Christopher Altman is an American physicist, quantum technologist, international diplomat and NASA-trained commercial astronaut who began his scientific career with a world record-holding artificial intelligence project and a NASA/USAF–supported time travel division at multidisciplinary, “Deep Future” research institute Starlab, featured in a Discovery Channel Special and in the Guinness Book of World Records.

As Director of the Board and Chief Science Officer for the world's first commercial astronaut corps, then as Director with the successor to the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program, his research spans the confluence of quantum technology and next-generation spaceflight. His inaugural keynote address as an astronaut candidate was broadcast live to 108 sister cities around the world. NASA allocated funding to the corps for its first manned spaceflights the following spring.^[2][4][131]

Altman has held positions at advanced research and development centers including multidisciplinary, “Deep Future” scientific research institute Starlab, NASA Ames Research Center and Kavli Institute of Nanoscience*,* as Chairman for the UNISCA First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, as senior scientist at an astronaut training base on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i, and as part of the US Government's fast-track QuIST Program in the global race to reach quantum supremacy.^[2][78][141]

His contributions have been recognized with honors and awards including the Association of International Education, Japanese Fulbright Fellowship, the Guinness World Records, the RSA Information Security Award for Outstanding Achievement in Governent Policy, a joint US US Department of Defense–Department of Energy Salishan High-Performance Computing graduate fellowship, dual consecutive Templeton fellowships with the Anton Zeilinger quantum entanglement and teleportation physics group in Austria, appointments to diplomatic and humanitarian aid missions worldwide as Extraordinary Ambassador at Large for Peace, Human Rights, Space and Next-Generation Technologies, and as Special Envoy to the United Nations and the European Union.^{[6][10][8][77]}

Altman initially conducted spaceflight training at NASA Ames Research Center and Johnson Space Center under mentorship of Ames Director, former Vice Director of Operations, Headquarters Air Force Space Command and Commander of the 50th Space Wing, USAF Brig. General Pete Worden in 2009. In 2011, he was selected as a NASA-trained commercial astronaut and Flight Member, then Chief Science Officer and Director of the Board with commercial astronaut corps, the Association of Spaceflight Professionals, working to develop its training curriculum with NASA astronauts and astronaut trainers, while growing its global membership base from 20 to more than 220. An invited keynote in Amsterdam on the long-term future of manned spaceflight was broadcast live to 108 ciities around the world.^[43][33]

Altman's research group and its artificial intelligence project at Deep Future research institute Starlab​ was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2001 as the “World's Most Complex Artificial Brain.” He lived and worked at the institute, taking up research collaborations with the principal scientists of the lab's NASA and USAF-sponsored time travel division—profiled in a prominent Discovery Channel Special—in work that was widely published, featured in a Discover Magazine cover story and continues to this day.

When Starlab came up short on research funds and serendipity brought him to the same Brussels hotel as George W. Bush on his inaugural trip overseas, he sought the counsel of the President himself to save the lab, requesting $1M in support under mandate of the 2000 National Nanotechnology Initiative created under tenure of President Bill Clinton.^[10]

For his contributions to the program, he was selected by the US Government as one of three graduate students most likely to impact the future of the field at the Salishan conference, sponsored to attend conferences and senior administrator briefings at NSA headquarters outside Washington, DC, attended the World Technology Summit in London, and was an invited delegate to the French Sénat to provide testimony on the future of artificial intelligence and how it will transform our lives over coming decades.^[6]

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he volunteered and was subsequently elected to serve as Chairman for a UN Disarmament and International Security Committee, leading several hundred diplomats to address and combat the threats of international terrorism, global and regional nuclear security, and information warfare.^{[83][80][6][100]}

His Chair Report to the UN General Assembly on the promise and perils presented by the rapid acceleration of unpredictable advances in converging technologies was read by the Secretary General, at the Executive Office of the President, by National Security Advisors, at Presidential and Prime Minister's offices around the world, was reviewed by national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, open source intelligence founder Robert David Steele, and futurists Alvin & Heidi Toffler—was instrumental in building political momentum and influencing Congressional policy to establish the foundations for US Cyber Command—and subsequently recognized with the 2004 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Policy. ^[14][6]

As part of the DARPA Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST) Program, Altman traveled the world to visit leading national labs, cutting-edge corporate and university research centers, interviewing top researchers and Nobel laureates to craft long-term national assessments on the future of quantum technology for principal US research and funding agency directors. His reports went on to serve as the template for the official US Quantum Roadmap—an accolade conveyed directly by the program's chairman, Los Alamos physicist Richard Hughes.^[83][76][82]

Following the inaugural NASA Quantum Future Technologies Conference, he brought together a team of world-record holding inventors and pioneers in secure quantum communications, serving as principal investigator on a joint research proposal under DARPA Quiness and NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts mandate to create the world's first global, space-based quantum teleportation network, Astronaut Development and Deployment of a Secure Quantum Space Communications Channel.^[65][141]

Altman leads an annual series of seminars on the future of technology and innovation at the main campuses of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston—and in parallel in Tokyo under mandate of the Japanese national government through the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (文部科學省), working to prepare the country for the future by redesigning its educational system from the ground up. In a 2018 trip to Japan, he was a special guest of The American School in Japan and the Laurus International School of Science, where he shared the promise and potential of next-generation spaceflight with the next generation of space explorers.

Altman is Cofounder and Chief Scientist for global climate change initiative, renewable energy cryptocurrency SolarCoin, Cofounder and Chief Scientist for ElectriCChain, the decentralized, self-organizing swarm intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) that forms SolarCoin's blockchain backbone.

SolarCoin was launched with the mission to accelerate our transition to a post-scarcity economy by encouraging solar energy to initiate the energy singularity—the transition from fossil fuels to a sustainable, renewable energy: based economy. ^{[133][80][143]}

SolarCoin was founded as an incentive to bring about a planet powered largely by solar energy.

To this end, SolarCoin is on a mission to build the foundation for a global energy transition by awarding SolarCoin to solar energy producers, creating the first global, energy-referenced currency.

To date, the project has granted more than 15 Million MWh of solar power across 82 countries—more than enough to power the city of Amsterdam and its residents for a full year. Each coin issued to renewable energy producers represents an equivalent carbon offset of 680 kilograms of carbon dioxide. As a reward for renewable solar energy, SolarCoin is earned at the rate of 1 § (SLR) per MWh, with 97,500 terawatt-hours of generation to be distributed over the next 35 years, following UN annual growth projections for solar energy production.^{[109][133][143]}

Counting more than seven million real-time solar monitoring stations in sixty-two countries around the globe—estimated by UN projections to grow to more than 200 Million over the next decade—SolarCoin has been recognized by the United Nations and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) as the lowest carbon currency, the largest environmental monitoring experiment, and the largest private renewable energy project in the world. ^{[133][109][79]} The project has been covered extensively by international press in thirty-two countries, with more than 100 featured publications with sources such as the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Development Programme, Forbes and The New York Times.^[140]

Altman's leadership influence and contributions have been featured in press and publications including the 2015 sequel to *!nnovation:

How Global Leaders Think, Act and Change Our World*, Flat World Navigation: Collaboration and Networking in the Global Digital Economy, which conducted in-depth interviews with industry pioneers and innovators like Vint Cerf, “Father of the Internet.” The latest volume focuses on the next generation of pioneers: “the important influence of individuals who, like Altman, are the epitome of connectors, communicators, and collaborators transforming our world.”^{[3][2][3][4][666666]}

His role in the nascent commercial spaceflight industry has been featured in select Springer publications by Canadian Space Agency Top 30 finalist astronaut candidate, GQ Magazine “World's Fittest Man” astronaut trainer Erik Seedhouse, including, Training Suborbital Astronauts, and Astronauts for Hire:The Emergence of the First Commecial Astronaut Corps.^[2] He serves on the scientific advisory boards of several leading global organizations, including Planetary Human and the Overview Institute.

In a nationally-syndicated, live two-hour radio interview, Altman background, experience and perspective on the future of science and technology, exploring such topics as global consciousness and the “Overview effect,” breakthroughs in quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing; artificial intelligence and Elon Musk's OpenAI initiative; magnetic thorium nuclear plasma drives; Alcubierre warp drives and wormholes for space exploration; multidisciplinary research institute Starlab, “Deep Future” research, time travel and retrocausality; disaster relief and humanitarian aid, analogue Special Forces field operations with Synergy Strike Force at Black Rock City, National Defense University, and The Pentagon; the next generation of government leadership in the post-scarcity economy; the technological singularity; outer space and inner space—and a myriad of other future trends. ^{[9][122][121][93][92][84]}

Altman is a regular keynote and invited speaker, committee and conference chair at federal government hearings, science and technology conferences, space, security and leadership summits including UNESCO, UNISCA, the French Senate, the Global Leadership Forum, the National Security Agency, the Gordon Research Conference, the Internet of Things Security Summit, the Global Space and Technology Convention, Internet of Things World, Further Future: TED Meets Burning Man, TEDxBeaconStreet, and Mobile Monday: Amsterdam—where his keynote on the long-term future of human spaceflight was broadcast live to 108 cities around the world. ^{[666666][71][666666][73]}

Following his closing speech at the 2014 Global Leadership Forum, he was interviewed by Souls of San Francisco, West Coast counterpart to Humans of New York. The interview was published online, featured in a documentary: Ignition: Souls of San Francisco, then released in a printed-edition book.^[10][123]

He has appeared in several science documentaries to date, including a two-part Discovery Channel Special on multidisciplinary blue sky research institute Starlab—where his work was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World's Most Complex Artificial Brain”; filming the inaugural class of spaceflight training with the world's first commercial astronaut corps, where he helped develop the training program and expand worldwide membership from 20 to 220; and was interviewed in conversations on the long-term future of intelligent life in the universe with The Consciousness Chronicles. ^{[102][102][56][58]}