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Mission-Tags

This is an old revision of the document!


Mission-Statement

The mission of Apollo-NG is to be a small and mobile Hackerspace, so that any joining hacker or hacker-to-be can work with others on exciting projects, where we all can share fun, food, resources, knowledge and experience.

It also operates completely self-sustainable, to prove that even today the technology exists, to live and work comfortably in an independent off-grid environment with absolutely minimal power consumption but without losing considerable comfort. Due to its mobile nature, it is also a very demanding experiment to evaluate “green” technology. All of this is documented in the Lab and the Mission-Log.

The whole hackerspace has to be powered by renewable solar/wind/water/biomass energy, depending on which energy-source a certain location can offer - thereby proving or disproving with long term data, that we as people can drastically reduce the amount of energy we consume (energy footprint per person) and satisfy our remaining energy needs in a sustainable manner, with locally generated small-scale smart-grid power.

It also means, that all electrical systems in use, have to provide their designated function (i.e. lights, computers, navigation, station keeping, music, network, wifi, storage, soldering iron, oscilloscope etc.) but use only a fraction of the power a generalized, industrial, mass market system would consume.

Code of Conduct

  1. Working for the benefit of all mankind
  2. Being aware of free will of every single human being
  3. Making and keeping all research & results publicly available as free and open resources
  4. Using/Developing/Releasing open-source software only
  5. Working towards developing & using only open-resource hardware
  6. Practicing full transparency on the way we organize our work and resources we use
  7. Using moneyless budget and strongly supporting money deprecation
  8. Publishing attributions of all direct supporters and known contributors to the commons we use
  9. English language & metric system for all of the mission's code, docs and communication

Principles

Efficiency

The most basic principle of Apollo-NG is to always try to increase efficiency of any given process or technology. It can be generalized as a level of performance that describes a process which uses the lowest amount of input resources (power, time, labor, etc.) to create the greatest amount of outputs. Simply put: Being efficient means reducing the amount of wasted input resources.

Sustainability

  1. Sustainability refers to the capability of complex systems to maintain themselves over time.
  2. In the context of human activity, sustainability has 3 aspects: social, economic and environmental.
  3. All three aspects must be met if something is to be considered truly sustainable.
    • Anything which protects the environment by driving people into poverty, or something that supports the economy while undermining environmental services, will inevitably collapse, often with devastating consequences for people today and future generations.
    • While nothing can be sustained forever, ecosystems, including those with humans, have maintained themselves for tens of thousands of years.

Resilience

The capacity of social, economic, environmental or technical systems to absorb shocks and recurrent disturbances so as to retain essential structures, processes and feedbacks.

Motivation

For the first time, in the history of humankind, the invention of the internet has enabled us as people to educate ourselves and to communicate, interact and share knowledge amongst each other in near real-time. Those of us, who have internet access and truly want to learn and evolve, can do so now, no matter where we are, what color our skin has, in which country we were born or whether our parents were rich or not.

Globalization may have had its beginnings in the industrial and economic aspects of the world, but the internet linked formerly separate people into one globally interconnected human species, flying together through space on a spherical mothership, we call Earth. It's time to act accordingly, as one species, without borders, all kinds of […]ism's and anything else, that tries to artificially cap our reach.

A lot of people have a feeling, that the world is “somehow not right” and also have a feeling that their personal way of thinking and acting differs a lot from what society at large considers “normal”.

If you can relate to that, know this: You are not alone

Hackers all over the world have started to join together, building hackerspaces and fablabs, to build new open technology, that easily reaches and in some cases already greatly surpasses what traditional industry could offer. We share resources, knowledge and encouragement. Hackers are the engineers of the future and it's very important that our fruitful and free self-education is kept alive and without restriction, even though some “civilized” nations already deem education itself only a third-class “must have” and rather focus their resources on war, censorship and surveillance.

Hackerspace

A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, fablab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology and/or digital/electronic art can meet, socialize and collaborate. A hackerspace can be viewed as an open-community lab, incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can share resources and interdisciplinary knowledge, to build and make innovative things together.

Growing number of hackerspaces all over the world

hackerspaces_map.jpg

Although the number of hackerspaces grows constantly all over the globe, there are still many white spots on the map. The Apollo-NG Project aims to fill this gap, by deploying a semi-temporary Hacker-Camp in areas, where no resident hackerspace is established yet, giving local hackers & nerds the opportunity to socialize, collaborate and tools to work on projects.

Since Apollo itself can only offer a limited amount of space and basic requirements of a hacklab (tools/machines), its primary purpose is to offer inspiration, encouragement and guidance on how to establish and operate a new resident local hackerspace.

RDF-Lab / Thinktank

Research, development and prototype-fabrication is the primary driving element of non-biological evolution, defined as systematic, creative work which aims to enlarge knowledge and also comprises activities exploring new applications for existing knowledge. In essence, it's exactly what hackers do, only on a larger and less individual scale.

Therefore, it should be a common goal to support and encourage R&D worldwide. Instead, the “free market system” actually penalizes companies, which invest more than 15% of their revenue in R&D, by heavily reducing their credit-risk rating (except for military and pharmaceutical development). As a result, industrial companies spend only ~3.5%, high-tech companies ~7% of their revenues in R&D.

At the moment, the major part of R&D activity worldwide is funded and controlled by companies which - by design - have to focus on annual growth and maximizing revenue rather than the development of cost-effective, efficient, sustainable and resilient products that can last very long. The conflict of interest couldn't be more obvious.

Apollo-NG's RDF-Lab and all Hackerspaces/FabLabs worldwide, invite creative people who are currently working alone or in companies and may have become frustrated to develop & engineer products and solutions, they know could have been better, if they weren't handicapped by the need of the company to “grow” and the budget wasn't artificially capped to avoid rating penalties or by simple greed. Share your knowledge & experience with the world, become involved in projects that aren't driven by money, work together with other enthusiasts and make a real difference by helping to shape the world of the future.

No matter what invention, after all, it were always people who created them. Let's start to hack the planet on this matter: Let's join together, to create things made by people, for people.

  • Share our knowledge, ideas, discussions and informational resources globally
  • Invent, research, benefit from the results and share physical resources locally
  • Link many different R&D facilities together to avoid overhead by re-inventing the wheel

Have a look at our R&D projects, the tools and the overall technology behind Apollo-NG and see if you can help improve something you like.

Test-Platform

Apollo-NG's size and mobile set-up makes it a perfect test-bed to try out new approaches in the development of society, economy, environment and technology.