The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination is launching in May with what it describes as a 'series of perspectives' on what we can expect in the coming century. Its inaugural symposium begins on May 14 at the University of California at San Diego with discussions on design, artificial intelligence, synthetic life and science studies and thoughts from writers Jonathan Lethem and Kim Stanley Robinson on the literary imagination. But those with interstellar interests will want to put days 2 and 3 (May 21, 22) on their calendar, when the Starship Century Symposium convenes on the same site. Gregory and James Benford have coordinated the latter event with the Clarke Center and will use it to present ideas on our possibilities among the stars as presented in their upcoming book Starship Century. Speakers will include prominent science fiction writers as well as many of the scientists most actively engaged in thinking about starflight. Thus we have Pete Worden (NASA Ames) as well as...

No stranger to these pages, Richard Obousy is president and senior scientist for Icarus Interstellar, which among other things is engaged in the ambitious redesign of Project Daedalus. But the organization has more on its plate than a fusion-powered starship. From worldships to lightsails, Icarus Interstellar is probing the possibilities both near-term and far, all of which will be discussed at an upcoming gathering of the interstellar community that Richard now describes. by Richard Obousy Starship Congress is the interstellar summit that Icarus Interstellar is hosting this summer in Dallas, August 15-18. As an event, Starship Congress will play host and give voice to a wide variety of interstellar organizations and distinguished proponents from the interstellar community. Registration for Starship Congress is now open on Icarus Interstellar's website. A call-for-papers has been made with selected presenter's papers to be published in a special Starship Congress-dedicated issue of...

In the 1950s, Arthur C. Clarke's fame had begun to spread, and he sometimes referred to himself, genially enough, as an 'unemployed prophet.' This is a period in Clarke's career that, from 1953 to 1956, saw the emergence of the fifteen tall tales that would be published in 1957 as Tales from the White Hart, a fictitious pub modeled after London's White Horse. But while the stories were extravagant, the setting was the perfect amalgam of Clarke's interest, for the White Horse was where science fiction met rocketry for his extensive network of friends. One habitué of the White Horse was Ken Slater, whose recollection of those meetings appears in Neil McAleer's Visionary: The Odyssey of Sir Arthur C. Clarke (2013): "Anybody new that came to the pub was always told to ask Arthur to tell them about rockets, you see. Which they would do and then sit back for the short lecture. After Arthur broke into the short lecture, then we'd always strongly advise the newcomer to ask, 'Look,...

I've always wondered how Arthur C. Clarke coped with the news he received in 1986, when doctors in London told him he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a terminal illness that in the States is often called Lou Gehrig's disease. The diagnosis was mistaken -- it turns out Clarke actually suffered from what is known as 'post-polio syndrome,' a debilitating but not fatal condition. For two long years, though, he must have thought through all the symptoms of ALS, knowing that the degenerative motor neuron breakdown could gradually sap him of strength and movement. How would such an energetic man cope with an agonizing, slow fade? Neil McAleer's revised biography (Visionary: The Odyssey of Sir Arthur C. Clarke) gives the answer, as recounted by Clarke's brother Fred: "...after the initial shock, Arthur more or less said, damn it, he'd got an enormous amount he wanted to do, and if he's only got fifteen months to do it, he'd better whack into it. And he did whack into it,...

In a 1955 letter to the British rocket scientist Val Cleaver, Arthur Clarke wrote about his view from the island then called Ceylon: "Beautiful night last night. Southern Cross (a very feeble constellation) just above the front gate, with Alpha Centauri beside it. It always gives me an odd feeling to look at Alpha and to realize that's the next stop." The next stop indeed. Cleaver was a fellow member of the British Interplanetary Society who, like Clarke, was instrumental in energizing the society after World War II. Both men served the BIS as its chairman in those years, and after Cleaver's wartime work at De Havilland, he would go on to start a rocket division for the company and become chief engineer for the rocket division of Rolls-Royce. He is perhaps best known as the man behind the Blue Streak missile, but for those with a passion for the works of Arthur C. Clarke, he will always be remembered for his deep friendship with the man, and his energetic contribution to British...

Tau Zero's founding architect brings news of a recent European Union meeting that included starships and their implications on the agenda. Here's hoping that while he was there he also had the chance to sample some of those fabulous Belgian ales... by Marc Millis The European Union recently held a conference to collect information to plan for the coming decades of science and technology priorities. This included the theme of international collaboration and the implications for all humanity across the globe. As a part of this conference, the EU organizers invited Mae Jemison of the 100 Year Starship organization to chair a session about interstellar flight. Mae rounded up a suite of speakers including Buzz Aldrin (a genuine space celebrity), Jill Tarter (SETI), Lou Friedman (solar sail advocate and former Planetary Society director), Kathryn Denning (space anthropologist), Pam Contag (microbiologist), Marc Millis (propulsion physicist), and about half-dozen more. Image: Outside the...

Jules Verne once had the notion of a comet grazing the Earth and carrying off a number of astounded people, whose adventures comprise the plot of the 1877 novel Off on a Comet. It's a great yarn that was chosen by Hugo Gernsback to be reprinted as a serial in the first issues of his new magazine Amazing Stories back in 1926, but with a diameter of 2300 kilometers, Verne's comet was much larger than anything we've actually observed. Comets tend to be small but they make up for it in volume, with an estimated 100 billion to several trillion thought to exist in the Oort Cloud. All that adds up to a total mass of several times the Earth's. Of course, coming up with mass estimates is, as with so much else about the Oort Cloud, a tricky business. Paul R. Weissman noted a probable error of about one order of magnitude when he produced the above estimate in 1983. What we are safe in saying is something that has caught Freeman Dyson's attention: While most of the mass and volume in the galaxy...

by Kelvin F. Long The chief editor of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society here offers part II of his article on the Society's history. If there is one BIS project that captures the imagination above all others, it's surely Project Daedalus, the ambitious attempt to design a spacecraft capable of reaching a nearby star within 50 years. But the motivations for Daedalus were wide-ranging and the conclusions of the study may surprise you. The success of the design effort showed us what was possible with the technology of its time, while subsequent studies like Project Icarus upgrade the vessel and take us that much closer to what may one day be a working craft. Les Shepherd took things to new heights with the publication of his seminal 1952 paper "Interstellar Flight". This was the first paper ever to properly address the physics and engineering issues associated with sending a probe to another star and it is what I regard as the beginning of interstellar studies as a...

by Kelvin F.Long Centauri Dreams readers will know Kelvin Long as the Chief Editor for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, but the résumé hardly stops there. He is also the Deputy Chair of the BIS Technical Committee and a member of the governing council. Long is the co-founder of Project Icarus, co-founder of the non-profit Icarus Interstellar (formerly serving as the Vice President European Operations) and is the co-founder of the pending Institute for Interstellar Studies. He is the managing Director of the aerospace company Stellar Engines Ltd. Here Kelvin begins a two-part article (to be completed on Monday) highlighting the British Interplanetary Society and its numerous contributions to spaceflight concepts both interplanetary and interstellar. Liverpool is a unique location in British history. Not just because of the Beatles or Olaf Stapledon, but because this is where the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) was founded in 1933 by a Cheshire-born...