LifeShip Partners with The Museum of Ideas to Launch a Gallery of Visionary Thinkers to the Moon

It’s not every day that two visionary leaders meet and spark a collaboration that reaches for the stars—literally. In January 2024, Ben Haldeman, the founder of LifeShip, and Shannon Mullen O’Keefe, the founder of The Museum of Ideas, met at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, igniting a shared mission that would see a gallery of ideas sent to the Moon. This partnership epitomizes how LifeShip serves as a platform for entrepreneurs and organizations to immortalize stories and ensure humanity’s most profound ideas are preserved across spacetime.

Shannon envisioned The Museum of Ideas as a platform to record the thoughts and reflections of the world's great thinkers and innovators. Her vision was to capture the ideas that shape our collective future, preserving them and generating conversations around them. When she met Ben Haldeman, their conversation naturally shifted towards how this ambition could be launched rapidly and taken to cosmic heights. Ben, with his mission to make space accessible and preserve Earth across spacetime, saw an opportunity to take this idea to the stars. He suggested the concept of including these interviews in LifeShip’s Pyramid on the Moon—a temple of Earth's life and humanity’s culture.

This would mark a monumental moment: The Museum of Ideas would be archived not just on Earth but on the Moon, with thinkers and visionaries contributing to a cosmic gallery that future civilizations could one day discover.

Ben challenged Shannon to move quickly and create a first collection in time to be included on LifeShip's next rocket launch, Shannon embarked on a whirlwind journey to interview fifty global leaders, visionaries, and innovators whose ideas would join the LifeShip Moon mission. These interviews, conducted from February to June 2024, formed the heart of The Museum of Ideas’ initial gallery, which would soon be enshrined on the lunar surface.

Among the interviewees were renowned figures such as Alexander Rose, former director of The Long Now Foundation, and Frank White, founder of the Human Space Program and author of The Overview Effect, which explores how space exploration can expand human consciousness. As well as, Nova Spivack, founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit designed to preserve human heritage forever. Many of the initial ideas are partners or related to the overall LifeShip mission. Each of these contributors shares a passion for imagining humanity’s future, whether in the fields of space exploration, technology, or the preservation of knowledge.

These interviews represent a stunning diversity of ideas, from questions about humanity’s place in the universe to the ways we can harness technology for the betterment of future generations. And thanks to LifeShip’s mission, these reflections will be immortalized on the Moon and beyond as part of a permanent archive. It's just the beginning of a series of monuments going to space from LifeShip and a bold platform celebrating the ideas of our time.

This collaboration between LifeShip and The Museum of Ideas showcases how LifeShip is more than just a space company. It's a platform for creators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries to build something lasting in the cosmos—a forever archive of our collective human experience. Whether it’s the DNA of Earth's biodiversity or the groundbreaking thoughts of today’s innovators, LifeShip enables organizations and people to be part of space monuments and long term archives.

The Museum of Ideas is a perfect example of how LifeShip’s provides a platform for others to build upon. Through this partnership, Shannon Mullen O’Keefe’s dream of a “museum of the mind” will be housed on the Moon and beyond, preserving a collection of human thought in a place that symbolizes our aspirations as a species. This is just the beginning of how entrepreneurs and organizations are leveraging the LifeShip platform to ensure that their missions and messages stand the test of time.

As Ben Haldeman and Shannon Mullen O’Keefe continue to explore the intersection of space and thought, their collaboration reminds us that what we create here on Earth has the power to echo across the universe. In the coming months, LifeShip will launch not only the DNA and art of Earth but also the ideas that may shape the next evolution of our civilization, ensuring that these ideas will endure for millennia.

As the world turns its gaze upward, The Museum of Ideas invites us all to consider how our thoughts and creations are worth preserving and sharing with the cosmos. This partnership is not just a launch to the Moon—it's a bold reminder that our ideas matter and deserve a place among the stars.

For more on how LifeShip and The Museum of Ideas are working together to bring visionary thought to the Moon, join LifeShip's insider update list here and follow The Museum of Ideas on LinkedIn or Instagram. Stay tuned as this cosmic gallery grows, and consider what ideas you would immortalize for future generations. To ideas!

The initial collection of thinkers in the first The Museum of Ideas gallery is:

Alexander Rose 💡 Former Director for 27 years of The Long Now Foundation; Rose is currently working on the digital preservation of data and thinks extensively about how to create long term organizations. 

Allison Duettmann 💡 CEO and President, at Foresight Institute, a Bay area organization founded in 1986 to advance science and technology for beneficial futures. 

Amy Karle 💡 Amy is an artist and designer, exploring the implications of new emerging and exponential technologies on humanity, how they impact us, our bodies, and our beings. 

Avi Loeb 💡 Avi Loeb is a professor of science at Harvard University, the Director of the Institute for Theory and former Chair of the Astronomy Department, who founded the Director of the Black Hole Initiative. He is a member of the President's Council on Science and Technology in the White House, former member and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies.

Ben Haldeman 💡 Founder of LifeShip. On a mission to preserve Earth, spread life, and expand consciousness. Community builder towards space settlement. Investor and advisor in companies related to these missions.

Bill Diamond 💡 President and CEO of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. SETI is an acronym which stands for “the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.” The institute focuses on research, education and outreach related to space exploration and answering that question, “Are we alone in the universe?”

Brooke Shanae Lehman 💡 Brooke a steward of spaces and bringing people together and an employee experience manager of a company that's doing internal communications. 

Cornelia Kawann 💡 From Switzerland, Corneila Kawann is an electrical engineer and she is also a personal energy strategist who likes to combine electrical energy with our personal energy.

Creon Levit 💡 Creon lives in Southern California and worked at NASA for thirty-two years.  Now he works for Planet Labs.

Cyndi Coon 💡 Cindy is an applied experiential Futurist.

Daniel Fox 💡 Daniel is  the author of The Feel the Wild and  Founder and Chief Visionary for Future Space.

Deborah Sass 💡 Deborah is the founder of SpaceVerse, the universe for space.

Don Pickering 💡 Don, is a tech entrepreneur who has worked in space and subsea and robotics. He now works on an AI platform for sustainability. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington.

Don Tipping 💡 Don is a farmer and business owner and plant breeder in southwestern Oregon, where he runs Ciske Seeds, a farm-based organic seed company.  

Egbert Edelbroek 💡 Egbert founder and CEO of Space Board United Company that is working on safely enabling human reproduction in space and improving fertility treatment on earth.

Emil C. Luth 💡 Emil was born and raised in Denmark. He has a background in art exhibitions, curating and museum work, and now works on energy technology and keeps a keen eye on sustainability efforts. 

Fergus Klein 💡 Fergus is the associate director for the Creative Destruction Lab space program. Once a mechanical engineer he now works in business development and has fallen in love with this idea of big picture thinking and utilizing space for the benefits of the betterment of humankind. 

Frank White 💡 Frank is Founder and President of the Human Space program. He is involved at many levels on the issue of space exploration and increasingly space migration and has authored multiple books on the topic. His most well-known book is called The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution. 

Henk Rogers 💡 Henk majored in computer science, minored in dungeons and dragons in college and wrote the first role-playing video game The Black Onyx, securing the rights to distribute Tetris and founder of The Tetris Company.  Today he spends most of his time fighting climate change.

Hillary Sanctuary 💡 Originally from Canada, Hillary now lives in Switzerland. She has multiple heritages, half Chinese, half Canadian, with British and Icelandic origins. She has a PhD in theoretical physics on the topic of modified theories of gravity. She is now a science outreach professional where she promotes the research of her organization with media rich stories.

Iwona Fluda 💡 Iwona Fluda is based in Switzerland and is  the founder of the Ministry of Creativity Lt.

Jane Metcalfe 💡 Jane Metcalfe, started WIRED magazine with Louis Rossetto. Now, she thinks about the next stage of the digital revolution— neo-biological revolution. “It's new biology, because it's biology that uses our engineering mindset and our digital toolset to actually hack our own bodies, minds, bodies, species, evolution.”

Jonathan Knowles 💡 Jonathan Knowles is an explorer, scientist and technologist, involved in a variety of technology and science domains.

Lakshmi Karan 💡 Lakshmi Karan, is part of the team of Lunarc with a mission  to democratize access and development of space.

Lauren Dickinson 💡 Lauren Dickinson is an abstract contemporary artist. She also runs transformational retreats with her company Orion Retreats. 

Mark Rubin 💡 Mark Rubin lives in the suburbs of Washington, DC. and is co-founder of Project Honeylight.

Monika Jiang 💡 Monika Jiang is a writer, facilitator, and community builder, cultivating third places for dialogue, connection, and community around the shared experience of loneliness.

Nick Searra 💡 Nick Searra is based in Cape Town, South Africa. He started a foundation called the Interstellar Foundation–the voyager of golden records.

Nova Spivack 💡 Nova Spivack is the chairman and co-founder of the Arch Mission Foundation.

Phillip Koellinger 💡 Philip Koellinger is a professor in economics who co-founded DeSci Labs and the DeSci Foundation.

Rachel Lyons 💡 Former Executive Director of Space for Humanity, Rachel now serves on the Board of Directors for the organization. She also spends her time coaching visionary leaders. 

Ralph Horat 💡 Ralph  grew up in a small mountain village in the Swiss Alps, he is a science fiction enthusiast, and loves ancient mysteries, mythologies. He has a background in business and economics, is the founder of the nextgen village project, where he and team aim to  build a village of the future in the Swiss Alps that serves as a living lab to prototype and test place for new groundbreaking technologies where they are also experimenting with a new decentralized monitoring governance system. 

Richelle Ellis 💡 Richelle is an artist, astronaut and curator. She designs artworks both for earth, but also made for space flight.

Pete Worden 💡 Simon Pete Warden is an astronomer by background. Worden spent 29 years as a US Air Force Space Officer, and retired in 2003. He worked as a college professor at the University of Arizona, served as  a Congressional fellow and worked for the US. Senate. He also spent 9 years as the director of NASA's Ames Research Center. He continues to dedicate time to the search for life in the universe. 

Sakiko Reuterskiold 💡 Sakiko is Japanese-Swedish, and grew up in Belgium and London. She is the founder of Nomosu. 

Sarah Kalmeta 💡 Sarah is also known as Sarah the pivoter. Sarah is a professional speaker, podcast host, and poet who helps transform perspectives.

Simon Drake 💡 Simon is the CEO of two companies, Space Ventures Investors which raises capital to invest in innovative space businesses and the Lunar Resources Registry which creates new innovative maps of the moon.

Skinder Hundal 💡 Skinder works in the world of creative production. He is currently the Director of Art for the British Council which is in cultural relations development across the world. He also chairs  a cultural leadership board aiming to nurture new leaders, new generation thinking, and to diversify how decisions are made in  municipalities, and how those cities connect worldwide. He also volunteers on various projects across the UK and internationally. 

Shiva Lynn Burgos 💡 Shiva Lynn Burgos is an artist, curator and researcher from Brooklyn, New York. She now lives in Paris, London, and Papua New Guinea. Her diverse practice ranges from using very elemental materials including bronze and iron all the way to futuristic technology. 

Stacey Murphy 💡 Stacey Murphy is the founder of Dreaming Earth, which is a venture capital studio, incubating startups in the architectural world who are building living materials so that buildings can grow themselves. 

Stephanie Chen 💡 Stephanie Chen is from many parts of the world. She is American, and Chinese by heritage. She now lives in London. Her passion is in longevity, impact strategy, impacting [wellbeing] and health and arts and culture. She is also co-founder of HOUSE OF AEON.

Thomas Reemer 💡 Thomas is the creator and founder of Space Hero which is the world's first global competition show to send somebody—- that humankind will vote for—- to space.

Thomas Kehler 💡 Thomas has a background in applied physics, a PhD and a minor in physics and ferromagnetism. He also has a strong interest in linguistics, that is, how people acquire languages and has been involved in the application of artificial intelligence to either physics or language for the last 50 years. He is currently the CEO of crowdsmart.ai.

Torsten Hoffmann 💡 Torsten is an independent filmmaker. He creates documentaries that are techno-optimistic. His latest documentary, Fortitude will be released in the summer of 2024.

Viola Ketelsen 💡 Viola is a city maker based and born in Kiel, Germany.

VJ Bala 💡 VJ Bala is short Vijayant. Vijayant  was born in Calcutta, India, and grew up in the Middle East and now lives in Canada and partly in Guatemala. 

Zach Bell 💡 Zach Bell is an entrepreneur and a storyteller and a philosopher, and a perpetual optimist. He is founder of Return and MyPlace and currently resides in Baja, Mexico.