User:Geraldshields11/sandbox/beyond earth

The Beyond the Earth foundation

Founded	October 10, 2016 (2016-10-10)
Type	Non-for-profit public benefits and education foundation
Website	beyondtheearth.org

The Beyond the Earth foundation is a non-for-profit organisation whose activities focus upon ‘interpretability preservation’ in geosynchronous orbit, long-term communication strategies and conserving the memory of heritage resources/ sites over intervals of cosmic time. In this, the foundation’s research and activities investigate the responsible usage of Earth's surrounding spatial environment as a preservative medium for proemial resources in order to support future archaeological observations performed by humanities' distant descendants.

While numerous initiatives are already committed to preserving libraries and knowledge repositories off-world, this foundation focuses exclusively upon ‘interpretability preservation’ i.e. providing an intuitive, non-partial introductory guide that should theoretically support bottom-up commensurability for the discoverer(s) over protracted intervals of cosmic time; regardless of the recipient's state of cultural evolution, social conventions, linguistic structure(s), cognition, ontogenic or phylogenetic traits, morphology, sensory perceptions or genetic heredity. The purpose of these intersubjective ‘Companion Guide to Earth’ artefacts is to coordinate the archaeology of the future by providing a basic interpretation of our civilisation’s intelligible resources to assist a discoverer to formulate deductions about the contents before introducing more complex elements [and thereafter, denoting the location of other elaborate terrestrial/ celestial resources for further investigation and experimentation].

Beyond the Earth is a non-for-profit, public benefits and education foundation that adheres to both the egalitarian and common heritage of humankind principle; premises of international law which designate that defined elements of humankind’s collective (cultural and natural) heritage should be held in trust [and protected from national/ corporate exploitation] for the benefit of future generations.

Project Purpose & Objectives

Beyond the Earth: capsule specifications

This foundation possesses a number of stated principle and secondary objectives;

• a) To foster unique public engagement and educational opportunities within SETI and long-term communication strategies, astrobiology, temporal social sciences, arts and humanities while also promoting inclusive, cross-cultural discourse on developing best practices for speaking in a single yet heterogeneous voice for Earth.

• b) To establish introductory, orbital libraries that can facilitate ‘interpretability preservation’ over intervals of cosmic time; artefacts that will contain an essential, commensurable [non-partial] record of human heritage which will subsequently benefit archaeological observations performed by our distant descendants. Sub-objectives for this goal include;
  • To encourage public participation and contribution of content(s) for these orbital libraries from the plurality of ethnic/ indigenous communities on Earth.
  • To preserve moderate, ancillary portions of knowledge from a myriad of disciplines and conserve intricate records about the Earth system while also conveying the interdependence of our planet with its’ inhabiting biota.
  • To intelligibly communicate core anthropogenic concepts and provide a rudimentary introduction to present social conventions, regardless of the receivers’ state of cultural evolution, morphology, cognition or ethnological traditions.
  • To further develop an iconic, instrumental pidgin lexicon that mitigates partiality while denoting how to interpret the library resources. This primer encyclopaedia and related implicit cues will be compiled through peer-led, interdisciplinary academic investigation and reviewed by communal, [online] public consultations.
  • To coordinate the recovery of elaborate terrestrial [and off-world] archives and vaults while also providing intelligible keys for accessing these repositories.
  • To responsibly deter future human interference with long-duration, deep geological waste storage depositories i.e. nuclear, chemical etc.

• c) To support the conservation of celestial heritage artefacts/ sites and develop additional, intelligible artifices and other graphic elements that can be adopted by external entities for deep time/ space communication strategies.

• d) To contribute peer-led research, ethical considerations and public knowledge to qualitative investigations that aim to address some of the most pertinent questions facing human culture and its' democratic proliferation within outer space.
  • e) To document and critically analyse the aggregate of artificial signature(s) and artifices already extant beyond our planetary borders and also to determine the hypothetical ‘profile of humanity’ available to a number of dissimilar agents; the perception of our planet and humanity that is theoretically accessible through the acquisition of segments/ all of the artefacts and transmissions.

• f) To encourage international, cooperative learning between different ethnic backgrounds across national borders in order to collectively undertake a common, multifaceted challenge.

• g) To communicate the importance of supporting cooperative, international learning over multigenerational time intervals and conduct analysis on the societal implications for partaking within this temporal dialogue.

Capsule Assembly and Layout

The library will consist of sixteen micro-etched nickel discs of information that will be enclosed within a hollow aluminium sphere (a 30mm globe which has a graphic rendering of Earth’s typography accurately etched across its’ surface).

Proposed Orbital Parameters

Placing these libraries within space presents a number of protracted conservation benefits including;

• Ensuring that the eventual recipient will need to demonstrate a specific level of technological sophistication and ingenuity to physically access the resident region of geosychronous orbit.
• Pioneering ventures within space (even to the aforementioned geosynchronous orbit) will require large-scale cooperation between future inter/national populations therefore ensuring that such missions benefit a larger demography of researchers/ citizens.
• The artefacts will largely remain viable and accessible without interference from active geological processes or bio-geo-chemical cycles.
• The items of cultural heritage will remain largely unmolested from man-made acts of intentional destruction or inadvertent consequences resulting from anthropogenic climate change etc.
• Protection from potential cataclysmic events that affect the global biosphere or human species.

However, storage of these libraries also represents a number of disadvantages (which this foundation is presently investigating) including;

• Preserving the terrestrial memory of extant artefacts residing within these orbital regions.
• Developing adequate marker strategies in order to support memory and recovery efforts.
• The general payload costs associated with inserting artefacts into this orbital region.
• Preventing instrument interference for future researchers (e.g. telescopic observations by astronomers).
• National/ private operator liability for storing passivated satellites within graveyard orbits.
• Contributing to the space debris epidemic or mitigating the possibility of near-future collisions.
• Viability of the archival medium against sources of cosmic radiation and frequent extreme temperature fluctuations.
• Temporal contamination from viable, extremophile microbes residing within the satellite/ archival element (future biota may not possess an immunity to older strains of associated diseases etc.).
• The long-term (billion year interval) stability of these orbits during Solar System evolution.

Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) is a stable region surrounding our planet that is capable of securely preserving objects for periods of cosmic time due to the relative balance between exerted radiation pressure, solar wind emanating from our Sun and also the gravitational influence of our home world. However, this region is not as stable as the much further Lagrange Points between Earth and other distant celestial bodies in the Solar System (these points are strictly regulated for continual scientific applications). As GEO is protected by Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) guidelines for contemporary telecommunication/ Earth observation infrastructure, upon passivation of the host satellite, this artefact will be maneuverered out into a further graveyard orbit just beyond GEO for secure storage. This region is still a very stable environment for the long-term preservation of these libraries and it is also capable of supporting further editions of this library over the ensuing decades (dozens of satellites are passivated into this disposal orbit per annum); therefore potentially facilitating a multi-generational portrait of our present generations. It is anticipated that slight perturbations within this region along with changes in solar pressure will eventually lead to a more elongated, elliptical orbit for most of these GEO objects; ultimately dislodging these artificial satellites into longer, heliocentric orbits after one billion years - a point in time in which Earth’s environment will become inhospitable for the continued proliferation of [present] life due to increased solar activity.

See also

• Arch Mission Foundation
• For All Moonkind
• Memory of Mankind
• Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence
• Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
• Lincos (artificial language)
• Voyager Golden Record

References

• Quast, P. 2018. A Profile of Humanity - The Cultural Signature of Earth's Inhabitants beyond the Atmosphere. Researchgate. Retrieved on 05/06/2018.
• Beyond the Earth foundation official webiste. 2018. Retrieved on 05/06/2018.

External links

• Official website
• Researchgate account