Tau Zero in Second Life I have almost no experience with online virtual worlds like Second Life, but I do want to mention that Marc Millis will appear later today (Nov. 2) on the ‘Virtually Speaking’ talk show program, which can be accessed here as well as in Second Life. The focus of the interview is to be on prospects for interstellar travel, what a program like the 100-Year Starship can do, and what Tau Zero and other efforts (such as Project Icarus) are all about. The show begins at 9 PM Eastern time (0200 UTC) this evening, and may wind up being audio-only if the Second Life bit doesn’t work out. I’m sure it will, but Marc is as new to Second Life as I am, and my last experience with the medium had me wandering around in an enormous virtual house trying to find someone with whom I was supposed to be doing an online interview, and I remember being alternately intrigued and baffled by the options available to me. Old time Second Lifers will find this bizarre, I’m sure, but some of...

Nuclear rocket designs are hardly new. In fact, it was clear as early as the 1950s that conventional chemical rocketry was inefficient, and programs like Project Rover, set up to study the use of nuclear reactors to heat liquid hydrogen for propulsion, aimed at the kind of rockets that could get us beyond the Moon and on to Mars. The NERVA rocket technology (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) that grew out of all this showed great promise but ran afoul of political and economic issues even as the last Apollo missions were canceled. Nor is the public wariness of nuclear methods likely to vanish soon, yet another hurdle for future ideas. But making people aware of what has done and what could be done is good practice, as Kenneth Chang does by example in his recent piece on the 100 Year Starship Symposium, which bears the optimistic title Not Such a Stretch to Reach for the Stars. In interstellar terms, propulsion is the biggest problem of all. Chang's article suggests a...

We've been talking lately about space missions designed to maximize science vs. those that are at least partly geared toward public relations. But most missions will have both components, the need for public support being woven into the fabric of our ambitions. As we try, then, to ramp up the scientific return, what can we also do to keep the public engaged and instill interest in space exploration? One answer came from Wernher von Braun's massive project for space exploration, described in a series of articles on space presented by Collier's magazine from March of 1952 to April, 1954. Let's put aside all the technical problems of the von Braun concept and concentrate on it as an incentive for space missions. Al Jackson, with whom I enjoyed dinner and several good conversations in Orlando at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, recently sent me The Ugly Spaceship and the Astounding Dream, an article he wrote for the AIAA's Horizons magazine. Al is completely upfront about the fact that...

Did the Apollo missions produce enough good science to justify their cost? It's a question Freeman Dyson has speculated on in the past, calling the missions a success because they were "conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science." Symbolic of this is the fact that the first item to be unpacked after each landing was the television camera that relayed mission imagery back to Earth. Apollo inevitably labored under the camera's gaze, but no great scientific discoveries came from it, and the entertainment emphasis inevitably detracted from the missions' scientific objectives. Image: Buzz Aldrin leaves the lunar lander in this photo snapped by Neil Armstrong. What might Apollo have been if it had been conceived from the start to produce good science? Imagine this: Our six Apollo landings put two astronauts each on the surface for a period of several days. At their disposal were two tons of supplies and equipment....

I've got an out of town speaking gig today and am pressed for time, so this may be a good occasion for something I needed to do anyway for the record, which is to highlight the papers given by Tau Zero Foundation and Project Icarus people at the recent 100 Year Starship Symposium. Most of the following were delivered as individual talks, although some were presented in panels. If you're interested in reading the papers each author prepared for the conference, many (but not all, evidently) are to be published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. I'll deliver publishing details when they become available. Here are the presentations of those associated with Tau Zero: E. Davis, "Faster-Than-Light Space Warps, Status and Next Steps" K. Denning, "Inertia of Past Futures" (anthropology) P. Gilster, "The Interstellar Vision: Principles and Practice" G. Landis, "Plasma Shield for an Interstellar Vehicle" C. Maccone, "Sun Focus Comes First, Interstellar Comes Second (Mission...