LONGECITY

Saul Kent and the Timeship Building
[Dec. 12 :: By Bruce J. Klein]

Someone out there really wants to save a life, and he's not just shooting from the hip, he's putting his money where his mouth is. And with $180 million, he's got a pretty big wad to chew.


www.timeship.org

TIMESHIP BUILDING
I'm talking about Saul Kent, President of The Life Extension Foundation. Kent is also the man behind the Stasis Foundation, a nonprofit group, which is backing what will become the largest, most impressive cryonics facility yet. He and fellow Stasis members are putting together a plan to build what is aptly named the The Timeship Building. This ambitious project will eventually house more than 10,000 cryonics patients.

Project architect, Stephen Valentine, noted for his work on the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, is calling his new building a "Cryoworld", which will be a virtual "Fort Knox" for the preservation of biological specimens.

CRYOWORLD
Preliminary design work has already been completed, and now the Timeship crew is looking for a place to dock their vessel. But not just any port will do. Kent and team are looking for a location away from such nuisances as terrorist threats, sea level rising, and climatic troubles, while still close enough to a metropolitan area to attract some pretty sharp minds, not to mention clients.

Kent expects to house not only "the largest facility for life extension research" but also rare and endangered DNA specimens, biological tissues, and over 10,000 human patients which will be cryogenically frozen. The Timeship Building, a six-acre structure, is scheduled to break ground sometime between 2004-2005.

SAUL KENT
So, who is Saul Kent? Make no bones about it, Mr. Kent is serious when it comes to life extension. As mentioned on their website, the Life Extension Foundation is "a nonprofit organization, whose long-range goal", immortalist take note here, "is the radical extension of the healthy human lifespan."


Saul Kent
www.lef.org

The Foundation seeks to "control aging and all the problems associated with it", while they strive to enable "youth and vigor for unlimited periods of time." Again, ears perk up on the immortalist.

Well, it's one thing to have a vision, and yet another to set a deadline, no pun intended. But that's exactly what Kent has done. He says he wants to develop scientific methods to "conquer aging and death" before his body gives out. He's dead set, opps, on stopping aging before 2020, the year he turns 80, and is calling this plan the The Foundation's PROJECT 2020. The Foundation is currently spending over two million dollars a year on life extension research.


If you have more information you'd like to share about this amazing project or Saul Kent, please feel free to add your findings below. I'm looking specifically for references to physical immortality... where he talks about it, etc.

Would you like to write an "Announcement Article" to be featured on the ImmInst homepage? Contact me for more info.

Bruce J. Klein
Director, Immortality Inst.


Reference:
TimeShip Building = http://www.timeship.org
Life Extension Foundation = http://www.lef.org
Achieving Physical Immortality - By Saul Kent

By the way, for those like me who did not know... the "famous" Dora Kent case was over Saul Kent's mother. She was suspended (head-only) Dec 11, 1987 by Alcor and was clinically dead. However, she was not pronounced legally dead due to an administrative oversight.

In their search for the head, the California police and SWAT team raided Alcor and confiscated their equipment and arrested five Alcor members for a short time. Luckily noone was thawed and in the legal battling that ensued over the next few years, Alcor essentially won the case, got it's equipment back, and eventually decided to move to its current location in Phoenix, AZ.


Reference: Cryonics FAQ

Another interesting fact about Kent is that he and fellow LEF principle William Faloon were arrested by the FDA back in the late 80's. They successfully faught the FDA, quite a story...

The FDA versus the Life Extension Foundation
by Ben Best
(based on "Victory Over the FDA" by Saul Kent)

http://www.benbest.c...con/fdalef.html

Update: Timeship building has been delayed because of funding issues. (information from an unofficial source)

House of the temporarily dead
http://www.guardian....1129295,00.html

It sounds like science fiction gone mad - a fantastic edifice housing thousands of cryonically preserved bodies awaiting reanimation. But construction work on Stephen Valentine's creation, the Timeship, starts in two years. He talks to Steve Rose about the battle to conquer death

Friday January 23, 2004
The Guardian

Woody Allen once remarked that he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work - he wanted to achieve it by not dying. Stephen Valentine could possibly do both. A self-professed visionary architect, Valentine has designed what could be the project of his career, and its purpose is to conquer death.
Officially, the building is "the world's first comprehensive facility devoted to life extension research and cryopreservation", a six-acre structure that will house research laboratories, animal and plant DNA, and up to 10,000 temporarily dead people. They will have paid to have their bodies (or perhaps just their heads) stored there until somebody works out a way to revive them. If Valentine is right, they won't have to wait too long. "This is going to be the century of immortality," he says. "Children being born today are probably going to live an average lifespan of 120 years. Their children, it is being predicted, will never die. There will be a time when people won't be able to comprehend the thought of not existing any more and just becoming fertiliser."

Cryonics, the practice of storing people at very low temperatures, has been commercially available since the 1970s. A handful of US firms currently charge around $120,000 (£65,000) for a full-body freeze (usually in liquid nitrogen), payable through the client's life insurance. Some 100 people, plus a few pets, are in their tanks, with several hundred more signed up. These "cryonauts" are effectively taking a double gamble - first that they will be faithfully preserved, and second that someone will find a way to bring them back to life in the future, either by repairing their whole body or - more likely - by transferring their consciousness into a fresh body (hence the need to store only their heads).

Nobody claims to have cracked human reanimation, but the first part of the process is just about viable, as long as a person is caught soon enough after death. The main problem is the damage caused by the freezing process when ice crystals form, destroying the body's cell structures. Cryonics companies say that by the time scientists have conquered death, they will also have the technology to repair damaged cells.

Given the nature of their activities, cryonics companies have typically operated from anonymous out-of-town warehouses but Valentine's Timeship is a significant departure: a dramatic, monumental building that will cost at least $250m (£135m) to build. Judging by the models in his New York studio, it will look like a cross between a fortress and a temple, rising out of Tuscan-landscaped gardens.

Within the perimeter wall, beneath research laboratories, will be 12 "neighbourhoods", each tightly packed with frozen bodies and heads (or neuros, as they are known). They are arranged around a central plaza, in the middle of which is a large tower in the shape of a truncated cone, representing a droplet of water, the stamen of a flower, and the phoenix - symbol of rebirth, Valentine explains. For a bit of sci-fi ambience, there will be a fine artificial mist drifting across the plaza, and angled mirrors around its edge will reflect the sky above.

"I've been able to integrate the symbolism and the architecture unlike anything ever been done before," says Valentine, a fast-talking, generously coiffed man in his late 40s, whose conviction frequently eclipses his modesty. He has spent a lifetime designing Utopian fantasies that are technically, if not financially, viable. These include creating floating cities for a man called Marshall T Savage, who had devised a plan to colonise the galaxy "in eight easy steps". Savage's wildly optimistic mission never got off the ground, but the self-sufficient ocean structures Valentine designed would probably have worked. Likewise his designs for buildings made out of water, or his floating countries, or his multi-billion dollar environmental theme park. But nobody had the funds to test them.

Timeship, though, is for real. The project is the brainchild of Saul Kent and Bill Falloon, two reclusive figures who have been involved in anti-ageing research since the 1960s. Together they formed the Life Extension Foundation, a Florida-based non-profit organisation involved in everything from selling vitamin supplements to investigating cures for cancer. Kent and Falloon have poured millions of dollars into (in Kent's words) "the kind of research favoured by those who hate growing old and dying, who love life deeply and want to see the fantastic world of the future."

Valentine first ran into Kent in 1990, at a cryonics meeting in New York, and Kent later asked him to come up with an initial concept for Timeship. He was given 10 weeks, and approached the task with a characteristic single-mindedness, researching everything from cosmic symbolism to ancient fortresses, glacial movements to nuclear blast scenarios. "I worked virtually around the clock. I didn't take a day off. I had the exact same meal, chicken noodle soup, every day because I couldn't afford to get sick."

He presented his scheme, and then heard nothing for three years. "It was like doing an audition for a play. They just said, 'OK, thanks,' and that was it. All the models went into storage in this huge warehouse. Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? It was like that."


Stephen Valentine

He later discovered the reason for the hold-up. Kent and Falloon had been creating a new company, 21st Century Medicine, headed by a leading cryobiologist called Greg Fahy. Fahy was working on a process called vitrification, by which organic materials take on glass-like properties when they are frozen, instead of forming damaging ice crystals. Such a breakthrough would revolutionise the world of organ transplants, and remove a major stumbling block of commercial cryonics.

With Fahy in place, Valentine's side of the project was reactivated in late 2000. Since then he has refined, tested and detailed Timeship's design, and has spent a long time looking for somewhere to build it. Considering the structure might have to last hundreds of years, resist all manner of natural and man-made disasters, and attract leading scientists and their families, the location was critical. Valentine is now negotiating for a piece of land "somewhere in the southern US". Construction will not begin for at least another two years.

In the meantime, he has effectively become spokesperson for the project, and, by extension, the cryonics industry in general. "Since the beginning of time we've done everything we can to make ourselves live longer. We've invented vaccines. We've cured diseases. What do we do that for? So people can live better and longer."

But shouldn't we be concentrating on increasing life expectancy for everybody, rather than increasing lifespan for a wealthy few? "Are we talking about a world where if I can find a way to make myself live longer, I should average it out and let everybody share my longevity? No. Can everybody afford to get a heart transplant? No. But a lot of things that were once not affordable are becoming affordable." But isn't the world going to get rather crowded if nobody ever dies? "First of all, we have a lot of space on this planet. Second, a lot of people might not want to live forever, and they can just die naturally."

Valentine also points out that Timeship will do more than just store temporarily dead people. It will also house the DNA of endangered species and organs for human transplants - a facility that could alter the face of healthcare. "It's a Fort Knox of biological materials, and it could be a Noah's Ark to the future."

Does Timeship ultimately represent selfish scientific folly or the logical conclusion of medicine? Valentine and company would rather cross that bridge when they come to it. In the meantime, they are busy building the bridge. Besides, as Valentine points out, the only people who will find out whether or not it was a good thing are those who sign up to it.

So does he have a berth on Timeship himself? "Not yet. I'm considering the idea. If I learned I had a few months to live I'd seriously consider it, but right now I'm not worried. I don't think I'm going to die soon."

"This is going to be the century of immortality," he says. "Children being born today are probably going to live an average lifespan of 120 years. Their children, it is being predicted, will never die.

This quote is from the guardian article. It actually seems a little pessimistic. I was thinking that most people under 60 have a good chance of living indefinitely....given the current pace of progress.

I found about this in the longevity meme: http://www.longevity...group.cfm?id=14

I quote:

The Timeship is an interesting project that has been in the works for some years now, to be funded by the founders of the Life Extension Foundation. The building, designed by Stephen Valentine. will host research into cryonics and other technologies.

Check it out: http://www.timeship.org/

I think it is great, LEF ( http://www.lef.org/ ) is really making a difference!
Edited by alex83, 28 September 2004 - 10:39 PM.

For more on TimeShip, please see:
http://www.imminst.o...T&f=67&t=505&s=

EXHIBIT
Timeship: The Architecture of Immortality
An Exhibition at The Municipal Art Society of New York


WHAT IS TIMESHIP
The Timeship Building, a visionary structure covering six-acres, will be the
world's first comprehensive facility devoted entirely to life extension
research and cryopreservation. Timeship will bring 50,000 people to the
future as
well as being a major center of biotech research.


WHEN
Opening reception: Wednesday, November 10, 6:00 PM
Exhibit: November 11 to Jananuary 10
Lecture by Stephen Valentine, December 1, 2004, 6:00 PM
All are free.


WHERE
All events at:
The Municipal Art Society of New York
457 Madison Avenue (at 50th Street) New York City


WHO
Timeship architect Stephen Valentine is both a Pratt School of Architecture
graduate and a former faculty member.


MORE INFORMATION
On Timeship: http://www.timeship.org./
On the exhibit: http://www.timeship....e/news/MAS.html
On Stephen Valentine: http://www.timeship..../architect.html
You can find articles on Timeship in The New Yorker and l’Arca at
http://www.timeship..../site/news.html


If you have any questions, please feel free to call John Lobell:
212-679-1935
Cell: 646-734-2860



John Lobell

JohnLobellPratt@aol.com
Home: 212-679-1935
Cell: 646-734-2860
JohnLobell.com
_______________________________________________
wta-talk mailing list
wta-talk@transhumanism.org
http://www.transhuma...stinfo/wta-talk

Download this as a file

Yes very beautyfull!!! But who is going to pay for it and for the research done in it?

Check out the website.

http://www.timeship.org/

Here's what it says on their "Project" page.

The extension of life, the prolonging of youth, and the sustaining of health are among the oldest of human dreams, expressed in myths and stories of potions, elixirs, and fountains of youth.

Advances in science, medicine, nutrition, and public health over the past century have extended our expected life spans by decades, but such advances are only the beginning. The new frontiers opened up by today's DNA research will extend life further, and we may soon be able to slow and perhaps stop aging altogether.

Such visions are at the center of the Timeship project. This project has been conceived by people who have long been at the forefront of life extension research, and who realize that this is the moment to make a great leap forward.

The Timeship Building, a visionary structure covering six-acres, will be the world's first comprehensive facility devoted entirely to life extension research and cryopreservation.

This seems like a fascinating project, but I've rarely ever heard anything about it, and I don't think I've ever seen it discussed around here. Anyone here have any thoughts or info on the subject?

There was a lot of infomation on it awhile back, but as you can probably tell from the website (click on "news update"), nothing has been done on it in quite awhile (couple of years), and I am not sure what the state of the project is at now. I remember lots of people talking about it a few years ago, but I guess it has kind of fallen off as of late. Always seemed like an interesting project to me.

Thanks LF. It's kinda stalled huh? Well, that sucks.

Thanks LF.  It's kinda stalled huh?  Well, that sucks.

Well, I'm not sure. I have no inside knowledge, but it seems that way to me, which is a shame (imo) because it always seemed worthwhile. I think that it would be rather expensive to do, and might have been a bit "pie in the sky". As I look over the site, it seems as though they had an "art" exhibition of the concept (designs of it?) for awhile. Perhaps that was all they were originally trying to do with it? I know several "art" exhibits that take the form of future-leaning projects that would be cool, but are more to stimulate thinking on the subject rather than actually propose such a project.

Like I said, though, I have no inside knowledge. It looks like they have a contact us page, so it might be possible to get more information on where they are at now for anyone interested.

I remember reading about Timeship a few years back and it's claiming it's going to be the biggest and safest cryogenic facility in the world. You can read about it at http://www.lef.org/m...over_lef_01.htm or the official website http://www.timeship.org/. The only problem; LEF announced Timeship's plans in 2006 and I have been regularly checking the official website, and there are absolutely no updates. They haven't even started construction. This facility is supposed to start accepting patients in 2035, but there is no info. Has the deal just fallen through or are they lagging behind? If anyone knows anything, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

My limited understanding is that even the LEF founders, Saul Kent & Wil Faloon, did not have the funds to build the Timeship on the grand scale they envisioned (fundraising efforts must have failed), and scaling it back did not appeal to them. And so the whole project fell by the wayside. I personally don't think it will ever be built.

John Grigg

Past threads on Timeship:
http://www.imminst.o...p?showtopic=505
http://www.imminst.o...&...;f=62&t=410
http://www.imminst.o...showtopic=10680
http://www.imminst.o...?showtopic=4507
http://www.imminst.o...?showtopic=4114
Edited by Live Forever, 13 May 2008 - 03:38 PM.

House of the temporarily dead
http://www.guardian....1129295,00.html

It sounds like science fiction gone mad - a fantastic edifice housing thousands of cryonically preserved bodies awaiting reanimation. But construction work on Stephen Valentine's creation, the Timeship, starts in two years. He talks to Steve Rose about the battle to conquer death

Friday January 23, 2004
The Guardian

Woody Allen once remarked that he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work - he wanted to achieve it by not dying. Stephen Valentine could possibly do both. A self-professed visionary architect, Valentine has designed what could be the project of his career, and its purpose is to conquer death.
Officially, the building is "the world's first comprehensive facility devoted to life extension research and cryopreservation", a six-acre structure that will house research laboratories, animal and plant DNA, and up to 10,000 temporarily dead people. They will have paid to have their bodies (or perhaps just their heads) stored there until somebody works out a way to revive them. If Valentine is right, they won't have to wait too long. "This is going to be the century of immortality," he says. "Children being born today are probably going to live an average lifespan of 120 years. Their children, it is being predicted, will never die. There will be a time when people won't be able to comprehend the thought of not existing any more and just becoming fertiliser."

Cryonics, the practice of storing people at very low temperatures, has been commercially available since the 1970s. A handful of US firms currently charge around $120,000 (£65,000) for a full-body freeze (usually in liquid nitrogen), payable through the client's life insurance. Some 100 people, plus a few pets, are in their tanks, with several hundred more signed up. These "cryonauts" are effectively taking a double gamble - first that they will be faithfully preserved, and second that someone will find a way to bring them back to life in the future, either by repairing their whole body or - more likely - by transferring their consciousness into a fresh body (hence the need to store only their heads).

Nobody claims to have cracked human reanimation, but the first part of the process is just about viable, as long as a person is caught soon enough after death. The main problem is the damage caused by the freezing process when ice crystals form, destroying the body's cell structures. Cryonics companies say that by the time scientists have conquered death, they will also have the technology to repair damaged cells.

Given the nature of their activities, cryonics companies have typically operated from anonymous out-of-town warehouses but Valentine's Timeship is a significant departure: a dramatic, monumental building that will cost at least $250m (£135m) to build. Judging by the models in his New York studio, it will look like a cross between a fortress and a temple, rising out of Tuscan-landscaped gardens.

Within the perimeter wall, beneath research laboratories, will be 12 "neighbourhoods", each tightly packed with frozen bodies and heads (or neuros, as they are known). They are arranged around a central plaza, in the middle of which is a large tower in the shape of a truncated cone, representing a droplet of water, the stamen of a flower, and the phoenix - symbol of rebirth, Valentine explains. For a bit of sci-fi ambience, there will be a fine artificial mist drifting across the plaza, and angled mirrors around its edge will reflect the sky above.

"I've been able to integrate the symbolism and the architecture unlike anything ever been done before," says Valentine, a fast-talking, generously coiffed man in his late 40s, whose conviction frequently eclipses his modesty. He has spent a lifetime designing Utopian fantasies that are technically, if not financially, viable. These include creating floating cities for a man called Marshall T Savage, who had devised a plan to colonise the galaxy "in eight easy steps". Savage's wildly optimistic mission never got off the ground, but the self-sufficient ocean structures Valentine designed would probably have worked. Likewise his designs for buildings made out of water, or his floating countries, or his multi-billion dollar environmental theme park. But nobody had the funds to test them.

Timeship, though, is for real. The project is the brainchild of Saul Kent and Bill Falloon, two reclusive figures who have been involved in anti-ageing research since the 1960s. Together they formed the Life Extension Foundation, a Florida-based non-profit organisation involved in everything from selling vitamin supplements to investigating cures for cancer. Kent and Falloon have poured millions of dollars into (in Kent's words) "the kind of research favoured by those who hate growing old and dying, who love life deeply and want to see the fantastic world of the future."

Valentine first ran into Kent in 1990, at a cryonics meeting in New York, and Kent later asked him to come up with an initial concept for Timeship. He was given 10 weeks, and approached the task with a characteristic single-mindedness, researching everything from cosmic symbolism to ancient fortresses, glacial movements to nuclear blast scenarios. "I worked virtually around the clock. I didn't take a day off. I had the exact same meal, chicken noodle soup, every day because I couldn't afford to get sick."

He presented his scheme, and then heard nothing for three years. "It was like doing an audition for a play. They just said, 'OK, thanks,' and that was it. All the models went into storage in this huge warehouse. Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? It was like that."


Stephen Valentine

He later discovered the reason for the hold-up. Kent and Falloon had been creating a new company, 21st Century Medicine, headed by a leading cryobiologist called Greg Fahy. Fahy was working on a process called vitrification, by which organic materials take on glass-like properties when they are frozen, instead of forming damaging ice crystals. Such a breakthrough would revolutionise the world of organ transplants, and remove a major stumbling block of commercial cryonics.

With Fahy in place, Valentine's side of the project was reactivated in late 2000. Since then he has refined, tested and detailed Timeship's design, and has spent a long time looking for somewhere to build it. Considering the structure might have to last hundreds of years, resist all manner of natural and man-made disasters, and attract leading scientists and their families, the location was critical. Valentine is now negotiating for a piece of land "somewhere in the southern US". Construction will not begin for at least another two years.

In the meantime, he has effectively become spokesperson for the project, and, by extension, the cryonics industry in general. "Since the beginning of time we've done everything we can to make ourselves live longer. We've invented vaccines. We've cured diseases. What do we do that for? So people can live better and longer."

But shouldn't we be concentrating on increasing life expectancy for everybody, rather than increasing lifespan for a wealthy few? "Are we talking about a world where if I can find a way to make myself live longer, I should average it out and let everybody share my longevity? No. Can everybody afford to get a heart transplant? No. But a lot of things that were once not affordable are becoming affordable." But isn't the world going to get rather crowded if nobody ever dies? "First of all, we have a lot of space on this planet. Second, a lot of people might not want to live forever, and they can just die naturally."

Valentine also points out that Timeship will do more than just store temporarily dead people. It will also house the DNA of endangered species and organs for human transplants - a facility that could alter the face of healthcare. "It's a Fort Knox of biological materials, and it could be a Noah's Ark to the future."

Does Timeship ultimately represent selfish scientific folly or the logical conclusion of medicine? Valentine and company would rather cross that bridge when they come to it. In the meantime, they are busy building the bridge. Besides, as Valentine points out, the only people who will find out whether or not it was a good thing are those who sign up to it.

So does he have a berth on Timeship himself? "Not yet. I'm considering the idea. If I learned I had a few months to live I'd seriously consider it, but right now I'm not worried. I don't think I'm going to die soon."

Did Time Ship project choose the location to build it's structure by the way?

I need to know the location of where it's being built, if at all possible.

Robots is the answer he is looking for . Robots with human minds hehe

We are Transformers robots in disguise

Last I heard the funding had not come through, in part because of the scale and sophistication of the plans Saul Kent and Will Faloon drew up (more than even what they could afford). But the once shelved project is supposedly being promoted again by them.

John

I recall hearing about Timeship many years ago, but gave up hope after hearing that funding had fallen through. However, after browsing an online bookstore, I noticed that a new book is being released shortly entitled "Timeship: The Architecture of Immortality". The only description given is this:

Timeship will be the world''s foremost laboratory for anti-aging research. Examines the creation of this remarkable building.

So apparently the project is still on? Also, I wonder if they have abanonded the original cryonics institute plan and now plan to turn the building into an anti-aging research extravaganza? It will be interesting to see what the book has to say

Some good press about the Timeship project here: http://www.hamptons....ct-Stephen.html

That being said, it is only "press". Still no time frame on when it will be built. Perhaps they need to drum up some new investors. It seems they had a good chance at this gathering. This is really a positive story and it sounds like a lot of people were exposed to the meme. Maybe we will have the pleasure of answering some of their questions here.

On the second floor of the seminal NYC book shop, a packed audience made up of a significant number of architects, scientists, professors and students listened to Valentine first defend the science of cryogenics and then explain the project he was commissioned to develop by Life Extension Foundation founder Saul Kent and Bill Fallon in 1997. After being introduced by Thomas F. Schutte, the president of his alma mater Pratt Institute, Valentine quoted his client Kent from a 2004 New Yorker article in saying, “Timeship is part of a comprehensive plan to conquer aging and death."

Admitting that the project is based on future technologies that Valentine conceded could be viewed as a “utopia or 'udopeia' and just a mad, impossible dream." He went on to say, “Let's take the year 1900 - since that decade whom among us could have imagined then that so many human advancements and scientific achievements could have been realized over such a brief period of time? It can be summarized in just a few words; we went from the man in the moon to men on the moon."

Does anybody have any updates on this?

What's the status on this project?

Has anybody read this? It looks excellent.


 time ship movement for indefinite life extension.jpg   10.2KB   0 downloads


http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/1864703245

It is one year now since the May 2011 conference at Suspended Animation which I followed on the web and where there was an amazing presentation on this project by Stephen Valentine. What is the status of the project after one year? Btw, if you know about similar high quality conferences please let us know.