A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art (but also in many other realms) can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. Hackerspaces can be iewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things
Thanks, Wikipedia!
The 100 Year Starship project once again made me a believer that I could do something to help get humanity into space. Here was DARPA, a large institution, offering a grant of $500,000 to further the dream of getting humanity to the stars. They were the group that invented the internet and worked on all manner of cool new tech for the US Government. And they had faith this could be done.
Though I was late to the party, my fire was rekindled by the proposal submitted to DARPA by Ricky Ng Adam and others: in short, hackerspaces working together to push forward the frontiers of mankind in space.
It turns out that proposal wasn't accepted. Icarus Interstellar, with their concept of an interstellar fusion drive won in the end. I fully believe they're a worthy choice and we'll do everything we can to support them in their efforts.
However, I also believe hackerspaces (and by extension, people like myself) have a part to play. Passionate makers, artists, engineers, hackers, community builders and, hell, humanity as a whole are ideally placed to realise our destiny in the stars, and this provides a democratic, egalitarian vision of what space can be. It used to be about governments, then it moved onto private industry (like Virgin Galactic, SpaceshipOne, et al).
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