Today Heath Rezabek continues his investigation of the Vessel proposal, a strategy for preserving the cultural and biological heritage of our species. Based in Austin TX, librarian and futurist Rezabek is concerned with existential risk and ways to manage it. His work has yielded lively discussions in the comments section here, as has that of his collaborator Nick Nielsen, from whom we'll hear tomorrow. In this essay, Heath moves on to question not only the various forms a Vessel might take, but where and how it could be built. Your thoughts are solicited not only in comments but also through the online survey whose address is given at the end. Previous essays in this series are Deep Time: The Nature of Existential Risk (on the mitigation of Xrisk through long-term archival and learning labs) and Visualizing Vessel (on visualization, design fiction, science fiction prototyping and their application to the Vessel proposal). by Heath Rezabek Comments and discussion in the previous...

Not long ago I pulled a wonderful 1950 film out of my collection for a long-overdue viewing. I remember 711 Ocean Drive from late night television airings, and when it popped up a few years back on a local cable channel, I made a recording. Edmund O'Brien and Joanne Dru are the key players in this gritty tale about an electronics expert who gets drawn into big-time crime, and the ending, which takes place at the Hoover Dam straddling the Nevada/Arizona border, is simply terrific, with O'Brien taking the fall after his shady dealings have been exposed. Image: On the run at the Hoover Dam in Joseph Newman's 711 Ocean Drive. Titanic forces, vast engineering, gunplay in the desert, all artfully directed by Joseph M. Newman -- what more could you want? And now, thanks to Les Johnson, I connect Hoover Dam not only with a film noir classic but with long-term thinking and starflight. Johnson, speaking in his role as a science writer with deep connections to science fiction, told the recent...

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...

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...