Define "humanitarian activities". How would this increase "stability" precisely?

In Canada (and many others), foreign countries can be represented in 3 different ways: #1 a diplomatic mission (embassy), #2 a consular post (consulate), #3 International Organizations and Other Special Representative Offices (office). Since Asgardia is not recognized as an autonomous country yet, the third option seems more viable. However, to create an embassy/consulate/office, we need to be at least recognized by the host country (not necessarily the whole UN), as it agreeing to cede a part of its own territory. To get such political territories, we need to be officially recognized first (at the UN, or under the host country's own recognition criteria). However, there's nothing preventing us to create Asgardia themed parks, stores and hotels... but, since we're a small nation, we need the official agreements to use the trademarks/intellectual properties (since probably not in the public domain yet) and probably some sort of "reports of good standings and motivation" under some guidelines and restrictions (to not tarnish Asgardia's name, or to not misuse/corrupt its very essence). I don't know if our government is bureaucratically organized enough to manage such lucrative ambitions yet. Since having no territories on Earth, such "embassies/themed parks/stores/hotels" could be enough to get an economy of our own, with our own currencies... ones of the few requirements to be acknowledge as a nation by the UN. p.s. Celestia, a space nation create in the late 40's (now "extinct") had it's own currency, and its flag once flew at the UN. In one year, Asgardia already count 100X more citizens!

But ultimately, the embassy is located in and with the permission of the host country. If this host country is the one there's problems with, then it's unlikely they'll grant permission for an embassy in the first place, and certainly wouldn't respect and boundaries of. As to the "how is it funded" I was talking more how is the Asgardian government supposed to come up the funds to make this work. We're in at least thirty countries. To assume a cheap building suitable for purpose would be within the reigon of a million - likely more as typically embassies deploy in the capital and it's unlikely we'd be wanting to be in their slums - then that's thitry million straight away as a up front cost, we'll make it easier and ignore taxes, making the building secure(ie: installing faraday cages, regular sweeping for bugs etc) having things wired up etc and just move straight on to staff - to think at least thirty members of staff per installation in order to provide for services(not including attaché staff) going on a standard 9»5 and being paid minimal wages then you can start adding in seven grand a day on their wages. Then you'll need supplies for these "imports" - if they're being chased out of their homes they're unlikely to be well prepared - just orgnising that will be a headache, let alone paying for it. Now start looking at Asgardia's "income sheet". So, again, how would you suggest this be funded.

There are about 1001 things that could cause what you are describing. If it is just one species of plant that is affected, it is most likely something like a virus, fungus or insect that specifically attacks that species. If multiple species are affected, then I agree that chemical contamination is a good candidate. Even if you narrow it down to a likely chemical contamination issue, you could spend a lot of money undertaking water quality testing trying to find the problem. Looking at the industries and activities upstream will help you narrow the likely suspects. Do you have a EPA or water authority at your location? It sounds like something they should be looking at.

Hello, this is correct, you need to have your water analyzed. If you are near a mining operation, you could have chemicals from the mining operation contaminating your water. Hydro fracking near by, a different set of chemicals, but also toxic. Depending on where you live, the cost will probably be around $300. Best of luck, Envirodoc

Prestel was the post office's varient. I'm a big fan of ultra low bandwidth technologies. We need our own comms network - in order to access the forums and other services. The ones currently in use are not entirely trustable, and worse rely heavily on the goodwill of third parties. Ofc, services additional to the forum are another topic to comms networks. For additional services I think it's wise to secitonalise, and not offer multiple choices for the same thing. Deploying an additional NNTP server would allow usenet-esque facilities, but then there's two places of active discussion - potentially for the same topic. Worse they are not actually intended from the ground up to be compatible. Confer-U or Mystic BBS can be setup for deploying BBS services, but how many users actually remember them? It's increasing the attack surface for little reason, there's nothing that can do which the website couldn't, and much of the "features" to such a system are unrequired. Everything you list: access to databases, communication, message boards, etc should all be possible within the existing service. In most cases, it's incredibly trivial to achieve. Consolidation advantages make me think the current service should evolve into a portal - If it was me doing it I'd seriously consider use of something like chromium(the OS, not the browser. Yes, it's the same project) or EyeOS, but I'd minimally expect the likes of collobora(effectively puts Libre Office into a web site) - but just using Django it can revert to a kiosk interface wherin the user has a full on interface inside their browser, select which facet of the services they would like to play with and away they go. That can be done with some basic PHP... It could be built entirely on open source projects which should make it trivial to deploy and maintain, and if built in a modular fashion it means it's then trivial to embed one part into another, or swap out one part for another at a later date as time progresses and new needs must be met.

"Robots" have vastly adjusted "human" life. "Digital" devices may of had a larger impact on your day-to-day living but your actual life has been changed by robots far more. Just because we've not all got something like Asimo yet doesn't mean robots are dwindling. Universities dropping courses is likely more about not recovering equipment layout costs than a lack of people who'd want to study - or even any issues with the field itself. The equipment they bought two years ago still hasn't paid them back properly and it's already dated. Attention stems from the previously mentioned industrial applications, mostly. Almost everything you touch today will of been handled by a robot first - most likely in the manufacturing process. There's not really been any drop in attention to robotics - overall - just lesser focus on the dreams and promises from 1960's SciFi. It's still a strong field and steadily growing stronger. Honda have spent the last few decades just perfecting Asimo - as anyone who actually tries to build something complex will understand, all the little variables require accounting for, previously - and Asimo will have to deal with plenty in an average deployment senario. They're definitely not "wasting" this time and effort, and there's plenty of examples of folks working on things for just as long and some good examples of things people are still creating - the first thing to spring to mind here would be Suidobashi Heavy Industry's Kuratas from the other year(now available for purchase) and Dahir Insaat's GCV - Robotics is a big market. Granted outside industry it's mostly trivially simple things like the Roomba and the Scooba - and many practically useless "toys" - Unsurprisingly, the simpler things are easier to do and this is what most have gravitated towards. But more complex devices - like self-driving cars - do exist. The "market" for is huge, what isn't as massive is the number of intelligent solutions provided. As long as the "market" for such remains strong then attention is assured by the folks who think of nothing more than harvesting as they always seek to harvest more - and in the process will fund those who will attempt to provide the actual solutions. As to robots in space - this is something also with some attention, tho admittedly the market here is notably smaller, those in it are paying intense attention. From NASA's R2 to the curiosity rover, down to the canadarm2/ERA on ISS - robots are definitely a big thing in space, already - have been for some time, and the market definitely shows no danger of lax. For us to have any realistical hope of gathering, refining and processing materials required to actually do anything for ourselves, then it's almost assuredly to require a high level of automation. Consider the requirements to send a mining crew, equipment, supplies - ignoring the dangers, and to only focus on cost - off the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to begin collecting resources - and then compare that to an automated facility than can be thrown over there, unfold itself, begin mining and processing and start throwing things back. One of those sounds a lot easier to achieve. Considering how much struggle a website appears to be, I'd not think it too wise to attempt to be putting people into space, anytime soon. I don't like being involved with disasters. One huge disadvantage of remote robotic control in space is the delay in telemetrics. Light can only move so fast. Even somewhere close like Earth orbit has significant lag. Things ideally need to react themselves, operate themselves. By the time you realise there's a problem with what you're doing, that happened at least tewenty seconds ago. At best, you want to direct. You say what you want done, it works out how to achieve it. Minimise the impact of that lag. The bandwidth isn't much of a concern - you're not sending a 4k video feed, it's a few bytes of control signal. The issue is definitely how long it takes to get there, and back. The mechnanical aspects of robotics are typically the easiest. It's the control software that the real cunning lies in - and this needs complex layers of simple instructions that can give the impression of intelligent action. By offloading most of the device's control function to the device itself you could operate entire "teams" of equipment with similar upwidth as a single unit.

20 years ago, Robotics are expected to have the great impact on humanity. However, Robotics haven't made a significant impact on humanity and even the attention to it has declined and even many universities have cancelled the major of Robotics from their academic programs. The electronic and digital devices have the biggest impact on humanity nowadays. However, the attention to robotics will return when the civilization in the space starts as the robotics will be certainly needed to achieve many tasks.

One huge advantage of remote robotic control is that we would be able to work on space constructions and projects from earth. We would only be limited by the number of robots and the broadband required to connect to the robots. For the forseeable future, we won't be able to go to space as a nation, but we will still need to pave the way and start construction at some point. Sending people to space to do constructions would be very expensive considering the lack of existing support structures such as habitats, food farms, water supplies etc. Sending robots with spare parts and a power station of some kind is alot cheaper and enables us to construct or carry out projects.