Thursday, June 28, 2007

TransVision ZERO-G Flight for X PRIZE Foundation

Spaceref reports on a Zero Gravity Corporation flight that will be held in conjunction with the TransVision 2007 conference. TransVision 2007 will be held in Chicago July 23-26. This conference is brought by the World Transhumanist Association, an organization for "the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities". The conference theme is "Transhumanity Saving Humanity: Inner Space to Outer Space".

A spot on the flight, available to conference attendees, will cost $5,000, which will benefit the X PRIZE Foundation. Peter Diamandis, from both Zero Gravity Corporation and the X PRIZE Foundation, will participate in the flight. Also participating will be Ray Kurzweil, who, as RLV News just noted, is also joining the Board of Trustees of the X PRIZE Foundation. On the subject of innovation prizes still, Ray Kurzweil is also a winner of the Lemelson-MIT Prize, a $500,000 prize for practical inventions and innovations. Check here to see more winners of this prize, as well as winners of the $100,000 Award for Sustainability and the $30,000 Student Prize.

Speakers at TransVision 2007 include Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, Chairman and Chief Science Officer of the Methuselah Foundation (which runs the Mprize competition to help people achieve longer lives), Peter Diamandis of all sorts of space-related companies and organizations, and all sorts of other people who will be recognizable to people especially interested in space, as well as to the general public in many cases.