## From the web Prompt To become a world leading 21st century scientific ecosystem, with greater diversity of approach – able to tackle challenges and opportunities that current institutional structures struggle to exploit. It will consider what such entities should look like structurally, what their inspirations should be, and how funding could be secured. We are interested in how a network of novel physical institutions could be leveraged to create or advance new fields of science and technology over a 15-20 year time horizon, with the potential to transform our world. This style of ‘vision-oriented’ funding – bringing together diverse skills to work collaboratively on emerging opportunities – is poorly served by the existing system.  To help achieve this, Better Science are establishing an essay prize of £1500 each for between three and five essays that each provide an example of such an area, and a brief proposal for a novel institution. The essay should answer the following question: The realisation of visions can lead to the emergence of the kinds of tools that support many other visions. These are not tools for imagination though, which I consider a lesser (but on the same axis )- tools for dreaming that result in thought. ### “If you were given enough resources to build a new institute of 30-300 researchers funded over at least 15 years, what vision would you pursue, and why? What about this institute would be globally distinctive?” **18/12/2020** And, perhaps, to set up sunset clauses for the organizations, so they don't permanently occupy organizational space in the discovery ecosystem; organizational longevity would then necessarily be through people and ideas being passed to future organizations, not organizational inertia. **12/12/2020** - SpaceHQ- a centre that builds tools and technologies focused on enabling large scale human habitation of Low Earth Orbit. Widening the usage of tools that are developed is not merely a function of making them accessible; it is also about instructing on their use and making them extensible so they are fit for purpose for more expansive visions. Thus, SpaceHQ should also serve as an education centre- that is one that generates resources that support adoption. - These technologies will have cross-cutting applications that can solve a myriad other problems- we should be careful to not get distracted by them as a centre. How does this distraction manifest? - In all walks of life, doomerist thinking overtakes the mindshare and, eventually, the fund-share. This generates a problem generation and problem-solving mindset. - > [!info] > "Teach to the problems not to the tools"- Elon Musk. - Contrast this to ideas where the issues/problems are not here yet; in such a setting, we think up problems of - So, we can see a lot of cross-cutting space applications (eg clearing space junk) - in space (e.g, space junk capture) and Earth. But the organisation must NOT think about these other opportunities because they have fundamentally different requirements. - Large scale human habitation requires: - Larger habitats than the ISS by at least 10x. - These must be built and maintained by robots, ideally autonomous. Why? - In all environments, construction can result in debris but planned robotic operations permit a higher degree of predictability as continuous measured tracking of operations and systems are possible. For example, robotic sensors allow us to track the "health" of a robotic system and predict/prevent its failure modes. ### Are tools for thought different from tools for dreaming- if so, how? Here%%Sidenotes work, albeit a tad ugly. But remember that it is not about appearance, but readability.%%is some text that you want to annotate with a sidenote. You can add more information or additional thoughts in the sidenote area. [^1]: This is the content of the sidenote. It provides extra details or comments related to the main text. ^[This is an inline footnote.] asdasd ^[Tis inline again]