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from the encouraging-women-in-science dept.
NASA is collaborating with a Mattel subsidiary to create Luciana, a character who wants to become the first human to step on Mars:
NASA is collaborating with a well-known doll and book company to inspire children to dream big and reach for the stars. Through a Space Act Agreement, NASA partnered with American Girl to share the excitement of space with the public, and in particular, inspire young girls to learn about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
[...] American Girl is known for their series of dolls created to encourage girls to think about who they want to be when they grow up. The focus of the collaboration is the Girl of the Year doll for 2018, an 11-year-old aspiring astronaut named Luciana who wants to be the first person to put boots on Mars. As NASA's human spaceflight focus shifts to deep space, including a return to the Moon, and ultimately, Mars, the collaboration with American Girl is timely.
The partnership with American Girl affords NASA an opportunity to educate through Luciana's story the value of learning from mistakes, teamwork and remaining goal-oriented even through challenging moments. Luciana's experiences may be familiar for many of the Women@NASA, including astronauts like Megan, who have overcome obstacles to pursue their dreams.
You can buy Luciana and whisper to her about all of the frightening health effects of long-term space travel outside the comfort of the Van Allen belts.
Remember that women are lighter and less metabolically active than men, which could translate into significant mass savings for a Mars-bound crewed spacecraft.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday December 30 2017, @07:06AM
Maybe not, but the explosion of capability could overwhelm society's ability to stop it. Bioengineering-related technologies are getting very cheap and the expectation is that it will continue to become cheaper and easier to do many incredible things.
Rich people own the government and set most of the rules. If setting or relaxing the rules is impossible, they simply need to set up shop in Bermuda or somewhere [techcrunch.com].
I think this is an important question. We live in age where if you really wanted to go full Bond villain, you could procure snipers, anti-personnel mines, infra-red sensors, and whatnot. The peasants with torches and pitchforks may have upgraded to handguns and Molotov cocktails, but they are no match for a machine gun. Their best chance at offing someone is to catch them unaware, and they have to know this evil person exists first. There are many multimillionaires and billionaires out there. Good luck keeping track of what all of them are doing in the back of their mansion, or why their kids grow up to be supermodels and geniuses.
The Unabomber looked at the world, hated what technology was doing to mankind, and tried to change it... with a series of bombs that killed a small handful of targets. He severely injured a single geneticist. A few biotech and nanotech scientists got killed in Mexico [wired.com] by ecoterrorists. That's about as successful as I see the backlash being. Because despite there being so many unneeded people in a country like the U.S., many of them have access to cheap calories, air conditioning, television, and Facebook. They are increasingly obese. They need to do some real legwork if they want to burn the system down. But they are easily distracted and will probably get caught up in the culture wars or some other outrage while missing the biotech trends going on right in full public view.
Philosophy: Bioethicists continue to screech, and are ignored or routed around.
Religion: Continually marginalized. The power of Christianity is weakening in the West, and in the U.S., despite some Evangelical high points like the elections of George W. and Trump, the religious are going to find it difficult to stifle the relevant research until it's too late. You see it already with the first human embryo editing and various chimeral experiments. Islam's power is mostly elsewhere; it doesn't control much of the world's science output.
Law: Go global. Find somewhere that is either not restrictive or looks the other way often despite laws in the books. China might be a good choice, but smaller countries might be better.
Look to the almighty trends. Cheaper, faster computers. Cheaper, better gene sequencing and synthesis. More advanced technology over time, not less. And a number [soylentnews.org] of [soylentnews.org] fertility [soylentnews.org] advancements [soylentnews.org] that I've reported on. I prefer to make guesses that are obvious.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]