Oxford-based Stephen Ashworth, who attended the recent Starship Century event in London, obviously took copious notes, as reflected in the piece that follows. Ashworth is a Centauri Dreams regular, a writer and musician who, like so many of us on this site, ponders the big questions of our engagement with -- and exploration of -- the universe. Here he reflects on the immense challenge of starflight and lets us know how a number of key players now see it. For more of Stephen's perceptive work, check in regularly at his Astronautical Evolution site. by Stephen Ashworth The new book Starship Century, edited by physicists James and Gregory Benford and with contributions from many active in the interstellar field, takes a broad view of questions of interstellar exploration, the editors told this meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society in London on 21 October 2013. In the first place, why has there been such a surge of interest over the past decade or so, with several new organisations...

Kathleen Toerpe, PhD, is a social and cultural historian who researches the human dimension of outer space through an emerging field called "astrosociology." She is the Deputy CEO for Public Outreach and Education with the Astrosociology Research Institute, volunteers as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, is active with the 100 Year Starship initiative to lay the groundwork for future interstellar travel, and provides space outreach consulting through Stellar Outreach, LLC. She also teaches social sciences and courses in critical and creative thinking at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and has spent her spare time hunting for exoplanets and extraterrestrials as a citizen scientist. She can be found on Twitter at @ktoerpe. by Kathleen Toerpe Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else. -- Leonardo da Vinci When da Vinci admonished his students to open their eyes to a...

Diplomat and author Michael Michaud returns to Centauri Dreams with a look at interstellar probes and how we might use them. Drawn from a presentation originally intended for the 100 Year Starship Symposium in Houston, the essay asks what effect our exploring another stellar system would have on its possible inhabitants. And beyond that, what effect would it have on us, as we weigh ethical issues and ponder the potential -- and dangers -- of highly intelligent artifacts going out into the galaxy? Michaud is the author of the indispensable Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials (Springer, 2007). Among his numerous other works are many on space exploration. He was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 32 years, serving as Counselor for Science, Technology and Environment at the U.S. embassies in Paris and Tokyo, and Director of the State Department's Office of Advanced Technology. He has also been chairman of working groups at the...

Starship Century in London A new Starship Century Symposium will be held at the Royal Astronomical Society, Piccadilly, UK on Monday October 21st. If I hadn't exhausted my travel budget by September, I would definitely have this one on my agenda and follow it with a week or so in my favorite city. Here's the information I have on the event from its organizers, James and Gregory Benford: Starship Century addresses the challenges and opportunities for our long-term future in space, with possibilities envisioned by featured speaker Lord Martin Rees, Royal Astronomer, Ian Crawford, Birkbeck College, University of London, writer/scientist Stephen Baxter, James Benford, Microwave Sciences, and Gregory Benford, UC Irvine. Starship Century discusses the implications that these explorations might have upon our development as individuals and as a civilization. Agenda 10 am Starship Century: Toward the Grandest Horizon James & Gregory Benford 10:30 Scientific Benefits of Starships Ian Crawford...

Space writer Neil McAleer's long association with Arthur C. Clarke culminated in Visionary: The Odyssey of Arthur C. Clarke (Clarke Project, 2012). A gifted journalist whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, McAleer is also the author of The Omni Space Almanac, which won the 1988 Robert S. Ball Award from the Aviation and Space Writers Association. Neil recently reminded me that a new book on Clarke was about to appear, and in the post that follows, he gives us an overview of a title in which Fred Clarke, Arthur's brother, makes an informative contribution, along with a host of writers and other Clarke associates. The photos in Arthur C. Clarke: A Life Remembered are worth the price of admission, and I've reproduced a few of them below with permission. Neil breaks the review down by contributing author and explains what you can expect from each. Ordering information is at the end. by Neil McAleer Arthur C. Clarke: A Life Remembered $22.95 plus shipping. ISBN...

A graduate of Cambridge University, Rachel Armstrong completed her clinical training at the John Radcliffe Medical School at the University of Oxford in 1991 and in 2009 embarked on a PhD in chemistry and architecture at University College London. She now serves as co-director of AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) at the University of Greenwich, London, and as Visiting Research Assistant at the Center for Fundamental Living Technology, Department of Physics and Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark. In this essay, based on a late September presentation at FutureFest in London, Dr. Armstrong recalls the English soothsayer known as 'Mother Shipton' and the petrifying well in Yorkshire that has long been associated with her name. The ensuing thoughts on black sky thinking take us into the realm of 'living architecture' and her engagement with the worldship ambitions of Icarus Interstellar. by Rachel Armstrong "To exist is to change, to change is to...

About a third of the way into his new book Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars (Current, 2013), Lee Billings describes a time capsule that was sealed in July of 1963 near the Cabrillo Freeway in San Diego, though it has since been moved. Within it was a book that looked a century ahead, with contributions from politicians, astronauts, military figures and others about the world of the future. Copies of the book, titled 2063 A.D. are available, and within them one can find the musings of Nobel-laureate Harold Urey, who worried about our use of energy and noted that largely because of the need for electricity, US fossil fuel consumption had increased eightfold between 1900 and 1955. Was the trend sustainable over the long haul? Urey doubted it, and he was hardly alone, for the need for energy seems to impose sharp limits on what a society can do. Billings notes the work of Tom Murphy (UC San Diego), who works with a long-term 2.3 percent increase in...

Aerospace engineer Gerald W. Driggers embraced the dreams of Dr. Werner von Braun and his team at an early age and was privileged to meet and work with many of them. He was a prominent figure in studies of space colonization and industrialization with Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill in the 1970's and also served as an officer in the US Air Force working on satellite launch vehicles. He has published over 35 technical papers and general interest articles and contributed to three books on technical subjects, but is now turning his attention to science fiction, authoring a series of books called The Earth-Mars Chronicles. Gerald and his wife became the first U.S. sponsors of the Mars One Project, whose objective is to place a team on Mars in 2023. A portion of the proceeds from sales of "The Earth-Mars Chronicles" goes to the Mars One Project. For 17 years, Gerald has lived on a series of boats because, in his words, "It was the closest thing I could get to a space ship." He currently resides in...

Nick Nielsen thinks big, as his previous work in these pages and elsewhere has shown. His presentation on "The Large Scale Structure of Spacefaring Civilization" at the 2012 100YSS conference examined humanity's growth as defined and enabled by the structure of spacetime itself. His continuing work with Heath Rezabek weighs the factors that threaten a technological civilization, while considering what we can do in response. An author and contributing analyst with strategic consulting firm Wikistrat, Nielsen here looks at our concepts of time and the emergence of 'Big History,' which might be called 'history in a cosmic context.' We are now developing the tools that, used properly, can address and resolve issues of existential risk. by J. N. Nielsen James Hutton is often credited with the origins of the modern conception of geological time, which is sometimes called "deep time." Looking upon the Bass Rock in the outer part of the Firth of Forth James Hutton is said to have remarked,...

In his first article for Centauri Dreams, Heath Rezabek described an installation design called Vessel that we might develop to mitigate near and long term risk. The essay explained why we should pursue practical strategies to avoid the permanent stagnation of society in case of catastrophe, and described the need for enduring educational facilities to forestall a flawed realization of our potential over time. The Vessel proposal involves the deliberate engineering of resilient and flexible facilities dedicated to the retention of humanity's legacy as an ongoing hedge against what he calls Xrisk. In this second article, Heath makes a case for the importance of visualization in the early stages of any long term project -- whether terrestrial or beyond -- as a strategy and tool for focusing enthusiasm on the long work of system design. by Heath Rezabek Cory Doctorow, author and open source advocate, has said that if we want to change the future, we need to change the stories people...