Starlab: Deep Future
The 'Noah’s Ark' of scientific research that launched 1,000 startup ideas

Lab-concocted vodka, time travel and epilepsy treatments:

Welcome to the Moonshot Factory

           “ a place where 100 years means nothing … ”

Financial Times | Sifted | 08 08 2022   — What happens  when you round up more than one hundred of some of the world's greatest scientists, maverick geniuses working on some of the world’s most groundbreaking ideas, put them together in a Belgian castle, and let their imaginations run wild? 

Fire extinguisher duels, bootleg vodka made with lab-procured ethanol and worldbeating treatments for epilepsy are just some of what went down at Starlab : a one-of-a-kind experiment created to unite some of the world’s most daring technologists.

When it was founded in 1996, Starlab was compared to other top research institutes — like Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center — that successfully bridged the gap between idea and market. It was also a prototype for the ambitious organizations of today like Google’s “moonshot factory,” X , trying to bring entirely new ideas to the world. 

But the centre’s idealism was to be its downfall; its pie-in-the-sky approach couldn’t pay the bills, and it went dramatically bankrupt during the dotcom crash. But what most people don’t know is that Starlab’s legacy lives on in the picturesque hills overlooking Barcelona and elsewhere. 

Many European VCs and universities claim they’re backing innovations that will solve humanity’s problems, but huge successes have been elusive. One of the companies from Starlab’s second generation has found significant success, but the centre's tale forces anyone interested in innovation to ask themselves: how do we really bring the wildest ideas to life — and make them financially viable?

The Noah’s Ark of science

Christopher Altman

Starlab was established by serial entrepreneur Walter De Brouwer together with MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and European VC pioneer Johan Konings. The idea was to create a utopian “Noah’s Ark” of science, where the brightest minds from different fields would be brought together to work on “deep future” research. 

“De Brouwer’s ambition was to bring the best scientists in the world together to ‘ think thoughts for the very first time. ’ It was very interdisciplinary — no walls, no boundaries, no borders …” says Christopher Altman — astronaut, quantum physicist and Starlab veteran. 

In its heyday, Starlab was home to more than 130 scientists from 36 countries, who worked on ideas ranging from time travel and consciousness to new media and “intelligent” clothing. The majority lived on site: a neoclassical castle designed in the late 1800s on the outskirts of Brussels.

Starlab “Time Travel Party,” May 2001.  ( L to R ): Hugo de Garis,
Serguei Krasnikov,  Roman Zapatrin, Christopher Altman

“It was like a pirate ship in a way, which is what I think I fell in love with. Or you could call it a kind of sect,” laughs Giulio Rufini, neuroscientist and current CEO at Starlab .  “We’d stay up all night talking in-depth theoretical implications of closed timelike curves ( time travel ).  Roman had a centuries-old recipe for homemade vodka and put to use some surplus ethanol he reappropriated from the biophysics lab down in the basement,” says Altman, referring to one of his colleagues, a quantum topologist and mathematician.  “One time a few of the researchers covered themselves in yards of aluminium foil as “ armor”  and started a duel, complete with fire extinguishers as weapons,  in the courtyard.”

Astronaut Scientists for Hire Open
New Research Frontier in Space

Source: KurzweilAI, Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, NASA Ames Research Center, with XCOR, SwRI, Association of Spaceflight Professionals, Virgin Galactic, and Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon.

At a joint press conference Monday with Virgin Galactic at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, XCOR, SwRI, and others, Astronauts for Hire Inc. announced the selection of its third class of commercial scientist-astronaut candidates to conduct experiments on suborbital flights.

Among those selected was Singularity University inaugural program faculty advisor, teaching fellow, and track chair Christopher Altman, a graduate fellow at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology.

“The selection process was painstaking,” said Astronauts for Hire Vice President and Membership Chair Jason Reimuller. “We had to choose a handful of applicants who showed just the right balance of professional establishment, broad technical and operational experience, and a background that indicates adaptability to the spaceflight environment.”

“With the addition of these new members to the organization, Astronauts for Hire has solidified its standing as the premier provider of scientist-astronaut candidates,” said its President Brian Shiro. “Our diverse pool of astronauts in training represent more than two dozen disciplines of science and technology, speak sixteen languages, and hail from eleven countries. We can now handle a much greater range of missions across different geographic regions.”

Altman completed Zero-G and High-Altitude Physiological Training under the Reduced Gravity Research Program at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, and was tasked to represent NASA Ames at the joint US-Japan space conference (JUSTSAP) and the launch conference (PISCES) for an astronaut training facility on the slopes of Mauna Kea Volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Altman’s research has been highlighted in international press and publications including Discover Magazine and the International Journal of Theoretical Physics. He was recently awarded a fellowship to explore the foundations and future of quantum mechanics at the Austrian International Akademie Traunkirchen with Anton Zeilinger.

“The nascent field of commercial spaceflight and the unique conditions afforded by space and microgravity environments offer exciting new opportunities to conduct novel experiments in quantum entanglement, fundamental tests of spacetime, and large-scale quantum coherence,” said Altman.

Altman conducts high-g centrifuge training at NASTAR

Astronaut Training Documentary with
Chief Innovation Officer of Virgin Galactic

“Observation of my life to date shows that the larger the number for whom I work, the more positively effective I become. Thus, it is obvious that if I work always and only for all humanity, I will be optimally effective.”

— Buckminster Fuller

2011–Present — Following manned spaceflight training under the direction of an astronaut panel at NASA Ames Research Center and Johnson Space Center in 2009, and subsequent back-to-back research fellowships with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger's research group in Austria , I was selected in April 2011 to train as a scientist-astronaut candidate for commercial suborbital and future orbital missions with a newly formed nonprofit organization whose members and advisors include NASA, ESA, and KSA astronauts, trainers, and instructors. I was honored to be selected for this new program, inspired and excited by the opportunity. The nascent field of commercial spaceflight—and the unique conditions afforded by space and microgravity environments—offer new opportunities to conduct experiments in quantum entanglement, fundamental tests of spacetime, and large-scale quantum coherence. In pursuing these goals, we also have the opportunity to inspire the next generation of scientists, researchers, and engineers.

How to build a ship for interstellar travel

Two hundred years ago, if you suggested people would comfortably travel in flying machines—reaching any destination in the world in a few hours time—instantly access the world's cumulative knowledge by speaking to something the size of a deck of cards, or travel to the Moon, or Mars, you'd be labeled a madman. The future is bound only by our imagination. 

Someday very soon we may look back on the world today in much the same way as we did those who lived in the time of Galileo, when everyone lived with such great certainty and self-assuredness that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe. The time is now. A profound shift in consciousness is long overdue. The universe is teeming with life. We're all part of the same human family. 

This is potentially the single most momentous moment in our known history—not just for us as a nation, or us as humanity, but as a planet. The technological leaps that could come from developing open contact with nonhuman intelligence are almost beyond our comprehension. That is why this is such a monumental moment for us as a collective whole. It could literally change every single one of the eight billion human lives on this planet. 

We stand on the shores of a vast cosmic ocean, with untold continents of possibility to explore. As we continue forwards in our collective journey, scaling the cosmic ladder of evolution, progressing onwards, expanding our reach outwards in the transition to a multiplanetary species—Earth will soon be a destination, not just a point of origin.