The timing of the announcement that Voyager 1 has, for some time now, been an interstellar spacecraft came just before the 100 Year Starship Symposium and was certainly in everyone's thoughts during the event. Jeffrey Nosanov (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) reminded a Saturday morning session led by Jill Tarter that when the Voyager program was conceived, the notion of going interstellar was the furthest thing from the planners' minds. Voyager's adventures beyond the heliopause are what Nosanov now calls 'almost a completely accidental mission.' How to follow up the Voyager success? For one thing, we already have New Horizons on its way to Pluto/Charon, with flyby in 2015, and I've already discussed the New Horizons Message Initiative, which would upload the sights and perhaps sounds of Earth to a small portion of the spacecraft's memory after its encounters are done (see New Horizons: Surprise in Houston for more). But Nosanov asked Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, himself all but...

One of the things I admire most about Eric Davis is his seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. The man is constantly in motion. Davis (Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin) is active in both the Tau Zero Foundation and in Icarus Interstellar, and deeply involved in the propulsion community at numerous conferences, all in addition to his duties at IASA. He has also, for the past two years, served as a track chair at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a role fraught with its own difficulties as it involves coordinating and reviewing submissions and dealing with presenters at the actual event. In Houston, Davis chaired the track "Factors in Time and Distance Solutions." At left is Eric Davis sitting across the table from me at Spindletop, the Hyatt Regency's rooftop restaurant, which turns out to be quite good despite the fact that it rotates. Calvin Trillin came up with the applicable maxim: "I never eat in a restaurant that's over one hundred feet off the ground and won't stand...

Broadening the interstellar community through public engagement is something Centauri Dreams is all about, so I try to keep my eyes on emerging tools that support that effort. On that score, the 100 Year Starship Symposium in Dallas was provocative. John Carter McKnight (Arizona State University) was chair for the track "Becoming An Interstellar Civilization: Governance, Culture & Ethics," and although I only had the chance to talk to him briefly, I learned about something called MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses. These interactive teaching forums support readings and video with intense interactions among students and teachers. Serendipity always works its magic, and the very day I was starting to look into MOOCs, Tau Zero social media wizard Larry Klaes sent me news of a MOOC being offered at the University of Leicester. It's not interstellar in nature, but Larry knows of my interest in the medieval world and knew I would be interested in a six-week interactive (and free) study...

The 100 Year Starship Symposium forces an interesting conversation simply by virtue of its name. I learned this yet again this morning when I met a neighbor out walking his dog. He knew I had been in Houston and that the subject was space travel, but he assumed we must have been talking about Mars. "No," I replied, "we're actually talking about a much more distant target." His eyes lit up when I described the Houston conference, and in particular when I talked about multi-generational efforts and what achieving -- or even just attempting -- them could mean. The odd thing is, I get this reaction often when talking to people about interstellar flight. Sure, you'd expect the audience at the Houston symposium to be onboard with the idea of outcomes beyond their own lifetime, but I'm finding a genuine fascination with the idea among people who otherwise have no connection with space. I frequently lament the extreme short-range nature of modern society, but it heartens me to keep...

There is much to say about the 100 Year Starship Symposium in Houston, and as I have done with prior conferences, I will be drawing on my notes in the coming weeks. But I want to start the Houston coverage with the good news that emerged from the outer Solar System. Some time back, Jon Lomberg came up with the idea of sending a new kind of message into deep space. No, this wasn't to be a controversial signal beamed at a nearby star, but a message from humanity that would fly aboard one of our spacecraft. New Horizons is already in the outer system on its way to a Pluto/Charon encounter in 2015 and, we hope, a close pass of a Kuiper Belt object after that. But Jon thought we could still use it, Voyager style, to house the sights and sounds of Earth. The plan: To re-purpose a chunk of New Horizons' computer memory, about 120 MB worth, after it has achieved its mission and is continuing out into interstellar space. The 120 MB figure is at this point a rough guess; it represents about 1...

My flight to Houston for the 100 Year Starship Symposium was complicated by aircraft maintenance problems, two switched flights and lost baggage (due in tonight), but I'm now ensconced in the hotel room, from which I just snapped the photo below. I'm 26 stories up and plan to go higher (to the rooftop restaurant) in a little bit. As I did at Starship Congress, my plan is to focus my attention on taking notes and I won't try to do any 'live blogging' from Houston. When I get back next week, I'll be writing up the event over a spread of days as I try to get my notes in order. There should be plenty to talk about. Look for me on Twitter as @centauri_dreams if you're hoping for the occasional tweet. And while I'm here, although I probably won't be writing much on the site, I'll take care of comment moderation as often as I can.

Centauri Dreams readers will be familiar with Kelvin Long as a contributor here and as the author of Deep Space Propulsion: A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight (Springer, 2012). But the indefatigable Long has a broad range: He is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Interstellar Studies, former Vice President and co-founder of Icarus Interstellar, Managing Director Stellar Engines Ltd and Chief Editor of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Fired with enthusiasm after the recent conference in Dallas, Kelvin took a new tack in this piece, wanting to communicate the experience of immersion in the new interstellar movement. by Kelvin F. Long We huddled in this place, gathering our kindled fires and showing them to each other "look what I made", "look what I discovered", each with a gleam and a tear in the eye as we thought of the visions of vessels that could travel across space to other places and other times. This was the gathering from across the...

Working on this entry last night, I found my thoughts turning inescapably to Frederick Pohl, the iconic science fiction writer and editor whose death was announced just hours ago. Most Centauri Dreams readers doubtless have their memories of Pohl's work, perhaps from the great novels of the 1950s like The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law or the striking Gateway of the late 1970's that would spawn the Heechee series. As something of a bibliographer, I'm also fascinated with Pohl's role as a youthful magazine editor. He was editing Astonishing Stories for the pulp house Popular Publications at the age of 20, an occupation that would deepen into lengthy runs at Galaxy and IF and later stints editing books for Bantam. Pohl's early days in science fiction are captured memorably in The Way the Future Was, a 1978 reminiscence that had me digging through my collection of old pulps to look up issues he had edited. Astonishing was always a favorite of mine, but I was surprised to realize...

The quickening pace of interstellar conferences in the past couple of years has been an encouraging surprise. If one necessary goal is to energize the public about the human future in space, then these meetings and their media coverage are surely part of the picture. I'm thinking about adding a calendar feature for conferences and other interstellar events to Centauri Dreams. Until then, here are some upcoming items, presented in chronological order. "The Starships ARE Coming" Peter Schwartz, writer, futurist and co-founder of the Global Business Network, will present a talk about starships and the scenarios that could lead to them on September 17th at 7:30 in San Francisco. Coordinated by the Long Now Foundation, the talk will track Schwartz' presentation at the recent Starship Century conference in San Diego. From the Long Now site: Participants included scientists such as Freeman Dyson and Martin Rees and writers such as Gregory Benford and Neal Stephenson. The professional...