the table and the puck, placed in the center, evenly, there will be drift one direction or another. Helicopters the thrust comes from slightly above as opposed to slightly below - and central as opposed to perimeter. Muchly different beasties in terms of handling, esp under mechanical failures.

Gotta admit that was funny, a little rude but funny all the same and no it is not still taking place for conflict's sake. I originally had never intended to reply past my initial comment. I was just trying to stress the fact that beyond the technicality you pointed out. The designed craft could still be considered as a helicopter in the basic sense of how they would both possess the same charteristics as far as flight is concerned